#game backlog 2023 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reliquiaen · 4 months

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As promised, here are the games I played in my Clearing The Backlog quest for 2023. I didn’t get through all of the games on my list, but I got through quite a chunk of them, so I’ll be continuing my challenge into 2024 in the hopes that eventually I’ll get all caught up! I also kind of want to write reviews for some of the games that really resonated with me, but I don’t know when I’ll have time for that and I also don’t know what format I want to do them in, so we’ll see.

Anyway, below the cut are all the games with little summaries of my thoughts on them. I’ve started 100%ing games, but that’s not what this is about so it’s not mentioned here but most of the ones I enjoyed I completed to 100%. Figure that’s a good way of saying ‘hey I loved this’.

Released This Year & Enjoyed:

Dredge – Fishing mini-game but make it the macro-game instead, throw some Lovecraft in there, mix it in with a fun mystery. Literally it’s like someone crawled into my brain and made a checklist of things I enjoy: chill game, the ocean, sea monsters, Cthulhu, insanity mechanic, fun art style, fishing mechanic, unreliable narrators, mysteries, like oh my god. They just made a game special for me? Play it if you haven’t. Thanks.

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty – The DLC and the 2.0 patch really did wonders, like I had a lot of complaints about the base game but so so many of those complaints were addressed by the DLC. I have so many thoughts and feelings about how Phantom Liberty changed the story and the themes and the overall progress of V’s arc and I’m just so emotional okay.

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Literally rekindling my love of crpgs, my 2024 is now gonna be all the ones I’ve been putting off for aaaages.

Above Snakes – Interesting exploration/survival game where you unlock ‘tiles’ while doing your survival stuff and you get to build the world how you want it. Can be a bit obtuse and grindy at times but it’s pretty and it’s wild west themed so that’s fun.

Terra Nil – Billed as a ‘reverse city builder’ this is just a chill game about making apocalyptic environments green again. It’s laid back and pretty, very good for after work when you’re tired.

Released In Previous Year & Enjoyed:

Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen – This was a revisit to polish off achievements because the sequel was announced and I’m obsessed. Go play this right now, it holds up so well, the combat is excellent, the STORY IS AMAZING GO PLAY IT!

Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning – Finally got around to this one; this is the third time I’ve bought this game and second time I’ve 100% it (maybe third? idk if I finished it on Xbox). I think that tells you something. The new Fatesworn DLC was such a grind though, don’t recommend that at all, but the base game is mwah.

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order – Again, finishing off achievements in preparation for playing Survivor. and I understand now why past-me never 100% it originally because some of those chests were ANNOYING AS HELL. It really needed some QOL things like fast travel back to the ship and like PLEASE why does he move SO SLOWLY while force carrying something? You’re using mind magic, boy, go faster!

Mass Effect Legendary Edition – I think the last of the games I revisited for full completion this year? I think ME4 (if/when it releases) is going to be a very divisive game, primarily because this trilogy is so good, so beloved, and no matter what they do, ME4 won’t live up to it. Prove me wrong, Bioware.

Kena Bridge of Spirits – This game is SO good I made an exception to my ‘no soulslikes’ rule (which I guess I did for SWJFO also but I didn’t know that was soulslike going in) the vibes are immaculate, the art style is so cute and pretty and the story! Man it was good.

The Entropy Centre – You know how there’s no Portal 3 and we’re all really sad about it? Play this instead it will literally scratch the exact same itch. Banger puzzles, banger story, banger dialogue. 10/10 game I can’t believe I waited to play it.

Spider-Man Miles Morales – Was so thrilled this came to PC. I loved the original game when I played it on PS4 so much I played it again on PC and getting to play more? Wonderful. I’m chomping at the bit for the sequel to be ported but I’ve gotta get through Horizon Forbidden West first. And you know what? Kudos to Spider-Man for making the movement so satisfying that collectibles don’t feel like a chore. Honestly, that’s the most impressive part.

Lost Ember – Also a really lovely art style and the story had me in TEARS a couple of times like it’s SO good I would love to do a full review for this one it was an emotional roller coaster from start to finish. Absolutely DO NOT recommend you 100% it though. This game is collectible hell and it’s not fun. Enjoy the story and call it a day.

