The art and music are incredibly good.

Looking forward to trying the demo (and hopefully the full game too.

I am surprised Unreal Tournament 2004 is not part of this initiative.

Come on, man.

I support reigning in corrupt oligarchs (full asset seizure, 20 years mandatory community service as a live-in junior janitor in a hospice care facility) as much as the next person, but this is stupid.

That’s ancient Rome, no? :)

As an early millennial, I can’t help but get good vibes from their 90s-era desktop UI.

The game concept and 80s retro-futurism are also appealing. 😃

I am really excited for this one. I did not expect anything from the original; I was very pleasantly surprised.

The 1.0 release is probably a good time to try it out. :)

I love the world-building and atmosphere in Caves of Qud. The soundtrack is also top notch.

But I just can’t get into the constant rogue-like combat. I wish there was a walking simulator or talking/charisma focused mode.

Minimum hardware requirements are likely to be performance (at relevant minimum resolution) and battery life at least on the same level as the current Steam Deck.

Was just going to say that I remember this being a feature in pre-1.0 Counter-Strike in the beginning of the 2000s.

Project Highrise - the unofficial sequel to SimTower

Cloud Emperium Games and Star Citizen.

They constantly lie about all sorts of matters (progress, release dates, financial matters, state of the company).

Many of their senior community managers are openly disrespectful to their backers.

The founder, Chris Roberts, put his unqualified wife as CMO (she openly admitted to not knowing how metrics worked or what is SEO), while coming up with a fake last name for her and warning employees to keep their mouths shut about the fact they were married.

The funny thing is, I believe RAM is actually one component that isn’t manufactured as much in China (compared to other components).

I was borderline thinking of re-editing the headline to something along the lines of:

Proposed US tariffs may significantly raise gaming hardware costs for US gamers

But then decided against it as I generally think it’s best to avoid title edits (other than minor corrections/edits that are explicit).

Thanks for sharing, this looks interesting.

VW Beetle in Beetle Crazy Cup

It is extremely hard. From what I’ve heard sales of ~10,000 units is considered a strong showing in the indie scene.

The whole market is extremely top heavy. You have have a few big winners that see runway success, a slightly larger group with modest “break even plus” type performance and 10,000 of thousands of indie devs that get no coverage whatsoever. In addition to having a well thought out and implemented concept (which is extremely difficult to do), you need a lot of luck.

IMO, the challenge lies in the lack of discoverability; an extremely difficult challenge for any consumer-facing marketplace. The major consumer stores (Steam, Apple, Google) don’t have any real incentive to work on discoverability since it’s so hard and they have a quasi-monopoly anyway. The topics-focused independent communities that were big drivers of discoverability (especially in mid-market and niche segments) in the 90s and 2000s are all dead or dying. You do have youtube which offers a modicum of coverage of niche segments, but then we are back to square one; discoverability of mid-market and niche channels. And Google is more focused on engagement (“the next quadrillion customers!1!11”) and competing with TikTok, there is simply not enough competition for them to care.

Thank you for the good convo as well!

I’m just pondering the idea of if Russia just have their government magically replaced with someone else’s, would the culture you say persist for more than a decade.

I maybe wouldn’t phrase in that way, but I do agree that russians are capable of change. There is nothing inherent or unchangeable about their chauvinism.

I think their current situation (authoritarianism, broad support for genocidal imperialism) is a product of their own choices, not some sort of essential chauvinistic quality of russians.

But to get to a state where they can replace their government, they need to be frank about the root causes of their predicament.

They have to clearly and openly condemn imperialism (including their actions in Chechnya).

They have to recognize that the root cause of putin’s rule is not some external scapegoat. It is the russian people. They elected him in 2000 (widely considered a more or less free election). They elected him again 2004 even after he shut down all independent TV stations. They went with comical medvedev seat warming exercise in 2008, there was no pushback against their invasion of Georgia. They again allowed to him to come to power in 2012 and there was no pushback to the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.

