loobkoob

And if you’re getting a game 48 hours prior to release, you’re at least getting a finished game.

True. But, personally, I think it has all the downsides of pre-ordering but at extra cost. The game could be an absolute disaster (Suicide Squad, anyone?) and there's no way for anyone to know that. Not waiting to be able to properly inform yourself about what you're spending money on is so stupid.

I'm honestly reaching the point where I think pre-ordering games should be legislated against. Sure, it's only stupid people being parted from their money, but it's clear some consumers need protecting from themselves and it's only really the corporations that would lose out.

So as per @Kierunkowy74's reply to me, limiting (basically what I described) is a feature on Mastodon already. It basically just sets things to follower-only mode on a per-instance basis. I'm not sure how well that would translate to the threadiverse, but I do think some level of opt-in integration would be best.

To go on a slight tangent: I've never used Imgur as anything other than a image hosting site, but I'm aware it has people that use it as a social network in its own right. Whenever I've hosted anything on Imgur in the past - even images that don't need any context - I've noticed it always ended up downvoted and sometimes with some negative comments, while the reception on reddit was generally far better. It doesn't bother me - like I said, I just used it as an image host - but it's clear Imgur has its own culture. Threads could be the same, and trying to merge its culture with ours could prove difficult.

I don't know what full-on federation with Threads would look like, but federating vote counts could definitely lead to Threads culture overwhelming threadiverse culture. But I assume that's also something that can be done on a per-instance basis; I know kbin (which I use) already doesn't federate downvotes from other instances, for example.

I'm not sure I have a fully-formed opinion on it all yet, unfortunately. I don't like the idea of cutting Threads off completely unless they do something to earn defederation. I think finding a way to smoothly federate with Threads could give the fediverse a boost in users that could be significant for more niche communities that haven't managed to find a large enough audience yet (because yes, I'm still missing some of the smaller communities from reddit). But I do also think there are very valid concerns about both the long-term and immediate impacts Threads could have on the fediverse.

That sounds like a good solution. I don't want to need an account on a different platform to see Threads, but I also don't want the feeds to just be overrun by Threads users, and that seems to achieve that.

I guess the ideal situation as far as I'm concerned would be for users to be able to choose that setting on an individual basis. Obviously anyone can set up their own instance and achieve that, but being able to do it without being an instance admin would be the best.

Personally, I would like to be able to follow individual Threads users if I so desire but not have Threads content showing up in my All feed. I don't know if that's possible with how federation/individual blocking currently works, but it would be the ideal, I think.

Sweet?!

So I just had a look into it and apparently American tomato ketchup is one third sugar (corn syrup, obviously...). Ketchup is supposed to be savory, America; why do you do this?

That's not even the big reason; microtransactions are often very lucrative (as much as I tend to dislike them). The main thing is just the COVID hangover and general economic downturn the world has seen.

• during the height of COVID, people had more time and money to spend on gaming. While brick and mortar stores and quite a few service industries suffered, the gaming sector was seeing record profits and growth.
• investors were also investing a lot. Crypto was booming, interest rates were really low, and a lot of investment companies were just throwing money around as a result. With gaming companies not only not being hit too hard by COVID, but also thriving during it, gaming-related investment shot up. See Embracer Group for the prime example in gaming.
• like good little capitalists, these companies saw all the extra money coming in and tried to grow their companies - more staff, bigger projects, etc. They scaled up to levels that were sustainable for their newfound income and investments.

Now, not only have all of those factors been reduced, they've actually gone the other way. Consumers have less disposable income than they did pre-COVID due to rising cost of living. Investment companies can't just throw their money at absolutely anything and still turn a profit because the interest rates are much higher. And the companies all found their expenditure and growth unsustainable once the money dried up, which is why we've seen so many layoffs in gaming already this year.

On top of all that, we've seen game budgets just go up and up and up, to the point where some games are costing upwards of $200M to make. The price of games hasn't really budged that much, which means the only way for the increasing budgets to be sustainable is for sales and microtransaction spending to keep increasing. Obviously that's not happening, and until some novel tech comes along that draws in new gamers - like the Wii did, where people who didn't care about games at all were interested in getting the Wii for Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc - I think gaming's not likely to attract too many new people.

Microtransaction scandals and less and less innovation in the AAA(A) space obviously don't help, but they're not the big reasons why the industry has hit hard times.

I'm aware of when to use "a" versus "an", but I wasn't aware that Americans don't pronounce the "h"! It makes a lot more sense now, thanks!

...well, a little bit more sense, anyway - I'm still not sure what calling someone "a herb" actually means...

Ahh, that would do it! I don't know if I've ever actually heard an American person say "herb" so I just assumed the "h" was pronounced like it is everywhere else! Thanks!

"He who controls the spice(y content) controls the universe" - Baron Harkonnen in Frank Herbert's Dune

Jim Spanfeller is an herb

What does this even mean? And shouldn't it be a herb? (Not trying to correct you on it, I know you're just quoting, but I can't figure out how or why you would say an herb.)

My interpretation is that it sold poorly, but that among the people who did buy it it's got high retention.

that game is over for me once I've launched the rocket

Ahh, well that definitely isn't the case for me! I usually keep playing long after I've launched the first rocket. For me, launching the rocket is a somewhat arbitrary "ending"; it's a good objective for people to focus on - especially new players - but I don't think anything really changes before or after the rocket launch in terms of gameplay loop (and there's no narrative to change). Just like before the rocket launch, there are still things to optimise, new ways to build, etc, (some of which are supported by the science you get from launching rockets, in fact).

I suppose it partially comes down to whether you're an objective-driven player or someone who enjoys the process. For me, it's all about the process/journey, and the objectives are more of a guide than anything. If the objectives are complete and I'm still enjoying the process, and there's still room for me to enjoy the process, then I'll keep playing.