Sure, I agree that “tech industry” can refer to individuals. But in this context, it’s referring to corporations. That’s the simplest interpretation of the headline, and if you don’t arrive at that interpretation, it becomes increasingly apparent in the article.

“Nothing to do with tech” – I disagree. The author is speaking to a specific issue of consent in how tech companies handle data and build UX. These are tech industry issues. Immoral data handling may also be an issue with Nestle, but the author isn’t talking about Nestle. They also aren’t purely talking about the general economic system of capitalism, because doing so would dilute their argument.

I don’t know the author, but I don’t think reducing the article to an effort to get “precious clicks” is fair. They’re an established tech blogger, they’ve worked in security for many years, and as far as I know they make no money directly off of their articles. They even strongly encourage you to use an ad blocker when you enter the site.

Nowhere in the article does the author pin blame on individual employees. “Tech industry” obviously refers to corporations, not individual contributors. The title isn’t clickbait.

To clarify, it was released in Europe as well :)

That’s fair, I 100% agree. No matter the reason for a game’s poor quality, you shouldn’t let it off the hook. Especially if it’s a commercial product.

Personally though, I don’t think he’s pretending not to have heard that point. He clarifies multiple times in the thread that he’s fine with people criticising his work. Instead, he’s speaking to a kind of criticism that claims – incorrectly – to know things about the game’s development, and that offers naive solutions to complex problems. In my opinion, that kind of criticism is pretty worthless, and takes up air that could otherwise be spent discussing the game’s real, concrete problems.

But I get the frustration. Bethesda’s response to criticism of Starfield has been dismissive on the whole, so the director of the game coming out against some criticism is tone-deaf from a PR perspective.

Also, it seems like no-one who complains about discourse online takes the time to provide examples of what they’re complaining about… So it’s hard to know what exactly Emil is talking about here.

I think it’s a fair point. They’re not arguing against all criticism, just the kind that comes from a place of ignorance for how games are made. There are certainly a lot of people who say things like, “why didn’t the developers just do X Y Z”, with no empathy for or understanding of how games get made. It’s possible to criticise things without spreading ignorance.

I was really worried about this game from the trailer but this is actually looking sick as hell… I like that they’re playing with different kinds of monsters and environments. And co-op sounds like a lot of tense shouty fun.

I dunno – I’m sympathetic to the DLC argument, but bad performance isn’t something I can forgive on launch day. I’m sure they’ll patch it in time, but if I buy a full-priced game, I expect it to run decently well. Anything less makes for a poor user experience. If a publisher truly cares about user experience then they won’t release a game in that state, or if they do, they’ll make it 100% clear on the storefront that the game has performance issues.

Racism and lack of bipartisan support were likely huge factors as other commenters said. There was also division between Indigenous people regarding the efficacy of the Voice to Parliament. Some saw it as a great step forward, others saw it as toothless or symbolic, others still believed it would delegitimise their sovereignty over the land. The Opposition latched onto this for their own gains I believe. Together with Fair Australia (conservative lobbying group) they dealed in fear, misinformation and distrust. They absolutely dominated over social media and took control of the narrative very quickly. This became a lot easier for them due to the cost of living crisis. Take a White Australian in the outer suburbs or rural areas, tell them to care about this thing they don’t understand instead of their rising mortgage payments and cost of groceries, when the Opposition is feeding into their latent ignorance and distrust of First Nations people that all Australians have, and you’ve lost them already.

For sure. That’s just how articles have to be titled to get clicks unfortunately. It can be annoying, but it helps keep journalism alive, so you take the good with the bad.

The author’s arguing that BG3 makes Starfield look like a shallow RPG by comparison. Their broader point is that Starfield is behind the times compared to most RPGs released in the last couple decades, even compared to something like Fallout 3.

Not sure, just didn’t know any unions had that kind of power. I’m from AUS, so maybe things are different here

Why do you describe unions as a labour cartel? Never heard that phrasing before.

Damn, that’s super impressive. Would love to see a breakdown on how they achieved that look, especially with how the arm/gun movements are animated.

Pretty dangerous territory making a game about bodycam footage though. Wonder if they’ll try any commentary on that or if they’ll try to play it safe.

Wow, that’s fucked up