Games

Cecilily discusses the financialisation of Pokemon cards as an investment vehicle.

It's one thing that makes me pause in teaching my niece how to play, I don't want her to get caught up in the abstraction of the cards as anything other than pieces of cardboard with funny pictures of animals

If you had to pick a good love story, you might think of something classic, like Jane Austen's Emma or Casablanca. Or maybe tragic, like Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin or Romeo and Juliet. Or possibly cozy, like Heated Rivalry or Netflix's Nobody Wants This. What probably doesn't come to mind is a video game love story, and there's a good reason for that. Despite the appearance of variety, video game romances only come in one type. And it hardly even counts as a romance.

Games are still young as a storytelling medium, so the lack of memorable love stories compared film or literature is hardly surprising. What is surprising is just how little romance has changed in over three decades. In 1994, Konami's Tokimeki Memorial made popular the idea of dating in video games. It was hardly what you might call romantic, with its stat-based progress and checklist approach to relationships. But it set a precedent for how to Do Romance in games, and later titles, like Harvest Moon, built on that formula. By 2000, the likes of Baldur's Gate 2 added a stronger element of personality, with more complex characters who played important roles in bigger stories, but not necessarily in each other's lives. Relationships consisted of saying the right thing at the right time and then, like magic, love occurs. 26 years later, game romances are still written like they were in 2000, with obvious exceptions like (usually) not being as sexist anymore and occasionally being decent enough to show more than one type of love.

Full Article

This is what people are talking about when it comes to cheap AI that reads your inputs.

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a great week and a good Valentines day. This week i kept to chipping away at morrowind, but it seems like for every quest I finish, 3 more spring up. Have a good week!

I hate this holiday

Mewgenics co-creator Edmund McMillen has discussed how he drew up the list of the personalities approached to provide the game's numerous cameos, saying that while he "understands we live in a time where a meow from someone who has different beliefs as you is scary and frustrating, confusing and controversial... it felt interesting, so I decided to explore it."

In an interview with RPS, following criticisms that the cameo cast included individuals perceived by some to have controversial views, McMillen said the game's meow roster represented people from across the ideological spectrum, including people — such as Ethan Klein — who had not publicly commented on his views of the Gaza conflicts at the time he was asked to contribute. "When we added most of the people on the list it was ages ago, like, Ethan was included a good four years back," McMillen explained.

"I wanted the game to feature a huge array of iconic voices I’ve been hearing echoing across the internet for most of my time making games. As some probably noticed, I was all over the place when it came to cameos and did my best to include and keep ones that clashed or kinda counterbalanced each other. The inclusion of Ethan and Hila [Klein] was counter balanced by iDubbbz and Anisa," he added, referring to two creators who have publicly supported Palestine.

"I made sure to contact both to make sure they were okay with the others' involvement so it didn’t feel like a weird gotcha on release," McMillen explained. "They were both very adult about it and said they had no issue with the other being added, and I really respected that, since I know they have been publicly feuding for a while now. It’s hard to explain without revealing aspects of the game people haven’t really experienced yet, but the inclusion of people with clashing ideologies felt appropriate."

McMillen concluded: "I understand we live in a time where a meow from someone who has different beliefs as you is scary and frustrating, confusing and controversial… but it felt interesting, so I decided to explore it. Also, I should probably point out that I don’t share the same opinions as, well, probably any of the people we included.

"If I only included people who share the same exact opinions as me, I’d be the only one meowing in the game. I included Chris, but also liquid Chris (those who know, know)... I didn’t [realize] Matan [Evan, an Israeli-American YouTuber] was controversial, I mean a lot of these people are characters doing bits."

Other notable inclusions on the list of vocal performers include Stranger Things star David Harbour and Supernatural's Felicia Day.

he is now posting about chris chan

Me irl

I'm a crappy FPS player but I'm down to blast some Nazis. I'm also a noob at PC gaming.

Looks like I can get a key for the whole Alt History Collection for under 20 bucks from some vaguely shady websites.

Or I can try the piratey seas but I've been traumatized from college years of torrent viruses bricking my netbooks (DLing WWE shows, TV series, and porn) and I don't have the know-how of pirating in 2026.

But damn that one exposition dump you get from the old guy at the beginning, I literally nodded off. I couldn't wait for that guy to stfu so I could get back to throwing bombs at goblins.

Ngl it looks really mid. The actual format isnt a bad idea but it just looks amateur.

Whelp time to replay 1 and 2

There aren't many games like them around tbh.