Monkey With A Shell

What is DLC vs an expansion has become somewhat blurry. There was StarCraft BroodWar that was really an entire separate game to the point of launching them separately at the menu. Now things like Rimworld (which I play far too much of) have these expansion/plugins that add new mechanics and features but don’t create a separate game in their own right.

I actually read an article recently about 20 years of Oblivion horse armor or some such. They made an interesting point that a lot of the acceptance of micro buys came from online games letting you show off your new gear to the masses.

As a fellow ancient of the game world, I would say 20ish years is not far off give or take. The Atari 2600 was around in the 70s and the original NES came out in 1985(?). The NES was really the beginning of the end for the arcade scene. True that a lot of the arcade ports where terrible, but the power just wasn’t there to do it in a small box yet. $1 rentals from the local video shop would let you play a game all night or longer depending on who it was from.

While the online game services from Xbox and co could be seen as returning to a pay-to-play situation, they where never a must have. You could still play with friends locally without a subscription and the mass push for DLC buys wasn’t there yet.

I would really put the return to money snatching along side the rise of mobile games. Buying addons and in game coins to get an advantage really picked up with the ease of always on connections and purchases with a simple swipe of the finger. Once that ‘just one more boost will do it’ addictive mechanic was made the norm it was all over for the concept of a game that you just bought as a complete thing. Now it’s a novel thing to see a game offered that you just buy and play as it is.

This is of course assuming they wouldn’t have had those extra 20% of sales if they went without.

Someone should try a comparison to release on one platform with the DRM and also on GOG with a discount for the amount the DRM would have otherwise added to the price and see which sells better.

So you play as a pharmaceuticals CEO?

For those willing to do a bit of CLI work there are even tools to pull your whole library automagically. Just make sure you got the space for it. Sitting at just over 1.5 TB here.

https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader

“We are working very hard to bring the post apocalyptic world of Terminator to life”

– Nacon The world at large

I know Finland isn’t exactly friendly with Russia, but the fact that you argue this from an instance run by someone a hop and a skip from Moscow is a beautiful irony…

All trolls, no, but given the notorious prevalence of media manipulation seen out of the region it’s a given that some not insignificant portion of the loudest voices are here looking to cause trouble.

Something I’ve noticed is that if something is posted with a positive view of Biden there’s a fairly consistent pattern where it gets up voted initially but as the day gets later and more into the daytime hours of your Russia/China side of the world the down votes start to come in. One can speculate on that for what it’s worth I guess…

We’ve permitted bribery for years with that alternate name of lobbying, nothing new really there.

The official acts thing is far more troubling particularly since as I understand it they left the declaration of what is ‘official’ ambiguous saying the lower courts would have to decide on each case. If so it opens a door for years of infighting as different districts decide their preferred person was working as president or candidate in any given action.

True, I’m more referring to the primaries in 2016 and 2020. You get all too many around here clamoring for 3rd party protest votes or disengagement.

Even with the sketchy goings on during those two, if there was an overwhelming vote for Bernie (who’s no younger mind you, but it’s an alternate that appeals to a different demographic) it’d be a tough sell to go against that even if the party did get a court to agree they could.

Even without party backing though, if there was a particular person that people took to en-masse the rules don’t preclude them from office or appearing on national ballots. Look at Trump, people at first wrote him off as a joke, similar to the other times he ran before, now he’s a major threat to both parties.

If only folks had gotten off their tail and voted for an alternate candidate rather than sitting on the couch whining about our political system and making memes…

Huh, odd that they don’t advertise it more then. Probably make the notion of selling it get less of a rep of desperate people needing money and more similar to donating blood as an altruistic thing, so you get more involved.

Racism, homophobia, and the like are not a matter that can be solved politically. One can make all the affirmative action and equal rights rules you like but the issue at the root is society and culture based. Educational standards are being fought against in our most conservative states pushing for religious indoctrination and denying historical reality.

You have a wing that actively pushes the militarization of the police over community support and engagement, and those same people trying to turn society back to the ‘traditional norms’ as they existed before the civil rights movement.

Given the realities of the need to actually get votes through, just how would you suggest those things be fixed?

And maybe they’re ignoring things like the civil rights movement, the original implementation of Roe, the progress of the LGBT community and all the other society changes that have happened in that same time.

You done flew that squid into a cloud of reactionaries who get real uppity if their vision of things doesn’t happen by 3 months ago. A story about what a political twat said MIGHT happen is suddenly priority #1 amongst all the other things the POTUS has to deal with on the daily.

Wonder if they could save some time and not put the rest back, just give it to a zoo to feed vampire bats or something… 🤔

I’ve only donated a few times but from what I recall you can donate blood or sell plasma. Always struck me as weird but the difference is that they use the whole blood medically while the plasma only is used for research or commercial purposes. We do love to make a market for near everything possible here.

As for how much, not sure exactly since I haven’t done so myself but I get the impression it’s not huge, maybe $20-$50 each time.

Could just get a personal size boat to get accustomed to the feel of it. Be aware of the boom when you turn with the wind (jibe if I recall the term) lest you get whacked out the boat.

And with a major portion of US military aid grants coming with the condition that the purchased equipment come from US contractors you can argue which funding bucket it came from, but in all practicality Israel bought US systems with aid money granted from the US and then where willing to give the old systems they intended to decommission to someone the US is aiming to support.

It really is just US aid to Ukraine with an Israeli sticker on it in that sense.

Israel wants to get some gold star for agreeing to send systems the US provided to Ukraine now? What kind of PR lunacy is going on here.