CleoTheWizard

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I don’t know why parents need to assume anything once their kid is old enough to display agency. And sexuality doesn’t need to be assumed, parents should stay out of the sexuality of their children for the most part.

But yeah I don’t see how gender is any different than figuring out if your kid likes broccoli. Just push them a bit to experiment like you would with food. Push them to try on all types of clothes. Show them all types of movies. Buy them toys of different types. Have them make friends with kids of other genders. Allow them to participate in activities that cross gender norms. But most importantly force nothing and go with what sticks.

I aim this particularly at parents in the US who essentially pretend that their children have little to no agency until they’re 13 or so. Give your child that agency and you’ll stop having to assume who they are at all.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I loved the PS2 era of gaming a lot. This may be a controversial take, but the PS2 era did not last long enough.

Everything about the aesthetics of the games that the PS2 produced were excellent. In my opinion, this is the point when low fidelity and high quality assets overlapped just enough to make games more comprehensible to their players. That enabled a lot of innovation that the PS3/360 era handled entirely differently. Forget an era, the PS2 is the last part of an entire age of gaming that delineates what I’m referring to.

The PS2 was a huge turning point in what games were and could be in 3D. Prior to this, many games were abstract and the characters were a lump of polygons. With the PS2, this began to change. So we began to get games that our minds had to do a lot of interpreting but could see reality through. Nowadays, I’d argue that your mind does less interpreting and so the resulting picture has glaring inaccuracies.

It also helped that ps2 was primarily played on CRTs or at least plasma which helped the picture look better in plenty of scenes than a PS3. Not to mention the color palette of games after the PS2 turned to muck.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Oh absolutely, I was going to reference the Gameboy Advance that I grew up on as a part of this phase. Unfortunately, I don’t think those handhelds even got their time in the light that they could’ve had. It seems like they’ve had a long legacy but the DS and GameBoy came and went in but two generations of consoles.

I mean imagine what we could do with a gameboy today. Or imagine how we could easily transform a modern phone into a DS form factor. We’re talking now about running a modern resident evil game in the palm of your hand. Insane power really.

All this is largely due to the mobile play stores having no competition or curation. Our mobile games absolutely suck now. There are gems, sure, but otherwise I hate phone gaming despite my phone being my most used device.

I think you’re absolutely correct though, the DS is the best handheld. Slim, powerful enough, very interactive, and a great game library. I highly recommend buying one and modding it, you won’t regret it.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

That isn’t why. PlayStation doesn’t view this as a problem and in fairness, I don’t either. If the game had shipped with this requirement, it would’ve been fine. Many people put up with Ubisoft and they have a whole separate account plus launcher.

What Sony actually wanted was to make it easier on their server side to authenticate purchases and then to use the same PSN account systems to matchmaker for easier cross-play.

Would they collect data? I guess. They can already do that if they want as a publisher. So yeah it’s purely just to use their ecosystem, which makes sense.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Did I mention server load? What I mean is that having a PSN account means that whatever game is processing your account details doesn’t have to deal with Steam accounts, it just deals with a PSN account the same as it would if you were on PS5.

What I’m saying is it streamlines the code on the developers side of the games they’re publishing and again if Sony is using systems already to authenticate purchases or whatever that can be collected in systems they already have.

This isn’t rocket science, PSN may just be a translation layer.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I mean yeah this is especially true for online games as this is a form of DRM for Sony and it gives them control to easily reject or accept keys and ban users using their pre-existing systems.

Same thing with cross-play, it’s possible that some of these games were designed to use PSN systems and so that makes integration easy. No clue, but if true it makes sense from Sonys perspective on both of those fronts.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Correct, I never said it wasn’t buggy either. I’m just pointing out that if you have cross play and you already have console support with console user IDs then it makes sense to just convert PC players into that same console user system.

This is what Xbox used to do when publishing games on Steam and still do with their GamePass stuff. And very similarly, that system also broke things and still breaks things for people.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Because those systems already exist for the console players. All they’re doing is switching it over to steam but they likely had a translation layer there before to do all the things you’re saying but through PSN instead. Why? Because that system already exists for consoles.

So their options here are that they can take the netcode for consoles and modify it to utilize SteamIDs and fetch data from Steam or they can just turn your Steam ID into a console ID and treat all of the inputs to their systems exactly like they would on the PS5 while fetching them from Steam.

I’m not saying it’s a good idea, I’m saying you’d think that just trying to match the console and the way it handles players would be simpler. Especially when you’re trying to make cross play work. Clearly it wasn’t so they temporarily ditched it. Maybe Sony does just want your data but if that’s true, why would the telemetry gathering be such a big deal? And they also could just use your SteamID for that data gathering. So clearly PSN used to be more integrated than people here are suggesting

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Yes but they likely have existing infrastructure on PSN so it makes sense to do that. Theyre just taking your steam ID and verifying your purchase, then using a PSN ID on their end after the purchase validation for online matchmaking and server side stuff. Not to crazy.

