I love these games. I replay them both every few years and they are still fun. I’m still pissed about what happened to Arcane Studios and what could have been had the big corpos not done their usual bs.

I have a withings and I really like it. Their privacy policy made me feel better about allowing my info on the cloud. You can run it offline (it sends weight via Bluetooth to the app but won’t show 7-day trend an scale screen without wifi). I don’t mind that, so I leave it disconnected. I don’t use a home assistant though so I can’t speak to that part.

I have the withings watch also, so I use the app as my catch all health tracker which works well. it’s nice to have everything together. Can’t speak to any others but I’d recommend withings.

OH MY GOD PLEASE STOP CONSOLIDATING GAMING STUDIOS. I don’t want all my games to come from Sony and Microsoft.

Not a lawyer, but it seems like changing the ball throwing mechanic is an admission that they are taking ideas from Nintendo. Maybe they are trying to minimize the damage but still seems like they are weakening their position.

Yep, and I’m still never buying a Playstation. Not worth chasing exclusives when there are plenty of good games on PC.

Already working on it. Just need to find someplace I can get a job that will let me work outside the US.

Yep, happened to Arcane Austin. Redfall was a disaster because Bethesda couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that Arcane made (awesome) single player games and not MMOs. Hopefully history won’t repeat itself.

It’s hard to believe that Annapurna leadership (and Ellison specifically) are surprised by this. It reads like Ellison is known for backing out of deals or simply not honoring them. Why should the staff believe she would honor a spinoff deal?

Hope the team is able to get something off the ground.

" optimize staffing levels to be more comparable with industry leaders”

I will never understand why investor types like to play follow the leader rather than giving strategic or financial reasons for business decisions. Who gives a shit if every other studio is laying people off? If the staffing is right for your company then following other industry leaders will only make things worse and cement you in a place behind those leaders.

+1 Usual Suspects for sure. That movie blew my mind.

Good. I’m sick of seeing the “pet this cat” reviews at the top of the list. Hopefully this changes some of that stuff.

“If we expect all games to attract players indefinitely, Buckley says, ‘we’re just going to get more of these really soulless live service games that come out and get shut down nine months later, 12 months later, because they’re not making enough money.’”

We need more developers talking like this.

Same. It’s nice to have a way to quickly look through a bunch of options (even if 95% of them are shitty Chinese counterfeits). I’ll even look through the reviews and see if anything glaring jumps out. But I haven’t been a prime member since they put ads in prime video and haven’t really missed it.

Same. I’m a little surprised it took them so long to build out a 4-player coop mode. Would have expected that with OMD3

Gaming historian did a really interesting documentary on Oregon Trail. Definitely recommend checking it out

Here’s the link https://youtu.be/8QbjlHeoLdc?si=BmxLQj_yIDn_Kzhl

The story in Horizon Forbidden West is pretty good too. There’s a whole bit in the dlc about Ted Faro that I did not see coming, but it makes me think a lot of the tech bros running things today.

Yeah, but the non-tech savvy business leaders see they can generate code with AI and think ‘why do I need a developer if I have this AI?’ and have no idea whether the code it produces is right or not. This stat should be shared broadly so leaders don’t overestimate the capability and fire people they will desperately need.

What I don’t get is that most of these acquisitions are reviewed by a govt body somewhere. And every single company trying to buy or sell another always says it will support growth of the business, but that is literally never true. There are always layoffs; sometimes right away and sometimes 6 or 12 months later, but they always happen. How companies get away with claiming the sale will create jobs and people are surprised when they turn around and do layoffs is totally beyond me.

He works for a marketing and web design firm. So the guy who designed their graphics is gone and they are using AI tools. Imagine paying for a firm to build you web and marketing materials only to have someone just use an AI.

Why bother paying the marketing firm at all?

The nice thing about products that improve accessibility is that they often make experiences better for everyone just by having more thought put into the design and use.

I don’t have any condition that would require me to need this controller but I’d love to try it out.