Fortnite is something I've grown to appreciate (but never play, because I will never make an Epic Games account). The microtransactions are so silly (I feel bad about humanity and society when I think about them) but the game has a lot of technical depth and variety. There's a Guitar Hero in Fortnite. There's a Minecraft in Fortnite. It's really a lot like Ace of Spades was before Jagex killed it.
What I mean to say is "I think you and I think about games similarly and I read your post with that lens." I think the main contention is that "fair" is necessarily subjective, and tricky to define.
If I were to suggest a definition, I'd say a singleplayer game which feels fair is one communicates well, does not have difficulty which demands a huge time commitment, and (counter-intuitively) has generous hitboxes. E.g. Celeste is fair because everything is clearly communicated (you can see the level and know what will kill you), the tricky levels send you back to the start of the screen, and the hitboxes feel sensible by lying to you up and down. (Celeste has three hitboxes, and hazards have tiny and sparse hitboxes.)
And often these games are not as good as From at realizing what players can take or not.
This is something I really liked about Tunic. I could beat any Soulslike I think, but I usually don't want to put up with that. But I had this experience in Tunic, where the first boss was very difficult. I thought I might have sequence broken to an impossible boss. Then, (spoilers; rot-13, you can use DDG to un-rot13 V unq pbyyrpgrq n cntr bs gur phgr va-tnzr znahny, juvpu unq n oyheel fperrafubg bs gung obff ng ebhtuyl zl fxvyy yriry, jvgu na rapbhentvat "LBH PNA QB VG!" zrffntr. Gur tnzr nagvpvcngrq zl pbaprea naq gbyq zr, npghnyyl, lbh pna orng guvf obff.
Then I beat the boss, and I was able to trust that I could beat any of the bosses in Tunic. They were just about the edge of what I was willing to put up with, though. I liked that experience very very much.
To add on to this, the Dark Souls and related wikis seem to be pretty bad (Fandom??) and a lot of the knowledge seems to be on YouTube videos, which is a culture of knowledge I don't respect and don't want to put up with.
I did try to get into Elden Ring when it launched but it didn't run on my computer, and the community was insufferable. People on r/eldenring got personally offended by the criticism of "it has a launch bug" so I gave up on them.
I've given them a cumulative 10 hours maybe; investing 30 minutes as a Hater with an open mind seems like it might have art payoff.
I'd invested 20 minutes in Outer Wilds before I was encouraged to see it through by a friend, and I am so happy I did. Maybe Dark Soulses can be like that too
I started listening to the Severance podcast, and Ben Stiller and Adam Scott compare Atlassian's Confluence (the worst wiki software in the world, as you probably know; it's so bad) to the Severance procedure, with wording very much like what you quoted in the post.
Yeah ;( All of my connections outside the USA have some degree of stakes in here (beyond the usual influence the US has worldwide). I'm already in on the "humanity is one organism on the earth, individuals are illusions and borders are lies" thing, but the only non (us) americans I know who talk about local politics are Canadians, which is already pretty heavily intertwined with US politics. I liked to think of myself as a global thinking person, but I've been looking increasingly local, and thinking more and more exclusively about US politics (and the politics of other nuclear-armed nations).
Regarding the first article:
tldr: I read the first article and took away about as much as a non-anthropologist might take away from an anthropology academia paper. I end this section asking how you found this article / how this article ended up on your reading docket?
I do very much appreciate the articles. I've been hungry for Brainy Readings after leaving academia, but there are few forums on the internet where such things are discussed that aren't also LessWrong-likes. I have to admit that I've only read the first one through so far
I started to write something of a book report for the first article that I've had to pare down a lot. Tbh, at first I didn't think I was the target the audience for the first article. The abstract felt like an impenetrable wall (and, at least in my field, that was supposed to be the easy part), but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rest of the article was the simple thesis, elaborated thoroughly, with a hefty contextualization in an academia I am not part of.
I had some prior background which helped contextualized the sections pertaining to language oppression in the US, Canada and China. I internalized some of those facts but otherwise it felt like too much for me to chew.
But most of what I cut out from the first and second drafts of this reply is "I can't appreciate this entirley". (I know this comment is already so comically long that I had to cut it into sections, but it was way longer!) The field is a bit too distant for me, some terms or ideas are a bit too abstract for me (is it really appropriate to label this academic article 'militant'? Is racism really inherent to any state? These are the ideas which need more elaboration for me to agree with.). It feels like liters of information flowing into my brain which only has room for a pint.
