Where there is competition, competing companies actually have to provide a service instead of relying on their victims not being able to leave them because there's no alternative?
Poor you. But trust me, real ISPs exist, they're not a myth. Uptimes of more than "whenever we feel like it" are real in other areas of the world, as are support line waiting times of less than 5 minutes. And there even exist customer reps that can actually solve your problem instead of just blaming you.
I'm not kidding. Yes, it is a reality in the developed world!
One should hope so, but people keep preordering them like they can't learn from previous blunders. Fallout76 had one of the highest preorder rates ever. Yes, sales plummeted right after it got out the door, but who gives a fuck? Preorder sales easily pick up the slack.
And people will keep preordering. Know why? Because they get that exclusive preorder skin for their puppy and the exclusive preorder emote for the multiplayer game that makes them so SPECIAL!
So who gives a fuck whether they actually play it after they already bought it?
This is authoritarianism. Usually it's associated with dictatorships or other forms of oppressive government, and yes, that can be socialist. But it can just as well be fascist. Or a theocracy.
But that's not what you need to hear, right? You're one of those people who label everything you don't like in a country "socialist", right? Oppression of opposition? Socialist. No free press? Socialist. People "disappearing" after a visit from some guys in black trenchcoats? Socialist. Being arrested for "reeducation" if you criticize the government? Socialist.
I'm pretty sure you're even one of those dimwits that will claim the NSDAP was a socialist party because it had "social" in its name. And it did all those things! See? The definition is true!
What fell the Amiga was clinging to the A500 long after it has passed its prime, and the incompatibility to newer models. Not its 3D-capabilities, or lack thereof. The PCs of the time were not any better at displaying 3D graphics, dedicated 3D cards came much later when 3D actually became a thing.
Furthermore, A500s were sold as "as is", hardwired and hardly upgradeable. You could plug a memory extension into it, you had an "expansion port", where upgrading it with anything cost way more than it was worth and you could basically only use Amiga hardware to do either, much as you do with Apple today (granted, back then this was not so uncommon), but Commodore simply didn't offer anything worthwhile for way too long. When they finally woke up, the ship had already sailed and people were turning towards the PC for gaming because it caught up quickly, sound cards became cheaper and while it was a bit more of a hassle to get the hardware to do what you wanted it to do (the older ones here may remember the worries of setting DMAs, IRQs and IO ranges so they don't conflict between various cards, usually with jumpers that deserved their name mostly for jumping from your fingers into the depths of the case), you at least could get it to do what you wanted it to do.
Amiga still sold the 500 long into the times of 386 and even 486 when VLB graphics cards came out that had more video memory than the A500 had in total. And games for the Amiga were also still built to run on the 500 instead of targeting 3000 and 4000 machines, mostly because of a nonexistent market.
The time simply passed by Amiga. That's all. It fell for the same reason the C64 eventually fell: Technology surpassed it and while it was technically possible to upgrade the A500, few people did and hence few games supported it.
Yes, Germany has a stream of bullshit changes to pander to their ridiculous Bundesprüfstelle to defend kids against reality (IIRC that's the most accurate translation), and in general they were hilarious. Top of my head I remember the suicide bombers in C&C Generals being gurneys with little bombs on them. But that's far from the most ridiculous change ever made in a game to get an a-ok from them.
But we're not talking about cosmetic changes here. If you look at the reasons given as to why the games were banned, including reasons like "rewards given based on rank", "distorted concepts of history and culture" and "game missions include fraud", this means that fundamental aspects of the game, its core mechanics and the story it tries to tell, are suddenly no-gos.
China is a huge market. And unlike the Euro/US market it is growing, rapidly so. And a market that the big studios still don't sell well in.
Fanboys will gobble up next year's "Generic Game Title 19". They have shown time and again that they will, no matter whether the game is any good. They buy it. And defend it tooth and nail against anyone pointing out that the quality has been deteriorating for years. They will buy GGT19 even if it's a weak port of a phone game (because phone games is what sells in China).
But the Chinese will only buy GGT19 if it's a phone game.
You can still become a really smart one. Start a page and fill it with bullshit. Bonus points if you know how to photoshop pics so that you're right there with the great legends of your trade when legendary shit happens.
Let's wait and see. The problem is that China is simply such a huge market that if they can land a hit in China, this would easily pick up the slack even if they totally bombed in the US and Europe.
You tell those big studios that they should ignore a market the size of the US, Japan and Europe combined. Make a video, their reaction should be priceless. I bet it goes viral.
In the international name-and-blame game, what you call yourself matters jack shit. The GDR was the German Democratic Republic. So? It was neither democratic nor a republic. And considering how they speak in those areas of Germany, even the German is something that I'd consider debatable.
I take it you don't care about video games. What do you care about? Movies? Sports? What do you do when you have time off and want to relax, unwind and have a good time?
