I get it.

I sometimes put AAA games on my wishlist anyway.
Not to buy them on release but to get alerted when they go on discount at some point down the line, which is generally how I use my wishlist mostly.

I have some unreleased indie games on there as well, but those I might just buy full price anyway whenever I feel like it or have a little extra free time to play a bit more at a time.

That is waaaaaay too cohesive of a text.

Trump would never stay on one point for that long.

He used to purposefully change topics frequently to keep on bullshitting when he was less demented and now he just isn’t able to focus for long enough to talk about one topic for that long.

I am pretty sure his movie career failed so hard he even had to act in a video game.

Nice review, thank you.

I am pretty sure Epic has given this game away for free in the past so you may have access to it without having to buy it.

I think it is worth a try if you want a relatively relaxed platformer experience (or you are a hardcore gamer and want to try the final boss unprepared, which I am told is quite the challenge).

A high-profile British judge who resigned from Hong Kong’s highest court last week has warned the city is “slowly becoming a totalitarian state”

Slowly becoming my ass…

HK is already totalitarian af.

You comment and comment and explain and explain shit that everyone already knows.

It is like you just recently learned what marketing is and now you feel like you know some big secret.

Just to make it short.
Every product in the world is marketed in a way to motivate consumers to buy.
That is not inherently immoral.

You said every successful game monetizes by maximizing addiction and frustration.

I have proven you wrong by naming games that just DO NOT MAXIMIZE FRUSTRATION.

Yeah off course even those games dangle stuff in front of you that you are supposed to buy.
That’s the whole business model of f2p games.

But there are different ways to get to the players money.

There are those that indeed trigger responses to frustration.
This is absolutely prevalent in mobile games or even those million deckbuilder games.

But there just are also games that use other ways to make players buy mtx.
Again, you can play PoE, LoL, CS and many other games for literal thousands of hours without ever getting coaxed into frustrating barriers like a Diablo Immortals would do to players.

You said there aren’t. So you were wrong.

So have fun running around with a goalpost in your hand, I am done.

Why do you think you can dictate to anyone what to wear?

right?

No, still wrong.

Obviously it is something that is not given to you for free.
It is a product and the developers/publishers are doing business after all.

And yes Sherlock, it is qol functionality that people playing the endgame might want and that is not included in the free version of the game.
But every functionality that any player ever needs is available for far less than what any other AAA title costs up front.

PoE is mainly financed by purely cosmetic supporter packs and whales.
Is that much more ethical than what you described? Maybe not.

But it sure as hell is not banking on frustrating the average user and thus a completely different form of monetization than the one that you just doubled down on insisting is the only one there is.
So again as I said, you are just plain wrong.

Oh and in CS I don’t think you can buy any functionality at all.
Only cosmetics, that don’t do anything for you in the game.

Any successful example is optimized for addiction and frustration.

That is just plain wrong.
Addiction I guess but frustration definitely not necessarily.
There are countless examples of highly successful games that do not monetize like that.

You can happily play PoE for thousands of hours without paying a penny; if you want to get into trading drop like 20 bucks for some stash tabs and you are ready to go again for absolutely any content the game has to offer.

CS or LoL also work just fine for f2p players.

And I say that as a player that fucking hates the new generation of soulless live service games.

Not that my opinion matters any more than the next person’s, but I also can’t recommend Celeste enough.

It does so many things so very right.
The pure gameplay is crisp and responsive platforming.
Like any good platfmorer it has some specific mechanics that make it unique, but every one is intuitive enough to pick up easily enough. I have heard it called something like “the hardest platformer that everyone can finish.”

And it is true. I could never finish some of the harder SMB levels but I never got too frustrated with Celeste.
And if I were, there would have been accessibility options to make the game more approachable.

But it also caters to the hardcore crowd with completely optional collectibles that are organically included into the gorgeous level design.

It is speedrunnable for those folks.

And as if that wasn’t enough to make a good platformer it also tells a heartwarming story supported by a beautiful soundtrack.

Sorry I am rambling, but Celeste is fucking awesome.

I am not in love with this artstyle but if the gameplay is as crisp as one should expect from Evil Empire I will probably give this a chance.

I mean wouldn’t you also much rather be bribed than blackmailed?

I’d argue there is only micro in chess and no macro, but I get your point.

A now adult woman that was only 17 years old when the incident in question happened.

Which is clearly stated in the article that you willfully missquoted.

Those Larian Studios people seem pretty nice from what one can hear.

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I don’t think that applies here.

The democrats oppose this spy tool because it is badly regulated and prone to abuse.
The Trump loyalists oppose this spy tool because it may expose some of Trumps crimes and treason.

Well the stock rising does generate money for Trump no matter if anyone shortsells it.

If you shortsell, you position yourself against the stock.
If it rises Trump wins and you lose.
If it falls Trump loses and you win.

But neither way is it you shorting the stock that makes Trump win.
He wins if the company represented by the stock actually grows in value and the stock price rises or if idiots buy his stocks and make the price go up. But I predict that after a brief rush on the stock by his gullible idiots in the beginning noone will want to buy his stock anymore.
That’s why I would consider shorting it, because I predict the stock to keep falling.
This I predict because I think the company that is represented by the stock is shit and basically worthless, which the stockprice should represent in due time.

A shortseller thus wants to profit off of Trumps losses.

Also, I don’t quite remember what happens if shorting fails, but it benefits the stock, doesn’t it?

First things first, I don’t really know how to actually shortsell stuff. My portfolio is super basic and my original comment was only half serious.

But I think you have the causality the wrong way around.

It’s less that the stock profits if my short fails.
It’s more that my short fails (in that I lose money) if the price of the stock goes up.

A single small shortsale can’t really affect the stock price in a meaningful way, but if it could it would generally lower the stocks price since it is a signal that the market (which the shortseller is a part of) has no trust in the stock.

That said I am by no means a trading expert myself and could possibly miss some effects on the market.
I only invest long term in broadly spread ETFs (think MSCI World and similar).

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but I also would never think of actually investing in anything Trump.

Shortselling is betting that the stock value falls without actually holding the stock.