Accumulation of power is a common motive regardless of political system. Money is just one way power gets expressed.

Not claiming our system is perfect by any means. But this thought, to me, always felt like kicking the can down the road.

I should get a cheap laptop and start self hosting…

People can run their own justifications for piracy, but god this has always been a shitty one.

It’s like not considering veganism because “The cow’s already dead. It’s been chopped up in that steak on the counter. Me refusing to eat it won’t change anything.”

Feels like many times I’ve heard in my life:

“We’d like to change this law.”
“You can’t change this law. See, it’s written here: It’s the law.”
“I’m…not contesting what it is. I’m saying I want to change it. We set it in place, we can make changes to it.”
“…But that’d be…against the law…”

I guess I’m lucky this never happened to me. I tend to do a lot of research on a console before I get it, and wait until mid-generation when it’s matured with some good games. The closest thing might be the Oculus Rift, since I never did find an addictive VR game I loved. If I hadn’t bought it, I might’ve never tried out Half-Life: Alyx, and would’ve been forever curious. But…it definitely wasn’t a killer app.

If it helps, I can recommend indie games that fit the mold.

I made a Steam curator group called “Objection! AA-Likes” to help

I get a nervous inhalation each time an acquaintance asks me for advice in buying a gaming laptop.

Their computing world started with laptops, and they want to extend the idea. It’s so hard to express to them it’s generally not a good one.

I’m definitely upset that influencers are more likely to talk about bombs and high profile failures than games they have moderately positive interest in. There’s a weird incentive to celebrate failure that makes game development less appealing.

I just go to YouTube, Lemmy, BSky, maybe a few others. I don’t go directly to any major gaming news sites, since they’ve had declining track records for decades.

And of course, Steam. Criticize the monoculture if you like, but when Sony and MS have killed their community features in favor of EpsteinNet, it’s not surprising people will go to platforms designed to discuss games.

Is this some Hollywood accounting, where they set the game up to fail? I’ve literally never heard of it until this post.