Rose @ umbraroze @lemmy.world

I'm just a nerd girl.

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Joined

1 yr. ago

Come to think of it the only reason I don't have a Blåhaj is that I still have this one IKEA shelf that I haven't assembled yet. (I will get to it. My pile of junk keeps mocking me.) And if I order more stuff then I have to justify the delivery fees and order more stuff while I'm at it.

I have boatloads of MP3s and at least they can pretty much be played by all imaginable software and hardware imaginable, and since the patents have expired, there's no reason not to support the format.

MP3s are good enough for its particular use case. Of course, newer formats are better overall and may be better suited for some applications. (Me, I've been an Ogg Vorbis fan for ages now. Haven't ripped a CD in a while but should probably check out this newfangled Opus thing when I do.)

Long ago I read some incredibly cursed parody along the lines of "if LotR was a Disney animated film". The songs were absolutely horrifying. I can't find it right now, and I think it's best not to subject you to it anyway.

I particularly like the 4'33" (downtempo electronica extended mix). 12 minutes and 54 seconds of perfect digital silence. You can almost hear the individual zeroes in the signal

I have provided sources to support this claim.

Again, the sources you provided did not back up these claims.

I find it difficult to recall the exact point of our discussion, as you continue to introduce minutiae and nuance that, while relevant, stray from the core argument.

So, let me get this straight: You asked me to elaborate on my assertions. When I did so, you then label that as an irrelevant digression.

Thanks, I guess.

I have kept my points clear and concise, consistently attempting to keep the discussion focused on the central issue.

I... don't think that's accurate.

However, much like Sean Hannity, you have managed to fill an entire comment section with excessive verbiage while ultimately saying very little.

Entirely your fault. I've done my best to cut down my replies, I can't say the same about you.

I have no doubt that you will now argue this with an even longer response with more quotes for my comment but I don’t think I’m going to respond to it moving forward I’m going to let you have the last word. Sorry. I’m tired.

See, this is a prime example. 45 words that could have been left out entirely.

You’re asking me to prove that the game’s messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but you’re not holding yourself to the same standard.

This isn't true. I'm perfectly willing to prove my viewpoints. You're continuing to jump the gun here. I'm about to explain my viewpoint, eventually. I was just hoping you would prove your viewpoints first. We're having a conversation online, we have all the time in the world. Everything in due time, right?

(It's as if you're engaging in this kind of complaints as a stalling tactic. This conversation would go so much smoother if you'd just address the points. Furthermore, you're repeating yourself a lot, it makes the comments hard to read. So please, address the points. I'm cutting this down for brevity.)

The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design.

Are you absolutely sure it had nothing to do with several key players in Bioware leaving over the years and EA quietly gutting the studio, replacing the talent and increasing their meddling? Because, as I said before, that raises the fanbase's eyebrows. The Bioware that made DAV simply isn't the same company that made DAO. Bioware hasn't really been independent of EA's meddling since 2016 at least - Mass Effect Andromeda was the clearest example of what happened when EA decided to assume more direct control of the process. Fans have had every reason to be suspicious of Bioware's output ever since. It's frankly a miracle Dragon Age Inquisition was anywhere near as good as it was.

Bioware doesn't exist in vacuum, they're not the only ones who are making decisions here.

Who exactly made the shifting writing decisions here? Can you give me concrete examples? I've not played DAV so it's harder for me to compare the things.

I've seen EA put this same kind of ruin on a lot of studios over time. Many classic game series - including celebrated RPG series - have been ruined by EA's meddling. What happened to Origin Systems has been happening to Bioware for over a decade now.

That is part of provable history. I would link to sources, but I suggest you read up on the history of EA and their studios (in particular Origin) on yourself - the information isn't hard to find, the ones in Wikipedia are a very good start.

If industry trends were the dominant factor, we’d expect similar pushback against every game in this space—not just DAV.

Just reminded me: Are you seriously saying DAV is unique in this regard? This kind of pushback is levied against a lot of games these days. There's so much of this kind of cries aimed at a lot of games these days. As long as people keep making lists about "woke" games on Steam, I don't think DAV was a special case at all.

[Sources]

These sources appear to confirm that Dragon Age Veilguard was not as great success commercially as EA hoped. This was not part of our dispute, and I was never even claiming that DAV was a financial success story. The opposite, in fact.

