Centrist, progressive, radical optimist. Geophysicist, R&D, Planetary Scientist and general nerd in Winnipeg, Canada.

troyunrau.ca (personal)

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  • 7 Posts
  • 246 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Counterpoint: Sometimes you can kickstart a community that you want to see just by consistently posting content. !science_memes@mander.xyz is my favourite example – it was essentially one person who created that entire community (and it’s since been diversifying somewhat – at least there’s traction in the comments).

    But to reinforce your point: I did !spacemusic@lemmy.ca and tried to do the same thing, but it sort of petered out. But it’s way way more niche.

    Rome wasn’t built in a day. Just engage with the content you like and build some places for content you’d like to see.


  • Excerpt from Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood:

    “This is the latest,” said Crake.

    What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.

    “What the hell is it?” said Jimmy.

    “Those are chickens,” said Crake. "Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.

    “But there aren’t any heads…”

    “That’s the head in the middle,” said the woman. “There’s a mouth opening at the top, they dump nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don’t need those.”








  • I’ll play devil’s avocado.

    There are some genres that were effectively created by the Japanese gaming industry (Nintendo and others). Pokemon and monster hunting/battling. Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest and JRPGs. Hell, I’d even say visual novels (like Steins;Gate and others). Japan has been hugely successful at exporting these genres that were already domestically successful. And so they became the reference standards.

    But if you were to look at racing games, or flight sims, or dozens (if not hundreds) of other categories, you’d see that they’ve failed to break into these genres with any significant effect. Not because they don’t have the technical skills, but rather, they don’t fall into their niche.

    Cherry picking Mario and Zelda is unfair.







  • Sure. Tales games tend to be high fantasy settings where each game is its own setting (much like Final Fantasy in that sense). They tend to have a lot of “war against heaven corrupted” kind of vibes. But largely there’s a lot of places to explore, NPCs to talk to, and a bunch of great little skits that trigger between your team. They tend to be lighter on graphics in exchange for length and depth of story. But it’s also somewhat linear, and carefully crafted and you can sort of lose yourself in finding the next story beat.

    But they also typically have active combat systems where it’s about button mashing and combos. This is the part I don’t like :)