Coromon – Pokémon wishes it was this good. Seriously. The QOL features this game has makes Pokémon look like an indie title. The sprites are fantastic, the art is fantastic, the creature designs are fantastic, the story is off-the-wall batshit insane, but who cares. You can change the spinner you catch your mons in. You can select which colour morph you want. You can get a one-time chance to upgrade each mon’s stats. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on this one, lads. Forget Pokémon. Play Coromon. (The devs are still updating it also!!)

Doom Eternal – Rip and tear, you know the drill. Was just as fun and frenetic as i was expecting. I understand why some people were saying the platforming was too much and to be fair that purple goo is my ARCH NEMESIS like who thought it was a good idea to put ‘slow down sludge’ into the ‘run and gun’ game? Imbeciles.

Spyro Reignited – Legit just cruising through the levels is so fun? Like a lil bit of childhood, and what more could you ask for? Dragons, pick up shiny things, set stuff on fire, perfect.

Abzu – Swimming around in a pretty underwater space with fishes and stuff. So chill, so good vibes, so glad I finally played it.

Dorfromantik – It’s like a… landscape builder… I guess. Place tiles with matching edges, make a pretty lil township and a forest as big as possible. It’s another one of those chill and unwinding games, you can really tell that work was kicking my ass this year, huh.

Journey – FINALLY played it. Worth. Now we wait for Sword of the Sea pls be just as good.

The Pedestrian – The puzzles are really fun, some simple, some more complex, but it has a low stake feel to it that I really loved. And the twist at the end!! Was so good!!

Stray – cat game cat game cat game

Biped – A really fun little co-op puzzle game. The controls can be a bit wonky but it’s a good time if you’ve got a friend who’ll play it with you.

The Stanley Parable – This was the year I got to unlock that achievement for not playing it for however many years that was. So I replayed it and got that. Still such a fun game. Doesn’t make me want to buy the anniversary version though.

Superliminal – More puzzles! (This will be a trend that continues into 2024 I have many puzzle games to play this year.) These ones were SO mind bending it was unreal. Like they aren’t kidding when they say to think outside the box. Forget boxes. Forget thinking. Good luck. Some of the movement was a bit rough, gave me a motion sickness feeling so be careful I guess if you tend towards that.

Assassin’s Creed & Assassin’s Creed II – Replayed these just for something fun and easy to tickle my nostalgia. They’re still really good. This is the style of AC game I really love.

Games I’m Neutral Towards:

Armello – I often feel compelled to buy games that are made by Aussie creators, this was one such case. It’s fun, honestly; it’s a hero-based game where you play matches. In my head I compare it to things like hearthstone and idk chess. You play your hand, try to outmanoeuvre your opponents, and it’s got great mechanics to keep it interesting. I had fun with it, but it’s not something that appealed to me enough to make me stick with it.

Hooked On You – Yeah, the Dead by Daylight dating sim, okay it was fun. Really silly, but really fun.

Ship of Fools – This is a cute little rogue-like where you sail through cursed waters fighting sea monsters as adorable like… um… seashell people? And it’s co-op which is why I gave it a shot. It was fine, I had more fun with it than most rogue-likes, probably because I brought a friend with me.

Sons of the Forest – Survival games are very hit-or-miss with me and while I enjoyed my time with this one, it’s best with friends and always so hard to schedule time to play. Generally, with early access games, I don’t sink a ton of time into them and this is a good example. Maybe I’ll go back to it when it gets its full release.

Destiny 2 – In the search for a game to play with all my friends, we tried this. The combat is fun but the grind is REAL and none of us wanted to commit to the many hundreds of hours Destiny was asking us to sink into it. I miss when Bungie was making story-driven single player games.

Sable – A very pretty and peaceful game that gives me similar vibes to Breath of the Wild. I had a nice enough time with it, but just like BotW, I got bored of just moseying around aimlessly. Something about the way the animation was done gave me a headache, too, but I really wanted to love it so I might go back and play it now and then. The fishing is fun. I already know I’m going to be fishing obsessed in it. That’s my end goal.

