I get your overall point, but I do think that the issue isn’t laziness, the issue is the use of AI. I think it’s a problem when AI is used whether the result looks good or not, because of the nature of how those AI models are trained, the environmental impact of their data centers, among other issues. For example, the current ram shortage is a direct result of these data centers. Overall, we’re also talking about people’s jobs. And as much as I’m offer degrowth and reducing the amount of work that people do, I also think it’s important that artists who are typically always underpaid anyways, are able to keep their paying jobs. I’ve seen so many programming positions reduced to minimum wage AI prompt writer positions, and that same shit is happening to real artists that have rent to pay and kids to raise… We already have tools to make these jobs more efficient, but the last thing video games really need is more cost cutting measures.

That’s hardly a fair judge of Morrowind, it’s very different from Skyrim. Oh it’s definitely clunky, but what we got with Skyrim was very streamlined in ways that hurt the role-playing elements. Morrowind is a little bit tougher to get into, but really rewards you for your time.

Dark Souls 2 gives you a very large amount of human effigies that can restore your max HP, and in a very early game area there is a ring you can wear that limits how low your max HP can go. It’s in a chest in a very early game area that you will walk by and see guaranteed in order to progress. What I think is more interesting is how you think it’s the norm and expected that you should be able to play through an action game and rarely die. It’s okay to enjoy power fantasy games, where dying means you fail - and you just get to retry the part you failed. But that doesn’t mean that enjoying the process of learning an enemy patterns and overcoming adversity is insane. Those games are not power fantasy action games, you are supposed to feel weak. Because when you feel weak and then you kill that damn boss anyways, it’s one of the best feelings ever in gaming. On top of that, a lot of the consumables that you’re talking about you can buy infinite of. Like I said, the games aren’t that hard, enemy patterns are usually pretty simple with only a few attacks, and as you move through areas you learn what gimmicks the enemies are going to abuse and can just adapt to them. Most enemies can be easily parried, or you can kill problem enemies with poison arrows or magic from a distance. Often I think that the people who are convinced that souls games are brutal and not fun are people who try to play them like they are some kind of action hero instead of taking advantage of the tools the games give you to use, especially the summons.

The games can certainly be punishing in key areas, and it’s better that newer entries and other soulslikes make an effort to make learning the games be more friendly. Death is punishing, sure. Losing consumables, fighting through the same enemies again, or even just having to run back to a boss - these are all sources of friction in this genre. Up front, I do wish these games had accessibility options, I do want more people to experience what they have to offer. But death really just isn’t as punishing as a lot of people make it out to be. Dark Souls isn’t that hard, in most cases. There’s certainly bullshit, and it takes time to learn enemy patterns, and dying can be bad feeling. I think that without the friction, if you could overcome every location and boss on the first or second try, these games would just kind of suck. So it’s a balance.

I’ve been working on getting the true ending in hollow Knight, and I’m currently trying to beat some of the DLC content. I’m get to play silksong soon

You can select to run them in proton, rather than just normal wine, in lutris. I’ve been doing it to run games from gog for years with few issues, namely games that are old and have the same problems working on windows as well. So… Yes they will?

Linux compatibility is fine. You can pretty easily install gog games by logging into your gof account on lutris. It’ll let you see your whole library and install directly from it, and any games that work in proton will work just fine using proton via lutris. You can also just add your gog game as a non-steam game and run it there.

We don’t usually work with cash. Most people I know don’t carry cash at all, and it’s a pain to get, since most paychecks are direct deposit. You’ve gotta head to an ATM or the bank, or ask for cash at checkout at the store.

The soundtrack in Celeste is fantastic

You can, in fact, learn to draw things yourself. It’s insane to expect artists to work for below a livable hourly wage just because you can’t afford it.

I live in an area know for having some of the better public transport in the states. My drive to work is about 25 minutes. I can bus to work, but it takes almost three hours and three separate busses, and then I cannot bus home after work.

People’s value doesn’t lie in their ability to perform labor. Being “useful” isn’t important. What should be done, is that everyone should have their needs met so they can do with their lives what they want. There’s a lot of theoretical ways to try and do that, but none of them are of interest in a capitalist society.

It doesn’t have to be people per se, find what brings you those sparks of joy in your life and don’t let them go.

“The horrors persist, yet so do I”. The world sucks, but I have things I care about, people I love, some wonderful cats. And I’m not gonna let a fucked up world take that away from me without a fight

Nice try FBI

I’ve played a lot of Battle net games by installing battle net in lutris, then installing the game I want to play there. There’s a lot of scripts you can find for installing particular games. I can’t speak for whether HOTS works, but I played many many hours of WoW and Overwatch (before 2) that way. It’s annoying using a launcher to run a launcher to play your game, but it works.

Happens, I’d bet money it was a multi-location stop and they were intending to deliver that neighbor’s package and accidentally grabbed yours. It’s easy to make a mistake here and there when you’re delivering to thousands of houses in a given week.

What’s crazy us, there’s actually enough existing housing for everyone, at least in the US to have a home. It’s just all owned by massive real estate corporations and left empty. The state doesn’t need to build more housing, they just won’t distribute what’s there. But let’s be real, they don’t want people to stop being homeless. Our prison industry is private and for-profit, they want them to be homeless so they can criminalize and arrest them, so they can make them do cheap/free prison labor.

Culture war nonsense is favored by governments that want you to have an “enemy” to point the finger at instead of them, it’s a classic strategy that the Nazi party used during the Holocaust. We’re susceptible to propaganda, all of us are, and a trans people are a minority that’s easy to point at - and get a lot of people with rigid values on sex and gender to listen. You can get that basic “ew that’s unnatural” response with bathroom or anti-trans women in sports rhetoric, regardless of whether there’s merit to the claims.

I face the faucet, lean forward and put my head against the wall so the hot water runs over my neck and shoulders, then stay like that for like 20 minutes or longer.