SloMoMonday's recent activity
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Comment on What’s a point that you think many people missed? in ~talk
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Comment on US withdraws from sixty-six international organisations in ~society
SloMoMonday Link ParentIts pretty much the textbook example of "a stupid weak mans idea of an intelligent strong man". It seems like the people in power are not content with status and influence if it doesn't look and...Its pretty much the textbook example of "a stupid weak mans idea of an intelligent strong man". It seems like the people in power are not content with status and influence if it doesn't look and feel like their ideals of status and influence. The schoolyard bully idea of power.
Oversight, controls and alliances are beneficial because it incentivizes everyone to play nice. And the US already carved out exceptions for themselves. Nations would willingly fall in line because doing so gave them access to NATO protection, UN networks, US products/western markets and the IMF.
Walking away from the table now leaves room for others to make new deals at your expense.
America was also able to keep conflict far away from their borders and shield the population from the realities of war. Now they threaten Mexico, Greenland and Canada because they can.
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Comment on I am kinda curious about the demographics of Tildes in ~talk
SloMoMonday Link ParentI know it's not the smartest time to do it with the current economy, but in November this office went from just another shit office to an actual concern for my safety. The hostile response to my...I know it's not the smartest time to do it with the current economy, but in November this office went from just another shit office to an actual concern for my safety. The hostile response to my resignation letter pretty much sealed the deal and I'm keeping a low profile until I'm out on the 21st.
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Comment on I am kinda curious about the demographics of Tildes in ~talk
SloMoMonday LinkMid 30s, Indian male. Currently in South Africa. Don't think I can call myself a developer anymore and in a few days I'll be a former "administrative manager".Mid 30s, Indian male. Currently in South Africa.
Don't think I can call myself a developer anymore and in a few days I'll be a former "administrative manager". -
Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
SloMoMonday (edited )Link ParentHoly crap. I was drafting this out and life got very hectic, very quickly. Must have hit post on my phone by mistake. Its a bit longer because theres a lot of context that most people won't know....- Exemplary
Holy crap. I was drafting this out and life got very hectic, very quickly. Must have hit post on my phone by mistake.
Its a bit longer because theres a lot of context that most people won't know.
So the project I wanted to pay attention to was BBBEE (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment). This was the big step up from the placeholder BEE initiative set in 1994.
This was a project that had the best of intentions. Primary one being that formerly disadvantaged people would be the priority recipients of government business support. At the same time the country did not want to chase off the existing white businesses so they were also given a pathway to equity and could be eligible for the same benefits. They just needed to demonstrate meaningful proportional representation in the companies structures.
The problem is that on a national scale, its very difficult to fairly assess each and every business and needed metrics. They developed a scorecard and rating system.
Now we only got to see the worst form of this project because of our esteemed former president, Jacob Fucking Zuma. Nalson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki were disappointing in that they were unable to meet the high expectations while preserving monied interests and still skimming a little off the top. But there was at least an attempt to keep things going. Not with our boy Jacob.
We moved from general BEE to the far more involved BBBEE around 2005 and it only come into effect around 2007/8. Zuma brute forced his way into the presidency in 2009. And let's just politely say that he was not acting in the national interest.
Jcob (curses upon his name) Zuma is very much a parallel to Trump and there is so much to tackle there. Right down rallying youth movements behind bullshit causes, to being under the influence of foreign business and stripping government departments and infrastructure for parts. Its a whole series of essays on its own and its been partially documented by the Zodo Commission of Enquiry into State Capture. This is a dense read but a very valuable (and expensive) lesson that no one outside South Africa thought was worth paying attention to. Generations of opportunity were stolen from under our nose, but that just Africa problems. Not something you'd see in the first world.
The BBBEE system was not perfect, but still a policy written by Intelligent people with solid justifications at the time And it was reduced to a quota system.
Now is whe the touchy part that I disclaimed with previously comes in. This policy only really applied to businesses but we believed it was everywhere all the time. Suddenly, if you didn't make it into university or get a job, it's because of BEE. If you company lost a massive government contract, it's because of BEE. Decline of inner cities. Falling education standards. Service delivery protests. Infrastructure being stolen in broad daylight. Potholes. Rolling blackouts. It's all just BEE.
Yes, we were being governed by a con artist and his chronies. But he was only there because of BEE. We doing the angry DEI rants before it was cool.
Even amazing public servants were removed from office to facilitate looting and it was masked as a BEE initiative.