Otherwise they’d have to redo their server code and what not just to handle Steam and for a game that’s already this old, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do that.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I mean sure but I don’t see how this is “half assing it” since you have no idea what happens on the server side.

And look I’m not saying they’re in the right here, I’m just saying that people are quick to jump to them hating their players and wanting their data when this seems to be more like something that’s being done to make their backend function.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I think this is the biggest myth of conversation. People always tell you to search for people whom you share something in common with, but the reality is that nearly everyone shares something in common and there’s no reason to go searching for it.

The key to a good conversation with a stranger is to initially do two things: 1. Ask details about the stranger and 2. Intertwine that with yourself in some way. You don’t even need to share this part.

Good conversations have these things I’ll call “footholds” where you intentionally give each other details shortly after meeting in order to create those ties in conversation. If you ask where someone is from, you should shortly offer up where you are from as well. Or if you ask about a hobby, offer a light comparison to your own.

Once you have enough of these footholds, the conversation should flow freely. If it ever doesn’t, ask the stranger more about themselves. And trust me, just be interested in what they say.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

He did demonstrate it that way, specifically with a carrot. And it somewhat worked. The problem is they programmed it to do more and more pressure every time it fails meaning that doing the carrot first actually caused a safety issue. He only moved onto his finger because the safety feature seemed to be working.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Sony should take the hint. Many of these reviews are from people who can’t even get a PSN account in their country. So Steam is about to be flooded with requests for refunds due to the game not being available to some users. I already asked for a refund because of this.

It’s unlikely steam will be able to tell people to just pound sand, so Valve will likely step in at some point and then Sony will be in trouble with the platform itself.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Apparently this was always a planned feature but probably wasn’t ready for prime time at launch.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Not sure why they’d publish this, Israel is 100% going to take the land that was bombed and leave them with an even smaller parcel than before. The homes that are rebuilt will be Israel’s homes.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

A deck isn’t necessary to play it obviously, just makes it nice to have this game on the go.

What took me in was mostly the art style and the chill atmosphere of the game. The levels are sort’ve like dioramas and they’re great interaction. That plus it’s been a long time since I’ve played a game with a camera mechanic and the implementation of them seems to either be great or really bad.

And yeah I love my steam deck. It’s worth it if you play a lot of PC games and definitely really nice for playing indies on the couch next to a partner or what have you.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Oh sorry, but yes that’s right. You buy a game once on steam and then you can play it portably and your saves will sync between devices.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

It’s not every single title but it’s a lot, I’d say a solid 85-90% of my library works. You can see the compatibility of any game on the Steam page. Most games with anti-cheat will break on it since it’s Linux based though. Other than that, it’s great for a ton of games.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

It is entirely possible and potentially more effective to satire the US while centering the story outside of the US

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I don’t think so. The Xbox ecosystem is about to stop existing the way it exists right now, likely turning into Steam Machine type boxes. Then GamePass has already been discussed as expanding platforms. So really MS is just aiming to sell GamePass which they can’t do through 3rd party deals so they buy their own studios and rely on their ROI by way of subscription sign ups.

It’s not like the things they make are exclusive either, they could be doing the Epic Games (gross) model of exclusives but MS really hasn’t been doing much of that. Which means they’re acting more as a game publisher for sales outside of gamepass and therefor do want the ROI from these studios.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

Kind of. They’re asking you to pay for maximum possible bandwidth but make no claims about how long you can use that max bandwidth. Packets are only a convenient way to measure a percentage of max bandwidth use over time.

CleoTheWizard, 1 month ago

I think we’ve just stumbled on an issue where the rubber meets the road as far as our philosophies about privacy and consent. I view consent as important mostly in areas that pertain to bodily autonomy right? So we give people the rights to use our likeness for profit or promotion or distribution. And what we’re giving people is a mental permission slip to utilize the idea of the body or the body itself for specific purposes.

However, I don’t think that these things really pertain to private matters. Because the consent issue only applies when there are potential effects on the other person. Like if I talk about celebrities and say that imagining a celebrity sexually does no damage because you don’t know them, I think most people would agree. And so if what we care about is harm, there is no potential for harm.

With surveillance matters, the consent does matter because we view breaching privacy as potential harm. The reason it doesn’t apply to AI nudes is that privacy is not being breached. The photos aren’t real. So it’s just a fantasy of a breach of privacy.

So for instance if you do know the person and involve them sexually without their consent, that’s blatantly wrong. But if you imagine them, that doesn’t involve them at all. Is it wrong to create material imaginations of someone sexually? I’d argue it’s only wrong if there is potential for harm and since the tech is already here, I actually view that potential for harm as decreasing in a way. The same is true nonsexually. Is it wrong to deepfake friends into viral videos and post them on twitter? Can be. Depends. But do it in private? I don’t see an issue.

The problem I see is the public stuff. People sharing it. And it’s already too late to stop most of the private stuff. Instead we should focus on stopping AI porn from being shared and posted and create higher punishments for ANYONE who does so. The impact of fake nudes and real nudes is very similar, so just take them similarly seriously.