Double post but:

So, another weird little tidbit of HL2 lore…

The CPs are basically all incels.

What I mean by that is… there are actually random radio lines of the OverWatch, the female voice, that will promise certain CPs, if they succeed in their mission, will be rewarded with a ‘non-mechanical reproduction simulation’.

So… thats… either basically a VR/neuroelectric brain dance of sex, or possibly they bioengineered a synthetic fleshlight creature.

The overwatch soldiers have half their organs removed and replaced, so they probably don’t even have their genitals.

Death is not ultimately escapable.

You are not permanent; one day, you will go to sleep, and not wake up again.

… but you do have the power to influence the path you walk on the way toward death, the face you’ll be wearing, the stories you’ll be able to tell, when you finally arrive in the company of the reaper.

You can be secure in knowing that it is not possible to escape this fate… and in knowing that you lived not in an impossible attempt to avoid the unavoidable, but instead, that you chose to tread the path as you saw fit to.

The Greek Gods were said to be envious of us mortals, because our mortality meant that what we did with our one life… was important, and meaningful, in a way that nothing the Gods ever did, could be.

When you realize that nothing objectively ‘matters’, to ‘the universe’… you are now free, to decide what matters to you, instead.

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A fool and his money are quick to part ways.

… I’m still adhering to ‘Remember: No Preorders’, from fucking 15 years ago now.

Everybody else just opts in to get financially hosed down and flatlined like random innocent Russian civillians in an airport.

Same question:

Why are funko pops?

Same answer.

… destroyed in every way that is possible, and indeed, in some ways that are essentially impossible.

I believe that’s his own description.

… Some kind of mod that replaces the HECU with ICE might be a not terrible idea.

Half Life 1 / Black Mesa Source is basically them being cocky and also massacred by a combination of transdimensional aliens and an extremely coffee deprived man working 24+ hours straight of overtime w/o pay.

He gets… rather creepy around Alyx, at least once.

I’d never thought of Barney as gay… but also… its not like he couldn’t be.

Unlike with Gordon and Alyx… and a few other minor NPCs, who actually talk about or are talked about as if they would or could or should be a couple and/or resume baby making after the destruction of the supression field…

I don’t think Barney ever actually has anything even mildly hinting at or suggesting his own sexuality, anywhere, in HL2 Ep1 or Ep2.

I think he at one point or another hints that Gordon and Alyx would make a good couple, but nobody like, does that in reference to him.

Of course… half the characters in the game could just also be bi or pan or who the hell knows.

Goddamnit… Laszlo would know the answer… rest his soul.

… Lets just hope Kleiner and Lamarr are just the nornal kind of owner-pet relationship…

I’m going with ‘StarTrek Q-like entity that is only seen doing a rather poor job of wearing a human skin suit.’

EDIT:

oh my fuck i missed the joke.

… you got me, that’s good lol

Well if they keep going with the GTA5/RDR2 framework, it would be Shark Cards/Gold, and a two tier in game currency system.

Give them real money, you get in game currency 1 or 2, some in game items cost currency 1, some cost ingame currency 2.

They set the ‘exchange rates’, as well as prices of special items, and they set the increment amounts you can buy ingame crncy 1 and 2 for, such that for ingame purchase combos they know are likely, well you have to spend a little bit more real world money and have some leftover ingame currency.

They basically wrote the book on using psychologically manipulative dark patterns in system structuring and UI design for this sort of stuff.

GTA Online is a ludicrous money printer in the way Steam is a money printer for Valve.

… But with Steam you’re getting, you know, new games. With Rockstar, you’re getting bling and overpowered vehicles snd weapons to troll people with.

Now… I don’t think they’d extend the ingame currency to be something you could purchase for single player GTA6. That seems like it just be waay too much, even for them, it would make single player into as much of a pay 2 win joke as GTA5 Online is.

But I guess its not impossible?

And, perhaps ironically… that’s kinda part of the point.

Valve literally presents the Steam Machine as a possible gaming device for the open ecosystem they ‘religiously’ believe in.

But not the only possible gaming device.

The original idea of the Steam Machine, over a decade ago, wss that it would basically be a performance and component spec standard, basically just a known quantity of kinds of hardware that they could say ‘Steam and most games on it will run on something that meets these standards!’

There actually were a number of pc builders that did their own attempt at making their own version of a ‘Steam Machine’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine?wprov=rarw1

Valve is here, now, doing basically the same thing, they just… literally built their own benchmark as an exemplar device, and also now have an operating system to actually center the entire concept around.

I think they’d be greatly pleased if this new Steam Machine, version 2, actually spurred on other manufacturers to make their own… just like how Valve keeps working to make SteamOS work well on other handheld PCs, made by other manufacturers.

Its because most people have a childish understanding of complex issues that basically boils down to ‘thing either bad or good’, ‘thing either perfect or evil’.

Fanboy/girlism applies to sociopolitical idologies too.

Its easier to perform purity testing to establish yourself as a morally/logically consistent person, its easier to criticize flaws…

… than it is to realize the fundamental strategy that has to be involved in achieving any kind of change from the world as it is, to the world as you’d prefer it to be… than it is to think about broad patterns underlying decision making, as well as what those broad patterns could lead to, in a complex world with other actors who have other ideologies/behavior patterns.