These sources do not, however, appear to support your particular claims about the message being the primary reason why the game failed commercially.

Also, I see you did not respond to the more interesing questions I asked earlier, so allow me to reiterate: Was the whole polymorph magic issue ever addressed in the Dragon Age lore? And allow me to expand on that - what did you think of the narrative ideas I presented? I'm just curious about that.

It's a little bit dramatic, it's a little bit wordy.
Yup, it probably is a genuine thing from the source: certainly, it was written by a redditor.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

You’re shifting the goalposts.

No, we're having a simple disagreement over whether this was a major reason why the game failed commercially or not. You're the one who's making this complicated.

My argument wasn’t that messaging was the sole reason for failure, but that it was a major factor—one that contributed to the game feeling like a product with priorities misaligned from what players actually wanted. Saying there were “many reasons” doesn’t refute that.

Insisting that the game having a message is the most major reason the game failed doesn't refute any of what I said either. We're still having a disagreement, nothing more. You've not proven your claim either.

Your claim that messaging wasn’t even in the “top 100” is still unsupported. Listing industry-wide problems like oversaturation and rising prices is fine, but none of that explains why The Veilguard failed specifically. Plenty of games thrive under these conditions. The difference? They connect with their audience. DAV didn’t.

OK, so you continue to be the one who's making the extraordinary claim here, that DAV specifically failed because the game didn't connect with the message, and that it was specifically because it was the message.

There are still plenty of reasons why a game wouldn't connect with the audience, as I said. You've not exactly proven why and how this was the definitive reason. That's the claim that needs to be proven, yet you've not done that.

Whether or not you're acknowledging it or not, you're acting as if as you think the game having a message is the sole reason why the game failed commercially. You acknowledge that it was a "major" reason, but then, above, you're also specifically saying that industry-wide problems aren't affecting the game's situation at all. Why? Why isn't the industry downturn affecting this game specifically? Why can't we explain this game's failure in large part with the incompetence and greed of major publishers?

Dragon Age has established magic that lets people change their gender at will. If that exists, then the idea of medical transition (and scars from it) doesn’t naturally fit within the world.

You didn't answer my question. I didn't ask if it "naturally" fits the world. I asked if it was established that this is what is actually happening in the lore.

Because you're still projecting your own assumptions on how the world should work on the work. You're not criticising the game's writing on its own merits. You're complaining that the game writers didn't write the game the way you wanted. In other words, this is still the "my historical accuracy in my fantasy game" argument.

Besides, there's plenty of reason why, in a fantasy setting, you could have trans/nb characters who don't get to use polymorph magic. Cost. Class gap. Haves and have-nots. The class divide is a pretty common topic that is often explored in fantasy literature and people being denied this kind of magic treatment, for whatever reason, is a valid catalyst for a story. It'd make an excellent fantasy plotline. But that's not relevant to DA specifically.

I said it feels like that’s what happened.

You're deflecting the real issue here. The issue isn't whether that's factual or just your personal feels. The issue is that you're saying that was the definitive cause of its failure:

it failed because making a good game was pushed aside in favor of making a game with a message".

And what I was saying was, well, no, it wasn't the definitive cause. Far from it. There's a lot of reasons for the game's failure.

Claiming messaging wasn’t in the “top 100” reasons for failure is just hand-waving. You provide no evidence for that, and even if it’s not the primary reason, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a factor.

I fail to see how you refute my point by saying that. I never said it wasn't a factor, I said it was insignificant compared to bigger problems.

You know, I didn't list the reasons because I thought they would be obvious to anyone who's actually following what's going on. Buuuut how about the oversaturation of the AAA game publishing space? (People have giant backlogs of great games to play, and there's no end to this stuff.) Rising game prices? (Big game publishers are getting pretty greedy.) Increasing standards of quality from consumers? (Can't release a meh game these days, if people are paying $70+ for games, they have to be beyond excellent.)

Most importantly: people actually want games that were made by studios that give a damn about the end product. Bioware is just EA's puppet, they make product chunks. In my opinion, the biggest reason DAV failed commercially because it was a game nobody was asking for, made by a developer that's a shadow of its former self and everyone knows that. People had scepticism, and rightfully so.

See? I didn't even get into what's in the game. That's what I meant when I said the Message isn't even in the top 100 problems.

