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I’m surprised at how hard seeing Max again hit me. I don’t have much interest in playing a new LiS game, but I still got unreasonably emotional dredging up memories of the first game.

Remember that other sequel with puppets?

puppets sounds cool actually

I played it a couple of years ago, before a lot of the patches, and still thought it was one of the better games I have never finished.

It might not be the right thing to say publicly, but it’s absolutely something they should be concerned about internally. It’s fucking astonishing how many man hours went into Starfield for such a hollow final product.

There is an often reposted study that shows people who are worse at video games are more likely to harass women. Though these are some issues with the study and it’s scope, this more or less matches my experience. However, this is usually transformed via a game of telephone into suggesting higher skilled players are less misogynistic.

I have played at the top level of multiple games over different genres and it is incredibly misogynistic up there. The key difference is most of the nerds up there are less likely express it so obviously and publicly. In a lot of cases this is purely about self-preservation, teams in competitive games will be collectively penalized so there is a degree of self-policing (nobody wants to have their team disqualified with all that money on the line) and in PvE games there is usually a great deal of time (and lets be real, often money) invested in an account people don’t want to lose.

It’s gotten a lot better since the “tits or gtfo” and “there are no women on the internet” days, but the last time I was in these circles was only during COVID and it was still wildly misogynistic behind closed doors.

Reddit feels like a weirdly dead place. Depending on the sub, there can be a lot of posts and comments but it’s very hard to engage with. You need to comment early and what conversation there is decays very early. A lot of it is fake too, with bots stealing comments to repost.

It’s a little bit better on smaller subs, but Reddit has a way of funneling everything into a larger subs if there is one for a topic, so outside of niche topics they tend to be ghost towns.

Lemmy is more like a small, weird forum. It’s hardly perfect but at least it doesn’t feel like a bunch of chat bots talking to each other.

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Farscape! I haven’t seen it since I was barely even a teenager. I loved the show and it meant a lot to me, but there are a lot of years between then and now so I’ve forgotten a lot. I’ve been shocked by how outrageously, flamingly queer it has been. Not like the unacknowledged, and often unintentional, homoeroticism of most genre shows of this era but gay sex only half way into the first season.

The show is just pretty great in general too, I love the Henson puppets and aliens so much. Ben Browder is a great lead with a ton of charisma. Just be warned if there are any topics you’d want to avoid, the show would have a fairly long list of content warnings. It can be very dark and not everything has aged perfectly.

I used to play a game with a guy who became a mod of it’s subreddit. Absolute sweetheart and always the guy putting is hand up to help out or contribute to the group. Guy hated being a mod but something needed to be done to stop it falling apart, so up his hand went as usual.

Young gamers don’t know the pain of a BSOD and the interminable wait getting back into game on an IDE hard drive. Even a CTD was a nightmare.

This is restricted to a small part of modern gaming, though. In indie games-

Yeah, no, maybe the fact that you had to immediately jump to indie games should have been a hint that it’s not a small part.

The level of quality and number of bugs depends a lot on the era you’re talking about, as well as the platform. As a PC gamer from the 90s, much of my technical literacy came about from trying to coax games to work. My experience with console gaming was usually much more hassle free, though I have far less experience with it and don’t have a modern point of comparison (last console I even used, not even owned, was the PS3).

My real point of “it was better in the old days”, is the industry learning to exploit addiction. It’s everywhere, and it’s not just gambling. The longer you play the more likely you are to pay so even without loot boxes and the like, games are taking as much out of casino playbooks as possible. It’s fucking revolting and should be criminal.

As someone who has had problems with addiction of various kinds in the past, it’s so blatant to me. I can feel it playing into my vulnerabilities and it makes my blood boil. I avoid most gaming these days because I know if I let it become a habit, the next time life knocks me down I’ll fall victim to this.

One of the reasons I really liked SWTOR, despite the many things I dislike, is the class stories give you something to keep your interest really early on. I’ve never really been able to get in to other MMOs that are mechanically similar because I’m bored out of my fucking mind with only a promise of potentially interesting end game content.

Every few years someone talks me into trying WoW and I spend one miserable night leveling then wondering why on earth anyone does this.

From the way you’ve described your mental health problems, I’ve had similar friends who have found stable, loving relationships. So there’s hope, though I know that can be the most infuriating thing to hear.

What are you doing with your life at the moment? Job, study, whatever.

Oh no, it’s fair.

A highly customizable table is the core of how you pilot your ship. It’s an overview that gives you a list of everything you’ve set it up to show in space around you, as well as a bunch of columns with information on said objects. Some of it is obvious and straight forward, like distance, but goes down into the minutia like transversal velocity. You can set up a bunch of presets for checking on different things.

Logistics and economy are huge parts of the game that you could mostly ignore (though at some point you’re going to open the market which is exactly as detailed and dorky as you imagine) which will prompt you to make your own actual spreadsheets at some point. Though funnily, in the 10ish years I played I never made a spreadsheet despite being notorious for doing it in other games.

There is just a ton of math and potentially useful data accessible to the player that you might want to use at some point.

My potentially hot take is the spreadsheet UI is the best, all MMOs should do it, and the worst parts of Eve’s UI are the parts that aren’t spreadsheets.

Eh, yes and no. It might help illustrate the limitations of testing for some people, but it’s not really telling us anything new about them. It is meant to cheaply provide an indication of how a student is fairing and has never been considered by anyone serious as some kind of comprehensive measure of intelligence. Their flaws have been known for a long time.

Probably a few times a day, depending on what I’m doing.

I work in a small office, and answer the phones. Most of the time the call needs to be transferred on. Standard operating procedure if someone can’t take the call is to say they’re “unavailable, can I get them to call you back?” and, if pressed, “on another call at the moment”. This is usually untrue - we don’t get many calls, so 99% of the time it’ll either mean they’re in the bathroom, having lunch or just don’t want to talk to an overly needy client who keeps calling at the moment.

I’ll often also lie about my position if a client questions why I can’t handle their call. It’s easier to say I’m just the receptionist or something isn’t my department, than explain why this either needs to be handled by someone else or would be far cleaner that way.

Oh, and I lie about why I’m putting people on hold all the time. I’m often not bringing up your file or whatever - I did that while we were talking.

It Takes Two would be my introduction for a partner who doesn’t game very much. Co-op, easy to play, fun in a really low stakes way with a great story. I had tons of fun with the game playing with an ex.

Raft is another I played with an ex that was a lot of fun. It’s a very chill co-op survival game where you build up your boat.