You can’t both claim that the elections are illegitimate, while also partaking in them and calling to vote for openly chauvinist parties that are well know to be directly managed by the Kremlin as fake opposition.

But instead we get some fake platitude about how putin does not reflect the russian people and “What is the EU’s strategy on russia?”

I don’t see any real desire to take actions that would allow russians to nurture their own position on things. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it is.

I’m not sure how territorial\political losses or economical decline would make russians frustrated rn. With a total grasp on local media, Tzar can easily put a blame on other states and for his followers it works. They do sell the myth of capturing others is the way to go, and that it needs some sacrifices.

I am not saying it’s a magical solution. But their only hope for a better life (democracy, government respecting their rights and not being able to just randomly kill people, addressing corruption) is them understanding that their dreams of empire are over and that they will be treated as they treat others (no visiting Europe). They can keep playing the victim, it’s all up to them.

I think you’ve been caught in a trap of thinking russian commoners are somehow different to others. Vatniks aren’t an unique occasion, and it seems a lot of countries are vulnerable to have them, especially if authporitarian states put effort to nurture a culture of useful idiots somewhere else like Russia does in bordering states.

That’s where I will strongly disagree with you. I will even go as far as saying this sort of attitude (and variants) of it is a key enabler of russian degeneracy.

I’ve lived in several countries in North American, Europe and Asia (several years each) and you’re right there are “vatniks” everywhere. However, what is unique about russian chauvinism is 1. It’s brutality and self-important backwardness. 2. The level to which it is universal across any and all demographic group; chauvinism and genocidal imperialism is the defining aspect of russian culture. That is not true for all countries.

Russians are still stuck in an 18th century colonial mindset. They reflexively gravitate towards taking land and forcing occupied people to become russian. While the rest of the world has largely moved on more efficient forms of geolpolitcal influence. And this is true for North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Support for genocidal imperialism has a strong majority across all demographic. You can slice the population by age, education, rural vs urban, income, federal district and still get a strong majority support for genocidal imperialism. Different quantitative methodologies, qualitative research, longitudinal studies; it all leads to dark, black hole of cruel and crude imperialistic mindset that dominates all priorities (even the well being of their own children).

This is not the case for all countries. There is been a lot of news about Hindu-nationalism in India. But even in India (a country much poorer and less education than russia), there is a modicum of internal cultural dynamism. You have the muslim minority. People in the south have their own language and culture. The Bengalis in the west have linguistic and kinship ties with their muslim cousins in Bangladesh.

Or consider the US, you have a lot of “vatniks” there too (I always found it entertaining how such a large portion of American are “experts” on constitutional law), but you still have some sort of internal sociopolitical dynamism. I believe US leadership has apologized for genocide against the native American population? Have you ever heard of any apology russians about the countless genocides they implemented over just the last 100 years?

And the West continues to ignore the russians’ deep rooted and near universal commitment to genocidal imperialism. The West continue to coddle the russians with their child-like fairy tales of the population not supporting putin and genocidal imperialism.

They need to understand that won’t be able to play dumb. They can play the victims and say that “you’re playing into putins hands” or “you’re discriminating against russians”; or they can start thinking on what they need to do change things. It’s their choice.

It would take a strong defeat (e.g. loss of occupied territories not only in Ukraine, but also Georgia, Moldova and loss of Belarus). They are unfortunately really petty and it would piss them off to no end if our countries became successful and independent.

Perhaps I am too biased against russians, but some sort of global ostracization would be helpful. Not allowing russian citizens into EU, US, Australia.

And most importantly a prolonged period of economic decline.

Yeah, Navalniy and his crew have zero influence inside the country and they are not really looking to do anything beyond YT videos. They don’t really want to fight. They are malicious grifters that at best run an online discussion community for somewhat liberal leaning russians.

Their pride stems from imperialism and “being feared”. They are no where near recognizing that they have the capability to build a better world for themselves. Not to mention they just can’t stop themselves from digging a deeper hole, that exponentially increases the cost of action.