There is literally only one person developing SDV and Haunted Chocolatier. This is literally an impossible statement. There is only ConcernedApe, and he has not announced any cancelation.

Tbh I play the hell out of some Kairosoft games on mobile <_< I love watching my little guys thrive.

BG3 is a huge exception. It’s more popular by far than most games of the sort. And still only two of the dozen gamers I work with has played any of it, and they are both done with it.

all these gamers glowing about how great it is

Where? If you mean online, yeah, online discussion and gaming publications focus on more complex games that more serious gamers are playing. There’s just more to say about them. And news sites are gonna pay more attention to exceptions to the norm like BG3. None of the many gamers in my life are talking about it. If you’re hearing about BG3 and other huge, complex games regularly, it’s because you are spending time in spaces where and with people who care about them. Because it’s not just everywhere.

Oh yeah I know that, it just seems like these type of games are super popular.

I honestly think that’s just your circle. That does not describe the majority of the gamers I know or have known. I have always been in a minority for wanting to do math in my free time and have to find places online to discuss these games because usually nobody else in my life is playing them. Most of the people I know who played BG3 did so because it is popular, and they avoided as much of the math and homework as possible. And most of them are done with it.

There are tons of games that don’t require that sort of knowledge base or study investment. It’s a minority that do. But you’re on Lemmy. This is a self selected community of extra thoughtful nerds. This community is more likely to be excited about games with homework than your average gaming community. I do genuinely love the research part of complex games. I like crafting builds and planning battles. I loved both Divinity Original Sin games and will love BG3 when I get there.

But sometimes I do just want a game for my hands to play while by brain takes a break. That’s why I spent most of the summer with Earth Defense Force 5, a 9/10 space insect exploding experience. Highly recommend it if you don’t want to fuck with the details.

Maybe he means trans-Atlantic rights?

<3 My 100% Merino Wool Aran Crafts coat. This is a shameless unpaid advertisement. My coat is an absolute treasure. I mostly shop used clothing, and my coat is used. I’m athletic and outdoorsy, and it’s still hard to find quality, durable clothing. I’m lucky enough to generally like the asthetics of sturdy clothes, but I still have to pick around the crap. I’m also lucky enough to be of a shape and size that gives me many different options while thrifting, so I can be picky and find good clothes, but even I sometimes leave Goodwill disappointed and hoping for better luck next time. I gotta get pants for this winter, like a whole new pants selection. Hopefully it’s not too painful.

I don’t really have an inner child. My childhood sucked. I have nightmares about feeling angry and scared and trapped like I did as a child. My adulthood just keeps getting better. I’m learning to enjoy life and the world for the first time, and I’m a more productive member of society for it. What you describe is totally alien to me.

But these “incomplete” releases are often still much more game than a finished ps2 game. And we don’t really know how finished the devs considered their games at the time. We know based on found content that many of our “finished” classics had cut and canceled content that could have been completed and released/activated on the funds from initial sales if patching had been a technological possibility. They have bugs and glitches that are just part of the game because they couldn’t be fixed after release. There are old games that are or can be legitimately impossible to complete on certain platforms because they have a glitch or potential hard lock if you make certain choices. And once printed they were permanently broken games. Games have been coming out incomplete for a long time. At least now they can be fixed.

If you’re genuinely not using it as a gaming machine, you could take it offline for use as a blu-ray player. That would at least let you skip the OS updates. And mine only complains about the shutdown if it comes unplugged or we lose power while it’s on or in rest mode. It never complains if I fully shut it down from the menu.

I left reddit a while ago for Instagram. There’s a lot of art on Instagram, and I enjoy that I can interact with artists there. I also do some personal and professional networking there. But I always missed having a text first space for discussion. And I missed that old school forum feel. It’s been a long time since reddit fulfilled those needs effectively, and Instagram isn’t even trying. I heard about Lemmy when the API exodus happened and decided to give it a shot. So far it’s kept my interest. It has a fun racous forum feel still, and could grow quite a bit yet without losing it.

Just when you thought you were out?