Prince of Persia (2008) & Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands (2010) – Putting these two together because you have NO IDEA how upset I am about these. I ADORED these games on the Xbox and played them so much, the stories and the combat, the art style in the 2008 game, the monster design in the 2010 game. Like. They were so good. Maybe some of that is nostalgia goggles, but replaying them this year (or attempting to, I should say) was such a chore. The controls were extremely unresponsive and I had hard crashes in both. In one case, I couldn’t even close the menu in the 2008 game. I paused it, couldn’t close the menu, it crashed. Couldn’t find any fixes, either. I am distraught.

Games I Did Not Enjoy:

Bastion, Transistor, Dead Cells, Hob, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, Othercide (has FANTASTIC monster designs, I really wanted to like this one)

These games all gave me more or less the same feelings: they’re very pretty with fantastic art styles (I love a stylistic commitment, and I love not-realism thanks) but with gameplay that didn’t hook me. The fight, die, repeat loop of rogue-likes/lites and the extreme precision required during combat or platforming that punishes anything less than flawless execution simply isn’t for me. I can appreciate the high skill ceilings and for some games I’ll even stick with it, but it’s a rare game that makes me want to pour hours and hours into mastering every system and mechanic. They’re not for me, and that’s okay. From now on (my 2024 gaming commitment!) I’m not going to buy a game with a fun art style unless the rest of the game also vibes with me!

#personal #reliviews #games #game backlog 2023 #welp #that's that with this year i guess #there are a lot of crpgs and puzzle games on my to do list for 2024 #so i'd say it's a good thing #there aren't a bunch of games i'm looking forward to #basically just dragons dogma 2 hfw and avowed #which are all gonna take a while now i think about it #oof #oh god and there are three games from this year i didn't get #jedi survivor rogue trader and dark descent #yowch okay nvmd #got my work cut out for me still #wish me luck guys!

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megidoreyn · 5 months

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Gimmel SMT2. His design being a reference to Apollo with the laurel crown and lyre have always caught my attention... I can't wait to meet him after finishing SMT1! 💚twitter | 💚misskey

#shin megami tensei #smt #megaten #smt ii #smt2 #gimmel #posted a different color variation of this on twitter a long time ago but ended up preferring the one without color overlays LOL #I love his laurel crown...it's so pretty!#going Neutral on SMT1! it's been a super fun ride so far and I'm enjoying the dialogue choices a lot #especially when it comes to seeing what the homies (boyfriends) waruo and yoshio have to say....#listen...as a person who loves + posts waruyona/walterjonathan... I am Morally Obligated and By Default also enjoy waruyoshio ok too LOL #whenever it comes to finishing my gaming backlog or drawing/exercising...I usually always choose working out or drawing instead NGL LOL #good time management is important tho! before 2023 ends I'd like to manage my time better to put in some much-needed gaming + leisure time

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chemicalbrew · 9 months

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finished the base game of hat in time. now what 💜

#the obvious answer is go play the dlc worlds but im pretty sure i would get burnt out on the game doing that #cause i got 40 time pcs :) i think thats literally the perfect stopping point #my backlog (slightly diminished because i spent a lot of july looking at games that turned out to be shit) is staring at me again #but im once again drawn to old favorites....#i keep thinking about how it would be absolutely hilarious if my 2023 game list will have not just one repeat from 2021 #BUT TWO #like help me #anyway i think i will give ys 9 a shot next because i keep thinking about it. i miss falcom #but there's literally so many options and i dont feel particularly drawn to anything #sigh.#mayb its time to do that savant knife kz run i wanted #zero.txt

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theneverendingbacklogblog · 11 months

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Thoughts on Dead Space Remake.

From the Evil Assholes (EA) that brought you (closing a famous and renowned studio) and Star Wars Battlefront 2s PR nightmare, EA has produced a stellar remake of its beloved horror Dead Space, without any unnecessary multiplayer or micro transactions tacked on, (As of writing this 22/2/23), which I now publish five months later.

Dead Space looks amazing, with an updated engine, and textures to match the powerhouse units of 2023, the USG Ishimura has never looked better, and never been more traumatizing to stay alive in. Isaac has also received a facelift, modelled to look like his voice actor Gunner Wright. Several roles have also been recast, Hammond and Daniels, with the new actors smashing their roles out of obit.

The story still follows the originals faithfully, albeit with several characters more fleshed out, several new side quests which give more time for side characters to shine. Isaac also drops his strong silent act, and instead comments on the scenario that he finds himself in, making the game feel a lot more natural, for instance Issac swears if he runs out of ammo, or if the player decides to spam the stomp button repeatedly. Neat!