Video games are, like all software, a product with a huge up front and a very tiny per-unit cost. In other words, your goal is to sell as many as possible, even more so than with any other product. Every unit sold, no matter how low the price, is higher than the cost per unit, so it counts towards profit.
There is now a huge market in China. Nowhere in the world, the middle class grows as quickly as there. They not only want but they also do buy games. You want to cater to that market as a game producers.
And since it's unlikely that we will get another version of the game out here in the "free" world, any ban, any limitation of speech, issued and enforced in China literally has an effect on us over here, too.
Even if you don't give a fuck about human rights in China, this isn't about China alone. It's about China dictating what kind of entertainment will be produced for you, too.
China is a HUGE market. If anything, that Diablo immoral (or whatever that installment was called) makes it evident. Studios bend over backwards to cater to the Chinese market.
Think your games will remain as they are? Think again. They know you'll buy the next Call of Battlefield anyway, even if it's a dumbed down phone minigame with microtransactions up the ass. They want that Chinese market.
The smarter ones never joined the cult of least privacy.
The REALLY smart ones joined it and filled it with enough bullshit information to make every headhunter and employer WANT them because they look like they're the hottest shit in whatever field they want to be hired in.
Many of the things that are evil can be turned around and used in your favor...
Japan and Singapore are already overpopulated and it's not that easy to get into Monaco. But Iceland looks nice, I might ponder moving there.
But just for a handful of years more? It's not like that's gonna change much. Besides, would I really want to? After all, the last few years are also usually the ones that really, really suck. I'd prefer to croak at 70 in acceptable health than ail along another 20 years, bedridden and lying in my own shit because nobody can be assed to wipe my ass.
Responsible? Not really, I mean, who'd be able to call us out for it.
Basically it comes down to whether you want to live, and whether you have children you want to live. Other than that, it's pretty much "do as you please", it's not like we have any accountability for the planet to anyone else but yourself and your descendants.
Slashdot Mirror
You certainly have some sort of evidence to back that up, right?
Where there is competition, competing companies actually have to provide a service instead of relying on their victims not being able to leave them because there's no alternative?
You don't say... really? What a revelation!
Poor you. But trust me, real ISPs exist, they're not a myth. Uptimes of more than "whenever we feel like it" are real in other areas of the world, as are support line waiting times of less than 5 minutes. And there even exist customer reps that can actually solve your problem instead of just blaming you.
I'm not kidding. Yes, it is a reality in the developed world!
Silent Service and Gunship were on the list too. Gunship. Of all the games. The infantry you "killed" were literally pixels.
One should hope so, but people keep preordering them like they can't learn from previous blunders. Fallout76 had one of the highest preorder rates ever. Yes, sales plummeted right after it got out the door, but who gives a fuck? Preorder sales easily pick up the slack.
And people will keep preordering. Know why? Because they get that exclusive preorder skin for their puppy and the exclusive preorder emote for the multiplayer game that makes them so SPECIAL!
So who gives a fuck whether they actually play it after they already bought it?
This is authoritarianism. Usually it's associated with dictatorships or other forms of oppressive government, and yes, that can be socialist. But it can just as well be fascist. Or a theocracy.
But that's not what you need to hear, right? You're one of those people who label everything you don't like in a country "socialist", right? Oppression of opposition? Socialist. No free press? Socialist. People "disappearing" after a visit from some guys in black trenchcoats? Socialist. Being arrested for "reeducation" if you criticize the government? Socialist.
I'm pretty sure you're even one of those dimwits that will claim the NSDAP was a socialist party because it had "social" in its name. And it did all those things! See? The definition is true!
Right?
What fell the Amiga was clinging to the A500 long after it has passed its prime, and the incompatibility to newer models. Not its 3D-capabilities, or lack thereof. The PCs of the time were not any better at displaying 3D graphics, dedicated 3D cards came much later when 3D actually became a thing.
Furthermore, A500s were sold as "as is", hardwired and hardly upgradeable. You could plug a memory extension into it, you had an "expansion port", where upgrading it with anything cost way more than it was worth and you could basically only use Amiga hardware to do either, much as you do with Apple today (granted, back then this was not so uncommon), but Commodore simply didn't offer anything worthwhile for way too long. When they finally woke up, the ship had already sailed and people were turning towards the PC for gaming because it caught up quickly, sound cards became cheaper and while it was a bit more of a hassle to get the hardware to do what you wanted it to do (the older ones here may remember the worries of setting DMAs, IRQs and IO ranges so they don't conflict between various cards, usually with jumpers that deserved their name mostly for jumping from your fingers into the depths of the case), you at least could get it to do what you wanted it to do.
