Not too surprised. What I’ve seen from friends and family in the industry is a mix of union busting and natural shrinking after the 2020 boom. AI is kinda frowned upon for those AAA companies (at least at middle management and below) so it wasn’t so much job replacement although that option might still galvanize union busting.

Granted the companies in question are Japanese and Korean developers, so the US side is mostly licensing and marking and such. And if I’m being honest, some of those marketers really should lose their jobs, or at least stop getting paid twice that of actual talented people… sigh.

Every morning, instead of pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, we get a bowl of war crimes.

My Pokemon White 2 has Wiis in the room and I just visited Game Freak because they self insert in every game, lol

I was a little surprised that AI was actually not too off, or at least when it was, it was because it misunderstood the distro I used. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go beyond basics though, like installing random stuff from the AUR to fix something can go horribly wrong.

I managed, but I’m a glutton for punishment. In the first one you can kind of go guideless as long as you know a few fundamentals: determination is most important as it gives more skill points and easily pays for itself - by endgame you easily have everything capped. Certain combinations of skills also become game breakers, like being able to duplicate items or pumping up exp gains, etc, but the game isn’t that hard and if you want to do everything you have to run multiple times anyway. That holds especially true in SO2, apparently.

On that note, SO games use divergent path storylines but rather than being a “choose a faction” or something, it’s dependent on party members. In SO1, it’s basically three ways things pan out for certain arcs depending on who you recruited, with some members required for others. Luckily there was a flowchart, so blind-ish runs can sorta use that without blatant spoilers. It gets kind of interesting because certain mutually exclusive characters are related in unpredictable ways, so multiple playthroughs kinda reveal more depth… at least as far as a game originally made for SNES can be.

Luckily the game isn’t that long so it wasn’t much of a chore to do multiple playthroughs, especially with fast forward functions of ppsspp emulator. Doing it on original hardware might have been more of a chore, though.

The skills system really calls out for a guide, it’s really easy to misallocate points early game. Or at least that’s my understanding; I did SO1 on PSP recently but uses the same system more or less and you can make life a lot easier with proper planning.

The recent remaster supposedly has better documentation, although I’m not sure I like it better.

I’m starting up… Pokemon White Version 2 completely out of the blue because RetroAchevements is beta testing their multiset feature and I’m a sucker for the Professor Oak Challenge grind. (It’s pure madness, truly a waste of time grind beyond human comprehension, but it’s also an excuse to binge watch stuff and keep my overactive brain in check).

As always I recommend RetroAchevements in general, though. Truly an endless supply of old stuff to do!

I’ve been holding out for a Full Body experience but might just have to emulate it at this point. Although missing out on cutscenes is a real shame-- when it first came out, my wife and I played the game and watched the scenes together and uh… was an interesting and tense situation. Lol

I’ve been using rEFInd for my dual boot and it shows a Tux, but that’s mostly cause I haven’t been tinkering with it. Now I’m tempted to use anime girl personifications of OSs instead, which would be really classy, I bet.

I recognized the shiisaa immediately! Very cute, my Okinawan wife would approve. Too bad we skipped our New Years cards this year because of bad timing and illness. Still ate Okinawa soba with pork belly, though!

Yeah I was gonna say, also didn’t he just rip off what Valve was sharing for free from their VR lab experimentation like 10 years ago?

That’s what I figured and I appreciate the confirmation. Since I work in education it’s probably a “better safe than sorry” approach since the laws on student privacy are actually enforced, unlike in corporate. (Obviously it’s security theater, though, as web apps and Windows integration make emails and files easy to steal anyway).

Yup. Although I’ve become a fan of things like GIMP, you do need to learn a new software and depending on who you are, it might take a while. Lucky (?) for me, I was too poor to afford it for school and since it was for official assignments, I didn’t want to pirate.

That said, Microsoft integration is more a curse than a blessing at this point. Privacy and junk aside, it’s dumped hundreds of GB of files onto my tiny SSD C: since it kept changing settings and ignoring my preferences. That’s why Microsoft messing things up is converting people who even prefer integration, when there’s an option to anyway!

I’d say it worked. Bravo. Haha

Some of y’all are showing your bubble side; outside of our communities here, Linux very much is obscure. That said, there really does seem to be a leak in the mainstream and it’s nice to see it mentioned in a publication. Even if just a little gain, thanks in large part to Steam raising awareness for gamers, US decline in Europe and Canada, and Windows 11 blunders with security.

I’ve gone from people being completely oblivious when I mention Linux, to going “oh, like steam deck?” but there’s still plenty of others who still are oblivious. Then again, mentioning file extensions goes over the heads of 95% of who I talk to, so I wouldn’t have too high hopes.

Probably for the best, lol. At the very least, Roblox isn’t particularly good for kids.

Also, modded Minecraft through Prism beats bedrock any day of the week. I’m hoping when my kids are of age, they’ll be down for an expert pack. My daughter sure as hell will be, she’s as weird as I am. I’m sure more normal kids have packs they’d enjoy, though.

Yeah, I think if it’s web apps it’s fine, just aren’t ideal. I was mostly frustrated I couldn’t use a third party email app or OneDrive integration app. It’s more a grievance with the university I work for, though.

I’ll be trying to contribute to that!

Already hit a difficulty since my workplace uses Microsoft for everything and the admins lock out third party stuff. I guess I can access files on outlook and OneDrive via browser based options but God they’re awful.

I guess we just need more global pandemics. It’s a great boom to the video game industry, literally everyone was playing games when AC:NH released.

I agree. Can’t quite put my finger on it… maybe the window behind the monitor? I try not to assume simply because of the style, but the lack of author credit makes it hard to check anyway.The weird thing is it wouldn’t at all be hard to draw by hand.

Edit: I like all the different answers. It feels like a new, unfortunate version of the “find the differences” game.