nromdotcom

joined 1 year ago
[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I guess I don't see what the incentive would be for this, or even what it realistically means in this case.

Do you mean like relicensing the backend and frontend with a closed source license? I don't see what the incentive would be for that unless they wanted lemmyml to be the only instance in existence (which runs counter to it's raison d'etre) and to make secret/proprietary/commercial extensions to it that are difficult to develop in the open.

Or I guess unless they wanted to start charging instance admins for the honor and pleasure of running their software, which at least right now would be the quickest way to ensure nobody runs their software.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I tend to agree here. But it has been interesting watching the proliferation of streaming services and trying to figure out what's gonna happen next.

Like Netflix was a big first-mover, then everyone realized they could keep more money if they built their own streaming service, then everyone realized that building and running a streaming service is expensive and complicated, then everyone had to get onto the Original Content treadmill to try to keep folks subscribed which has led to somehow even more commodification of art, and now that running at a loss and pouring cash into original content to bump up numbers has gotten too expensive some services are pricing themselves out of the market.

I'm fascinated to see what the next big move is for these businesses. With more and more people starting to choose month to month which one or two services to subscribe to rather than keeping them all, I wonder if we're gonna continue seeing the return of ad-supported plans or some services only offering yearly contracts or what the next move will be in pursuit of endless growth.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago

I guess my reaction is partially because I never see articles like this for my other hobbies and while I don't see articles like this about video games often, I do see comments around the internet about this fairly regularly.

I don't hear people saying "playing board games helps me with strategizing" or "playing guitar has really improved my hand-eye coordination and playing in a band has helped my ability to cooperate with others."

Maybe that's because gamers tend to feel more defensive about the hobby as it has historically been disparaged. People are more likely to picture "CoD yelling person" when they hear you play video games than they are to picture "wonderwall at parties person" when they hear you play guitar.

But, on the other hand, D&D players and Marvel nerds seem to have largely moved on from "but it's actually really cool and fun and not weird at all." Maybe video game players should consider doing so as well.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 28 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I dunno, 'game company commissions study to ask gamers to self-report about how gaming isn't a waste of their time'?

I'm in my mid 30s and have played video games my whole life. I also participate in some gaming communities online and my real-life friends are about 50/50 with regards to gaming. And if asked, yeah, I would probably self report that video games have had a positive impact on my life.

But have they? I'm not qualified to say. I don't have any actual data in front of me. I do know playing video games often makes me feel good, but I can say that about lots of unhealthy habits.

Was pumping 150 hours into Tears of the Kingdom better for me than the couple weeks of workouts I skipped? Is it good that I drank more beer during that time than I normally would have?

Would my life have been more or less improved if, instead of talking about video games online I had been practicing guitar and finding an open mic night to play at?

Would it have been better for my mental health and hand-eye coordination instead of playing Elden Ring to have gone to Home Depot, bought some wood, and built the shelves I've been putting off building in the basement to ease some of our storage issues?

If video games really were an unqualified good, would "my loser boyfriend stays up all night yelling into his headset about Overwatch/CoD/Fifa/Fortnite" be such a common stereotype?

I'm not suggesting video games are bad (or even that the sometimes-unhealthy way I engage with them is bad), but I am suggesting that "gamers say gaming is good for them, actually" does not provide useful data for analysis or discussion.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

I like to explore the "Selling Right Now" feed and "Discover" tool on Bandcamp, or browse through the "you may also like" on albums I already own. Since I buy almost all of my music there these days anyway it's pretty convenient.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Okay. If the article is misleading or wrong, it shouldn't be posted. If it is found to be incorrect after posting, is it better to fix the title and let the comments sort it out or to fully delete the post?

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 88 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The title of this post is at best misleading and at worst simply wrong. From the source that OP linked in a couple other comments here (emphasis mine throughout):

Since the start of July, the app's downloads have fallen by almost 30% compared to the preceding two months, according to data from app performance tracker Apptopia. ... Twitter has gained usually 15 million to 30 million users a month since 2011, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It gained just 10 million users between August and September of this year. ... Visits to the web version of X, which still operates as twitter.com, fell since the start of the year, with global web traffic down 10% in August and US traffic down 15%, compared to a year ago, according to an analysis by Similarweb. ... So far in September, daily users are down to 249 million, a roughly 2% decrease... Monthly users are down by about the same percentage, now at 393 million users from 398 million in July.

That is emphatically not "loses over 30% of users in two months." That is, though, "signs of slowing growth" and "signs of the most recent round of dramatic announcements wearing off and folks moving on with their lives" which is why Musk is doing his best to get back into the news cycle.

Maybe OP should go ahead and update the post with a more accurate title to avoid spreading misinformation.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

As someone without an Xbox or a PC, Starfield has very much gotten me back into NMS. Loving the last couple of updates, especially as a PSVR2 player.

I hope I get to play Starfield some day, cause it looks like a lot of fun, but it's not a hardware seller for me. Probably some day I'll pick up a gaming laptop or steamdeck or something and check it out along with the other PC games I've been missing for the past few years.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, my plan is PS5, too. I was worried because been playing these games on PC almost literally my whole life, from BG1 and IWD through to PoEII and DOSII. But I don't have a PC that can play any sorts of games right now, so it's gonna have to be PS5.

Watching a few let's plays and streams, it sounds like controller support is solid. So despite not being what I'm used to, I'm confident it'll be a solid experience.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

I read the His Dark Materials trilogy in middle school, and that hugely influenced my thinking about power structures generally, religion specifically, and morality broadly. I mean, I didn't have words for a lot of that stuff at the time, but looking back they were massively influential.

I re-read them a couple years ago and they really hold up astonishingly well. And yes I am secretly smug about having read these books as a kid while most of my peers were reading Harry Potter.

[–] nromdotcom@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Right? I'd never heard of either of these games before, but after playing the Goodboy demo and watching some YouTube videos of Witch n Wiz, I'm pretty excited for this cart.

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