That’s fair! I’ve often levelled this same argument against my friend when it comes to mastery and video games.

I mainly play video games during my lunch break at work. It would not really make sense to practice a musical instrument in the office.

Of course. But that’s often a sign of bad game design. Difficulty should follow a smooth curve. Enormous difficulty spikes are what you expect from old games in the 80s.

But there’s also an element to mastery that gamers seem to completely neglect: downtime. I finished my math degree a couple of years ago and throughout that entire process I got stuck on math assignments thousands of times. Bashing my head against a wall trying to solve the problem right now rarely worked. I had much better success putting the pencil down and coming back to the problem later, after a period of downtime.

Since graduating I’ve been revisiting a lot of old NES games that I never finished growing up because they were too difficult. Since I’m busy with work I don’t have a ton of time to play every day. This forced downtime actually has the benefit of getting me to think and reflect on my approach, just as I would expect it to!

It is, but different people enjoy different things. Hard games like this focus on long term goals and achieving mastery as the source of fun. Other games aim to be more relaxing.

I like all types of games. I just think it’s a bit silly when people argue “why isn’t this orange more like a banana?”

I think the runback is important to give you time to think. You can repeatedly attempt a difficult section of a game with a ton of checkpoints and get through it without actually learning it properly. You essentially get lucky that your hands do the right thing just enough to get by.

Imagine going to a piano recital where the person keeps messing up and repeating a difficult passage of the music, never actually being able to play the entire thing without making a mistake! That’s just not very impressive!

The goal of playing a difficult game should be to improve your skills and get better, figure out new strategies and use them in battle, not merely reach the end.

Banking, messages, email, calendars, discord, messenger, maps, browser, Voyager (Lemmy), YouTube, music, shattered pixel dungeon, Wikipedia, notes, swipe keyboard, duolingo, WhatsApp, desmos, reminders, camera, photos, home automation….

I use my iPhone for a ton of different things. I pretty much never use it to make calls and hate talking on the phone (which is what flip phones are optimized for).

Nintendo’s always been litigious and controlling of their brand. What they haven’t been (until recently) is price-gouging peddlers of derivative schlock resting on their laurels. They used to be afraid of low-quality games and rehashes diluting their brand (they witnessed the carnage of 1983). Now they just don’t care.

Respect is a weird word. It seems to have 2 nearly opposite meanings (kind of like literally):

1. Deep admiration for someone or something for their abilities, qualities, or achievements
2. Due regard for the feelings, wishes, or rights of others

So the first one implies that respect must be earned. The second implies that everyone must be respected by default (their due regard), thus respect is unearned.

The US has turned into Ferenginar so gradually I didn’t even notice!

I support thrifting 100% though. Buy stuff from real people, stuff that’s good quality that somebody no longer needs, and avoid buying newly manufactured disposable junk.

To be fair, I think it’s pretty hard to get legitimate reviews from happy customers of a PSU. If it’s doing its job, you don’t even notice that it’s there. However if it fails, you’re likely to be highly motivated to go leave a negative review.

Not saying this is a good PSU. I’ve never used it; it could be a piece of crap with leaky recycled caps for all I know. The above issue is a possibility with many different utilitarian products.

I don’t. I just use the phone because it works well with my laptop. My previous one was all banged up and scratched, so I wouldn’t really call it a status symbol.

I don’t really care about status though. My friends are a bunch of misfits. If it bothers you that people are using something as a status symbol, perhaps you’re more concerned about status than you realize. I’d love to just advise you to stop caring about that but it’s not that easy. Status seeking is a pretty common, normal behaviour.

Space isn’t a science either, it’s the subject matter for astronomy and astrophysics.

Yes! Playing some Dark Castle in the woods!

Well the other thing is that design work doesn’t scale the way art does. You can’t throw 1000 game designers at a project and expect them to create a coherent game design.

So you end up with one or a small team of game designers and they need to get the major parts of the design done early since everyone else follows from that. This leaves you with so little room for experimentation that you end up with a cookie cutter game design.

Sorry dude, but cars are technology too, not just self driving cars. Every death due to cars is a technology death. You can’t escape the reality of tradeoffs.

What do you mean science backs it up? Science is finding massive social problems with technology all the time. Social media and its negative impacts on mental health (especially for teen and preteen girls), for example. Microplastics everywhere, for another. Climate change anyone?

Sounds like you should start growing your own hot peppers! That’s what I’ve been doing the past 2 years. I love it!

Oh okay. That sounds a lot better than I thought!

I think to me the crank seems ideal for a fishing game. Has anyone made one of those?

I’m not sure actually. I’m into the hobby but I have only a New 3DS. I plan to get one of those handhelds at some point but I’m not there yet!