Obviously this is just me, but here is a list of the last 5 games I purchased that were not smaller indie titles:

Stalker 2, Elden ring, remnant 2, bg3, dragon’s dogma 2

You could argue that remnant is intended for multiplayer and you could argue that maybe only bg3 and stalker and really narrative driven but the truth is, anymore I tend to buy single player and stream to my friends than I do actually play mp games. The only mp game i was tempted by was Helldivers and I was just too busy at the time.

Anything else are steam deck friendly indie games. I buy a lot of those, and bought a lot even before I had a deck.

In my anecdotal experience, when I see x game is multiplayer, or live service, or just not an experience I can enjoy on my own time I tune it out. For example, I always bought Diablo games but I don’t own 4.

I also immediately think of some other big ones that I opted out of, like Wukong. People fucking love single player games when they are good games. I think the real issue is developing a good game is hard. Developing a game with dark practices and otherwise addicting (but not necessarily fun) gameplay is a much easier way to make uninspired games made by committee.

It’s just easier to point the blame at the market than actually admit that upon self reflection you realized it is best to avoid the hard part of game development.

I quit a couple years ago for good, but my main account on RuneScape was created in classic as a kid. I had about a year and a half of PLAY time on the account, mind you the vast majority of that was back when you had the hard 5 minute afk timer, so that was at least moderately active play. Then if you add my ironman account I have nearly 1/15th of my whole life logged into RuneScape. I don’t regret it, my whole friend group as an adult stem from those friendships I made online during my young teen years. However, as a modern game as much as I have a place for it in my heart, I found I had more of a negative addictive relationship with it. Maybe I always did, but I didn’t feel a negative mental effect at a young age.

I have over 1k hours in The Long Dark and 7 days to die. Around 500 in space engineers, darkest dungeon, binding of Isaac, enter the gungeon, grim dawn, and satisfactory. ~300 hours in ToME4 and Caves of qud each. That’s just steam stuff though, there are a lot of games that I know are up there that aren’t on steam.

I’m sure I have at least similar numbers to 500-1k if not much higher in Diablo 2-3, and I’m sure more than a few thousand in wow though I lost my og account after wotlk because I forgot the details when I quit so I’m really not sure.

They have some greatest hits too, like repeating that higher education tends to come with a left leaning bias. I don’t think they realize why there is a correlation between education and those politics, but it certainly isn’t what they think it is.

As far as I remember, your companions will only attack if the npcs are hostile with the exception of boon. Boon will always shoot legion on sight. You can have some decision over their actions though by talking to them.

As for the armor it does matter when and where you have it on. Again my memory may be foggy but factions can be peaceful or aggro depending on what you are wearing. You can even go into a camp with hostiles if you have their faction armor on.

Take all of this with a grain of salt though, it’s been a long time and I did play with and without mods.

I’ve been saying this to my friends for a good while. I would take it even further than that too.

My prediction has long been that since they were thinking about getting rid of it anyway, and they are shifting focus, that what you predict will happen and that eventually either Xbox will not exist or the Xbox of the future will just be a streaming dongle like the firestick. Just a little app store with controller and you stream all of your games over wifi.

They sell it for dirt cheap and no legit console can compete for basic gaming. Sony will still have a hardcore market, especially with vr and their first party titles, but most of the casual crowd would buy a 50-100 dollar “Xbox” so fast and just pay for game pass. It is a no brainer for Xbox, consoles are always a major loss of money and they don’t want physical media anyway.

Edit: “We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.”

While they announced new hardware they were real hush on it, just that it would shake up the industry. While I’m sure they would say that regardless and a lot of people say a handheld, either way I don’t think it’s just a console. A handheld would allow exactly my prediction to be possible but it wouldn’t be as cheap.

That quote feels like it nails exactly what I expected though. It might be some time but I do think it will happen and their whole narrative seems to be moving away from Xbox being a console.

You know, sometimes I think I’m an average guy with what I hope are generally good opinions.

Other times I see opinions that to me are so blatantly obvious that all I can do is roll my eyes and say “no shit…”. These opinions are apparently news worthy sometimes. When that happens I wonder to myself in a moment of egotistical self indulgence, that maybe I’m secretly a genius.

That, or pretty much everyone who wouldn’t be considered medically brain dead would think this and the individuals who decided this was news probably use all of their processing power just to remember to breathe.

So, everyone enjoy that nice long eye roll with me and indulge my fellow geniuses. For today, an opinion you came across so easily is news worthy, you are extraordinary.

I’m an American living in Denmark. Everyone here knows how to drive them even if their current car is automatic. They are becoming more popular, though.

I suppose the irony of trying to make it less lGbtq and instead making it lgbTq goes unnoticed by the bigoted creator?

I legitimately do not understand, who wants this? Sure, maybe I’m biased and maybe lemmy is going to be an echo chamber and be like “yeah, stupid Google!”. However, for the life of me, I just don’t understand. Maybe I am really just getting old, I feel like every company now is just trying to stick “AI” into things every way they can. If I cared about the comments, I’d read the comments. if I did care about those comments, that means I would want to read THEM. Who does this serve? I watch a video because I want to watch a video, I don’t want a summary of the content I came to see. As a bonus to this rant, If I wanted shorts I’d watch them, hell you can’t even remove them anymore, not that I could before since they always came back. It’s like my doctor saying I shouldn’t have a surgery to remove my reproductive ability because I might want it later. No thanks, I don’t want kids and i don’t want shorts, let me remove it.

It’s getting harder and harder to do anything the way I want to do it on any platform. Things I value get taken away, like down votes, and i have to use other means to return them and yet stuff gets shoved in my face that I don’t want. The algorithms are terrible too, half the time my suggested to watch are just tons of videos I’ve already seen from the most recent creator i watched. I love adam savages content but its background that I usually put on, I don’t need every other suggested video being that, maybe pepper in some of the other creators. I follow hundreds of creators and those videos ive seen are all that can be suggested, really? Oh and by the way, have fun with trying to block ads 😊 Sure, what I’m doing now works, but for fucks sake I would watch an ad if it wasn’t so toxic to do so. I just want a service that actually seems to care about serving. Not trying to tell me what I should want.

Tldr: angry man shouts at the internet, contributes nothing or any real solutions.