What a treat of a read. Always nice to see a new story like this pop up, thanks for sharing!

Typed out a whole thing because I didn't really agree with you that it's not just the people up top, but also this perpetual growth, zero sum game most C-suite level people seem to think the world operates on.

Most of my points ended up agreeing with you, but I do want to add that profit seeking isn't a bad thing, but that the constant desire for more profit, 'growth' is where the real evil lies.

I think that's where his point kind of lies tho. Don't get me wrong, I share the same sentiments, but scale doesn't necessarily translate to production costs. Larian has been in the CRPG genre for a while, and they have engines, proprietary tools, and design philosophies based off their past successes and failures. Other companies won't really have that edge, and will likely make many of the same mistakes that earlier titles did, which is what Rami Ismail is probably fearing.

There aren't many other ideal solutions to deal with this tricky problem. Capital like engines and tools aren't really built so easily, and even when they are built, there's tons of tiny little details that CRPGs make, ranging from camera to how dialogue is handled, to control schemes, character building (I don't think Larian got away with utilizing the 5E system without a hefty licensing fee) and plot.

Not to say all these things need to be at quality and comparable to BG3, but that due to it's popularity and success, it will be a frame or point of reference when thinking about another CRPG, and thus when a game doesn't do anything new or drastically different, it'll be framed as a 'lower quality BG3' because it won't have anything to help it escape that direct comparison.

As for doing something different, using a different TTRPG system, or other unique quirk that set it apart drastically enough to free itself from that looming shadow, that's a pretty hefty risk for a TTRPG or studio to take up, with no guarantee that the game itself will come out okay. You only need to look at Shadowrunn Returns, a CRPG for Shadowrun a cyberpunk fused fantasy world. Sounds like a great time, no? Well, I wouldn't say it did badly, but that it didn't do well enough for the people making or funding to entertain the risk of a sequel, and thus the 'tightening of the noose' that he's referring to.

With a step down in price, or for new entrants to enter a market, we'll either need to understand that new games likely won't have the same polish or quality of current ones, but they will still need to earn a profit from these games. This either translates into enough sales (which I doubt people would do as people generally don't care about things unless they're incredibly passionate, which naturally limits the quantity of people) or a high enough price to still make a profit with a lower amount of sales, which means that smaller scale 20-30$ CRPG is just not feasible if they don't have some other way to raise funding or keep costs down. You'd basically be looking at maybe 5-10 hours of gameplay for that kind of price, and the quality still would not be the same, missing a lot of things we take for granted in a AA or AAA setting.

It's not really about consumer interest in a genre or style of game, it's more to do with people's flawed perspective that games are constantly getting better, and while it's not to say new ideas aren't being tried, and those can be done with indie teams, they just need to be either completely distinct when compared to it's competitors, so the flaws aren't fixated on, and accepted as a form of the medium, or reinvent the wheel in a way to subvert the genre they're currently in. I could go on all day, but this is already a wall of text, and you get my point.

Pt 4.

Yes, if you throw democracy in the trash, ignore the rights of the unpopular, and pass any law that appeals to today’s public morality, then you’ll have lots of options.

Great extremist response to a more moderated opening of discussion.

I just don’t want to hear you guys complain after this idealism gets spun to fuck you over by corporate lawyers more skillful than your populist politicians.

You've just talked shit to basically everyone in the room, ignored the discussion going on around you and decided you were right in your own head, structured arguments to take down discussions going on to justify your own conclusions, and now you try to pretend to have a semblance of morals?

But fuck me for pointing out the logical inconsistencies in the useless seething groupthink machine, I guess. Apparently I only have rights if the public likes me.

I mean yeah. Fuck you. Fuck you for coming into a discussion, arguing in bad faith while tossing around assumptions made in bad faith and building bad faith arguments off that. In a forum setting, you only have someone's ear if you actually make sense instead of having arguments so poorly worded I'd believe it if a geriatric wrote it for you.

Also, great to have a clean, easy way to wipe your hands of any actual discussion after you came in and shat all over the place with your existence. Just go 'yeah, fuck me I guess' when things don't seem to be going your way and walk away from a conversation, sure to go over great with anyone you get into an intellectual debate with.

I know you're probably not going to read this far (luddites, amirite?) but this kinda seems like you're worshipping corporate law in either the hopes you become one, you already are one, or you just don't like the idea that white collar crime is starting to become a serious issue that people are understanding needs severe rules and regulations around, and there needs to be severe penalties for. Which in that case, I'm not quite sure why that idea bothers you so much. As they say, ' if you've got nothing to hide, why are you worried?'. Finally, you may just be arguing from a standpoint that is just factually false, trying to justify it like some kind of religion. In which case, I sincerely hope you either learn to know better from educating yourself, experiencing it yourself, or fall out of the population as fast as possible.

Intellectual debate is pretty important, and intentionally arguing and acting in bad faith is just as serious to making sure young voters understand why things are important, as well as laying out the thought process for them to understand. Instead of just giving false promises if you buy into their cult of corprotology, teaching people and encouraging them to learn about issues they feel strongly enough to argue in bad faith or make an effort talking about is so important.

Pt 3.

You go after organizations whose bread and butter is legal entanglement, using legal entanglement as your only weapon. You make the regulatory environment more difficult for startups and SMBs to compete in, and you do nothing but give your (supposed) worst enemies more political tokens with which to negotiate advantageous positions in that environment. Why do you think these corporate elites flush hundreds of millions of dollars sponsoring progressive media outlets?

