DreamHollow4219

This is the video since I can't seem to link it any other way.

Man the TF2 hype has really deteriorated since the bot problem became so bad.

Risk of Rain 2. Been playing a lot of this game lately.

Well yeah. American politicians dare not poke a hornet's nest issue like that, because it would involve talking about the fundamentals of the American economic and political systems in general. Interestingly but not surprisingly, they absolutely hate talking about the actual root causes of these issues.

People have been accusing those with power and influence for being responsible for wild things like this for as long as there have been tabloids. It's time to give it a rest. There's a difference between pointing out the actual damaging effects of extremely powerful corporations and extremely rich tycoons, and then there's extremely silly things like this. No offense. People are falling into a disconnect between reality and fiction. It's easy to go there; the mind tends to wander and make connections to things that don't connect. It's a very human thing to do. Especially when things are so miserable and so full of grief that you will be more willing to point the finger at the people you already dislike. So when you hear people you agree with starting to break out the pitchforks and go after a disliked popular figure, it's not that hard to gather up the strength and join in. But tell me, do you actually believe this? Are you trolling us? What about microchip technology do you know? What about it's advances, it's capabilities, and it's modern adaptations? What do you know about virology or bioengineering? Do you understand the nature of the Pandemic Severity Scale? Do you know the process for determining infection from person to person; the commonly adapted R0 scale? Please look into the actual facts of things like this. If you can't verify the facts through someone or something else, verify the facts for yourself. If you can't verify them for yourself, trust research that is collaborated on by multiple experts. Despite what some might think it's actually VERY HARD to get a bunch of eggheads to agree to lie about established facts. Some of them really do have more principle than that; motivated by actual science and whatnot. And if you don't trust science? I'm afraid I have nothing more to say to you. You are well within your rights to distrust the news, the media, and the popular opinion. There really is some ridiculous stuff out there full of misconceptions, bias, and falsehood. But when you start doubting facts that you can verify for yourself I'm afraid there's nothing more anyone can tell you.

They are a bit of a catalyst though. Maybe not in most states, but you are seriously underestimating the passionate defense of the 2nd Amendment in the South, particularly. Most of the Deep South would not take any serious changes to gun ownership laws very well due to very conservative (and usually pro-hunting) districts across the lower United States. People like that don't care what guns you're restricting because they care the most that gun ownership is being challenged at all. More conservative leaning districts are constantly sent fear-tactic mail screaming at citizens to protect their right to own guns because they might lose their ability to use guns at all; at least that's what the politicians and activist groups will try to make them believe. Trust me. It's worth being at least aware of how seriously people take gun ownership in the United States and how even the worst tragedies will not deter possible dangerous actions from the most extreme gun owners. Especially places like Texas. It's dangerous to disregard groups that have constantly threatened retaliation for taking action on an issue.

If there's a better thread for this, let me know. I just want to bring awareness to people who might not already realize what's happening. As of the past few years, tech companies are becoming increasingly restrictive in what they will allow their users to do. Terms of Service for most major monopolies are adopting very similar guidelines to "always be a good citizen, and never question anything" on a regular basis. For an example of what I'm talking about, Microsoft recently updated their terms of service to double down enforcement on a Code of Conduct that I'm sure did not previously exist- at least not for user-to-user personal use. I can understand on some level the enforcement against things that are flagrantly illegal that Microsoft would never want to be associated with, that's not what I'm worried about. What I'm deeply concerned about is legal gray areas where legislation and pending court cases have not fully established "modern" judgements in cases that would affect users day-to-day lives. Under these new rules, it's not far fetched to say that someone's entire Microsoft account could be completely terminated because you just did something Microsoft didn't like. And because Microsoft has easy access to a lot of people's information, this could be a significant and permanent "all goods and services" ban that completely eliminates your ability to use Microsoft products without an appeal- including Windows and Windows programs. This is especially true of the particularly invasive Windows 10 which has had multiple services enabled by default that are extremely hard to turn off. 21 different settings that should be modified just for you to retain some of your privacy to yourself. Sheesh. If you value your privacy or even your safety, Windows 10 is a bit antithetical to that. There is almost nothing you can do that Microsoft won't know about, which is another major reason people have been distinctly hesitant to upgrade to the OS. I just wanted to get the opinion of some of the people here, seeing as how I only see these trends intensifying over time. I have no doubt that without something like government intervention, these companies will continue to double down on their users to encourage certain "behaviors". I know how I sound, but I've been observing tech and tech trends for years. I'm from real old school computing, back during the days of those rough looking tan computers that took actual floppy disks. Those days are long gone, and the idea of an operating system that keeps any data on a singular computer are practically a distant memory. I just want people to be aware how much worse this could get before it actually does.

I'm not so sure. We're living in a time where people were willing to attack the Capitol building to physically depose and harm members of Congress. At this point I'm willing to believe things will get worse, not better.

Seems like it. I don't see this going over well with people, it might even spark some more armed resistance by citizens.

Lootboxes have been an overall terrible idea for a while. They seem moral on the surface because most games only store things like cosmetics in them, meanwhile you other games where actual equipment, perks, and powerups are stored in paid lootboxes. That's just seedy. Overall though, I don't approve anyway. The AAA game industry is usually found secretly bragging about "whales"; addicted gamblers dropping huge amounts of cash for digital content. It's not even the same as paying for the games themselves because games are actually protected as goods. Instead this is in a whole new subcategory of goods within goods, creating a new sort of legal ground. Honestly as slow as the legislative process is for so many parts of the world.. it's going to take some time for meaningful laws and resolutions to be passed that the public actually agrees with. You're going to get a lot of flipflopping.

