First off, I generally don’t worry about DRY until there are 3 instances, not 2. With only 2, it’s really easy to over-generalize or have a bad structure for the abstraction.

But otherwise, I disagree with the article. If it’s complicated enough to bother abstracting the logic, the worst that can happen in the above situation is that you just duplicate that whole class once you discover that it’s not the same. And if that never happens, you only have 1 copy to maintain.

The code in the article isn’t complicated enough that I’d bother. It even ends up with about the same number of lines of code, hinting that you probably haven’t simplified things much.

It’s one guy claiming people around him are happy about it. He doesn’t even say that he is personally excited about it.

Oh man. There’s only one of those dungeons that I actually like, and I got almost 2/3 through it solo, and decided that I just didn’t care enough. I’m sure I could have done it with enough tries… But ugh. So time consuming.

I totally respect people that do it even once, and people that do it for every dungeon are basically gods.

When I was a kid, Tomb Raider was a pretty easy game, except this one part that required absolutely perfect timing for a some running and jumping between platforms for a bonus item.

At the start, I could make it to the next platform. After a while, I could do 2. Eventually, I got 3. After a long, long time, I finally managed to string all of them together… And screwed up the very last one.

Here’s the thing, though. I got it on the very next attempt. I had learned that sequence so well that it actually wasn’t hard any more, even though it was nearly impossible for me at the start.

Afterwards, my parents (who watched the whole thing) told me they had never seen me focus on something so intently for so long and they couldn’t believe I managed it.

That’s what souls games are, from start to finish. Every single encounter is basically impossible at first, until you die and learn enough to get through it. But you start from the beginning of the game every freaking time.

Companies won’t hire someone that’s overqualified because the employee is very, very likely to leave again soon. It costs the company a ton of money and headache for very little benefit.

Any time I see the word “exclusive” I know it’s a crap article. Yes, your own writers only write for you. That’s not what “exclusive” was supposed to mean for journalism.

Being unable to come to an agreement isn’t “exclusive” news. No shit. It’s not even article-worthy.

Honestly, free-2-play economics are so baffling that nothing they do surprises me.

There’s a Genshin Impact McDonalds collab where you have to buy a very specific happy meal to get some in game wings (which I very much want) and some other garbage. I actually considered just buying the meal and giving the food to someone else (homeless?) because I can’t eat that crap on my diet. But instead, I settled for telling everyone around me that I want the code if they get one, and I’ll just hope.

How does that help Genshin Impact? I imagine it helps in the same way as this nonsense physical copy. People get excited about physical copies, even in normal boxes, and they get excited about exclusive items that can’t be obtained any other way. That pulls in a little money directly from the sales of the plastic, but it also creates a ton of buzz around the game like this whole thread.

I think. As I said, it’s pretty baffling. I have to file it under “there’s no such thing as bad PR” most of the time.

The disc is 100% trash. People that buy this want the cards, keychains, and (especially) the exclusive in-game items.

I am surprised that it doesn’t also come with some in-game premium currency, though.

As for $40 in-game… That alone is going to net you some trash. You’ll pull a lot more on the free gems you get just for exploring and playing. Sure, you could get a great character, but the odds are back-loaded so that you generally won’t pull a 5-star in the first 70 pulls. $40 is like 40 pulls, maybe?

To add to that last point, I worked for a company (at retail) that claimed to know that keeping customers was cheaper than getting new ones, and corporate even implemented a policy where the clerks on the floor had up to $100 to keep a customer happy. I never once saw that $100 used, and the one time I tried to keep a customer (who had just spent $3000) happy, management refused to let him return a crap $100 printer because he didn’t have the manual in the box. He had left it at home, and was glad to bring it in next time he was in. Nope. And that incident was within a week of implementing that system.

So even when a company understands that point, it’s still really hard to make good on it at the levels that it can matter.

Well, I’ll give it a shot.