Again, we're not writing law here. Nobody has even propositioned any concrete plan, or even an actionable statement to get this riled up about. The 'legal entanglement' you're speaking of is just fretting about the semantics of a law neither you nor anyone else has defined, and how if this hypothetical law is hypothetically written poorly; Which is a strawman you've created, deluded yourself into somehow being convinced is the most logical and reasonable stance to take, and the most accurate interpretation of events is both baffling, and really underlines how you're not here to discuss, just argue in bad faith and say, 'no this is bad because what if, if, if, ad infinitum.'

We’re talking about criminal law. Can you clearly, objectively, without arbitrary valuation of goods or services, define a legal principle which identifies the point at which a health plan cut becomes a crime?

We discuss a general idea and intentionally leave the actual wording of the hypothetical law unsaid because that is none of our (including you) job to make, and to intentionally assume it's going to be written poorly or demand details like what you've argued above is really, once again, putting a nail in the coffin.

Also, nice hyper-focus to the literals instead of the practical argument being made. Nobody ever defined if we were discussing civil or criminal law, or even what classification it should be. So, would you mind explaining why you thought the example given would be inferred as a criminal offense?

Do you think they’re stupid?

Do you think anyone else but you is this stupid? Seriously, this is some piss poor arguing.

Hope you or your family don't get falsely accused or convicted of any of those felonies then. Seriously, some people don't understand, once you strip rights from one group of people, it's only a matter of time until either they or their families either fall into that group, or the group gets expanded so large that they will inevitably be included in it. If you don't think you'll end up in that group, you're either incredibly conceited, or you probably deserve to be in jail in the first place. Seriously why would people who benefit from disenfranchisement ever want to stop?

politicians are really just career criminals. They can't earn an honest dollar on their own so they have to buy and sell favors for it, all while selling out the rest of the country underneath them.

If you're not careful, that'll incentivize competing companies to collude with or acquire suppliers to drive up prices for competitors. I know that wasn't the thought behind the suggestion, but there's always someone there to break the spirit of the law, if not the word. And there's always people breaking the word of the law.

It's not about paying to not see ads. Anyone with an adblocker could understand that much. The point is to support an app you personally like, and appreciating what comes with an app that has an income stream.
Part of that comes with understanding that all things come at a cost. Like many have said above, FOSS comes at the expense of the time and money of the developers of the app themselves, and some of that cost is passed down to the consumer (anyone who uses FOSS without contributing to development is a consumer in the end, after all).
The consumer has to bear the cost of slower, more infrequent updates that are entirely dictated by the developers schedule and whim, with less focus or effort put into the design or other features. And honestly, if a consumer can't tolerate that, that's totally fine, that's what dedicated teams and people who do these things for a job are for.
If you're one of those people who doesn't mind slower, less intuitive, or buggier software, then go ahead. But until you can actually prove that a FOSS offers better services than a marketable service, people are really just going to dismiss you as someone who can't think for themselves.

I played the heck out of it too! The base building mechanics are pretty satisfying. I do like how they've set up exploration, and I can't wait to see some of the location designs, plus once they build up combat, it may create a pretty fun loop. The underdust is a pretty cool location too, hopefully it gets more than the one variant soon. That being said, I do think the roadmap is a pretty achievable one, and it'll keep people coming back when there are major updates.

Some of that really resonates with me. My personal take on the lack of empathy and the aggression towards protestors, volunteers, or other non-profit work really spirals into one thing; the widening wage gap. I know if I could make enough money without having to work 50+ hours on an above average wage to make ends meet, I'd probably do more things with my life. I'd create, do volunteer work, protest about things I care about. When I was making less and actually struggling, any little extra hurdle on what was supposed to be a fun day off or little chores were suddenly a lot more emotionally draining, demotivating, frustrating, and all the other negative connotations.

I think as more and more people start losing what comforts they are used to, they lose a lot of the safety nets that kept them pleasant in the first place. keep in mind, there are a lot of people who were middle class just 5 years ago that got squeezed out, and even if they were polite people, wealth doesn't make people grow, it just makes problems go away. So we had a lot of people who never grew because they didn't go through these hardships and haven't had time to learn all the hard lessons. Probably feels like they just fell off a fun slide and broke their leg on the dismount.

So, yeah, I do think people are more apathetic to problems. I've been told multiple times to my face by personal friends, "It's not a big problem", "It doesn't affect me, so I don't really care" and other ways to politely deflect the conversation into a "it's not my problem" and that's the real stickler. People like that won't really care until it's a problem that affects them, personally. It's why I think, in a twisted sort of way, that people being ripped out of middle class and others losing some of their safety nets is a good thing.

I do want to clarify that for the generals, it is not okay, and is a worse trend for everyone overall. But it forces these people to suffer the indignities they regularly come to expect, forces them to realize that this 'minor setback' is in fact not minor at all, and will keep them perpetually in this place in life if they do not deal with a problem that is not unique to them. Forces them to think about someone other than themselves, which is a hard thing to do when they don't want to do it themselves, especially if they have no reason to.

Now they do.

I love the new overlay UI while in game. The menus are smaller and take up less screen space so you don't have the annoying problem of UI elements overlapping each other, unless it's by user intent. When steam needs to open a chromium browser in the overlay, now there's properly a tab feature and URL bar, which is HUGE when you're trying to browse discussions or guides. The design and gray nature means it's not difficult to read and is in line with the library UI update which has cleanly smoothed out the feeling of disconnect these past few months. Overall, props to the UI/UX people working behind this update, it looks great and functions even better!