Feel free to degrade me.

Are you okay?

The vast majority of the Bible was simply guidelines to keep people healthy and happy. All this “the skin of the pig is unclean” stuff? They hadn’t figured out germs yet. No sex until marriage? No contraceptives, so don’t create in cared for children. I won’t waste my time on it but, when examined in context, this is the vast majority, if not the entirety of the bible: lessons on how to be safe and happy relative the time, made digestable and relevant to the common person.

Sucks they had to get there via fear of imaginary, post-life pain, and it sucks twice as hard that they’ve neglected to rationalize that part as the rest of the belief structure has modernized.

God fucking dammit.

I have a multiple friends who, whenever they find success, almost immediately feel guilty and apologize to anyone else involved. In every case, those friends come from backgrounds where they were surrounded by narcissists. The guilt and apologies are a programmed response because “friends” and family would always frame their success as someone else’s, usually their own, loss. This is now the lens they see every success through.

Win at a game? Apologize to the people you beat. Interview well and be offered a new job? Feel guilty about the other applicants. Hell, go out for a meal with friends and your food comes first? “I’m so sorry, guys.”

Narcissists have programmed these friends to believe that they are undeserving of success, or even good luck, and that they should apologize for existing. I do my best to reassure them when I can, “you earned this,” or “you had nothing to do with this happening,” but ultimately it’s something they have to grapple with until they can figure out for themselves how to grow past that programming.

I have no idea if this applies to your situation, but it is a lens to consider.

This thread is actually huge, so apologies if this has already been recommended, but take a look at Against the Storm. It’s an indie city-builder with a bit of a rogue-like spin. You can usually get it on fairly deep sales, and the rogue-like elements combined with some meta-progression gives it a real play length, even though a single city-building session is a ~45-60 minute experience.

Holy fuck the throwback meme.

“No Stupid Questions” isn’t meant to be a challenge.

Male’s haven’t been actively repressed as a result of their gender for thousands of years. Simply switching the genders does not work because they’re not equitible terms. Systematically speaking, they come from different backgrounds and expectations.

I take your point that “female” as a durogatory term is relative to the context it’s used in. But we can’t pretend we’ve lived in a world of equal opportunity that treats men and women, males and females, equally in trying to make that point.

Mhmm. Everyone is shitting on Nintendo, but the reality is their games are literally keeping up with inflation. The problem is that our wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and the cost of living has, at least, kept up. In some cases (rent), it’s grown faster than the inflation of everything else.

Don’t get me wrong, Nintendo is tone deaf for making this decision now, and I suspect they’d still make billions with a $15 price increase rather than a $30 one. I’m not defending them. But the picture is a lot larger than them.

It can be both.

There’s no “sanity” system in Look Outside. The closest thing is a hidden “stress” stat which, last I checked, is literally just combat problems when it gets low.

That said, Look Outside is a fantastic game, and the Dev is super down to earth and active with his players. Highly recommend.

Bless.

“No stupid questions” should only apply to questions, not thinly veiled attempts at polarizing conversations.

I fucking hate the rise of the alt-right more than most, but one of the reasons for that hate is the bad faith bullshit they get up to in pushing their agenda. I have no interest in combating them with bad faith bullshit of our own.

See, comments like this…

Yes, because having a visible sexual fetish deviating from normalcy makes them a child predator. Fuck off with these chud talking points.

I’d argue that sexual expression is insanely repressed, and that celebrating it openly is more in line with the LGBTQ+ movement than you realize.

I mean, look at this thread. We have a majority upvoted comment calling this person mentally ill. Another insinuating that they’re a child predator. Just for being willing to express a non-normative opinion on sexuality. That’s not that different from the right-wing chuds calling trans people mentally ill as the modern stand-in for the r-slur, which in turn is a modern stand-in for “doing a socially unacceptable thing that I don’t like and should be ashamed.”

Personally, I think this person’s choices are in poor taste. But I get it. I get why someone would want to do this in a world where they’re constantly told they’re strange and wrong for the way they’re wired, so long as that wiring doesn’t cause harm to others.

I don’t inherit the sins of my father solely because of my skin color.

Correct. We inherit the responsibility to do what we can to make those wrongs right because of the advantages we are afforded by our historical background.

Because of the family I was born into, I was afforded easy access to food, shelter, and education, and easily able to find success and prosperity. This allows my children the same, and that’s, in large part, a result of history. Those coming from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds do so because, again at least in part, my distant relatives stole from them to my benefit.

When these issues are divided by skin color, then yes, it is racist to ignore them in their entirety over the argument that we had no direct control over the actions of our forefathers, as we continue to benefit from them today. It’s really some trolley problem stuff: we are advantaged by being the ones hanging out around the lever, not tied to the tracks. When we are asked to switch the tracks, or heaven forbid stop the trolley, we should not respond, “it’s racist to tell me I should be doing something about this! I didn’t build the tracks! I don’t own the trolley!” Okay, cool. But they’re down there, on the tracks, and we’re up here, next to the lever. Call it luck, but by the nature of our birth, we have an advantage that minorities do not. It is not racist to identify that.

You want genuine people, friend, taking the time to try and discuss these perspectives to someone is about as genuine as it gets. It’s not easy to accept that, despite massive personal struggles and relative low wealth and prosperity in a world owned by billionaires, I’ve been at an advantage just because I was born European descendant Caucasian. Don’t mistake disagreement for a lack of authenticity, or being poor of character.

And yet we benefit from it every single day all the same, while throwing out hands up and screaming “that isn’t on me!”

We’re not responsible for what happened to them then, but we are responsible in what we do about it now. Turning away that responsibility while continuing to reap the benefits is racism.

You heard it here first, ladies: the left knows how to eat pussy. You’re welcome.

I mean, this just isn’t true, though. You’re not wrong in pointing out that the scope of sales has changed, but so has the scope of development, as well as consumer expectation. I suspect if you compare the number of man hours spent on a title today vs an NES game, it’s not even a comparable discussion. And then there’s the matter of post-release support.

To be clear, I don’t think a $30 price hike for physical copies is at all sensible, but the arguments being presented both for and against it are incredibly poorly thought out. Everyone presents a single facet of videogame development today compared to years ago and then acts like it’s a “gotcha” that proves their point. The entire ecosystem of game development and consumption has changed so drastically, that any discussion comparing the adjusted for inflation price of games then vs now is just pointless. Art and entertainment are art and entertainment, and it’s impossible to create a de-facto value statement for them, because consumer subjectivity, bias, and valuation is too wide to make objective statements about.

Imo, the real criticism of the matter is that +50% cost during a time of economic upheaval, when the buying power of the middle class is approaching the weakest it’s been in a long time, is going to be received poorly, and probably result in a loss of Western sales. It’s a massive leap, in a single generation, at the worst possible time, regardless of what inflation adjustments tell us.

While I am not okay with the game price hike, you’re comparing genuine dog shit to actual good games. It’s like asking why anyone would ever order a steak when they can just go to McDonald’s. Sure they’re both food, but they’re not really comprable.

That said, I am not trying to justify Nintendo’s pricing. They’re asking for too much of a leap (+50%!!!) in too short of a time frame. But this meme is a bad argument.

Every time I tell myself I am not buying a Switch 2 because the games are too damn expensive and I already own a Legion Go for hand-held gaming, I remember that Kirby Air Riders will exist and I become the angry, arms crossed “WELL, FINE!” guy.

That said, City Trial mode or I riot.