I am not saying the culture of AAA studios isn’t toxic as hell, but the size difference does create the potential for stability a smaller studio just physically cannot have even if its culture is far better.

Hell yeah thank you!

Video games are more than part of our culture, they extend into areas far beyond just entertainment.

Games are a way of understanding dynamic, hopelessly interdependent systems whether in an attempt to predict how dynamic situations with multiple actors with differing objectives will turn out or better understand history as a living dynamic thing that happened to occur one way (see Cole Werhle’s board game Pax Pamir 2e or John Company as perfect examples of this).

The evolution of good game design and the general progress of most games getting better UI systems over time as designers figure out how to best represent complex situations and choices to players is also FAR more important than just a nice consequence of iterative design, it is the groundwork for good architecture in the software realm in terms of how software is experienced by humans.

I wish that was how it would work, but we have to step all the way back here and consider how there is a fundamental difference from an employment perspective, from a target product perspective and from a budget perspective between indie game companies and large boring game companies.

I love indie games, I don’t play AAA games really, but you have to recognize the crucial role larger game companies play at providing consistent employment for entry level game development jobs… those workers can go on and found indie game companies and make their best games fine… but what about before that? What if you want to develop awesome video game but you have a family? You really want to fuck around with going it alone as an indie game company?

From the other side, even in the sanest possible world are indie game companies the right tool to craft highly iterative cinematic sports games with? … that sports fans will want to play?

I keep bouncing off Caves Of Qud because I guess maybe it feels more build focused like Tales of Maj Eyal, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but there is something so radically expansive about Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, it feels less like you are in a game than you are in a system undergoing a descent into monstrosity and yet you have agency… with a depth Project Zomboid isn’t even on the same magnitude as.

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead speaks to a desire to inhabit liminal spaces in me, which is also why I love the movie Stalker (and the mostly unrelated video games too of course) and that coupled with the fact that the most terrifying parts of Cataclysm’s world are geniously the wetlands (the monsters evolve out of pre-existing animals and wetlands have the greatest biodiversity so it makes sense…) makes it hard to pass over when thinking about trying some of these other games.

I say all this to say, the universe in Caves Of Qud is almost painfully evocative, I love it, it is beautifully strange and weird while still feeling heartfelt, I want to spend more time in it and I cannot recommend Caves Of Qud highly enough but fuck… Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is one of the world’s great wonders.

If you want more focused gameplay in Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead you MUST try the “Sky Islands” mod that is now part of the base game, the name is a bit confusing, it changes the game into a “run” based system where you spawn in a random spot on the game world and must reach a portal some distance away in a randomized direction before a certain amount of time to get back “home” which is an empty island in the sky. You can only keep what you carry through the portal and if you die you spawn back on the sky island hurt and naked with nothing you had on you, which makes CDDA more into a “game” and I love it!!!

https://github.com/TGWeaver/CDDA-Sky-Islands

*fix ed

Well that sucks

This is a feature not a bug for massive corporations, do not fall into the trap of thinking that because the collapse these corporations cause hurts the corporations themselves it means that in the end the wasteland left behind that they can consolidate and buy up isn’t beneficial for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

It helps to take a step back and think about Syncthing as a file sharing utility in general.

Syncthing allows you to share any number of folders with any number of other devices with any type of sharing structure you want (2 way file sync = filesharing, 1 way file sync = backing up). You can also set up file versioning on files within a Syncthing folder’s settings.

Note: Syncthing is not intended to be a true file backup utility, and some people will get quite upset if you portray it that way, which I get, but also it just works… and you just need to be reasonable about how you do things, just remember it is a general filesharing tool that you are USING to backup files.

You are the cloud with Syncthing, but unlike something like Nextcloud there is no special central file server nonsense, there are just Syncthing devices sharing folders to other Syncthing devices so you can do it however you want. You do need two devices of course, your phone you want to backup and the device you are backing up onto (which could be a computer with usb drive attached), but from there you can add new devices and share the same folder/folders to them and leapfrog important files without needing to sit there and think out some complicated system or architecture ahead of time.

Syncthing is very “organic” because it is so simple, but it is also very powerful, I have relied on it for years in a variety of contexts and have never really been let down.

One tip, if you want your own personal cloud, a raspberry pi type device, or an old phone plugged into the wall can serve as your server that is always listening for file edits/updates from devices in a folder share. Otherwise you have to make sure Syncthing devices are on the internet at the same time to sync files, though there is actually a quite nice GUI interface for resolving file conflicts if they do happen (I have used it quite a few times and resolved issues).

