Polkadot Stingray

And anything else on my Japanese music playlist :D

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1qp2kWRqMd77nsVXr2jG5um4DpMWNn5Y

whoosh

Sounds like somebody needs a Snickers™ 😏

It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out

In almost exactly the same sense as our own brains' neural networks are nonsensical :D

Ooo fun writing challenge. Knuckles crack*

Ok, so hear me out:

Warp Drives use up massive amounts of energy in a single burst. We all know acceleration and deceleration are the things that are costly in space, not maintaining momentum. So you can design against that, right? Massive capacitors that are easily replaced, that store the charge before passing it to the warp drive, which only needs to operate for a short time.

Shield emitters, on the other hand, need constant power running through them to generate the necessary energy field. Like a powered magnet, it's only by running current through the device that the field is generated. And any time you move large amounts of power continuously like that you're going to generate heat and degrade the medium.

So it comes down to the fundamental nature of the task being performed by the hardware.

Nailed it. This was a perfect explanation. Thank you!

I'm from c/all and WTF does this mean? I understand base 10, 2, and 12 and the concept of a base in general but......wut????

"midnight" and "noon" for sure.

.... And now I'm thinking about all those super heros and villains named "midnight" and their logical counter-characters "noon"

I never said anything about the quality of the games. I'm speaking specifically to the monetization bullshit.

As I said elsewhere: budget bloat happens in a lot of places. Greedy executive and publishers is one place. Overambitious design goals that get scrapped is another. There's also bad tools workflows, mismanagement, and any number of other contributing factors.

But even indie devs are getting screwed on pricing and making far less than they deserve to be in many cases.

If people keep buying CoD and Assassins Creed, devs will keep making them. And if they can't increase retail price to cover the budget they will find other ways to do it.

I almost replied from my inbox; glad someone said it before I even got to it haha

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the capital structure is fair by any means. I understand all the reasons why people - especially right now - are struggling to justify big purchases.

And I will readily agree that inefficient and improper use of resources is one of the contributing factors to ballooning development budgets

That said, video games are - and I challenge you to disprove this - easily one of the best investments for entertainment. Dollars-per-hour of fun on a 20hr, $60 game is $3. For a live service game where people spend hundreds of thousands of hours playing it can get below $0.10 per hour.

EDIT: I also agree that demos need to make a comeback because I'm sick of wasting money. Though people also need to read some reviews before they buy occasionally :/

While that may be true, the costs and budgets we're dealing with today are orders of magnitude higher than they were back then. Physical product manufacturing doesn't even come close to making up the difference when you factor in digital storefront costs.

I simply chose two big, well known, and beloved titles for the sake of expediency.

This problem is not unique to big budget games.

Indie devs are getting screwed too. You saying that you've found great games for $30-40 from indie devs isn't an argument against more sustainable pricing like you think it is.

If the dev budget for the indie game was 5% of the AAA game but the price was 50% then you've literally just helped prove my point

The fact is - and I challenge you to prove me wrong here - video games continue to be hands down the best dollar-per-hour investment for entertainment. Even a $60 game that only lasts 20 hrs is still coming in at $3/hr of entertainment, which is very hard to beat. When you look at live service games where people will spend literally thousands of hours after paying anywhere from $60-200 you're looking at $0.10/hr in some cases.

Fun facts incoming!

Cost of "Mario 64" on release = $59.99

Development budget for Mario 64 = ~$1.56mil

Inflation adjusted Mario 64 cost in 2022 = $111.91

Inflation adjusted Mario 64 budget in 2022 = ~$2.91mil

Cost of "Elden Ring" on release = $59.99

Estimated dev. budget for Elden Ring = $100mil-200mil

Mario 64 units sold = ~12mil

Elden Ring units sold = ~28mil

These details are provided without comment. You do the math and decide whether the fact that prices haven't changed since 1996 might be the reason for some of the enshitification we continue to see.

And now for the comment:

Consumers are horrifyingly resistant to price increases for games. It is directly responsible for many of the shitty monetization models we've seen. Development budget continue to rise, even on indie games, while consumers pay less and less in "real money value" over time.

It's completely unsustainable and the very reason the "business types" get involved, forcing unpopular monetization schemes

Exactly this. I work in the games industry as well and even big studios are falling over themselves NOT to release anywhere near GTA6.

Nobody believes there won't be people playing other games at that time. But it's going to dominate the media cycle for a month, especially if it is either better or worse than fans hope. And the reality is that many, many people have limited gaming budgets. If you've only got $100 to spend, GTA6 is very likely to be the default pick at that time.

It's a behemoth in terms of grabbing attention from both the media and players. All the best laid plans for a successful release can be completely derailed by a game like GTA6.

This, 100%. How people view the homeless (as a group, if not individually) is the quintessential, textbook example of just-world fallacy.

And your interpretation that it is a coping mechanism is also accurate. People need to resolve the cognitive dissonance of "I'm a good person, and good people help the homeless, but I'm not helping the homeless for X,Y,Z (possibly legitimate) reasons". One of the easiest ways to resolve that is the just-world fallacy

Lol check my post/comment history and see how fucking wrong you are

Literally caucused for Bernie.

Everyone is so ready to pick up a pitchfork that you fail basic reading comprehension.

I'm literally just trying to think of ways they could have EXECUTED this. I said nothing of the legitimacy, fairness, justice, or legality of the behavior

It is the bread and butter of capitalist fucks to operate just barely within the letter of the law.

This was never apologia and your (and others) penchant for picking a fight is toxic as fuck.

I have no idea. That's why I was asking 🤷

Is it possible some of these were liquidations or inventory sell-off or something? As a data person my initial assumption would be a few bulk purchases throwing this calculation out of whack

I could see some private dealership figuring out a way to buy the vehicles and resell them as a hard-to-get item later

Edit: down votes for asking a question? Y'all are weird. I'm not even saying it's not fraud.