They could ask Ford for tips on raising their own crack squad of private enforcers, to send over there!

I agree here, this continues to be self inflicted by lifetime players, but is also natural failing of legislation to get involved. After the ESRB in the US formed (since that’s my experience) it seems the government simply handwaved any need to get involved ever even as games came online and marketplaces got added.

Parents similarly cannot simply just know the intricacies of every hobby their kid slides in and out of, and few hobbies are quite as insidious to may or may not allow extra purchases quite like gaming. Not even all millennials grew up as gamers, and can pass off that knowledge. And many more just play fifa with the boys on weekends and just wanted a product that works - they treat it like an online NES. Turned it on and go with no deeper thought or realization of the market it supports.

It’s an ad this time.

Yeah this happens every fucking time. This time it’s 6 hours. Next time it’s a week.

This is how DLC started. “It’s not like we cut content from the game to sell!” Was only true for that batch of games for a year or two. The industry’s scum sucking knows no limit and will absolutely pay wall more for longer if this isn’t denounced properly. It is never, ever “just” anything when it comes to these parasites.

“$80 for 80%”

Can’t make people pay to stream board games and dnd. Which, coincidentally, I am buying guide books for because shitfucks like this are actively making gaming harder and harder to continue to justify morally to myself.

They: don’t pay their staff but give executives massive bonuses (Game company CEOS are among the highest when you look at pay disparity charts), indulge in layoffs on failure or success (listing non-paid wages in the quarter as profit to shareholders) , continously justify gambling as not because it’s digital (lootboxes, “player packs” boosters), actively erode consumer rights (liscense vs ownership), actively treat their consumers like dogshit (the ps3 WILL cost $700 and if you do not like it you can…get an Xbox? Lol?), cutting content of products to add back as paid extra content (moving up deadlines and prioritizing XYZ at the end so it’s “not done” by deadline so it can be added back later for a price to beat the “we intentionally didn’t include it” allegations)

Gaming’s shitty practices are ruining other markets and the governments of the world’s refusal to reign them in is causing spillover into other things.

This is because the average arch user does not enjoy their experience. The average enjoyer is so far beyond a mere “user” when it comes to self-flaggelation

I love pointing out that in the US, a base ps5 is now what you risked paying a scalper when they were new, except now it’s not a scalper listing it on Walmart, it’s just straight up Walmart charging it.

My ps5 purchase helped a guy pay his rent after he made a dumb fucking decision in 2022, people buying now pads Walmart pockets.

Had a nokia 3310, had a flip phone, did not like T9. The predictive nature was aweful and never got me to like it before I got a slide keyboard phone.

Something that often gets lost here is high quality gemstones are still rare by comparison. Not saying it excuses their stupid prices, but that we use diamonds to coat sawblades because it is so abundant, yet so much is shit quality.

Large enough to set in jewelry, with few enough imperfections to convince a buyer, and a skilled jeweler with years of practice cutting it, is still rare and worth something. Sure debeers did a “fuck you i control the supply” and we’re still falling for part of that scam, but it doesn’t mean gemstones are suddenly commonplace and worth $10.

Gonna catch a lot of “get with the times” but an ad blocker and watching YouTube in browser on my phone - I’ve never seen the value of needing Premium to do adblocking or a whole ass app like Vanced. Maybe sponsorblock for more but like overall, my impression has always been YouTube Premium is a joke of a service that can never offer anything more than adblocking/sponsor block already just does from a browser on my phone.

Generally I’ve heard* she shuts down a lot of dissent and criticisms of her work (even legitimate “I don’t like this” type passive comments) on r/comics because so much of the sub is her content and she gets disproportionate vote because of it (and like 3 other people like HowlingElk).

A fairly legitimate complaint I’ve seen is the aforementioned meta fact that half the sub is her content and not much more so they have to constantly see her stuff even if they otherwise don’t mind the messaging.

Yeah they are just so evil bad and aweful, too bad I don’t know their names so I could actively avoid them. If only some good Samaritan would help me find my way to avoiding those.

Distrust of police is separate from distrust of the legal system, at least in my eyes. Your question is about two different groups - Two applicants walks in and one is exLEO and one is not. Thats different than two applicants walk in and one being a felon/one not.

For criminals, people draw all sorts of lines. Sex crimes, violent crime, robbery, crimes of any kind against children. Different people in different fields will draw different lines. A great example is people who work with money obviously get leery around people charged with theft, embezzlement, or tampering. This is why convicts working trash services is such a “popular” job for the deeper end of the crime spectrum. They dont work with people, children, or money. You can be a sex pest, violent home invader, fraudster, and none of that matters because you sling cans and don’t talk to homeowners. If you can wake up at 4am, and show up not drunk, and can move 60-120 lb trashcan, you have a job. All this to say, it would depend on what my hypothetical small business is doing, and what position applied for, where I’d draw that line with regards to monetary crimes. Violence and sex crimes are harder to justify allowing as customer facing the worse they get, but in accounting? Hardly relevant I’d think unless its egregious or consistent enough to think I’ll be replacing them in 6 months as they caught a repeat case. I worked with a man who was charged with assault over a decade prior for getting in a fight, and nothing else. No issues as a cashier - because it was a fight with a dude over something not a recurring anger issue. Case by case.