Over the 2010s there was an entire industry around mathematical manipulation of ones business to get to Level 1 status. At it's worst, you could just give a cleaning lady a fancy title and score points. And it wasn't a big secret. I believe my mom and aunt were a "directors" in my dads business for female representation.
This prevalence of manipulating numbers combined with the, new national reality, open corruption and the very obvious social decline; you can imagine what some some people tried to scapegoat to push various agendas.
And that's when you started to see the whole, "it was better under apartheid" narrative spinning up.
Because the blame game is so easy: The wrong people were in charge and bad things happened. Same way you can see the sorry state of many black areas that were racial dumping grounds compared to the former "white only" areas. Black people had every advantage over 30 years and they couldn't keep the lights on and the streets clean.
The reality is that when 80+% of the population gets equal rights, there is going to be unilateral impacts. And unfortunately the country was only really geared to service a tiny minority of population. While we had world class cities and infrastructure, it could not keep up to the scale of development and it was only exaggerated under Zuma.
From here the BEE debate spins into extremism in every possible direction.
On one hand there are people saying reconciliation was not nearly enough and we need to expropriation of land and assets for redistribution (I knew someone in uni that genuinely believed it was just about to happen and he could graduate, get his land and live in peace.) The other is that apartheid was better, in that power was focused on people best suited to use it. Another is that the state should leave everything to the private sector and "let markets decide". Or we nationalize everything. Or we should be moving completely away from big business interests and focuse entirely on rural and black communities. Or we just split up the country entirely. Of black people need to get revenge (and this sentiment was a reality and did result if several horrific farm murders. But it's not nearly the "white genocide" some people make it out to be.)
This is just my single view on what happened. There are people that definitely benefited from this initiative. There was most likely deserving people that were considered for a role because of BEE. And there could also have been the reverse where the program was manipulated and the wrong person was put in place. But the discussion doesn't deal in spesifics and edge cases.
"The program started, things got worse, program bad." That's how a lot of people saw it.
I added so much context around this because nothing happens in isolation. I didn't touch on major banks being implicated in devaluing the currency. Or the Gupta Family and the Sahara Business Empire and how they were taken down by a wedding. Or KPMG and SAP not just being complicit in State Calture, but willing participants. Or that time the president was accused of sexual misconduct and he just said that it was okay because he took a shower after. We let that slide but it really came back to bite us. -
Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
SloMoMonday LinkSo this is one of those things where there is a very narrow band of rationality between two different flavors of discrimination. So please forgive me if I stray too far one way or the other. After...So this is one of those things where there is a very narrow band of rationality between two different flavors of discrimination. So please forgive me if I stray too far one way or the other.
After apartheid in South Africa there was various reconciliation projects with a wide range of efficacy.
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Comment on Grok AI generates images of ‘minors in minimal clothing’ in ~tech
SloMoMonday LinkTo shift away from the moral bankruptcy needed to make a machine that does this and the consequences of it existing; I'm curious on the How of this particular situation. If this is an "emergent"...To shift away from the moral bankruptcy needed to make a machine that does this and the consequences of it existing; I'm curious on the How of this particular situation.
If this is an "emergent" behaviour, the timing is very convenient. Because in the start of December there was a new light/mid-weight model framework called something like Zee Image. It's one that currently focuses more on realistic people and artificial 'photography". And naturally, it immediately started to be trained for deepfakes. There is already uncensored versions of it along with a full library of LORAs for celebrities, models, athletes and best of all, politicians. (Sidebar: is there anyone I can report these type of things to. I know the bigger model hosting sites draw a line at real people but it's not that hard to find this sort of crap and it's got to be illegal.)
Don't want to speak ill of the lovely AI specialists someone like Elon Musk would hire. But it would be surprised if all those AI researchers are just copying other peoples homework. And in this case they pushed an uncensored version of an open source project. Cant imagine why they would even have an uncensored model in a build, but it seems like an innocent enough mistake.
I started developing this theory when Sora released 6 months after public releases of the Chinese Wan Video Model. Around when people were getting past the models tendency to favor Asian features and there was already a library of different styles and animations. Its not like these companies really care about property rights or intellectual integrity and whats one more thing after strip mining the entire internet.
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Comment on Looking for Backroom games with something to do in them other than walking in ~games
SloMoMonday (edited )LinkI'm trying to pinpoint the vibe you're looking for. Because I often associate the backrooms with mazes and being trapped. It's also a core theme in Superliminal and Stanley Parable. The closest...I'm trying to pinpoint the vibe you're looking for. Because I often associate the backrooms with mazes and being trapped. It's also a core theme in Superliminal and Stanley Parable.