Calling Planned Parenthood a political group is just telling on yourself. You hate women’s bodily autonomy and/or trans people enough to overlook the fact that they offer free and income cost adjusted birth control and vasectomies and hysterectomies and fertility treatments. They are a non-profit organization offering every type of sexual and reproductive health care. They, in fact, do not engage in politically driven discrimination against certain types of sexual health issues. They treat those trying to get pregnant with the same level of evidence based care as those seeking abortion or hrt or to be made infertile, without concern for public opinion or political discourse. I assume all of the above can be said of the children’s hospital mentioned, but I don’t have an ongoing relationship with them to base my comments on…

which feels like it might be easier if companies are already complying with this

This is part of the California regulation strategy: California is the largest market in the country for many products. It’s often cheaper to make things to California standards for everyone than to run two different production lines or facilities or give up California altogether, so we get California approved and labeled things all across the US. It’s a nifty feature of the state.

It’s something I’m actively pursuing. I really had to transition first before it was a realistic option. Now it feels almost inevitable. I rock a manic pixie moon child look and vibe working at a busy dispensary. I just have to let RNGesus do her terrible work and stay vigilant.

I wouldn’t say that I’m discreet, but I don’t make a point of telling people about it or anything. It eventually comes up in conversation naturally as I’m getting to know people. If I talk to you about my personal life, it’s gonna come up.

My wife has has a boyfriend for more than five years. I’m not attracted to him like she is, but nobody is unhappy in or about our arrangement. We met each other really young, and it stuck. But neither of us wants to have only one great romance in our lives. It really is what works for us.

Tbh, my wife and I have been together for so long and through so much that is has become easy. We’ve been together more than fifteen years, and both of us consider our childhoods of abuse to be the hardest periods of our lives. We know and trust each other deeply and implicitly. She’s had an increasingly serious second partner for more than five years now, and it’s become pretty easy. I’m casually looking for a boyfriend, and she’s excited for me. It’s the foundational strength of our relationship that makes this lifestyle possible. We’ve built a big, full life together, and we have enough love and space in our lives to share <3

Probably the Gateless Gate, the Eiichi Shimomissé translation. I’m actually a Discordian, but I find the Principia best for introduction. It devotes a lot of space to silly rules you’re supposed to violate and other introductory concepts and practices. And Illuminatus! is plagued by a masculine confidence and aggression that both the writers and Hagbard were aware of and tried to minimize. The Gateless Gate is, to me, much better for staying deep in the untethered state of pure Discordian existence. It talks a little much of patriarchs, but it’s not thematically essential. And it isn’t rooted in and doesn’t reference modern western theology and philosophy like the Principia because it was never intended to stand in contrast to or lead people out of modern western theology. Both the Principia and Illuminatus! reference it in some way because secular zen is important to the development of Discordianism. Maybe no book has ever changed my life as much as Illuminatus! but the Mumonkan is one of my primary tools for staying rooted in this way of being. It’s with me all the time. One of the first things I do when I get a new phone is make sure my Mumonkan made it over or go download it again. I read it whenever I’m feeling lost or confused and uncertain about a decision or life change. It always leads me back to me.

They’re oldies, but both of the Soul Reaver games and the Raziel parts of LoK: Defiance have a two tiered death system. (Minor spoilers going forward, but I’m talking spoilers for the opening cutscene from Soul Reaver, so I’d argue not real spoilers.) See, after having his physical vampire form thrown into the well of souls and falling through an endless abyss for several hundred years, Raziel exists first as a structurally sound spirit in a world where most things don’t maintain any resemblance to their corporeal forms after death. After being salvaged from the well of souls and set on a quest, he gains the power to create a corporeal form that resembles wretched wraith he has become in spirit. But that new corpse isn’t him, and destroying it doesn’t kill him. It just releases him back to the spirit realm, where he can regain his strength and manifest a new corporeal form. You can be killed in the spirit realm and sent back to a checkpoint, but the spirit realm is by and large far less dangerous than the physical. Very few threats can follow you, and the soul scavengers who populate most the spirit realm are little more than fodder for a creature like Raziel to slay and eat at his leisure. So you regain your strength, find a nexus between the worlds, and manifest a new body. It’s probably my favorite unconventional handling of death or failure in a game because of its comprehensive and essential connections to the story and lore of the series. Raziel is the beating black heart of the mythos of the series.