You can argue that this kind of fast-food opinion/judgement formation is itself a personality aspect caused or exacerbated by the instant gratification of modern digital hypercapitalism.

Like, I don’t think Valve or Gabe are perfect moral actors, I don’t agree with literally everything they do or espouse.

But… on net? In the big picture? Nearly every other major or even notable actor in the space is morally atrocious in comparison to them, and many things that Valve does are effective counter pressures to those much more atrocious things.

Yeah that’s a whole insane aspect of this to me:

So many people will have whatever set of values, and then also a 6 or greater figure salary… from one of the main causes of the problem.

Now in most instances it would be stupid to criticize a low income wage slave for Walmart or Starbucks for being a low income wage slave. You should do the opposite, sympathize with them, help them form a union, etc.

But the tech industry?

These people are much more likely to actually have the means to exit gracefully, downsize their life a bit, and not be a hypocrite.

‘Just following orders’ didn’t work at Nuremberg, and it doesn’t work for me either.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/112343/gta-6-is-a-singleplayer-experience-gta-online-may-be-sold-separately/index.html

GTA 6 is a ‘singleplayer experience,’ GTA Online may be sold separately

Rockstar Games and Sony seem to confirm GTA 6 will be a singleplayer game, possibly indicating that the next version of GTA Online could be standalone.

… (bunch of examples of Rockstar repeatedly describing GTA 6 as ‘a single player experience’ consistently across all of its marketing material, everywhere) …

This gave Rockstar lots of flexibility in how gamers interact with the game itself–which has splintered into two very distinct offerings–and many analysts believed and took for granted that Rockstar would simply ship GTA Online as a free component within GTA 6’s base game.

If I had to guess, I would say that Rockstar is currently preparing to essentially translate the existing version of GTA Online, which takes place in Los Santos, to the other side of the country in Vice City’s crime-ridden streets.

It’s possible we could see the current iteration of GTA Online go into retirement as Rockstar moves into the next version, however, all of this takes time and a lot of manpower and money, so it’s possible that the new version of GTA Online simply isn’t ready yet.

GTA+ would probably be involved in this process in some way, potentially offering access to GTA Online by default while also adding in extras and bonuses like vehicles and weapons.

So yeah my guess would be that they do a two pronged approach of either:

You buy GTA Online 2 as a standalone game

or

You have a GTA + monthly subscription, which gives you both access to GTA Online 2, and also basically a ‘battlepass’ or w/e, monthly perks.

But with the latter, stop the subscription? Well there goes your GTA Online 2 access.

You can do both too, of course.

They already figured out that you could split RDR2 and GTA5 into ‘singleplayer + multiplayer’ and ‘just multiplayer’.

Why not just also have ‘just single player’?

I mean… all of these should be elitist if not understanding an in-joke or reference to them arouses mockery and scorn from the fandom.

Nearly totally unrelated but:

So I’m on Bazzite, on a Deck, make the mistake of running a system update, with Steam open, on the day Steam massively updates itself alongside the SteamOS update.

I futz around with Steam settings because I didn’t even realize anything had changed.

Long story short, this somehow resulted in my internet adpater drivers… halfway unconfiguring themselves.

Fortunately I was able to use a shitass tether to my shitass phone, roll back to a previous Bazzite version, which unfucked my network adapter / device, then re roll forward to stable, all back to normal, no data or apps lost or anything…

But I had to actually pop into a shell session on boot, because the borked net drivers meant Steam couldn’t log in, thus no UI option to go to desktop mode… had to actually use nano and edit a conf file to boot straight into desktop mode.

So that was fun.

Just so people understand this story properly:

Kotaku, a ‘game journalism’ website… is writing an Op-Ed, based on the actual original reporting of a Youtuber.

Gaming Journalism, everyone!

Why the fuck isn’t Kotaku maybe the ones doing actual investigative journalism?

Because they’re all fucking hacks!

They are a fucking tabloid and undisclosed advertisment machine.

God fucking damnit.

We are so far beyond ‘the people who did this have names and addresses’.

The people who fucking did this are the most famous people on the planet, at this point.

Stop being afraid.

Stop acting like anything they can bring on you is legitimate or justified.

Like Howard Beale, I want you to get mad.

Stop complaining on the internet, and start protesting loudly at every single physical place these people ever are.

You’ll get arrested. You might end up put away for weeks or months… but those penalties will only get worse, the more power they accumulate, while we all just sit back and bitch about, uselessly.

They are the system.

There is no ‘safe’ way, according to the system, to meaningfully challenge it.

Actually become ungovernable, instead of just being fucking catty on Twitter!

You don’t have to be a bad person.

… you can wait untill it comes to PC, we’ll get it cracked eventually, at least single player.

Those old GTA 6 alpha leaks are still out there.

I actually had a copy at one point… I’m sure someone still does, and I’m sure examining it can be useful.

But uh yeah, fire a whole bunch of devs right before release?

That’s AAA industry standard, been that way for like 15 years now, they basically all do that.