That’s a good point. It reminds me of a quote that I recently heard that I enjoy.

"You should support indies if you can, but culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it. ULTRAKILL wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t had easy access to movies, music and games growing up.

If you don’t have money, you can support via word of mouth." - the creator of ultrakill.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I had used Xbox gamepass for a long time when it was really cheap. You could upgrade a regular subscription to gamepass for a dollar. That went up after a while by a little bit but stayed the same service wise.

They recently changed it to where you can convert, but they reduce your subscription time. It’s annoying because I want to use gamepass as a rental service, but if I do that, they convert your entire account to gamepass and reduce your overall time for their regular online services (which is a whole other can of worms)

I’m debating if it’s worth it right now. I’ve experienced a lot of games i likely wouldn’t try, because of the service. I’ve gotta go through and calculate all the games I’ve played and the price associated.

I already buy most games when they’re on a 60% or more discount. I’m wondering if I should/could just stop most of my purchases… There’s a lot of older titles I’ve always wanted to play.

I’m torn because I don’t really spend money on anything else. Maybe some food or treats. It’s weird because I’m in this middle zone where I can technically save up for some luxury items, but too poor to save for anything actually significant. So it kind of feels like I’m just perpetually stuck on a hamster wheel. I’ve been trying to figure out how I can either work less or earn more because right now it’s really getting hard to justify just working to exist. It just feels oddly pointless

I feel like the carrot(media and consumption) is getting dangled in front of my face. I chase it in order to feel better about my situation, but it’s just a band aid for larger systemic issues that I don’t know how to fix. Without consumption, I am nothing (which is extremely sad and messed up now that I think about it.) Any major goals or milestones are just a dream and consumption is the escape from the reality.

There’s cosmetic outfits and then an actual armor that alters some stats!

I accidentally made the second half of the game harder for myself by not upgrading my armor. Oops. Ended up having to tinker with things for the last boss. But adjusting armor made the fight go from 2-3 hit KO’s to being able to actually take some hits. It was a lot of fun!

Greedflation on necessities like food, utilities, housing etc etc.

Control. They want to feel like they’re in control of all aspects of their team/company. I work from home, but they’ve put on tons of monitoring software to check if we’re looking at different pages, moving our mouse, and interacting with our keyboards. It’s all just about control. When people are in the office, they feel like they have control over what they’re doing. They’re being observed by other coworkers, etc.

I know you’re probably right. But I want to believe with every fiber that you’re wrong

I have a gut feeling that my life expectancy is probably lowered due to the stress from financial issues. I mean I know there’s been studies done, but who knows how it actually goes for each individual. I wish…there was just some way to give everyone a safety net

I don’t know about you all, but I’m looking forward to checking out all the games I’ve missed in the past 20 years.

I was thinking he would just be retired at this point

I think it says that it will continue to air on pbs?

Back when I was on reddit, they had tipofmyjoystick which was pretty helpful. If you aren’t opposed, everyone there was very knowledgeable. I liked frequenting that sub because it was like a guessing mini game each day, but you got to help people find games they miss.

I have no idea how wide spread this is. But I recently heard that there’s this experimental drug Pluvicto that has helped people recover from advanced prostate cancer. I didn’t think you could come back from advanced cancer either, but who knows at this point.

That’s very good news!

Well that’s a bummer. Thank you for the info!

MangaDex was taken down? When did that happen?

I could be wrong here, but this feels like a larger trend of trying to consolidate profits. Cut out anything/anyone “unnecessary”. Similar to the whole AI trend.

I would be so excited if more games were made in an n64 or ps1 style. Maybe I’m just huffing nostalgia, but I still enjoy some of those classics. Games don’t have to have amazing graphics or be massive to be fun.

Someone on lemmy recently put this into perspective for me. Even like 1% of the population of the USA is 3 million people. If you increase the cost of a product and don’t care about long-term sales, the immediate gain in profit can outweigh the loss of total customers down the line.

I still think cutting off customers and burning good will isn’t a good business model, but I’m not stupid wealthy, so what do I know.

Thanks for the kind words. I guess it’s just very difficult to fit into whatever mold these companies are looking for. It feels like they want a unicorn or a robot. And if you don’t somehow match their very specific buzzwords, your resume doesn’t get looked at.

It makes me feel like I’m not enough. I’m quite uncertain as to how I’ll make enough of a living going forward in the future, but I guess I shouldn’t worry about it too much. Stuff usually works out right? Haha