Jeffool

I can say I've heard of all of the winners, but the only one I've played is Balatro. (I'm not counting playing 20m of BG3 and saying "can't wait to get around to really trying this!" And never doing it.)

In 2019 a friend and I got subscriptions to Regal and began going to a movie a week. Most days we'd plan something, but sometimes we'd just show up and pick something. (We blindly picked Underwater, and what a great surprise. Also decided to see the Tom Hanks Mr. Rogers film and proceed to ugly cry all over myself.)

Then COVID.

The last movie I saw in theaters as a subscriber was Bad Boys for Life. I tried to go see Dune 1. I drove 30m, bought popcorn and a slushee, and waited... But the video file was corrupted. They said they had to redownload it before the next show, so they canceled the showing and gave everyone a free ticket. I never bothered using it. I just went home and watched it for free on HBO Max.

I love theaters, both as nostalgia and just to have the experience. But man, "paying extra to go out of your way" is a difficult sell.

It's incredibly common in the US, especially among younger people. This was just on the first page of my search but I'm sure you can find tons of similar stories over the years: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/more-americans-prefer-watching-shows-with-subtitles-study-finds/ar-AA1rj48O

Overall, half of respondents said they use subtitles regularly.

Personally I've always done it since my youth as well (around '96.) Admittedly that was mostly because I mostly used my TV to watch late at night instead of sleep... But it wasn't even unheard of then to prefer subtitles. And it was pretty common at the HD switch over, often citing bad speakers (both quality and physical design.)

Wasn't adding engagement numbers to each tweet one of the first things he added? I remember thinking "who the fuck wants to see that?" But I guess to people like him that was important at the time? Huh.

I'll probably always think that Tetris is the greatest video game ever. The inherent dramatic arc that comes with watching the blocks stack up is tension directly within you the player, not you watching tension unfold for characters on the screen. It's different every time, even if the shape of the arc is similar, because you improve as a player. It's the kind of emergent involvement the most designers could only aspire to create.

That said of course Shadow of the Colossus is also a favorite. That one probably feels a little more obvious, but I'm okay with that.

Thanks a lot!

"War. War never changes."

"Remember. No Russian."

"Itchy. Tasty."

You know, that feels like a pretty great use case.

Sure, but with that philosophy, why use a microblogging system at all?

It gives space to do servers based on specific interests if you want. I'm part of a game development server, and my "Local" tab has people on my server often talking about, and showing, things that are related to game development. And I can still follow anyone from any other Mastodon server too.

If you're into video games, film, maybe a specific genre of music, you can have an instance dedicated to that. (It might already exist.) It's like a virtual neighborhood, or forum. Remember forums? Those were nice. They cultivated a sense of community which made people a little more responsible in their attitudes, it feels like. Maybe that's just nostalgia, but I like the server I'm on. It's got friendly people I can talk to without feeling the need to fill my follows with them.

While I'm reluctant to call anything a magnum opus... You're bang on about the difference between those two and SWFG.

That's what led me to this. I quit Audible a few months back, planning to just buy more media outright. But they offered me a "come back and pay $0.99 for the first three months!" and I'm not really saying "no" to basically giving them Amazon's money. (Though for the holidays they've apparently upped the offer to that plus a $20 credit.) So I thought this would be a good general question as I look for more ways to support creators directly, after taking their money runs out.

Good mention of Libby, too. A coworker recommended that to me, so I've got it now as well. Sadly my local selection isn't great for audiobooks. But it does make me want to get an ereader more.

Bandcamp looks to be a good way to buy music though, as someone mentioned. But I can't find any good way to buy digital copies of movies/TV. It's all pretty platform locked, it seems.