‘This company I like must secretly want us to hack their code because I am a good person and they are good people so we must think exactly the same!’

OK buddy, tell yourself what you need to.

That’s really cool, I’m going to have to get one to play with.

You’re a very small fraction of the audience, it shouldn’t be surprising they focus on the majority who prefer online play as it adds a social element into an otherwise predictable and static environment.

As someone who loves ai I think this is a great approach

I don’t know, I just listen on YouTube, it’s not got the useful features but it works

I would just like to take this moment to suggest people find a comfortable place to sit with a stiff drink, spliff or whatever and listen to the first chapter of the audio book - and I mean really listen, actively visualize the story and everything being described, let yourself really emotionally connect with the events as much as possible - it’s a really powerful and well written bit of action sci-fi.

It’s on YouTube read by Christopher Hurt, first chapter is about 40 min, I’ve read a lot of sci-fi and it’s without a doubt in my mind the strongest and most thought provoking opening to a Sci fi. It gets you pulled into the characters, the world, and emotion without a break in the action - and for a book punished in 1959 the action is unbelievably believable, it’s hard to imagine better high energy action sci-fi combat – someone needs to make a real gritty anime of it.

The point is the war must continue for ever, this is made very clear in the book - that’s what happens when you deify soldiers, when you make a society obsessed with valour there needs to be a war for the generals to earn stripes - when your society’s entire social contract and cohesion is based on war your leaders will always find a war that just HAS to be fought…

It’s all people who don’t read much or only read modern stuff, heinlein was an author who explored ideas he wasn’t someone who believed that his job was to tell people what to think. People who think the book is trying to be pro or anti anything are honestly borderline illiterate, they certainly haven’t read his other work.

The movie is just a dumbed down action movie directed by someone who didn’t really understand or enjoy the book - is a great movie for an action movie but it’s not very well thought out and it’s certainly not deeply thoughtful.

The film misses all key moments - the first scene, Zim throwing the knife, etc and everything subtle that really makes the story and emotion work - for the film the ending makes no sense, in the book it’s really powerful.

The movie isn’t really about much, the book is about everything - along side Friday and Stranger it’s a fascinating insight into the evolution of Americanism and cultural ideals pushed to absurdity. That’s not to say it should be read expecting answers, prime golden era sci-fi wasn’t about giving answers it’s about posing questions - hence foundation, the laws of robotics series, Stainless steel rat, etc - ‘We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society’ it’s not about telling you how to live or how not to live it’s about showing possibilities you probably haven’t thought to explore.

Games like Sam and max, beneath a steelsky, it came from the desert, Dune, Darkseed, there are so many counter examples to your claim

Look at Betrayal At Krondor, amazing story that rivals and beats most fantasy today.

I’ve recently gone back to using reddit regularly because it’s the only place with sensible news, lemmy is such a bubble it’s a terrible place to get opinions and ideas from.

Latchkey kids of the 21century have it worse than the originals, parents not there for them but now they’re also helicopter parents spying on them and controlling their actions remotely. I guess we should call them drone parents.

I bet you’d get upset if someone pruned your trashy videogsme collection.

Is it really so hard just to let people enjoy what they enjoy without being a dick about it?

It’s main problem is that people overuse it massively and act like they’re saying something really clever by using it

That is a good point, I guess I might accept there should be carefully considered regulation in certain well defined situations - I already agree money or brought currencies shouldn’t be allowed which will limit real world damage but I don’t really see where it is needed beyond this.

Sure but the point it is didn’t help, likewise gambling is illegal in a lot of places and those places tend to have more of a problem with it because addicts can’t get help.

Treating game addiction generally involves people learning to recognize and respond to behavior cycles, just like with other addictions. We should take these things seriously and teach kids how to recognize and escape manipulative cycles, a lesson which would be useful their whole life in every walk of life.

I think that there are better responses and more nuanced opinions to be considered, certainly teaching awareness and response to such stimulus is better than playing wack-a-mole with whatever people get addicted to.

The drug war demonstrated this very clearly, it’s basically impossible to ban things people want and this is even harder with internet services or downloaded software - focus on harm reduction and education for best results.

That said we should regulate against psychologically manipulative game mechanics being linked to real or purchased currencies, though education and offering alternatives must come first.

You do have a valid point there tbh, certain mechanics should be forbidden from being linked to real or purchasable money but I don’t really think they should be forbidden in general.

My argument for this is it’s too wide ranging and will limit positive elements in game design. I think it’s also important for people to be able to practice emotional response and regulation to such stimulus, if we don’t then advertisers and manipulators will walk all over us.

But surely you see how you can’t say ‘kids might see it so it’s banned but we can have this worse stuff because kids won’t be able to see it’

Adult streams with nudity and violence use the same system so should be treated the same.

And for clarity I’m not saying that they shouldn’t decide what their platform focuses on but if people are going to use the think of the children argument you don’t get to split it to allow violence without question but forbid nudity, it’s not consistent. Support banning both or neither with this argument or make a different argument is all I’m saying.

The first paragraph of this is brilliant projection.

You’ve also made up a lot of weird lies and confusion simply to get around the fact that your assertion that only governments can do censorship is wrong and all this to defend a totally meaningless point because my argument is still 100% as valid if we use a more cumbersome word or phrase instead of censorship.

Seriously read your own comment history and work on your issues.

Oh and anyone interested in how deceptive he’s being in this rant, his statement about me being into conspiracies is from a post talking about knowledge fight and the absurdity of conspiracy theories. This is not someone that even understands the concept of arguing in good faith.

I used Wikipedia and the dictionary as a source for the established usage of a word, a totally reasonable usage of the resources.

Yes in another thread entirely I made an observation that a joke is misogynistic and got upvoted by people who agree. I also made a joke that people saying ai learning from images it viewed is theft from artists would be angry at the statement made in post that piracy is not they because the original owner doesn’t get deprived of the original - none of this had anything to do with the topic at hand.

Your effort to dismiss my options with (incorrect) semantics and now whatever this weird display is make it very clear you’re simply against the conclusion I come to but are incapable of coming up with am actual argument against them, very typical emotional response tbh but digging into my comment history is a bit of an obsessive act and hints to me that you’re not seeking truth especially as you refuse to spend less effort reading the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article and learning your already meaningless argument on word definition is wrong.

But again pro censorship person tries to use methods to silence someone or divert from their original point rather than address the actual argument is par for the course.