The closest other gerne would be a lot of the "helpless horror". Because you can't fight back, places have a tendency of becoming very liminal after introducing a threat. Suddenly a straight line from entry to exit becomes a maze where you are in danger and can get yourself lost or cornered, even though you know where to go and what to do.
I think the Amnesia games do this well. Especially The Bunker.Beside that, Slay the Princess is a Visual Novel in the style of Stanly Parable.
Death stranding does a good job of letting you take a mechanically complex walk across a landscape that not quite right. Baby Steps does a similar thing but you are directing every individual step. (Not nearly as bad as Getting Over It too).
If you don't care about the very deep puzzles, Blue Prince is a fun maze game where you build a house one room at a time.If you want to go all the way off the deep end and fully embrace the surrealism of liminal spaces, theres LSD Dream Emulator and all the things inspired by it. Yume Nikke Dream Diary, Antichamber, Umurangi Generation, NaissanceE, The Void, Brainwasher, Rememoried. All of these lean heavily into the the Dreamcore and Psychodelic aesthetics and can range from deep philosophical explorations to cool nonsense environments to explore.
Edit.
Forgot to add my favorite game from here:
420BLAZEIT 2: GAME OF THE YEAR -=Dank Dreams and Goated Memes=- [#wow/11 Like and Subscribe] Poggerz EditionYes, that is the full name.
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Comment on What video games would you say have the best stories? Feel free to suggest more than one. in ~games
SloMoMonday LinkBioShock Infinite is a good follow up to the original game if you want to continue a story you already know. The Story DLC is also a must and the game still holds up pretty well. If you enjoy this...BioShock Infinite is a good follow up to the original game if you want to continue a story you already know. The Story DLC is also a must and the game still holds up pretty well. If you enjoy this sort of sandbox story game, the Metro Series is also pretty good.
The 2 God of War reboot games make for a deep exploration of family and fatherhood.
Undertale and Deltarune is an adventure, bullet hell, RPG that deconstructs concepts like player agency and moality in games.
The remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 is a wild ride, especially if you didn't play the original. Death Stranding is also an option, but that's more of a zen, walking sim for me. And theres the Silent Hill remake which is a must. Silent Hill F is an amazing story that's held back by a weak game.
And for short-ish, weirder ones that are best enjoyed with minimal details:
The Stanley Parable
Outer Wilds
Thomas Was Alone
Inscription /Pony Island
Thank Goodness You're Here
ENA Dream BBQ
Wanderstop
Fear and Hunger 1 and 2
Look Outside
A Hand With Many Fingers
Slay the Princess
Many Nights a Whisper
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
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Comment on Life: Your personal year in review for 2025 in ~life
SloMoMonday LinkSo this year was the final straw for a lot of issues I've let fester in my life. And it mostly stems from spending the last few years at my family's joke of a company, hoping that the Hard Work...So this year was the final straw for a lot of issues I've let fester in my life. And it mostly stems from spending the last few years at my family's joke of a company, hoping that the Hard Work Fairy to come down and make the misery mean something. Well I've now fully destroyed my physical, mental, social and financial well being and I'm getting the sense that the Hard Work Fairy isn't real.
So, handing in my resignation on Friday and will be out by the end of Jan. They don't get to say that I walked out in the busiest period of the year, but everyone is stretched so thin that I don't think psyco and lapdog will even consider a proper handover. So online and WhatsApp store, international customers, the chemical and cosmetic suppliers, the branded products wholesaler, tech subscriptions, the SAMBA server, and the crypt of IT infrastructure they refuse to upgrade can all take care of themselves.
I have money on them calling me for the next six months asking if I'm ready to come back to work.
I'm sharing this here because I can't exactly voice this to anyone besides my wife. The family reputation is something that is pretty potent and if my last walk-out back in 2011 is any indication, I don't think anyone would be particularly interested in my side of this story. Especially not if I say that I'm actually happy and hopeful for the first time in a very long while.
So here's to 2026.