The game is a technical masterpiece, the player can travel around the ship, and backtrack at their leisure, something the original did not allow, when I returned to previous areas, I found Necromorphs who I had killed, lying in the same position from hours before, next to ammo or pieces of the environment I used to kill them.

The games lighting and sound is something to be cheered about, I haven’t felt a more tense atmosphere in a horror game as of late. Hearing Nercomorphs in the walls, and far off in the distance creates a stellar atmosphere dripping with fear of what’s outside the range of my flashlight. Taking away that lighting and leaving the areas in pitch darkness, with the player only being able to use their torchlight to see, is another added mechanic that is a chef’s kiss.

Frustrating elements have been removed, such a transporting a huge spoiler through an area, instead, the player must survive a gauntlet before moving on to the next story beat. As well as the old gravity moving mechanic, instead of having to aim and jump spot to spot, Isaac can use his rocket jets in Zero G, a mechanic that feels fun to use, and could have been a disaster if the programmers didn’t get it right.

All in all, Dead Space 2023 is a game that should delight new players, and make old players rejoice. Gameplay feels fresh, and fun. A fresh face lift has brought this game back to life much like the Necromorphs in the game, it’s a solid horror, with fantastic action thrown in. I have high hopes for a Dead Space 2 Remake. If you are a fan of sci fi horror, this game is highly recommended.

#the never-ending backlog blog #dead space remake #Dead Space #Horror Games #games of 2023

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kallowrites · 1 year

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“The eyes must stay supplanted to the flesh, for if they don’t, well… Surely you’ve seen what happens, dear hunter? All is not as it seems, in Yharnam… Not even the humble pebble.”

I have not stopped thinking about a Bloodborne 'theory' (there's p rock solid (lol) evidence for it imo) I read once that all pebbles are/were actual eyes at one point, and it IS gonna be mentioned in this fic, I stg

#bloodborne #kallowrites #excerpt #writing #also partly posting this because yes im alive and im trying to force myself to work on this fic again #it's probably gonna be weird and all over the place because I haven't written a multi-chapter fic in ages #(especially in full? I have lots of *idea* docs but.... not much 'completed')#so like... what even IS pacing lmao -- BUT WHO CARES I just wanna try my hand at writing Bloodborne stuff #2023 is the year I wanna get weird with it #(but also this will be difficult because i have a p considerable game backlog... including Sekiro AND Elden Ring LOL)#BUT I will at LEAST start a Bloodborne fic (as in post it on AO3) this year -- there's a resolution I can manage

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fuckyeahmasahirosakurai · 1 year

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My Nintendo (no pun intended) year in review for 2022!

#personal #how did smash end up on the list #i havent picked up that game in a century-#oh right it was when i went on holiday and played the hell out of it #anyway need to work through my gigantic backlog of switch games LOL #that would be great for 2023

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jcmarchi · 4 months

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Reader Discussion: What Video Game Gifts Did You Get This Holiday Season?

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/reader-discussion-what-video-game-gifts-did-you-get-this-holiday-season/

Reader Discussion: What Video Game Gifts Did You Get This Holiday Season?

It’s December 26, which means Christmas has come and gone, and other seasonal holidays are underway while we all wait for the new year to kick off next week. Everyone knows that the days between your winter holiday and New Year’s Eve are for gaming, right? At least, we hope you’re doing some gaming today, tomorrow, and the day after! Or maybe you’re kicking back with a good book, or watching a new movie?

[embedded content]

We don’t know what it is you’re doing but we want to! In fact, we want to know what video game presents you found under the tree or in a beautifully wrapped gift box this year, too.

Did you get a new console? Did you get some games to add to your never-ending backlog – we’re all still catching up on 2023’s frankly absurd gauntlet of releases, right? Did you get some cool shirts, some Fortnite V-bucks, or a new coffee cup with Clive from Final Fantasy XVI on it?

Whatever it is you got, we want to know so drop a line in the comments below! And if this year’s gifts weren’t video game-themed, tell us what your favorite gift was anyway!