Part of it is that they can’t know the point that someone is willing to stay vs leave, and they’re always optimizing for that point. Saving money is always the goal for expenses in a company.

Part of it is that they have a budget that they can’t exceed. Sometimes a person is overqualified for the job, and the job simply can’t afford them. Sometimes that person will stay far longer than they should, when they could get paid much better elsewhere, and sometimes they choose to move when they’re only slightly underpaid for their skills.

Part of it is that there is more to a job than money. Being comfortable, un-stressed, and generally happy is more important at some point than more money. The company tries to balance these things, as it’s often cheaper to relieve or prevent stress than pay someone to put up with it.

In the end, it’s super complicated, but all about money, on both sides.

First off, I think you’re absolutely right about your right to disable “this nonsense”. I support you in that.

But “this nonsense” is what makes games fun for me.

I’m not about struggling and finally overcoming.

I’m about having an adventure. It’s the interactive version of a book, where I engage my brain a bit more and explore or solve puzzles, instead of the book just telling me the answers immediately. I enjoy gun fights in games, but I don’t want to play them even twice. I want to win them and move on to more content. Losing a scenario doesn’t make me feel even better when I win. It just drags me down.

I have enough things in my life that I’ve accomplished by struggle that I don’t need it from games, too.

But again, if that’s what does it for you, I think you should have it, too. There’s no good reason you can’t disable it, IMO. (Other than the devs just not providing the option.)

Besides the other games mentioned here, there’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What’s_Inside_the_Cube%3F . Read the completion section to see just how bad it was.

Back then, I think he has someone telling him “no” and filling out the rest of the game with sensible stuff.

Now, he just throws ideas at the wall (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What’s_Inside_the_Cube%3F ) and sees what sticks. Since he went on his own, he hasn’t fully delivered a single game, and the ideas are wacky at best and horrible at worst.

And unlike Hello Games, when Molyneux overpromises, he doesn’t spend years implementing every promised feature.

BTW, the exaggeration goes all the way back to Fable, the launch of which was plagued by lies that Molyneux and his team told about the state of the game and the features it would have. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great game, just that it wasn’t what he promised.

Well, then there shouldn’t be any hesitation about signing up for the better protections for the actors then.

I think this happened to me as well. I had something pop my FEP film, and I replaced it, and tried a couple prints, but really didn’t like the whole resin experience, so I sold my printer.

When the buyer got it home, he told me the screen was cracked. We weren’t sure whether it happened in transit or not, and I’d given him a pretty great price on the thing with a washing machine and a ton of resin, so he decided he didn’t want any money back.

After learning more about resin printers since then, I now think it was my fault and I feel bad about it. Either way, I’ve definitely learned to check the major components before buying or selling something.

That does look good. Thanks!

I looked on the Steam page and didn’t see that, but I thought I remembered it from launch. Perhaps I was just tired and missed it, but I think they didn’t do a good enough job calling it out.

I liked Braid, but I liked his other games since then a lot more. Put out Witness 2 and I’m all over it.

OTOH, put out a graphical upgrade and a couple new puzzles for Witness and try to charge full price again, and I wouldn’t bother.

Edit: Wait, Braid Anniversary didn’t even include new levels? No wonder it didn’t sell! All it has is a documentary track and some visuals.

All we know is that the rumor is he was texting with someone underage and set up to meet them at a con. He’s admitted portions of that in his responses online, but nothing you can really pin down.

Amazon thought whatever he did on Twitch was bad enough to cut ties with him and pay him out.

No legal action has been taken, and he didn’t violate the contract, so Amazon had to pay him out to cut ties.

Do I think he’s awful? Yup, and I don’t support him at all.

But we know just about nothing, and we definitely don’t know any more than we knew months ago. Yet people are hanging on every word from the press like it’s news and not just rage-bait.

I realize I’m getting on in years, but “Skibidi Toilet movie by Michael Bay” really, really makes me feel old.