I had a conversation with my sister about that recently.

The amount of shows and movies that have $100,000,000+ budgets is rising, yet more and more of them feature very limited sets, small casts of mostly mid range talent, and a dozen executive producers all putting up their own money (this is all especially prominent with big shows on streaming networks, cough Star Trek cough The Acolyte)

Here's my comparison: a group of 10 investors come out and announce they're spending a billion dollars to develop a new luxury car. They drum it up as being the next big thing. Then, when it comes out, it's about as nice and luxurious as a base model Toyota Camry. Fine, but not "a billion dollars" fine. Immediately, everyone would be wondering where the hell that money went? There's definitely a chance it was just squandered, but you have to wonder. When you have a group of private investors with executive power over the project, what goes on behind closed doors?

For all we know, they're literally just passing massive checks in a circle to one another to say "yes, it says right here in our bank records that we spent a combined $100,000,000", meanwhile only 25% actually goes into the production, and they pocket the rest. Then, when the flock of people have to come and check out the new megaproject, all they need to recoup is a few million more than they spent (far less than the perceived budget), and they can run for the hills.

Anywho, crackpot theory time over. But think about it, if my simple brain can think this stuff up, why can't the hollywood bigwigs, who actually have the capital to make it happen?

"Limited by it being a game" is such a condescending thing to say. Just shows that these people look down on video games in general and most likely have little respect for the people who these games mean a lot to. I mean, that shows in this TV show, just based on the short bits I've seen. The Chief acts like a Stallone or a Tom Cruise stand-in, instead of a stoic warrior.

I can't wait for an Elder Scrolls show helmed by these showrunners, the Witcher showrunners, and Alex Kurtzman

That's not why it was made. Data collection is a titanically large industry. Why just collect data from specific programs when you can literally just set up a screen recorder to collect all data?

This is what happens when people are flippant about data collection. First, data collection isn't even there. Next, it's there, but is off by default, then it's on by default but you can opt out, then only certain aspects are opt out, flash forward 10 years and here we are.

This stuff isn't coming out of nowhere, it's a slow build because consumers consistently allow more and more egregious privacy violations to slip past because they "don't care, the big corporations already have the data"

I'd agree with you, except Sony, another massive Japanese company operating in the same industry as Nintendo, doesn't lash out this aggressively at their own community that is just desperately trying to enjoy games in their own way.

Sony has left basically all emulation projects alone as well as modding projects like 60FPS patches (there was one emulator that they took to court in the 90s, Bleem, but Bleem was charging money for the emulator. Funnily enough, Bleem won the case and was allowed to continue existing, but the company went under due to the cost of the legal battle) .

Nintendo doesn't have to act out like this. They actively choose to stifle such products so that they themselves can offer tightly curated versions on their own schedule and at their own price. This isn't an IP protection strategy, it's an agressive cornering of their own market.

Man I've got really conflicted feelings about this game. I do think it's great, and will probably be picking up Phantom Liberty next sale, but I never know whether to appreciate the devs for sticking with it and making sure their work lived up to expectations, or to be frustrated that I basically had to wait a year for a full product after buying for $80 CAD on day one (my own mistake, I foolishly thought CD Project was immune to such blunders). I guess it's a bit of both. I do really appreciate all the hard work, I just wish that wasn't on top of a bunch of frustration and disappointment.

Remember when telemetry/data collection across the internet was often optional and pretty minor?

The more shit we absentmindedly agree to because it's not really a big deal in the short term, the worse it gets in the long term.

If I play a game on Steam, then Playstation, EA, Ubisoft, etc should all fuck off. I already gave those companies my money, it's insulting that that isn't enough anymore.

Edit: great point I just saw someone else mention, the fact that Sony has allowed over 100 million users' data to be exposed due to various breaches by bad actors over the past 15 years. At least one of those times, the data was revealed to be nowhere near as secure as it should have been.

In an age where everyone rags on live service games that will inevitably lose support, a cheap, fun, well made, feature complete game (and was that way on release) that gets infrequent updates is "abandoned" and "insultingly barebones". Classic 2024 gamer moment right there

"They already stole your car, why call the police"

Everybody donate to Pine64 so they can get that open source printer off the ground someday.

I work an extremely physical job. I get home on friday, basically become a vegetable, saturday is a blur if I go out an do anything, and I just start to feel rested and like I want to get up and do stuff on sunday. Of course, i have to go to bed early to make my commute the next day. 2 days off is flat out not enough, and I would really prefer to not give up other aspects of my life just to have free time I can actually take advantage of.

This works in Netherlands and a number of other European countries, without cutting pay. We should be able to figure it out. Should.

Apple literally scans your photo galleries for illegal photos.

Edit, looking into things, it seems like they might have backtracked on this one due to backlash when it was announced.

Made the full switch a couple days ago and already don't miss reddit at all. The community is smaller, yes, but that lends itself to better, more engaged discussion. People are here because they want to be not because its the only place offered.