I still say they should have called it "Optimus-Prime"

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: kaimanMight as well go first. 504.1 hours, says Steam. That's from playing the "tutorial" campaign, an early start in India, and halfway through an early start in Germany. And a weekend of multiplayer.

I really should try the Tutorial, I kept trying to find the time to start playing CKII, but could just never finish watching huge videos on 'how to play' then III came out... one of these days!

I bounced off the start of CK II back in the day. I was coming along great, I guess in what passed for a tutorial . . . anyway, I'd arranged a decent marriage with someone eligible who appeared to complement my attributes nicely, started developing my fief and building the army a little, then there was a peasant revolt or something and I . . . flat out could not figure out how to make the controls tell my forces to go where the fight was and fight. And that was that.

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Quoting: 14I guess I can contend with the fact that with no story baseline, there is just as much chance for it to be good as there is for it to be bad. I'm still salty about some bad writers and their producers though.

I think it's really more about bad producers and their writers. The Hollywood bigwigs seem to have gone to great efforts to create a situation where it's as difficult as possible to end up with a well-written result, the better to control what they get for maximum bland re-tread-i-ness and minimum short-term risk.

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Quoting: nwildner"performed in line with management expectations in the quarter" Mean: "we're not taking our fanbase opinion seriously and we're heading whatever the f**k management wants".

That's a true recipe for disaster on any project, trying to please management instead of it's users.

Normally I'd agree with you, but considering they're canning them I think in this case it just means "We're sacking these guys, no need to be rude as well".

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Quoting: LanzPart of the problem here is that what we're seeing is corporatism. Capitalism is supposed to be regulated such that a free market always exists. There are antitrust laws that are supposed to be enforced.

Somewhere along the line, politicians started taking "campaign contributions" from "special interest groups" rather than doing their job, and now it's almost a rarity to see antitrust action taken or really anything done other than cronyism. We already live in the post-capitalist world, and that's the reason we see so much corruption. We are letting corporations and special interests operate above the law and we are not holding politicians to account.

This is true but at the same time it is a misunderstanding. You're imagining some "normal" capitalist situation that this is a departure from. In reality, the stuff you're talking about is normal. It was the strong regulatory government that was the aberration.

Experiments with strong restrictions on capital for the broader economic and public good happened because of the Great Depression and massive popular movements from below, because of the massive upheaval of WW II, and because of the Cold War presenting the practical threat of a different model (It turned out not to be that great a model, but that wasn't always clear, and it meant our elites had to offer a deal that was clearly better than that other one seemed like it might be). Once those shocks went away, we started gradually returning to the pre-Depression status quo, characterized by very high inequality and lots of poverty with crap wages at the bottom.

Regulated, social democratic capitalism with strong unions is a system that really works quite well. Unfortunately, it is unstable and very difficult to maintain for long because it leaves capitalists ultimately holding the big levers of power, and with strong motivation to break it. So they do.

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Quoting: MohandevirThey skipped the second "E".

That joke just refuses to get old.

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I've been fond of Andre the Giant for a long time, but mostly because he was in Princess Bride and seems to have been such a nice man.

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Quoting: WorMzyI wasn't particularly impressed with Civ VI, it seemed like a step in the wrong direction vs. Civ V, but picking up the anthology for <£22 is a pretty good deal.

I'm with you on that . . . it's funny, there was some stuff that seemed like it ought to have been a good/cool thing, like the districts. But in practice I ended up finding them kind of annoying and fiddly, especially in the late game if I started finding that what with specialty districts and housing and stuff, I had used up too much of my good land on my best cities . . . which is kind of realistic I suppose, except with real cities you just expand the hinterland you supply 'em from.

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Quoting: poiuzAnd: Since native gaming is basically dead

This is clearly not true and I wish people would stop saying it.
I was expecting something like this to happen with Proton & the Deck, for reasons that seemed to me good and sufficient. But it didn't, and I have adjusted my ideas to reality. Some people seem to be just assuming that their ideas about it must have happened and so they don't need to check.

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I'm glad it looks ridiculous; it'd be pretty disappointing if a game called "Schizollama" didn't look ridiculous.

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