Oh no, they gave indie developers guaranteed money and helped finance the completion of their games!

An astounding story of what could have happened if we hadn’t arrested Elizabeth Holmes and let Theranos just keep going.

Because the point of this is to force friends and adult family members to purchase extra copies of games. Do yall actually think Valve is giving away free game access?

To those who are saying it’s not IP locked: people on reddit are all saying that the newer sign-ups are locked but they didn’t clear older sharing from early beta.

Hard disagree. The district system of Civ 6 was half-baked, and the new one for Civ 7 seems way more interesting with districts growing more organically. Civ 6’s world congress was garbage. The eras system needed serious work as dark/golden/heroic eras just didn’t feel impactful enough aside from getting a monumentality era early. The new map generation with navigable rivers is a huge plus as well. The climate system in Civ 6 was a dud too, not nearly impactful enough. I think they could’ve made a Civ 7 which fixed all the broken Civ 6 systems and made a great game.

I don’t think Firaxis would agree with any of my feedback because I think I disagree with them in a fundamental sense about how the game should be oriented. Mandatory disasters appear to be a fundamental part of the Civ 7 game philosophy: you build your civ, face the crisis, reset your civ in a new era, and start over with some amount of carry-over. I get the motivation: by forcing these soft resets, Firaxis is making it so you can’t snowball so far ahead that the mid/late game is a chore of uninteresting gameplay. An advantage in the first/second eras won’t put you in so far of a lead in the third era that it’s just a rush to hit the next turn button. On the other hand… that also means that everything you do in the first/second eras counts way less, and that feels bad.

Granted I obviously haven’t played the game yet; this is just my read from demos and press around the game/design philosophy. We will see if I’m right or not.

The crisis system, the era system, and the changing civilizations system all feel especially game-y to me. I get it, Civ is first and foremost a video game. Still, the idea that there are pre-defined eras, and that you have to hit a crisis at the end of each pre-defined era, feels artificial and unnatural. Why can’t I lead my civilization through into a new era unscathed? Why is that disallowed?

Don’t get me wrong: I like the idea of eras and crises. If, instead, eras were triggered by hitting certain milestones or accumulating enough points (e.g. hit some combination of weighted tech/cultural/religious/economic development) - I would be down for that. Different civs would hit those at different times and you would strategize around hitting your new era at the right time. Crises are also totally valid: if your civ is too large and there’s too much corruption you could have a civil war. If too much of your civ is following another religion there could be unrest. Those are all interesting and fun ideas, but the important part is that the goal is to avoid/mitigate them and play around them - not that they’re some kind of inevitable occurrence that you’re forced into even if you play otherwise perfectly.

It feels like Firaxis decided to lean hard into “Civ is a board game focused around balance” and completely away from “Civ is a game about growth and optimization”, and I don’t know if I’m here for it. I guess we’ll have to see.

Does anyone actually think the British royal family would have let Diana keep dating an Arab and a Muslim?

I mean we’d all kill Hitler if given the chance, wouldn’t we?

Why would you trust steam? Valve famously invented lootboxes and tried to do the NFT market thing before NFTs were big. They are the strongest DRM on the market. What makes you think they’re not just as greedy?

What’s NVidia seeing in the gaming space? Or do they conflate gaming and ML sales?

And one government has international support

I feel like 90+% of the time I use Google, it’s just because it’s more convenient than going to the actual website I want. Like if I want a Wikipedia article about a movie, it turns out it’s faster to type in the movie name in Google and click than go to Wikipedia and search the movie.

Turning it off right when Ukraine was about to launch an offensive, definitely no collusion there what a coincidence on the timing.

Inflation is important because it punishes the hoarding of wealth and encourages spending. When investments grow greater than inflation but wages grow slower, it’s problematic because the investing class is rewarded for having money while the working class is punished.