We need to go deeper.

Okay, this is a deep cut, literally, but that’s what a salt mine looks like.

Always turn off motion blur and DoF if you can.

By that logic, “You don’t have a contract with me, therefore you can’t own my intellectual property,” should also apply, no?

Like, if your intellectual property was given away on the basis of an ongoing royalty payment, and Disney decides not to honour that contract, then they can’t keep the IP.

I pronounce it like “twitter” and I spell it that way too.

It’s not like anyone wants that word for anything else. It’s just a play on onomatopoeia that some marketing company made up ages ago because it was easy to search.

Nobody will be confused by the term, and it’s not like twitter is going to do anything terribly relevant from here on out except spiral into the ground. To the extent it matters to history, that’s what people will remember it as.

I mean, fair enough. If you don’t like grind then Subnautica isn’t going to be for you. A lot of these grindy games I use as podcast games - I listen to stuff while I’m doing the boring bits, then when shit gets real I pause the sound to focus.

Again, you can get past some of the grind, but if you don’t enjoy the process to get to that point it’s maybe not worth it. Even once the worst grind is gone… I mean there’s still grind. The actual story is pretty fascinating, it’s all about conservation and responsible stewardship and working with the ecosystem and not against it. Oh and also you’re virtually a slave in a hypercapitalist company town structure.

Anyway, I think Spiritfarer is very bittersweet, although I would consider myself very at peace with the concept of death, so I understand others may feel differently. If you’re a big crier it will definitely do that for you. A big theme is letting people go when it’s their time. I played it on a week when I was particularly sick and didn’t have the energy to do something more active, and it was the perfect thing for that time for me. I personally think it’s very wholesome and healing in many ways. The ambience is very soothing, you spend time tending your gardens on the ship and keeping everybody happy whilst you travel. One of the things they sometimes need is hugs. It never feels like a grind imho, but again I’m happy with minecrafty/subnautica type games. I have to admit I haven’t finished it, it was very much an experience limited to that time I was sick, which is weird. I’ll have to try it again.

How far did you get into Subnautica and what turned you off about it? I understand it’s not for everyone. It can be a little bit obtuse in the way it gates your progress behind radio transmissions, and if you don’t find the right blueprints your journey can be made much harder or easier respectively. I’ve been replaying it recently and I can see how it’d be hard to get into. One thing to note is that as you advance a lot of the annoyances of finding food, water & power to upkeep everything get eased through different technologies, so you slowly get more freedom from the grind, and the story is worth seeing to the end. In fact every new tech makes the game easier and faster and opens up the world that much more, either by making it easier to traverse long distances or go deeper, or carry more, etc. The early game is slow and frustrating in comparison.

I could cosign a bunch of suggestions already, but Outer Wilds is one of my favourite games of all time. I’ll try to explain it without any spoilers: It doesn’t gate your progress behind anything but your own curiosity and acquired knowledge. It also gives you a sense of freedom that you get from fully simulated physical movement in space. It is also deeply emotional and if you’re halfway to the end wondering, “How could they possibly stick the landing on this and end it well?” the answer is just trust, omg it’s so good. You can’t really experience it twice - it’s designed such that when you possess the right knowledge, you can finish the game extremely quickly, but also to do so you must truly understand and master the ideas you are being taught - so you can only experience it again by watching blind let’s plays. I’ve watched 4 so far and each one was a moving experience watching the person go through their own process of understanding over many, many hours.

If you like platformers, Teslagrad is a beautifully illustrated and impeccably designed metroidvania which I’ve played through many times. All the story is delivered through puppet shows rendered within the levels themselves and gorgeous collectible cards. They’ve just released a remastered version with a number of QoL changes that I’ll be playing again, and the sequel is out. I believe they’re still available in a Fanatical bundle right now.

The metroidvania that got me into the genre is actually a free game by the maker of Celeste, from many years ago. It’s called AnUntitledStory and I’ve played it through many times. Some quite hard platforming challenges but the whole aesthetic is extremely cute, and as you’d imagine from the dev of Celeste the controls are crisp and precise.

Hollow Knight is another incredible metroidvania/souls like. You play as a bug in the ruins of an ancient civilisation of bugs and it is quite haunting. Again, amazing aesthetic.

And if you want something chill instead, I’d go with Spiritfarer. You build your boat and travel the spirit world helping souls on their journey to the afterlife, except each soul is unique and has their own personal needs and closure you help them achieve before they’re ready to pass. Most importantly you can pet your cat whenever you want, which every game should have.

Steamworld Heist is an incredible twist on a turn-based tactics game, just by adding a tiny element of skill to your aiming. It gave my twitch-reflex monkey brain just enough dopamine to engage in the turn based gameplay that usually turns me off, and I had an incredible time.

Well, short of trusting the users themselves to volunteer their location, it’s the best we’ve got.

GeoIP lookup. Pornhub did it recently to protest certain states’ laws that would require them to check IDs of visitors.

No but don’t you see the system is closed source and we choose how you consume it in a purely authoritarian manner and it could never be any other way.

This is a real dichotomy.

Your description of “extremely good” boils down to “extremely well-funded”.

If you actually think that the most expensive lawyers and firms get results because they are just so “extremely good”, you’ve probably bought into another capitalist lie of meritocracy. This just sounds like you fantasising again about a world that would make you right if it existed, but it doesn’t.

I’m sorry, can you outline for me how you get to a world with 1000 first degree murder cases for every 10 competent lawyers? This isn’t mad max. If you want to raise an issue you need to explain why it’s a genuine problem anyone should care about.

As it is right now, lawyers are monopolised by the richest & most powerful. In a world where we don’t have enormous armies of corporate lawyers - who generally hate their jobs because they know they contribute nothing to society - we would have a lot more competent people available to do real jobs. Removing money from the equation helps both of these problems.

Don’t have a society that gives all the power to people who have the most imaginary tokens. Don’t assign and apportion legal counsel according to money but instead according to need. Like, obviously I’m criticising capitalism, but your question assumes capitalism is here to stay.

Of course, under capitalism this will never happen, because the legislature is thoroughly captured by capital, and they are quite happy with lawyers being extremely expensive and siloed away in massive corporate legal teams.

Now of course none of what I am suggesting is going to be easy, quick, or absolute, which I mention just to head off the inevitable critcisms along those lines from people who find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. As Ursula K le Guin said, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.”

It sure is weird how a political system based around who has the most money always ends up hurting the people that don’t have money. Nobody could’ve predicted that.

I had more or less gotten over the game when the ender dragon was added. It was too grindy and slow and I felt like I could never get far enough to even approach the end. Then I joined a server where they had a bunch of infrastructure already set up. Suddenly I had access to enchantments and elytra and the game became super accessible, and I discovered just how much faster and more fun the game is now with all the incremental improvements. It’s given me something to play with my kids.