Finally, comparing this to the “historical accuracy” argument is a bad-faith deflection.

No, perhaps I was being unclear. What I meant by that is that it's in the same category as "historical accuracy" whinging. It's a fictional setting, so arguing that it has to match some real world facts and logic is utterly pointless.

Dragon Age isn’t real history, but it does have established lore and internal consistency. When a game introduces elements that contradict its own worldbuilding, it breaks immersion. That’s the issue.

So how exactly did it contradict the worldbuilding? Was it specifically established in DA lore that all nb/trans people will use polymorph magic? I'm genuinely curious here.

Or did you mean that this particular logic doesn't make sense to you personally? That's not "lore". That's not a worldbuilding issue. That's projecting your own assumptions.

Besides: Even if it was specifically earlier established in DA lore that all nb/trans characters will just use polymorph stuff, who cares? The writers are well within their rights to retcon their stuff. Worldbuilding is not dogma.

No, it failed because making a good game was pushed aside in favor of making a game with a message—and not even a very good one.

I see! So there was some kind of explicit order, or at least concerted effort with explicit goal, to make a game with "a message". And I assume we have all the evidence to look at to see the day-to-day chain of events that led to the market failure.

No?

Seriously though, there were many reasons why DAV failed, and "having a Message" was not even in the top 100. Every piece of media has a message.

It makes no sense to have nonbinary people in The Veilguard!

...This is literally just the "historical accuracy" argument.

Open source software doesn't, by definition, place restrictions on usage.

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.

Clauses like "you can use this software freely except in specific circumstances" fly against that. Open source licenses usually have very little to say about what the software should be used for, and usually just as an affirmation that you can use the software for whatever you want.

(Pre morning coffee brainwave)

If someone wants DIY fix their Cybertruck, they should consider adding an isolated, self powered emergency door release mechanism. With explosive bolts. Now that would make it cyberpunk as fuck. Wait, that makes it more vulnerable to weapon fire. Shit now I really need my coffee

I don't really watch Star Wars. I'm a more of a Trekkie gal.

🖖

See, you can separate files both ways as long as it's logical

For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.

Well I switched from the birdsite to Mastodon because a) I like to shout in the void and b) see what other people are shouting into the void. Doesn't really ultimately matter who's doing the shouting. People who go to social media exclusively for news and updates are a bit strange when you really think about it. You've got to have the shout in you.

(I'm only being half facetious here)

Matrix. Seems to be the hottest thing for group chats. Also what a lot of open source projects that used IRC before are switching to (or, if not switching, are providing a bridge for).

I'm not really all that invested in trying out Friendica, because Facebook is basically the exact sort of social network service that I really don't give a darn about. I wanted to check it anyway, but the only tangible information on what Friendica is about is the project/marketing page. I can't browse the instances. If I go to your massive social platform, the last thing I want to see is just a brick wall of a login page. Then I looked at fedidb and... um, those aren't huge user numbers.

So I guess I'll keep posting on the services that seem more sensible to me, like Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy.

One day, I was browsing my YouTube subscriptions and found several Lunduke videos where the dude was screeching about woke DEI stuff, and I was like, "wtf, when did I sub to this raving chud" while reaching for the unsub button.

I probably watched some Linux video loooong ago and subscribed and thought nothing more of it.

"Linux is probably insecure. Also GPL sounds like communism." ...did I just get mysteriously whisked back to 1998? Because that was the last time I heard this shit.

Many years ago I noticed that using a paper almanac was very helpful in certain situations, actually helping me make more use of the Google Calendar. Two years ago I started using a bunch of notebooks (basically one notebook per topic) because writing ideas down is very helpful to me. Just at the end of the year I got a sketchbook for drawings. At the beginning of the year I got a bunch of Post-Its and started my very own conspiracy wall (the conspiracy is that there's stuff I'm supposed to do at some point).

Well, the ball is in the court of the public transport agencies, then! While OpenStreetMap cannot be expected to accept any and all kind of geographic data imaginable, OSM is meant to serve map data that can supplement other data sources and services.

I'm in Finland, and there's at least a couple of Web services that do long distance bus/rail/plane route planning, all using OSM. Our municipal bus schedule service, mobile app and the bus stop displays have been using OSM for over a decade.