As for exLEO, as the question probably wants to ask, people in this thread would probably get leery about why they are looking for new work. Retired and Forced to Quit are very different reasons that HR won’t answer and the person is not obligated to be forthcoming about yet probably what people would want to know. Its also generally a highly prized skillset, honestly. On the professional end, you (generally) have report writing skills, documentation, and hypervigilance skills. While honesty of LEOs is probably the OPs aimed weak point, most customer facing jobs do not have the one thing LEOs perceptually abuse - authorisation to use force. Most customer facing jobs dont allow you to talk back, get in confrontations where you might be the cause, or put hands on people. For these reasons most people who distrust former police will still hire them.

Edit: I guess all this to say, it depends on the crime, and depends on how deeply you distrust former cops. I don’t even trust my regular coworkers/employees to show up on fucking time, and they arent either felons or former cops. I’d be their boss hiring them cuz I need a job done - I’m not interviewing for new BFFs and looking to get chummy about their idiosyncrasies. So for me the only important part I see is “does their history with these institutions show they are so distrustful that I will have to fire them quickly?”

Be the change you want to see!

Something pointed out via a friend is that, while we like to shit on corpos for these layoffs, sometimes in the art/story field they (the employees) really are not needed or not desired anymore. Some places eant to hire a new storyboard person/team, or art directors to make changes to the existing items . The first guy made his impact, now the company wants changes that, as an artist, they just don’t see from their artstyle (of any medium like story, characters, environment etc) perspective. Think the botched Ecce Homo fresco as it was originally painted, and then the restoration - the original artist could not concieve of what it became and therefore is legitimately no longer needed. Paying him his dues and letting him go is the nature of it, if done honestly.

That doesn’t excuse hoarding wealth and trying to get out of paying severance, retirements, royalties for their work, and insurances, but while we often praise that one time Nintendos kept people on at the expense of the CEO, the question is “for what though” if it was a legitimate direction pivot.

But in general fuck epic because thats not what this is. This is almost always"line must go up" behavior. Just wanted to mention it so I can say “ah, there it is” when fortnite skin quality/story direction/landscape changes invariably catches up with and shows the result of these missing staff in a season or 2, as a direct result of these people’s layoffs.

Down

Early games are easy to say like Ocarina and such but I think the games I really started to compare to:

Ratchet and clank- sure I played mario64 but I didnt really grasp the breadth of platforming until ps2. The Jak/Ratchet games really secured my expectations in future platformers for what I expect from movement and targeting in games. Especially by Deadlocked, being able to strafe and fire/keeping your gun/ camera on target and snappy switching between them is something I notice even new games not get right. A great example of this is Darktide - for all its fun sometimes the button inputs for weapon swap dont trigger due to input overload. For me this is the “Why doesn’t this third person game just have Ratchet controls”

Exploration was easily shaped by Ocarina of Time. Where checking behind the waterfall isn’t an easter egg, it’s an expectation. The temples certainly stretched the imagination for puzzles, and modern game puzzles genuinely don’t feel like they rise to it. Being older and sharper has helped but perception wise it felt like the first game to challenge me like an older game did was Portal 2 for difficulty, and Genshin Impact for small fun puzzles. (Not that they are particularly hard but it takes some thought and intentional placement) for me some games just hit the “exploration and puzzles should challenge the player”

This one isn’t new or controversial: but gaming in the 360/ps3 era and older, seeing cash shops lock up cosmetics you used to just…unlock. like whole ass costumes and easter egg outfits. Colors and reskinned weapons all sold back to players now. I get the whole f2p “gotta make a sale to stay free” but holy shit $20 for a fortnite skin is disgusting considering how many people buy that specific skin. It pays for itself and THEN some, and they drip these every week or so - and every single one sells a thousand copies to different users. “Game companies got greedy, and cut content to sell back to you after swearing they wouldn’t”

Black ops 2: I didn’t play earlier games and mostly grew up with cartoon violence, so this was my first real foray into an online environment and experience that I compare shooter level design to. I still compare the new(ish) call of duties to it. Moreso like “how the fuck are spawns still this fucking dogshit, have they learned nothing in 20 years” and “How the fuck is nuketown still a map its too small to make any really plays, it’s just spawncamping for 10 minutes” (the answer is kids like it for some reason). And why I haven’t bought a cod since cold war (the homies all wanted to play so we made a game night out of it).Anyway BO2 is what I compare shooters to. If you can’t match a 2012 game in terms of how easy it is to traverse a pvp level, and the player feedback of a kill (like how impactful it feels to secure the kill is almost on par with Doom2016) “Kills should feel punchy, dynamic, like you actually hit that fuckin dude through a wall, not just tickled him and he ragdolled”

Pokemon gold/silver and Emerald. "Games don’t have to have super deep or complex stories, or fantastic budget breaking graphics to be fun

And this is why you dont take AR scans of pokestops/use ar mode. The free $1 poffin isnt worth the betrayal of the area.

Goofy.