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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the capital structure is fair by any means. I understand all the reasons why people - especially right now - are struggling to justify big purchases.

    And I will readily agree that inefficient and improper use of resources is one of the contributing factors to ballooning development budgets

    That said, video games are - and I challenge you to disprove this - easily one of the best investments for entertainment. Dollars-per-hour of fun on a 20hr, $60 game is $3. For a live service game where people spend hundreds of thousands of hours playing it can get below $0.10 per hour.

    EDIT: I also agree that demos need to make a comeback because I’m sick of wasting money. Though people also need to read some reviews before they buy occasionally :/



  • I simply chose two big, well known, and beloved titles for the sake of expediency.

    This problem is not unique to big budget games.

    Indie devs are getting screwed too. You saying that you’ve found great games for $30-40 from indie devs isn’t an argument against more sustainable pricing like you think it is.

    If the dev budget for the indie game was 5% of the AAA game but the price was 50% then you’ve literally just helped prove my point

    The fact is - and I challenge you to prove me wrong here - video games continue to be hands down the best dollar-per-hour investment for entertainment. Even a $60 game that only lasts 20 hrs is still coming in at $3/hr of entertainment, which is very hard to beat. When you look at live service games where people will spend literally thousands of hours after paying anywhere from $60-200 you’re looking at $0.10/hr in some cases.


  • Fun facts incoming!

    Cost of “Mario 64” on release = $59.99

    Development budget for Mario 64 = ~$1.56mil

    Inflation adjusted Mario 64 cost in 2022 = $111.91

    Inflation adjusted Mario 64 budget in 2022 = ~$2.91mil

    Cost of “Elden Ring” on release = $59.99

    Estimated dev. budget for Elden Ring = $100mil-200mil

    Mario 64 units sold = ~12mil

    Elden Ring units sold = ~28mil

    These details are provided without comment. You do the math and decide whether the fact that prices haven’t changed since 1996 might be the reason for some of the enshitification we continue to see.

    And now for the comment:

    Consumers are horrifyingly resistant to price increases for games. It is directly responsible for many of the shitty monetization models we’ve seen. Development budget continue to rise, even on indie games, while consumers pay less and less in “real money value” over time.

    It’s completely unsustainable and the very reason the “business types” get involved, forcing unpopular monetization schemes






  • Go pirate. That’s what I do when shit doesn’t work.

    I just don’t also fool myself into thinking they will ever change their ways so long as it’s profitable 🤷

    I’m not saying you’re wrong. Nor am I telling you to accept the shitty quality stream as the best you can get. I’m just saying this is how the system is set up right now and it’s not a Netflix problem. It’s a capitalism problem.


  • neatchee@lemmy.worldtoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldNetflix bad... Shocker, I know
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    4 months ago

    Big corps like Netflix only care about supporting the 90% of users to who operate in a bog-standard configuration. They really couldn’t care less about supporting things like reverse engineered AirPlay, debloated Windows, Linux running on a Mac, or anything else that’s not damn near configured exactly as it was when it was first removed from the box.

    It is not worth the engineering investment to make it work. They would spend more money maintaining these features than they would earn from it.

    You can have whatever opinions you want about that reality, but that’s just how it is. Blame capitalism.


  • Interestingly there is a body of research that suggests enjoyment of music comes from having exactly one of two things, never both:

    Familiarity and predictability

    If it’s neither familiar nor predictable, it is inscrutable and therefore discomforting to listen to

    If it is both familiar and predictable it is boring

    If it’s familiar but unpredictable, it feels like a journey through known emotions

    If it’s predictable but unfamiliar it feels like ‘logical discovery’ and is fun and satisfying

    A bit reductive but I love this idea




  • I think we have far more that we agree on in this conversation than we disagree on. We can get into the minutiae of specific UIs but that probably misses the point.

    Where I agree with OP is on the first impression of the default Lemmy UI to users trying to migrate from big-corpo products

    For better or worse, these folks have come to believe that “slick looking” = thoughtfully designed = featureful and advanced. And that “sterile/boring looking” = amateur UX design = complicated and difficult

    We can’t break that mentality in the general public by simply repeating over and over that they’re wrong. It just doesn’t work that way, sadly.

    On my Mastodon server, we have the Elk frontend available and have it listed prominently right next to the sign-up/sign-in button as a “Twitter-friendly UI experience” (also on our About page). Then, we periodically throw up an announcement telling users that apps, Elk, etc don’t provide all of the features available on the modified webUI/PWA, along with a list of what they’re missing and how to learn more.

    It’s an “abopt, extend, extinguish” approach and it works. There’s a reason corporate enshitification pioneered that strategy. We can use it too, but for good :)


  • If the goal of Lemmy - and specifically lemmy.world is to be a boutique, niche aggregator then fine. But that is explicitly NOT the goal. That may be what some users want but they are free to go form their own small servers and isolate as much as they want

    I am not suggesting that every community needs to be growth-oriented. Small groups are great.

    But they are also weak, and virtually incapable of creating and maintaining the systemic change required to protect themselves long term.

    If the attitude is “let the capitalists take over everything else, I’m happy with my underground movement that struggles to survive” then that’s honestly bordering on selfish. “I’m happy so I don’t care about what happens to others. They can figure out how to find us and do what we do or get fucked” kind of energy. It’s privileged in the extreme

    The best way for small communities to thrive is through collective action. And in order for that to happen there need to be enough small communities to have any sort of influence as a collective. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be an entry-point into the collective that is accessible to newcomers.

    That is what Lemmy - and especially lemmy.world - have positioned themselves to be. It’s not dissimilar to Mastodon(.social)