They can call it what they want to deflect scrutiny, but the fact is that it mirrors breeding mechanics from other games, like FF7’s chocobo breeding. So calling it “breeding” as a joke is not really that wild or unusual.

I think you’re laser-focusing on a weirdly specific thing, I think it’s just a joke. Gita clearly enjoys the game, the subheader is just a funny elevator pitch for the game.

Did u read the article? Gita seems to be in love with the game, I wouldn’t say they were shaming it at all!

right? it was like the only thing that made me sort of okay with the lack of sales.

definitely licensing issues, 100%. The record company owns the old song and doesn’t want to allow it in the game again, at least not for a reasonable price. Could the artists re-record songs to bypass the record company, like Taylor Swift did? Yeah sure, but only if they are still around, and only if they care that much about being in the Tony Hawk remake. Re-recording songs includes re-doing all the mixing and mastering, and that is a decent chunk of time and money for essentially no return on investment. Most of the bands in original Tony Hawk that are still around are pretty focused on ROI at this point.

there are apparently a few cases where they didn’t get the same song, but they got a new song from the same artists. But yeah…it’s a bummer from a game preservation perspective

I seem to remember even FF7 allowing this.

Yeah I hear that a lot, I tried to speed run ARR but just ran out of motivation before I got there 😔

that’s just what a man with a weather-controlling doomsday device would say! i would expect no less from the zodiac killer.

I played for a lil while, trying to get into it to play with my friends. The only MMO i’ve gotten DEEP into was the original Guild Wars, and that is obviously a bit different from other MMOs, so I wasn’t sure if it would be my cup of tea. I ended up falling off before finishing the base Realm Reborn MSQ. I found the same problem I always have with MMOs - the initial loop is really fun and addicting and I’m enjoying learning the world, but then I hit a point where doing the quests just feels like a slog to endgame. I did some dungeons with my friends once that was possible, and it mostly just felt like I was struggling to keep up with something that everyone else had done 50 times over already. It stunk that I had to do story quests solo, and could only really party up for dungeons. Much preferred the GW experience of playing the MSQ together.

Idk, I’m not trying to trash on the game, I can tell it’s really well made and I’m happy for all y’all. It just didn’t resonate for me.

I agree that banking the money is probably the wisest move rn. I love the idea of Beehaw funding some kind of initiative in the future, but i don’t know if the surplus is big enough to pursue something like that yet. Also - if the admins wanted to use the surplus to pay someone like PenguinCoder a little compensation for their substantial labor contribution to Beehaw, I wouldn’t be opposed to that.

I think that specific piece is going to vary from group to group for sure. My group is all pretty inexperienced with rpgs and not taking it very seriously, so that might be part of why we can go on a looser schedule. We don’t have tons of details to hold together, at least not yet.

the Beeple are very passionate about this particular server. I think other servers have a lot of folks that would be fine with jumping to a new server if they had to, but i cannot really speak to that.

Regrettably…they kinda do. At least for studios like Obsidian and Double Fine, the landscape has become very grim. They are studios of a size that is very difficult to keep afloat in this environment. Investor funding in the gaming segment has dried up post-COVID, and these kinds of mid-level (or higher) devs were very reliant on that kind of funding. In light of that, these studios may have seen Microsoft as something of a safe harbor. They knew these layoffs were always a possibility, but I think it was better for them than the alternative. Or at least, it was the best choice for the people leading these studios prior to their respective Microsoft acquisitions. The devs that are being laid off are not the same people that signed off on the acquisition.

This is an incredible turnaround after it seemed like the initiative was stalling just a few weeks ago. Keep those signatures rolling if you can! As others mentioned, there is still a value in new signatures because some will be invalidated. Let’s finally get a win for media preservation, eh?

I am new to running a group but generally i’ve picked up a couple things:

• One is having a loose schedule, and just scheduling games for days when everyone agrees that they can make it. Don’t try to force a weekly schedule or whatever. I’m sure that works for some groups of dedicated nerds, but for most of us this is just one hobby in an array of other hobbies and interests. Better to treat it like a rolling game night, than to treat it like weekly band practice.
• The other is dividing your crew into “core cast” and “guest roles”. Some players are just more flaky or less dedicated than others. Your “guest roles” need to have a good narrative reason why they are in-and-out. I think i’m having an easier time with this because my game is Blades in the Dark, where the party is a gang of scoundrels. Scores usually start and end within a single session, so it is easy to write around a scoundrel or two that is only available for some missions. When they are gone, they are off on other solo missions, or they are indulging their vice or whatever. I understand that this is more challenging if you are playing an RPG with multi-session dungeon crawls. Maybe the character chose to take an alternate route through the dungeon, or they were knocked out or something?

Do you just ignore the fact that the PC carrying the magical Orb of Whatsit is off on holiday when the king demands the Orb to save the kingdom?

I think a key part of this is not giving key items to guest role characters.

Luke Plunkett asking the real questions. It must be nice to be a CEO, just failing constantly with the security that you will continue to make millions per year for years to come. If I made this many miscalculations in my job I’d be unemployed within 6 months.

This is how I think about socialism when arguing for it in a modern context. Capitalism is a game where we compete and there are winners and losers. Okay, I mean Americans love competition and games, so that’s all well and good. But games have RULES, and if we are playing football and someone gets hurt, we don’t just dump them in the trash and keep playing. We pause or stop the game, we make sure they are doing okay, we get them to medical care if they need it. Then and only then do we resume playing the game. This is what socialism is in my mind - we still have a free market and use competition to breed innovation, but we also make sure everyone is doing okay before we continue the game. As is, it seems like our fearless leaders think that if you lose at the game, you deserve to die.

At the least, we need to get back to REGULATED capitalism. The fact that the Activision deal was allowed to go through is preposterous. Just like everything in our society involving corporations and absurd amounts of money. What’s the point of obliterating regulations if the corporations help nobody except their wealthy shareholders?

It’s been a slow, 15 year suffocation.