If it's worse than 2025, then I'm convinced I actually did die back in 2018 and I'm descending through layers of eternal torment. -
Comment on Half way through the 2020's. What's your favorite games so far? in ~games
SloMoMonday (edited )Link ParentThanks. I might take you up on the invite. Been looking for gameplay vids there's some genuinely interesting kits at work. I'm really interested in Paradox, Paige and Victor since I'm geared to a...Thanks. I might take you up on the invite. Been looking for gameplay vids there's some genuinely interesting kits at work. I'm really interested in Paradox, Paige and Victor since I'm geared to a utility and slow burn playstyles.
But I like the idea of downtime in rounds. Because thats often a time for creative decision making and coordination. And it seems like there's more to do than just run from spawn to the a fight.
Overwatch instantly lost that tactical layer in the second game. I know people hated on 2cp but the Egypt, Japan and Russia maps were incredibly demanding on both sides because you needed to play the entire arena. Same with how they removed the second thank and changed some entire characters.
Like Orisa got a ton of playtime for me in OW1 because it was only hard defence character and it gave her a lot of field presence. A remote shield to cover DPS on main, grav ball to disrupt a dive, bongo to boost a clutch fight, fortify out of a big CC to protect vulnerable team mates and saturating an area in endless chip damage; all at the same time. I wasn't taking a lot of kills, but it would take an ult or major wipe to dislodge us off a choke. The character played like a slow moving fortress and you don't see a lot of that in other games.
Now the new kit is very much: what if Dva, but worse in every way.
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Comment on Bringing back the battleship? - Railguns, US shipbuilding and a 35,000 ton bad idea? in ~engineering
SloMoMonday Link ParentIt sort of feels like a 1985 sci-fi idea of a 2030 warship and not a designed around strategic considerations. The type of spec no one would question if it was in an old movie. Like they envision...It sort of feels like a 1985 sci-fi idea of a 2030 warship and not a designed around strategic considerations. The type of spec no one would question if it was in an old movie.
Like they envision a Defiant class ship being completely surrounded by enemy vessels demanding its surrender. And in a storm of lasers and railgun fire it makes short work of all of them.
And then you have the all the propaganda about how the Donald Trump is the biggest and bestest ship in the whole wide world and that President Trump was a genius commander. I wouldn't be surprised if they insist to put a figurehead of the guy on it.
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Comment on Half way through the 2020's. What's your favorite games so far? in ~games
SloMoMonday (edited )Link ParentHow is Deadlock playable? I didn't even know it was a Valve game or that it was a hero shooter/moba. I just assumed it would be a Tarkov/LoL situation with its own launcher and overpriced store....How is Deadlock playable? I didn't even know it was a Valve game or that it was a hero shooter/moba. I just assumed it would be a Tarkov/LoL situation with its own launcher and overpriced store.
Also never really get any gameplay or content about it either.I'm interested in finding an Overwatch replacement but Marvel Rivals sort proves that ability/tech heavy gameplay is just held back by the shooter format. Its only a matter of time before it all comes back to "click head to win". Then you end up with 50 DPS and the 3 viable tanks and support are just different flavors DPS (I'm still very salty about Overwatch 2 killing second tank role. And PvE. And wasting all that money/effort on OWL. And going FTP. And flip-flopping on their design decisions. And those stupid skins and new characters...).
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Comment on Vince Zampella killed in Ferrari crash in ~games
SloMoMonday LinkDon't know how he was as a person, but it feels like everytime he's come up in industry news, it's mostly on the receiving end of bad situations. Fired after Modern Warfare 2 through to having...Don't know how he was as a person, but it feels like everytime he's come up in industry news, it's mostly on the receiving end of bad situations. Fired after Modern Warfare 2 through to having both Titanfall releases being poorly supported by EA and having to clean up after Battlefield 2042.
But he had a hand in creating a ton of amazing moments for a lot of people. And for that, I think we're greatful for he's commitment to the craft.
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Comment on The truth about AI (specifically LLM powered AI) in ~tech
SloMoMonday Link ParentSpeculation on the future of the tech is valid but it does feel a little moot at this point given the scaling limits. (There was an updated assessment on the diminishing returns if you don't mind...Speculation on the future of the tech is valid but it does feel a little moot at this point given the scaling limits. (There was an updated assessment on the diminishing returns if you don't mind 50 pages of wizard math). Deepseek broke a barrier with MoE architecture, but I think that there is a foundational limit to LLMs by simple virtue of the fact that it's based on Language, not Data.
This is personal philosophy, but it often feels like information in an LLM is going to be polluted eventually because the model can't seperate a data point from the representation of that data, its linguistic functions and all the associated "baggage". The mess will initially be be sqashed with context and systems prompts, but all that noise will eventually drown out even the most recent instructions and it may even have subtle influence on outputs that even seem correct.
