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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • People don’t really like to read the articles before commenting, huh.

    Knowing Stardew was such a beloved game, I knew I had to get context before judging the author because it could be read both ways.

    People who assume games not changing = criticism are telling us more about their own uncharitable view of others than anything else.

    EDIT: That said, if I were to offer criticism, I feel like the author gives too much credit to Stardew as though it invented or pioneered the tight gameplay loop: perhaps at least some mention could have been made to Harvest Moon, the game from which Stardew borrows - and perfects - most of its major systems.

    Also to be fair, it doesn’t go anywhere with that thought that Stardew hasn’t changed. Felt a little low-effort, like a retrospective on Stardew that just basically listed what people liked about it.










  • It’s weird cos you’re the only person bringing up pirating first (others are bringing it up as a talking point you’ve raised), and that’s not the dichotomy - it’s not dubious reselling sites or pirating, it’s Humble Choice, the topic of your post, where the games are already discounted, the developers have decided to opt in, and some money is actually going to charity.

    Even if you bring up your original post as providing “options for everyone”, it was written in the spirit of advertising grey market sites as an alternative to Humble Choice, and therefore it’s entirely fair that others are bringing up the harms of grey market sites so that everyone knows what the risks are between them. I used to use those grey market sites as a kid more than a decade ago before I understood that they were a tool by scammers to make their money, and now I no longer use them. It would only be honest for you to have talked about that in your original post rather than ignoring it because the only alternative to you is piracy.




  • You’re wilfully applying a very stunted concept of “wanted” to a legal system that deals in fact. I’m not saying you don’t understand whatever it is you claim to be supporting. What I’m saying you do not understand is the concept of “wanting” and “mens rea” (as it applies in law, but also as it applies under your framework - you’ve chosen instead to just pretend it’s no longer relevant instead of redefining it under your framework - like I said, the laziest kind of science.) And there’s really no point in me repeating what I’ve said before.

    Maybe what I’ll leave you with is a possible definition of “want” under your system, which is one step further in thought than it seems you’ve ever gone: an action is wanted if the action would have been taken with no immediate or overt external (needs to be defined) motivation. This means if they were abused as a kid and later this translated into abusing other people, they still wanted to abuse them.

    (As a note, I’m not saying this is the correct definition, but this is what is needed for people to start discussing what should and shouldn’t be in this definition.)

    Saying “nobody can want to do anything because determinism” is an incredibly lazy determinism because it’s starting with the axiom and then not bothering to come up with a proper framework to explain everything else in the world. If you continue to protest it not being lazy there’s really nothing else we have to talk about.


  • You don’t understand. Obviously everyone is a product of their environment. But after all of that, if the person wanted and intended to do something because of all of these different dispositions and upbringings and backgrounds, then they have mens rea.

    Like I said before, it’s purely a finding of fact. Does it mean that there shouldn’t be mitigating circumstances? No, there might well be reasons to argue that they were only doing so out of desperation. Nonetheless, they had mens rea.

    Recognising that there are all these complicated factors but not taking the time to at least make sense of them is the worst kind of determinism. Sure, there’s no free will in your conception. There still needs to be laws and concepts like mens rea still need defining to allow for the protection of “innocents” under the law.


  • Guilt and mens rea can be quite compatible with your admittedly strange idea of there being no free will (and yet trying to parse laws under a framework of people having free will), unless you believe that all acts are coercive (which is quite reductive).

    All you need to ask yourself is if the person wanted and intended to do that, whatever the nexus of causes led up to them wanting to do the act.

    It seems very weird (and a bit lazy) to subscribe to a framework of there being no free will and yet not even trying to contextualise the safeguards of the legal system to fit that framework. Sure you may agree with putting people in jail to prevent net societal harm, but mens rea is one of the checks to ensure that they will cause societal harm to others, and without being able to settle such a question of fact you will instead never be able to put anybody, even if they need to be put behind bars, there.




  • I’m thinking about the games I played in my childhood that influenced what I like to play now, so it might be only halfway relevant to the question.

    First monster collector: Pokemon Blue. Digimon World 1 was also one of my favourites, because of how real it felt, like a real monster. The one other monster game I really got into as a child was Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, I think I played Cobi’s journey. It helped that a lot of my friends were playing it.

    First builder: Simcity 3000. Started my lifelong love for city builders, even though I’m not great at them per se.

    Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper 2 were my introduction to management sims and also my favourites for a long time.

    As a kid I absolutely loved this RTS called Warbreeds because of the ability to graft any weapon onto any unit. Nowadays though I just find such mechanics fiddly, but as a kid it felt so sci-fi. In terms of time spent playing, though, the standout RTS was probably Starcraft.

    I also played on a lot of MUDs as a kid. Wheel of Time (but had never read the books), Discworld (but had also never read the books), Aardwolf and I think one or two others. I was amazed at how it felt like I could do so much (even though most of the “free” actions were just emotes.

    My first graphical MMO was I think Maplestory, which was a huge part of my social life as a kid. I think I miss the feeling of being part of a big community than the MMO experience itself, honestly. Nowadays when I try getting into MMOs it feels like that feeling of being a part of a giant community of people is gone.


  • There’s a difference between conservatism and regressivism, and as you yourself keep saying, the Republicans you see on the internet (your source, apparently) are not just being conservative.

    Which again, begs the question of why you think you’re qualified to claim that this is some “truth”.

    And again, I’m completely sympathetic to the idea that uncritical hatred and demonising of “the other side” leads to uncritical and one-sided ideas of the “truth”.

    What I think you’re missing is the nuance that someone can consider both sides and still consider that one side is indefensible. The disqualification of the modern Republican from being “good people” does not mean that someone has not carefully thought through their stand.

    Now about how you react to bad people: you can give them a chance to be good - the benefit of the doubt that they may not actually be standing for everything that being a modern Republican involves. But like I said previously, it might be a good time for those people to re-evaluate whether they actually are Republicans (an archaic term that has no real meaning today beyond a party affiliation) or feel like maybe it’s time to recognise something has gone deeply wrong.