Homeschooled316

“However, Coco noted that Koenig also urged the Holy See to not make public what he was revealing because he feared for his own life and the lives of the resistance sources who had provided the intelligence.”

Koenig, for the 99% of people who don’t read past the headline, is the author of the letter in question.

Violating an NDA is a civil issue, not criminal. This guy got arrested for stealing.

The processor listed in the specs, Rockchip 3128 SOC, is a smart tv chip.

Present evidence that fake gambling causes real gambling. Not evidence that it actives dopamine receptors. Actual gambling.

Fantasy and fiction don’t cause maladaptive behavior. One day society will accept that this is still true for audiovisual media, just as it had to be slowly accepted for music, just as it had to be slowly accepted for books.

A review bomb is a collective effort to lower the score of something, abusing systems meant to reflect an average opinion by gathering people who would not normally leave a review, often people who haven’t even played the game. It is intentionally creating sampling bias. “Review bomb” is a meaningful term being applied correctly here. I don’t like modern blizz, but Overwatch 2 is not the worst game on steam as its review average would indicate.

The game’s original hype stemmed from it being a technical showcase for the PS5. Not exactly a selling point for the already more-powerful PC world. They also didn’t bother porting the previous game to PC before porting the sequel.

Whitehead also dashed away one of the big points of speculation among Sonic fans: that Sonic Mania 2 falling through was the result of bad blood between Sega and members of Evening Star. “Contrary to any rumors, we maintain a friendly relationship with Sega and hope fans are pumped to play both games once they release,” he says.

These responses do not leave me with the same impression as the article’s author. Both parties maintain professionalism, but they also both dodged the direct question of why Evening Star isn’t making a sonic game right now. I still think there is bad blood, and history makes me wonder if it was Iizuka wanting to seize more creative control than Whitehead’s team was willing to give.

Left 4 Dead is like Animal Crossing. The sort of game that tricks devs into thinking “oh yeah that’s so simple, i can do that easy,” without understanding all the effort put into the little details that made the original shine.

Would former l4d devs understand that better? Maybe. But I’ve thus far been unimpressed with game offerings from “the team behind [bigger game]” projects.

An early win is a well-documented technique known among gambling researchers and clinicians as a catalyst for addictive play, because it creates an early dopamine hit that gamblers are then eager to recreate, even as their subsequent losses mount.

You meant to say “Because it tricks someone into believing the continuing experience has more value than it does.”

I agree with the premise of the article, but the overuse of “dopamine” to explain predatory commercial behavior is exhausting. Your brain does stuff when you experience stuff. Dopamine isn’t some evil drug that you GeT a hIT oF. 90% of the time I see the dopamine used to describe some phenomenon, it is literally just a worse, more pretentious and sciency-sounding way to explain it. Like trying to describe how microsoft excel works to someone by describing semiconductors.

I remember more than a decade ago when (because popular things are evil) online articles were preaching the dangers of World of Warcraft vanilla, a game with a fixed subscription cost and no way to monetize big spenders. “When you level up there’s a big gold explosion, that’s to help with the DOPAMINE release and keep you HOOKED on your MMO DRUG.” Jesus christ people, it’s just strong visual design that made people feel accomplished.

These games are different, of course. They are predatory. But you don’t get closer to understanding why these tactics are effective by pretending you’re a neuroscientist talking about some highly objective medical phenomenon.

And before I get accused of being uneducated or disrespecting science, I’m a published researcher in cognition and cognitive neuroscience. I don’t have a phd because I left the field sick of a lot of the same fakeness I’m complaining about now.

Yep, I’ve been holding off on it for awhile because of this. It feels like it’s maybe never going to happen at this point.

I believe South Park: Fractured but Whole

Kevin Connor, a spokesperson for Monterey Bay Aquarium, said Otter 841 is considered a danger to the public because it is ignoring its natural survival instincts, ABC reported.

“When we see this type of behavior exhibited by otters, it is a sign that they no longer have that healthy fear of human beings that allows them to stay safe in the wild away from us,” Conner said.

I’m reading your words, Kevin, I am. But my heart is stronger than my brain. It wants that Otter to win.

It’s a novel hybrid of two genres, so the recommendations are all going to be split between them. The best (western) turn based tactics game is likely XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. The best deckbuilder card game is likely Slay the Spire.

If you want a tactics game that retains the social/character aspects, you’re looking for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but that’s on the switch.

Jez Corden correctly leaked the Death Knight class in hearthstone prior to announcement. He seems to have sources at blizzard.

Game companies will literally invent superhuman artificial intelligence to filter rude remarks sooner than they will admit their ranking-treadmill game design breeds toxicity.

I should put “accessibility” in sarcastic quotation marks. Here, it doesn’t mean adding options or features to assist someone with different handicaps or needs. It means making the game so easy that anyone, even a toddler or game journalist, can finish it without having to learn from mistakes or think about what they’re doing.

Particularly with regard to excessive guidance. Varying degrees of “mobile game that makes you click exactly what it says for 30 minutes to prove you played the tutorial.” Those games may be the worst offenders, but less-dramatic hand holding happens in console and PC games too.

People are going to be pedantic about this one, because it’s not ALL games, but what you’re seeing is real. Game design, especially corporate design, has changed to accomplish two things:

1. Engagement
2. Accessibility

Games are designed to be playable by as many people as possible for as long as possible. Some would say this is just Western AAA games, but lots of anime games have been doing this nonsense for decades - games with 10 hours of baby’s first JRPG tutorial and 80 hours of grinding and filler. Many of them critically acclaimed games that fans would flog me for if I actually named one of them.

There are indie games that help you escape this, but many take that accessibility-first approach that requires everything to be very structured and corral you toward the right direction.

Again, I think people are going to be dismissive, but you’re right. It’s a tough world out there for someone who just wants to play a game and not be suckered into a live service engagement trap, or ladder system that hides your real MMR to keep you grinding up an imaginary points system. It’s not like the old days when you can just pick something popular, you have to discriminate and carefully judge what you buy now.

All the usual problems you expect with lists like these.

• Franchises represented by their first or most ubiquitous game rather than their best (or better yet, all of them that deserve it making the list)
• Recency bias toward games that likely won’t be recognized as this good 5 years from now.
• Missing entries so egregious that almost anyone would agree they belong on the list (see the lack of Symphony of the Night, for example).
• Arguably too much weight put on storytelling.
• (most importantly) The items above being applied randomly and inconsistently.

Arkham City was for a long while considered the best, but age has arguably been kinder to Asylum (thanks to storytelling) and Knight (thanks to streamlining/modernization).

I don’t think there is any question on how to answer the literal post, though. If you could only get one of them, it’s Asylum.

Also, I would not recommend binging these games unless you are REALLY feeling it when you finish Asylum. The chief complaint about them was always that they did not change the formula around enough between games. I have to think playing them back to back exacerbates that.

Age of Empires 2 skirmish maps are procedurally generated, in contrast to other competitive RTS games of that style. It’s done quite well and makes scouting meaningful for reasons other than rock-paper-scissoring your opponent.