Amiga still sold the 500 long into the times of 386 and even 486 when VLB graphics cards came out that had more video memory than the A500 had in total. And games for the Amiga were also still built to run on the 500 instead of targeting 3000 and 4000 machines, mostly because of a nonexistent market.
The time simply passed by Amiga. That's all. It fell for the same reason the C64 eventually fell: Technology surpassed it and while it was technically possible to upgrade the A500, few people did and hence few games supported it.
Yes, Germany has a stream of bullshit changes to pander to their ridiculous Bundesprüfstelle to defend kids against reality (IIRC that's the most accurate translation), and in general they were hilarious. Top of my head I remember the suicide bombers in C&C Generals being gurneys with little bombs on them. But that's far from the most ridiculous change ever made in a game to get an a-ok from them.
But we're not talking about cosmetic changes here. If you look at the reasons given as to why the games were banned, including reasons like "rewards given based on rank", "distorted concepts of history and culture" and "game missions include fraud", this means that fundamental aspects of the game, its core mechanics and the story it tries to tell, are suddenly no-gos.
IN China? Very few. FOR China? Very many.
China is a huge market. And unlike the Euro/US market it is growing, rapidly so. And a market that the big studios still don't sell well in.
Fanboys will gobble up next year's "Generic Game Title 19". They have shown time and again that they will, no matter whether the game is any good. They buy it. And defend it tooth and nail against anyone pointing out that the quality has been deteriorating for years. They will buy GGT19 even if it's a weak port of a phone game (because phone games is what sells in China).
But the Chinese will only buy GGT19 if it's a phone game.
So take a wild guess what GGT19 will be.
You can still become a really smart one. Start a page and fill it with bullshit. Bonus points if you know how to photoshop pics so that you're right there with the great legends of your trade when legendary shit happens.
Let's wait and see. The problem is that China is simply such a huge market that if they can land a hit in China, this would easily pick up the slack even if they totally bombed in the US and Europe.
You tell those big studios that they should ignore a market the size of the US, Japan and Europe combined. Make a video, their reaction should be priceless. I bet it goes viral.
But who's gonna build all our crap then? India? Do you really want that? Product and support, all in one hand?
What does China have to do with socialism?
In the international name-and-blame game, what you call yourself matters jack shit. The GDR was the German Democratic Republic. So? It was neither democratic nor a republic. And considering how they speak in those areas of Germany, even the German is something that I'd consider debatable.
I take it you don't care about video games. What do you care about? Movies? Sports? What do you do when you have time off and want to relax, unwind and have a good time?
Video games are, like all software, a product with a huge up front and a very tiny per-unit cost. In other words, your goal is to sell as many as possible, even more so than with any other product. Every unit sold, no matter how low the price, is higher than the cost per unit, so it counts towards profit.
There is now a huge market in China. Nowhere in the world, the middle class grows as quickly as there. They not only want but they also do buy games. You want to cater to that market as a game producers.
And since it's unlikely that we will get another version of the game out here in the "free" world, any ban, any limitation of speech, issued and enforced in China literally has an effect on us over here, too.
Even if you don't give a fuck about human rights in China, this isn't about China alone. It's about China dictating what kind of entertainment will be produced for you, too.
Everyone playing games does.
China is a HUGE market. If anything, that Diablo immoral (or whatever that installment was called) makes it evident. Studios bend over backwards to cater to the Chinese market.
Think your games will remain as they are? Think again. They know you'll buy the next Call of Battlefield anyway, even if it's a dumbed down phone minigame with microtransactions up the ass. They want that Chinese market.
But ... but ... but profit! Why do you hate capitalism?
Good! As long as they don't do it and nobody else may do it...
The smarter ones never joined the cult of least privacy.
The REALLY smart ones joined it and filled it with enough bullshit information to make every headhunter and employer WANT them because they look like they're the hottest shit in whatever field they want to be hired in.
Many of the things that are evil can be turned around and used in your favor...
People on a self discovery trip should try looking at home, maybe they're there.
Japan and Singapore are already overpopulated and it's not that easy to get into Monaco. But Iceland looks nice, I might ponder moving there.
But just for a handful of years more? It's not like that's gonna change much. Besides, would I really want to? After all, the last few years are also usually the ones that really, really suck. I'd prefer to croak at 70 in acceptable health than ail along another 20 years, bedridden and lying in my own shit because nobody can be assed to wipe my ass.
We certainly can. But can our crops and livestock?
Then you gotta vote in someone... oh, wait. Right. You can't.
Remember when this was a Nigerian prince targeting us? It's not even 10 years later and now the Chinese are already having it.
Responsible? Not really, I mean, who'd be able to call us out for it.
Basically it comes down to whether you want to live, and whether you have children you want to live. Other than that, it's pretty much "do as you please", it's not like we have any accountability for the planet to anyone else but yourself and your descendants.