But regardless of how things develop, we can't ignore the fact that there has already been almost a trillion dollars in capital expenditure. Funds allocated, prior to sufficient infrastructure being made available, let alone user demand. I think it's why they keep trying to scale compute, data and training time in spite of the scaling limits that they identified. Spend that can't be recouped if there is some major development in the next few years.
The AI industry can not risk a more efficient GPU or model going public because that would instantly tank the value of Blackwell GPUs and the massive cost to train the latest models. I suspect it's the reason openAI sounded a code red when Gemini ran so well on TPUs and not cuda hardware.
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Comment on The truth about AI (specifically LLM powered AI) in ~tech
SloMoMonday (edited )LinkI do have an implicit bias against LLMs and big tech. I think my last three back to back posts are stating my distrust of it and it has little to do with direct outcomes or processes within it,...I do have an implicit bias against LLMs and big tech. I think my last three back to back posts are stating my distrust of it and it has little to do with direct outcomes or processes within it, but rather the bad business around it. If I'm going to be expected to transform my my entire business/lifestyle, I'm going to be doing some risk and dependency management because big tech has burnt me a dozen too many times to have the benefits of the doubt.
To highlight just one of the many concerns:
Wnat is the true costing I should expect because flat rates do not seem sensible and sustainable?I know from testing that there is linear escalation of token spend in simple analytical data models and exponential burn with LLMs. The new advanced models that lean on multi-model architectures and AI agents just multiply that token spend. LLMs are stateless because the models have to adjust for prior token generation in the context of a new prompt. Over the course of multiple projects, what does it look like.
I've been looking at peoples Cursor Wrapped reports and there are billions of tokens used across multiple models per user per year. Its still $40-60 per user per month. $200 for power users but that's still a steal. (The docs detail $1.25/mil input/cache, $6/mil out, $0.25/mil cache read)
Something is fishy here and the other shoe has to drop eventually.
And I need to know how much is this efficiency gain worth to contractors and companies. If this is a scaling cost, what happens when you breach the break even point. Especially if the manager feels that for half the cost, they could just get an AI agent and learn to do it themselves.Theres also the conflict of interest where the AI service provider is likely going to charge per token burn and I've seen how companies incentivize scaling up over efficiency.
It becomes hard to see this as a great technology leap when everything about it looks like a golden noose.
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Comment on Indie Game Awards rescinds Clair Obscur's GOTY wins over use of generative AI [for now-removed background assets] in ~games
SloMoMonday Link ParentTrue. Image generation and even animation models can be run pretty effectively. I think the most recent big model is Illustrious after StabilityAI decided to go full corporate with SD3. Speaking...True. Image generation and even animation models can be run pretty effectively. I think the most recent big model is Illustrious after StabilityAI decided to go full corporate with SD3.
Speaking of going corporate, the Flux model is owned by Black Forrest Labs, Illustrious is owned by Onoma AI, Qwen and Wan Video is developed by Alibaba. AuraFlow is by FalAI. The developers of Pony Diffusion seem to also be starting their own thing. Just saying that a lot of the Self Hosted solutions come with strings attached and the terms of any new model could change on a dime. These companies are crowdsourceing a lot of RnD and I'm a little concerned of how things turn out when they shift from Development to Profitability.
At the same time Disney has announced a partnership with OpenAI and I suspect a lot of non-OpenAI models trained on Disney works will be seeing some action taken towards them. Something that will set the president for any other rights holder.
Text based LLMs are probably the area that has the most room for improvement, but many of those models are similarly owned by one of the big tech players or an expensive startups. And most of the self hosting initiatives looks a lot like crowdsourced RnD again.
But the biggest issue is that now the barrier to entry has jumped up from anyone, to anyone that can meet the hardware requirements.
In the last few weeks there's already been several hardware vendors reporting a scaling back or withdrawal from the consumer market. Micron, Nvidia, TSMC to name a few. If AI tech is viable, it's going to be a long while before hardware costs are at reasonable levels (Think Micron forecast it going well into 2027). If it's not... I do not want to imagine what happens to chip market .