On behalf of everyone here at Game Informer, we hope the holidays are treating you well (and we hope you’re getting through that backlog for the sake of 2024’s release schedule).

#2023 #2024 #amp #backlog #book #box #Christmas #coffee #december #eve #Future #game #games #gaming #holidays #it #metaverse #Music #Other #styles #Tree #Video #youtube

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inima · 1 year

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so. when wolf among us 2 . when oxenfree 2. when silk song.

#2023 OK.#i will keep waiting.#>:(#c'estmoi #i should probably finish my backlog of games #shadow of hte colossus im so sorry i just suck at playing you

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zehecatl · 1 year

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anyone want a huge, giant, like absolutely enormous, video game rec post, because hmkdfmkdmf i kinda wanna 👀

#ze.txt #it'd be a HUGE work in progress though like. i game so much #and my main goal for 2023 is MORE GAMING. DESTROY THAT BACKLOG

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defiledheartsblog · 15 days

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I just released another monthly smut, thus increasing the smut backlog in size. This month's interactive smut and the backlog are available on my Patreon for patrons in Outraged Fox tier (and up). Now, the backlog includes:

June 2023: Kinda toxic smut with Marcus in a cave

July: Quinn wakes you up from a nightmare and is pretty weird about it

August: Niall gets ambushed by Hati in the middle of naked druid rituals (as one does)

September: Kinda toxic Legate smut

October: Fooling around with a dom Camilla in her wine cellar

November: Hati becomes the offering to Tinsae's goddess (another perfectly normal day in the peaceful town of Moguntiacum)

December: Drinking game with Niall and Marcus

January 2024: Reading poetry with Marcus

February: Quinn hogties you. As one does

March: Monster loving

This month's (April) chosen smut RO is Niall.

#defiled hearts: the barbarian #interactive fiction #smut #patreon

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idrellegames · 4 months

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Wayfarer 2024 Roadmap

It’s the start of a new year and I’m excited to announce my plans for Wayfarer’s development.

The primary focus for 2024 is finishing Episode 3 and starting Episode 4. My goal has always been to get the alpha build to the point where it is one episode ahead of the public build, and forcing my way through this period has been very difficult. Episode 3 has turned into a more challenging endeavour than I anticipated due to its sheer size and complexity. I did not intend to take over a year to finish it, but if I’ve learned anything from the creative process it’s that it is unpredictable and things never go according to plan.

The 2024 roadmap is for an idealized scenario. I am hoping I have given myself enough wiggle room should things go off-course. With that in mind, the plan for the last 6 months of the years is an estimate and will likely change. Regardless, the goal remains the same: finish Episode 3, finish Episode 4, and release Episode 3 publicly.

Winter • January to March

This quarter will be focused on finishing the next stages of Episode 3. Episode 3 is divided into 4 parts:

Part 1: the beginning of the episode, following the routes that occur if the player ends Episode 2 with Aeran or Veyer. This part is finished and was added to the alpha build in May 2023. It includes over 300,000 words of playable content.

Part 2: the beginning of the episode, following the routes that occur if the player ends Episode 2 with Melchior, alone, or drunk. This part was skipped over and will be returned to at a later date.

Part 3: the middle of the episode, split into three different routes that eventually bottleneck at a specific point. This part is currently in-progress, with Route 1 nearing completion.

Part 4: the episode finale

January and February will be devoted to writing Episode 3 Part 3, which includes finishing Route 1 and completing Routes 2 and 3. In March, I will code that material and playtest it. Once it has been thoroughly playtested, it will be added to the alpha build (playable on my Patreon).

March will also see an update to the public build. Patch 2.7. will not add any new content, but it will patch reported bugs in Episodes 1 and 2 and update some quality of life issues.

Spring • April to June

This quarter will be focused on writing Episode 3 Part 2, the Episode 3 finale, and coding and playtesting all of the remaining material. Should all go according to plan, the Episode 3 alpha will be finished at the end of June. All routes will be playable for members of my Patreon.

The next round of playtester applications will open in May. Playtesters are volunteers who play the alpha build in search of bugs, continuity errors, and typos. They get first access to new content, and updates and patches before anyone else does. Because Wayfarer’s gameplay includes hundreds of choices and many, many variations that build on each other, playing multiple times and checking different options is essential for testing to ensure each area of the game functions as intended.