I did a brief search to see if it had been recommended by anyone here, but I didn't find anything. Hook is a 2D physics puzzle game developed by Maciej Targoni and Wojciech Wasiak. I remember it being an enjoyable experience even if the game itself isn't very long. I remember Ross specifically mentioning that he was interested in puzzle games, and this one here is slightly niche puzzle elements. The game itself is still valued at roughly $1 so at that value it's basically a steal. I would consider it one of those "huh, that was neat" experiences that you try out for the sake of doing something slightly different. I recommend it.

I bought this game a few years ago and I used to play it a lot. Unfortunately, my computer could barely keep up with it. I had to play relatively small scale games just to keep my graphics card from burning up (relatively low end graphics card compared to decent CPU and RAM. Bad combination.) I could run it again now, but I'm not that interested. They changed up the dynamics of how planet development takes place to a point of micromanagement hell. I enjoy mostly enjoy the micromanagement, but it feels like they dropped the ball with the latest system. The complete rework of the planet-colonies became much more confusing and disengaging than any other aspect of the game. It was so bad that I had to stop playing. The intergalactic wars in the game feel MUCH better than they did in the beginning. For a long while, AI would greatly favor a sort of "wait too long and we will become invincible" sort of logic style in conflicts. This was refined and adjusted to a more reasonable extent in later patches to the point of completely reworking space combat entirely. Stellaris reminds me a lot of Civilization but with even more of a focus on war. Being diplomatic can give you relatively strong alliances over time, but you're much more likely to be forced to fight if your enemies are immune to diplomatic measures. Sometimes this is even the case for empires that are simply Xenophobic rather than just outright immune to trade and diplomacy.

I've played this one through. Lifeless Planet does an alright job of developing a narrative through exploration, but by the time you get close to the end of the game it just starts getting unnecessarily weird and a little boring. The premise itself is fascinating and has a lot to offer, but unfortunately it feels like it just falls short.

Game Engines like Unreal are already proving that AI is insanely powerful right now. I remember witnessing their technical demo for their latest engine and how close to photorealism it was. With graphics in particular, we really aren't that much further off until we can count the grains of sand in a fully emulated beach. That's a huge testament to how far graphical AI has come.

Bleed 2. Big fan of the Bleed series, but it's relatively obscure and no one seems to say much of anything about it. It's just your generic arcade-style platform shooter. I know it's not the kind of game to draw a lot of attention or even register on most people's radar. Still a shame that hardly anyone knows about it. I'd say that I can understand if people are pushed away from it because of it trying a little too hard to resemble an "anime" influence, but the gameplay itself is pretty satisfying. All in all, big fan of Bleed 2, sort of modest fan of the original Bleed.

Yes and no. I think as a country, the United States might be on borrowed time. I've met people from across the political spectrum who seem to be in relative agreement about that prospect. As for what the U.S. will become in the future; we really don't know. I've heard the word "balkanization" thrown around a lot and it's a concerning possibility. Some states and their governors have openly talked about succession. That's regardless of it being a "Red" or "Blue" state by the way. I know that around the time of 2019-2020 I started to read articles about states threatening to break away via their governors. It seems like some of the States in the United States are trying to break off into their own identity, which feeds into this Balkanization theory. The idea that these places are trying to force their own autonomy because they are starting to feel as if it's time to break away from the Union. It's worth thinking about the fact that a big part of what keeps the country united is the idea that we are all "Americans." Once that idea starts to become heavily eroded, all that's left is "state pride" and an association with that. What I don't think any of these potentially separatist states are considering is what kind of effort actually goes into becoming a separate territory. They would need: A currency unique to their territory. Separate state laws that fill in gaps that Federal laws once covered. Established borders (which may lead to some immediate headaches regarding territory). Most likely a new territory name. And most likely some things I haven't even considered. These are just some of the basics. So really what we should be on the lookout for are the signs of actual state separation from the Union of the United States. Once states start actively breaking away, that's when the real tension is going to hit. It will force D.C. to render a decision about how to proceed, depending on how seriously the State is taking it's own autonomy. If it's a vested effort with actual measures to separate from Federal influence, it would definitely count as a civil conflict. Edit: By the way, I'm not just talking about Civil War personalities either. Both California and Texas are confirmed to have at least announced a possible secession in the recent past.

Hey. I just go by Dream, DH, or DreamHollow. I've been a big fan of the Game Dungeon series for a while, and I was a pretty big fan of Civil Protection and Freeman's Mind before that. Nice to meet you all.

The Spiderbot at the bottom of the picture is a great touch. Spiderbot is actually the first episode of Game Dungeon I ever saw.

I was initially interested in crypto mining when I first started hearing about it in the news and on various websites, but as time has gone on it's left kind of a sour taste in my mouth. We're reaching sort of an unpleasant threshold where people who were initially interested in trading crypto as a profitable venture and hobby that they hoped they could share with other people, now gradually but uncomfortably mingling with the kind of people who design software to mine crypto on a computer in secret. I was very interested in Ethereum until the last year where it's been used in things like NFTs- I highly dislike non-fungible tokens and I feel like they're setting people down a bad path. Essentially a copyright gray-area where people can create a replication of someone's work without owning the actual work. It creates a lot of problems and I predict we'll start seeing court cases about it in the near future. Not trying to bump a really old topic here; just felt like it might be relevant to talk about crypto as it's come back in the news as a huge thing recently.

I have found some pretty enlightening games as of the last few years. RimWorld has been a big one for me. I never expected that one of my favorite settlement/colony games would be discovered completely by accident; but that's exactly what happened. Though I'm not really sure how to follow up on the Crohn's disease comment. Glad you have things you can do to keep your sanity during the worst of it?