If your files are smallish, just setting the “file versioning” setting under a Syncthing folder’s settings to a number like 5-10 versions can provide even more confidence you won’t lose something but I digress…

I love Syncthing!

edit you can also do weird little hacks if you need to by doing things like setting up a Syncthing folder share on a Dropbox folder to sync files in ways you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, it isn’t a recommended practice but shrugs I have also done this many times too and haven’t had any serious issues.

You don’t need a full backup of your phone, you need a backup of all the relevant data! What do you need to backup other than contacts and media in your home folder? (documents, downloads, music, podcast, DCIM etc…)

If there is relevant data “locked up” in your apps can you export it in some form to somewhere like your downloads folder and sync that folder?

Yeah but you can also set it to copy your DCIM photos folder or whatever (if you want to backup files, make it a one way folder sync in the folder options in Syncthing), if Syncthing is limited it is because of Android’s filesystem limitations not Syncthing.

Also consider an option that uses termux if Syncthing doesn’t work such as this one that uses rsync and termux.

https://howtos.davidsebek.com/android-rsync-termux.html

^the above tutorial may look intimidating at first, but each step is explained very clearly

You can also use termux to install Syncthing and then take advantage of termux’s ability to work around Android file system limitations.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.termux/

Use syncthing and just sync all your important folders!

On F-Droid app store use Syncthing-forked

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingfork/

There are probably other more wholistic and specific ways to do this with apps specifically designed for it, but Syncthing you can use for pretty much anything and any other internet connected device you have you can use Syncthing to share/backup files too.

You don’t even need internet to use Syncthing, it will work entirely over your local network if both devices are on the same network.

before anyone says Microsoft/Xbox are idiots and are sabotaging themselves… yes they are but also this strategy is an extremely successful longterm strategy so long as you have enough money to survive the temporary collapse and can buy up large chunks of the industry during the downswing.

Eventually if you keep doing this then you own most of the industry and neither developers nor gamers have any choice but to accept the crap you serve them. Problem solved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

This is one of the reasons why the narrative is nonsense that renting games is better because you can easily own “too many games” if you keep buying them and then… oh no!!! You own too many digital games!!!

When you buy an indie game you are supporting art whether you get to the game or not, remember that, which isn’t to say buy random games but I think this statistic underlines how much it does matter to the smaller game developers to take a leap and buy their indie games. It helps that they usually cost 1/50th the cost of a AAA game lol…

No shit

Yes but part of the selling point a lot of the time does perversely come back to US-centric companies providing the leaders of Governments and Corporations a Backdoor-As-A-Service product to force upon those lower down in the pecking order.

In a sense this AI bubble is really two things, it is partially a bullshit bubble full of idiots and it is partially an embodiment of the basic philosophy of Sun Tzu demonstrating the act of losing a war before it has ever begun by becoming obsessed with pouring everything into a costly illusion that only the elite are really enamored by.

The same thing with the F35, that thing is a thesis and world monument to the philosophy that the way to win a war is by making the opponent lose on multiple levels before you begin the outright war part. It doesn’t matter how well the F35 works or doesn’t work, the amount of resources and waste have already “lost a war” entirely from the diversion of a Trillion plus dollars of resources that could have transformed the US in any number of other more productive directions. The F35 already lost an entire war before it ever even fought in a battle.

Oh yeah, I am livid about that ughh.

I hate Android with a bloodcurdling passion but yes.

Apple has the most condescending design philosophy I know of and I will never tolerate the degree of suffocation Apple imposes on devices you have purchased and own.

Also Android has F-Droid which makes Android categorically superior to iOS.

https://f-droid.org/en/

Get all of your core basic apps like flashlight apps, image gallery apps, file browser apps etc… from F-Droid.

Samsung? I hate samsung and yet I have an older used flagship samsung phone and ultimately that is what I recommend doing with Android, always buy near top of the line phones (samsung or otherwise), just go used and older until you hit a price point you are comfortable with. This reduces the headaches you will run into with Android a lot since you are always getting the experience Android was meant to give and that designers focused on especially when it comes to the hardware and camera + camera app.

I recommend Swappa for buying used electronics/phones since the website is dedicated to only those kinds of sales and provides a lot of confidence and comfort vs. buying off a random ebay seller.

https://swappa.com/

edit ALSO on Android you can change your launcher/homescreen, the idea that you can’t do this on iOS blows my mind even though it doesn’t surprise me…

Where I draw the line for whether it is ethical to light things on fire is when they start destroying rare knowledge and books as fast as possible for no other reason than to hoard and obscure knowledge for private benefit.

It is one thing to fund the creation of knowledge and then hoard it, it is entirely another to begin actively attacking and destroying pre-existing publicly shared resources of knowledge in the pursuit of monetizing access to that very knowledge behind a gargantuan profit motivated entity.