In June bonus content (short stories, writing tutorials, worldbuilding and lore posts, etc) will return to my Patreon. It is currently on a break, but the backlog of extras and specials are available to members of the Apprentice tier.

Summer • July to September

If the Episode 3 alpha is finished on time, this quarter will start the development of Episode 4. Episode 4 is divided into three separate routes that have no-crossover and each feature a main companion. Alexia’s (Route A) will be worked on in August and Ren’s (Route B) will be worked on in September.

This is an estimated timeline and is subject to change.

Fall • October to December

The last quarter will see the end of Episode 4’s development. This includes Calla’s route (Route C) and additional coding and playtesting. A second round of playtester applications will open in October. If all goes well, December will see the release of the Episode 4 alpha on Patreon and Episode 3 will launch on the public build.

This is an estimated timeline and is subject to change.

#wayfarer #wayfarer if #housekeeping #announcements #dev log

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i-crochet-things · 1 year

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Junimo Amigurumi Pattern

Check out my other patterns on Ravelry and Etsy.

Pattern is available as a PDF on Ravelry.

Working on uploading some stuff from my backlog of patterns. Stardew Valley was one of my comfort games during 2020. That game eats free time like no one’s business.

This is an icrochetthings original pattern © 2023. For personal use only. Do not copy, sell, alter, or distribute this pattern or parts of it. You may sell a limited number of your handmade finished items provided you credit icrochetthings as the designer.

Size: 3” tall

Materials:

• DK weight yarn in green, black, pink • C (2.75mm) crochet hook • 6mm safety eyes • Stuffing • Scissors • Yarn needle

#crochet #crochet pattern #free crochet pattern #amigurumi #amigurumi pattern #free amigurumi pattern #handmade #plush #junimo #stardew valley

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Brinklump Linkdump

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore

Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have "pricing power," the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo:

https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427

What's going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're raising the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It's like these guys can't even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.

Take Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.

Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a malicious compliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must still pay Apple a 27% fee for every dollar their process:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-app-store-rule-changes-draw-sharp-rebuke-from-critics-150047160.html

In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/

This is obviously not what the court had in mind, and there's no way this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.

Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

This is some real Darth Vader MBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Ubisoft sure are innovators. They've managed the seemingly impossible feat of hybridizing Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. Ubisoft's head of subscriptions, the guillotine-ready Philippe Tremblay, told GamesIndustry.biz that gamers need to get "comfortable" with "not owning their games":

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games

Or, as Immortan Joe put it: "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

Capitalism without constraint is enshittification's handmaiden, and the latest victim is Ello, the "indie" social media startup that literally promised – on the sacred honor of its founders – that it would never sell out its users. When Ello took VC and Andy Baio questioned how this could be squared with this promise, the founders mocked him and others for raising the question. Their response boiled down to "we are super-chill dudes and you can totally trust us."

They raised more capital, and used that to create a nice place for independent artists, who piled into the platform and provided millions of unpaid hours of creative labor to help the founders increase its value. The founders and their investors turned the company into a Public Benefit Corporation, which meant they had an obligation to serve the public benefit.

But then they took more investment money and simply (and silently) sold their assets to a for-profit. Struggling to raise capital, the founders opted to secretly sell the business to a sleazy branding company called Talenthouse. Its users didn't know about the change, though the site sure had a lot of Talenthouse design competitions all of a sudden.

Finally, the company announced the change as the last founders left. Rather than announcing that the new owners were untrustworthy scum, warning their users to get their data and get out, the founders posted oblique, ominous statements to Instagram. The company started stiffing the winners of those design competitions. Then, one day, poof, Ello disappeared, taking all its users' data with it. Poof:

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

I'm sure the founders' decisions each seemed reasonable at the moment. That's every terrible situation arises: you rationalize that a single compromise isn't that big of a deal, and then you do the same for the next compromise, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you're betraying everyone who believed in you.