I'm curious, what got this article on your reading docket? When I was in undergrad and grad school, I usually read articles as part of an assignment, or research, or for a presentation for student organizations. Without a question to answer, or deliverable to produce, I felt my reading was directionless.
Regarding the second article, and more of a reply to you:
So I haven't read the second article through yet, and I have a separate 300 words on that already. But I really regret not reading this one first. I feel like I've internalized a lot more from this article (which I've read for only ~10 minutes so far, compared to the ~90 on the first article).
But it's been about 100 hours (I'm sorry it took so long, and I'm sorry I didn't even finish the second article yet!) But yes you did indeed make sense! I'm sorry it took me so long to reply.
Anyways, I am going to read that second paper eventually (probably in the next 50 hours)
(sorry for being late to reply, i'm still reading the first paper, i just wanted to send you an acknowledgement at the ~50h mark lol. i'll be back here)
Yeah, that's entirely fair. I'm sorry about being Americentric but I also don't know how I would be less so from my positionality. I can only post from the sum of what I know, which has been poured into my brain inside America.
I don't mean to ask for an essay but I'm also not firm in my stance and want to know more? I think suicides to send a message are still probably usually a waste of the rest of a life. But I want to know more about your viewpoint in general (or at least the paper you mentioned? I know only a tiny bit about Tibet and the general history of Chinese imperialism, and even less about Tibetan self-immolation.) (And it's not unthinkable to me that censorship and repression could be so strong that self-immolation is the only way at all to spread a message, especially when so many people are doing it. But I don't know enough to go the rest of the way and imagine anything specific about the impact it would have.)
(I also am eager to discuss suicide in general and I appreciate this thread a lot so I hope my first comment doesn't monopolize this whole thread lol)
Oops, I edited out my asterisk; so * there is good reason to speculate Aaron Bushnell might have been trans, people who knew Bushnell said otherwise. It's touchy, so I'll just quote Bushnell's name and use proper nouns.
Sorry; I should clarify what I mean. By "cheap and quick", I really do just mean that the amplification is real and short-lived. And I only have my American political context here.
The self-immolation protest suicides in Tibet are something I really didn't know much about at all. (Other than searching up their wiki articles after having had read your comment.) I'm only speaking in my context as someone in the USA who's mostly aware of these suicides in how they interact with politics in America.
I can only readily recall two examples (other than suicide attacks), even though I know there were many more. The most salient being "Aaron Bushnell"* self-immolating last year. The anniversary is tomorrow and I doubt it'll be remembered at all.
And by "cheap", I'm trying not to fedpost here, but far-right terrorists in America have conducted suicide attacks that have proven to have real political gains. Trump might not be in the office today if his supporters didn't show ten years of evidence that they're willing to throw away their lives and drive and shoot and kill for him. I think suicides amplify a message, but don't have the same chilling effect that suicides attached to terror attacks do.
I feel for that. I think "copycat suicides" really are a serious problem. I think suicides to prove a point are usually just a waste. They're a cheap an quick way to amplify your voice a little bit, at the cost of ever being able to speak again.
That said, suicide is also a pretty good solution to almost every personal problem. So much of the dialogue around suicide refuses to acknowledge this, because "We concede that suicide is a reprieve from all pain forever" probably isn't good messaging." Trying to reduce suicides is probably a good thing.
And I'm not sure a peer group of depressed and suicidal individuals wouldn't just fuel each others' worst tendencies.
This is a difficult point for me. There used to be such a group on Reddit that did go into the "Suicide will end your pain but also put it onto others, and most suicidal people really shouldn't do it, etc." It was legitimately good and useful dialogue with decent moderation.
When Reddit banned the community, it found another form, and it lead to many many premature deaths. I know people who have died after discovering methods on the offshoot community. I think these communities are possible to exist as something healthy, but that's very difficult to do and is also a huge liability.
I don't have any answers here, I'm sitting here with you on this. It's a subject I love to talk about but it feels like such a danger. It's very unique as a taboo.
Personally I feel offended that you would interpret my participation in a silly post as an indication that I have "low self esteem". I feel insulted that you would think I have such a sick and twisted worldview that I would think anyone can deserve to be insulted.
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