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Comment on Indie Game Awards rescinds Clair Obscur's GOTY wins over use of generative AI [for now-removed background assets] in ~games
SloMoMonday Link ParentThe problem is that generative data models are only levelling the field right now because it's the same cost and outcome for everyone. Anyone can pick it up and with some practice, get themselves...The problem is that generative data models are only levelling the field right now because it's the same cost and outcome for everyone. Anyone can pick it up and with some practice, get themselves to the point that they can deliver passable art, VO, code and the like. Maybe they use that as a springboard to making games for a living.
Fast forward maybe 5 years. The AI companies now need to show return for their trillion dollars of investment. If someone is reliant on the cloud service, how do they keep up with escalating costs and degrading quality of service. A lot of digital artists that rely on Adobe tools are facing the same problem. So are Uber drivers, Airbnb hosts and social media creators.
These services provide financial security when they are not profitable for the companies providing it. But once you are dependent on them, then it's a lot easier to squeeze those users until the barrier to entry is already having a successful business model and revenue stream.
Now you are just another replaceable worker at a major studio or a freelancer that rents their tools.
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Comment on AI will likely affect administrative and operational jobs in heathcare in ~health
SloMoMonday (edited )Link ParentI'm not going to defend the administrative bloat of many systems. But there is little distinction between a system with excess capacity as a healthy redundancy; and systems that are bogged down...I'm not going to defend the administrative bloat of many systems. But there is little distinction between a system with excess capacity as a healthy redundancy; and systems that are bogged down with excessive costs, meaningless middle-men, predatory contracts and being extorted by cronies. The former represents a system that provides stable employment and operational flexibility. The latter is sadly the reality that we are dealing with and the few functional actors in the system are over-extended to mitigate all the waste around them.
And the way I see it, AI is an attempt to replace those functional actors with an automated system that are the embodiment of excessive costs, meaningless middle-men, predatory contracts and cronies. All justified by the idea of "efficiency" and "cost effectiveness". Promises that are completely false.
I was interviewing someone that runs an insurance brokerage and he said that scaling with people is a linear cost while AI is flat. And it hit me on just how well obscured the costing was for average users. As if you can just pay openAI a fixed monthly cost and you could just spin up as many LLM instances as you want.
AI now is still in the first days of Uber and AirBnB. The company is going to eat a ton of the cost and plan to recoup it with interest once they capture the market and establish user dependency. True cost of LLM's often scale with the context size because the system reprocesses the entire instance with every time its invoked. Simpler analytical models can be linear but its often exponential. Advanced Multi-model and Agent systems multiply those costs.
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Comment on Steam Replay 2025 in ~games
SloMoMonday LinkSo mine is a fun one since I set up the second hand steam deck in the TV room last year. My kid has started to play more on her own and so has my wife. And we're also getting a lot of guests and...So mine is a fun one since I set up the second hand steam deck in the TV room last year.
My kid has started to play more on her own and so has my wife. And we're also getting a lot of guests and my wife's clients who have kids and it's something for them to do while the adults are busy. Anyone's free to dig into the ever expanding backlog and download/delete whatever they like, so long as they put everything away and don't mess with save files. And it's been a success.I should probably set up all the family accounts sooner or later to keep stats like this clean and I can see people playing concurrently becoming an issue. But such a wide spread like this feels like I run an arcade.
So the damage is:
174 games and its 50/50 between old and new
You can sort of see the months when I'm between projects because I'm committing to single games. Otherwise its a whole mess of things.
Those marathon games were E33, Blue Prince and I was lucky with Silksong because it released just before the 6 weeks I was out with a broken foot.
When I was in "work mode", most of that time was spent with Hades and other Roguelikes. Also tower defence.
My favorite stats are these, where no game got more than 10% playtime.
Also, I'm pretty happy that there doesn't seem to be any AAA in my list and no mtx. You could count Space Marine 2 and a few hours to mop up the last of BG3 but it's not the same.
Anyway, I'm probably not going to have any time till March again and I'm pretty sure next year I'll have far fewer hours to spend on games. But I do think this was a pretty good year for game releases (the state of the industry is a whole different story).
No one is immune to social engineering. And it's not just scams and security. Marketing, algorithms and bias framing is all around us. Most people are too fatigued and overwhelmed to critically filter everything.
Something important to keep in mind is false equivalencies, especially in advertising.
Cheap is not always economical. Fast is not always efficient. Easy is not always simple. Impressive is not always useful. Likely is not ever guaranteed. Possible is not always ready. Popular is not always good. Newer/bigger/expensive is not always better.
There's so many times I've had someone intentionally twist their words to affect peoples judgement while covering their own ass.