One answer to this is "Ulysses pacts": making binding commitments to do right before you are tempted. Throw away all your Oreos when you go on a diet and you can't be tempted to eat a whole sleeve of them at 2AM. License your software under the GPL and your investors can't force you to make it proprietary. Set up a warrant canary and the feds can't force you to keep their spying secret:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

If the founders were determined to build a trustworthy, open, independent company, they could have published their quarterly books, livestreamed their staff meetings, built data-export tools that emailed users every week with a link to download everything they'd posted since the last week. Merely halting any of these practices would have been a signal that things were wrong. Anyone who says they won't be tempted in the moment to make a "reasonable" compromise in the hopes of recovering whatever they're trading away by living to fight another day is bullshitting you, and possibly themself.

The inability to project the consequences of your bad decisions in the future is the source of endless mischief and heartbreak. Take movie projectors. A couple decades ago, the studio cartel established a standard for digital movie distribution to cinematic exhibitors called the Digital Cinema Initiative. Because studio executives are more worried about stopping piracy than they are about making sure that people who pay for movies get to see them, they build digital rights management into this standard.

Movie theaters had to spend fortunes to upgrade to "secure" projectors. A single vendor, Deluxe Technicolor, monopolized the packaging of movies into "Digital Cinema Prints" for distribution to these projectors, and they used all kinds of dirty tricks to force distributors to use their services, like arbitrarily flunking third-party DCPs over picky shit like not starting and ending on a black frame.

Over time, the ability to use unencrypted files was stripped away, meaning every DCP needed to be encrypted, and every projector needed to have up-to-date decryption keys. This system broke down on Jan 1, 2024, and cinemas all over the world found they couldn't play Wonka. Many just shut down for the day and refunded their customers:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector

The problem? Something that every PKI system has to wrangle: an expired certificate from Deluxe Technicolor. The failure has been dubbed the Y2K24 debacle by projectionists and film-techs, who are furious:

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/34652-the-y2k24-bug-major-digital-outage-today

Making everything worse is that Sony mothballed the division that maintains its projectors, so there's no one who can update them to accommodate Technicolor's workaround. Struggling mom-and-pop theaters are having to junk their systems and replace them. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Sony is definitely the most negligent link in the chain. Shame on them.

Big corporations LARP this performance of competence and seriousness, but they are deeply unserious. This week, I wrote, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Score one for team deeply unserious. The multinational delivery company DPD fired its support staff and replaced them with a chatbot. The chatbot can't tell you where your parcels are, but it can be prompt-injected into coming up with profane poems about how badly DPD sucks:

https://twitter.com/ashbeauchamp/status/1748034519104450874

There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help. It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive.

DPD was a waste of time, And a customer's worst nightmare. It was so bad, That people would rather call the depot directly, Than deal with the useless chatbot.

One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.

This is…the opposite of an AI hallucination? It's AI clarity.

As with all botshit, this kind of AI self-negging is funny and fresh the first time you see it, but just wait until 3,000 people have published their own versions to your social feed. AI novelty regresses to the mean damn quickly.

The old, good web, by contrast, was full of enduring surprises, as the world's weirdest and most delightful mutants filled the early web with every possible variation on every possible interest, expression, argument, and gag. Now, you can search the old, good web with Old'aVista, an Altavista lookalike that searches old pages from "personal websites that used to be hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, Xoom and so on," all ganked from the Internet Archive:

http://oldavista.com/

I miss the old, good internet and the way it let weirdos find each other and get seriously weird with one another. Think of steampunk, a subculture that wove together artists, makers, costumers, fiction writers, and tinkerers in endlessly creative ways. My old pal Roger Wood was the world's most improbable steampunk: he was a gay ex-navy gunner who grew up in a small town in the maritimes but moved to Toronto where he became the world's most accomplished steampunk clockmaker.

I was Roger's neighbour for a decade. He died last year, and I miss him all the time. I was in Toronto in December and saw a few of his last pieces being sold in galleries and I was just skewered on the knowledge that I'd never see him again, never visit his workshop:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/16/klockwerks/#craphound

A reader just sent this five-year-old mini documentary about Roger, shot in his wonderful workshop. Watching it made me happy and sad and then happy again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMGomM8yF8

The old, good internet was so great. It was a place where every kind of passion could live. It was a real testament to the power of geeking out together, no matter how often the suits demand that we "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The world is full of people with weird passions and I love them all, mostly. Learning about Don Bolles's collection of decades' worth of lost pet posters was a moment of pure joy (I just wish more of it was online):

https://ameliatait.substack.com/p/the-man-who-collects-lost-pet-posters

That's the future I was promised: one where every kind of freak can find every other kind of freak. Despite the nipple-deep botshit we wade through online, and the relentless cheapening of words like "innovation" and "future," there are still occasional gleams of the future I want to live in.

