Nah this is just whataboutism. We all agree that the highest severity issues are access to heathcare/nutrition/sanitation/education in developing countries or among the homeless etc. That doesn’t mean we are suddenly not allowed to talk about anything else.

Do you do this in real life?

Colleague: “hey did you catch the game this weekend, boy I hate being a jets fan”

Blarghly: “that’s rather gauche, don’t you know there’s major food insecurity in sudan”

It has the intellectual weight of a parent trying to cajole their toddler into eating.

Yeah, again this is just semantics, a 401k in British English is 100% a pension. A UK defined contribution “workplace pension” is just a tax sheltered retirement account until it is annuitized, which is common and sensible but not necessary. The annuity is technically a totally different product, offered by life insurance companies (who interestingly with reference to above conversation would typically hold very little equity exposure backing it). Brits also call the equivalent to the social security retirement benefit the “state pension”. It’s a catch all for assets you use in retirement. Whether that’s used to fund an investment drawdown product or a life annuity or just taken out and splurged on a Ferrari makes no difference.

About half of the US population is enrolled in a pension even today…

https://www.unpri.org/private-retirement-systems-and-sustainability/private-retirement-systems-and-sustainability-united-states/5990.article#%3A~%3Atext=The+US+is+the+world's+biggest+funded%2Cactive+(working)+members+and+10.3+million+retirees.

Not true of UK defined contribution, you can do what you want just like a 401k, though it may be disadvantagous for tax purposes.

It’s pretty normal in British English to use pension as a synonym for retirement account, though I can see why you don’t like that.

Didn’t knights of the old republic have farkle in too? It’s a good game, and I guess just unfamiliar enough to bolt into a fantasy setting.

God help the partners of patient gamers (the ones that aren’t gamers themselves)

That’s his whole schtick though, I bet 90% of people end up with the “good” ending and it rings hollow and everything just feels like his chickens coming home to roost. I really into the Arthur morgan/Joel from last of us type: sympathetic but ultimately shitty character getting what they deserve and it feels fair but still sad. Fucking brilliant story telling in both cases.

P.s. I totally agree that the gunfights are almost always immersion breaking.

Some of your examples of harmony involve fourth wall breaking, which is interesting because I had always thought of the harmony between game and story as about immersion You’re right though, being seen as a player for what you are trying to do is the essence of harmony. That is if you’re trying to immerse, being wrenched out of it is bad, but if you’re taking the piss, the world should take the piss right back. Hard for a game to do both, but I had vivid memories or baldurs gate 1+2 characters talking to their “omnipreseent authority figure” that walked that line perfectly.

Yeah, the main story could have been so great if it had more non murder ways to progress. Or made your murders fewer so as to feel as impactful as the deaths of characters around you were. I it’s defence though it has brilliant moments where they’d really woven the game mechanics into the story. Mega points for minigames and the mission where you get drunk.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot

It’s mad given that Scotland technically is quite pro-renter. You just can’t enforce anything so landlords have learned not to give a fuck. A friend viewed a tennament they were trying to let with no kitchen (as in no cooker fridge or sink). Like something out of trainspotting.

We don’t really know yet just from an empirical standpoint. I theory it seems useful in the narrow areas that it’s good at (translation/summarization and any tasks analogous to those).

We have a running joke at work that any problem it can’t solve is a skill issue with prompt engineering. At least… I hope it’s a joke.

Difference is, everyone knows bioshock is entertainment. And no one bases their actual political philosophy on it.

There are ways to resist short of burning shit down. The idea that this is a dichotomy is exactly the “yet you participate in society, interesting” meme.

What fucks with me is that you can’t control all the variables. School and peers can outweigh the ideas you try to put forward. I feel like I’m working on deprogramming more than I actually have a chance to teach already and my kids are only small.

Fuck me, for self-proclaimed coward you are unbelievably smug. Don’t you consider that a “better” life also means being able to take pride that the way you move through the world doesn’t actively harm others. Just awful.

Oh wait, I was thinking of fallout tactics. BOS was like wasteland skinned diablo right? That is, not turn based so not in my original grumpy old man comment.

Eh, I remember enjoying it, though never played it again so 🤷 possibly nostalgia. It was just not an open world or rpg.

Russerfrushenrushen kids and their first person fallout games. All my homes know best fallout is third person isometric turn based.

I mean they are objectively poor in a lot of ways, but you’re spot on. At the time they were fricking mind blowing. Space opera/space cowboys on the big screen! Before that we had what? 2001 and star trek?