Like the researchers who spliced a photosynthesis gene into brewer's yeast (a fungus) and got it to photosynthesize, and to display enhanced fitness:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01744-X

As Doug Muir writes on Crooked Timber, this is pretty kooky! Fungi – the coolest of the kingdoms! – can't photosynthesize. The idea that you can just add the photosynthesis gene to a thing that can't photosynthesize and have it just kind of work is wild!

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/19/occasional-paper-purple-sun-yeast/

As Muir writes: "Animals have no evolutionary history of photosynthesis and aren’t designed for it, but the same is true for yeast. So… no reason this shouldn’t be possible. A photosynthesizing cat? Sure, why not."

Why not indeed?!

OK, that's this week's linkdump done and dusted. It only remains for me to share the news with you that the trolley problem has been finally and comprehensively solved, by [email protected], of the IWW IU 520 (railroad workers):

Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.

https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/20/melange/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing

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animebw · 1 year

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I’m gonna be honest, I thought going into Winter 2023 that this was gonna be a bit of a dump season. One of those seasons where anime just kinda sits around farting and we all wait patiently for the actual Good Shit to start coming out again while pretending to catch up on our backlogs.

That... has not been the case.

Bofuri Season 2: Seriously, how does this show get so many incredible action cuts?

Buddy Daddies: Look, it’s probably not gonna be gay, but Spy x Family meets Tiger and Bunny is something we all need in our lives, okay?

Campfire Cooking in Another World: Couldn’t even last a full episode of this one before my eyes glazed over. Dropped.

Endo and Kobayashi Live: Now this is pretty charming! Pity the animation’s such garbage, though.

Giant Beasts of Ars: It’s a damn good season for fantasy anime, y’all.

Handyman Saitou in Another World: Could actually end up a halfway decent isekai SOL if it stops being so goddamn terrible at structure.

High Card: This is exactly my brand of Anime Bullshit(tm) and I am so on board.

Ippon Again: An actually great female-led sports anime? With major A Place Further Than the Universe vibes? Do not sleep on this one, y’all.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea: Damn. Good. Season. For. Fantasy. Anime.

Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible: As far as Takagi-san knock-offs go, this one is pleasant enough.

The Magical Revolution of the Oh Fuck It These LN Titles are Impossible to Remember Just Call it “MagiRevo”: Buckle up, folks, we might just have another Actually Good Isekai on our hands.

Malevolent Spirits Mononogatari: It’s Noragami but shit. Dropped at 1 episode.

Nagatoro-san Season 2: Yeah, turns out I’m still not above the occasional well made trash.

Nier Automata: Genuine question, is this gonna be an acceptable substitute for the game or will I just be spoiling the experience for myself?

Onimai: I fucking hate the Mushoku Tensei studio so much and I hate myself even more for deciding to stick with this one.

Reborn to Master the Blade: This one might be soon for the chopping block, but I’m holding out hope that its story can overcome its middling production values. We’ll have to wait and see.

Revenger: GEN UROBUCHI’S BACK BABY YEEEEEEHAW

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale: Take notes, Every Isekai: this is how you explore slavery in a fantasy setting.

The Tale of Outcasts: Feels like a 13-year-old’sedgy Ancient Magus Bride fanfiction. Honestly, though? I kind of really dig it.

Tomo-Chan is a Girl: LET. TOMBOYS. BE. TOMBOYS. WITHOUT. SHAMING. THEM. FOR. IT. Dropped at episode 2.

Tokyo Revengers Season 2: At this point, I’m just watching out of morbid curiosity of how bad the manga’s ending supposedly was.

Trails of Cold Steel: The Northern War: Easily the weakest fantasy anime of the lot. Giving it one more episode to impress me, otherwise it gets the drop.

Trigun Stampede: Y’all are buggin, the CG here is incredible.

Tsurune Season 2: Good god, the glow-up from season one is nuts. KyoAni just does not miss.

Vinland Saga Season 2: Okay, manga readers, let’s see if watching a bunch of sad men farm is as incredible as you say.

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