ObsidianBlk

In deed, man... If you fail to get it, that's you then.

You don't live in a village. You live in a nation with easy access to products and produce from boarder to boarder (until someone decides to mess that up). You're "local" farmer is easily both that white and that black farmer.

And if you're tired of the focus of things being on skin color or sexual orientation, even more of a reason to level out those statistics because, while those statistics continue to show a disparity of opportunity between White and POC/Queer individuals, you're damn right the focus should and will remain with the latter.

I'm late to this thread, but, if you want a challenge, here's an idea...

Make two simple games... like, maybe Pong and Asteroids, but, set it up so that the player can swap between the two games at will (maybe by pressing the TAB key, for example). However, both games should still be actively running even when not actively being played. Maybe, for fairness and an additional challenge, if one of the games isn't actively being played, it still updates, but the updates are at half speed.

Is this a solid game idea? Probably not... but it would be a fun challenge to see if it can be pulled off smoothly.

To flip this argument... Are the vegetables from a black farmer worse than a white farmer? Do queer farmers make worse cheese than a straight farmer? I somehow doubt it. Therefore, if output is equal, maybe it's time to spread the love to these black and queer farmers.

You say, "in the end, it's a matter of skill and you can have that regardless of your sexuality or skin color"... and that sounds great, on it's face, but using that as your argument now, when, statistically, it's shown over and over again that skill is rarely the factor that matters, is disingenuous. When we, as a society, can get to a point where we can regularly show that, statistically, race and sexuality (or any other reason humanity chooses to use to make "others" out of our fellows) truly do not effect ones prosperity, then, and only then, would your statement hold any meaning.

The point was, the only reason only two parties exist in this country has less to do with any mechanical reason why and more to do with the fact that a huge number of people, such as yourself, continue cementing into people's minds that any alternative choice is worthless. Effectively, by continuing to perpetuate this idea over and over again in peoples minds, you have effectively created a self fulfilling prophecy.

You are technically, right. A third option has little to no chance, but only because people, such as yourself, have continued to tell others that a third options had little to no chance.

The sad thing is you're technically correct only because it's people with a similar mindset to you on the matter that perpetuate this idea.

Amsterdam, Doughnut Economics, Time article from 2021 While the long term viability of this may still be in questions, this at least answers your questions of "Name an economic system on planet earth"

You're absolutely right... it's a game. Larian could do whatever they wish. Then again, what's the point of utilizing an IP and Ruleset for your game if you're not planning to adhere to that IP and Ruleset as closely as you can within the limitations of PC game? And if you do adhere (as much as you can) to the rules, then there are going to be some things that are possible in one ruleset that are not possible in another (and vice versa) while maintaining a fun player experience in a medium (PC gaming) that cannot adapt rules like a human can while still being accurate enough for those players that know the ruleset and those that have never used that ruleset before.

Just to be technical, here... Those past games, BG1 and BG2, utilized a very different ruleset (the ADND ruleset, if I recall correctly) to the ruleset BG3 utilized (5e). While they share a lineage, ADND and 5e are quite different.

To start with, you're right. Digital distribution in general is volatile for consumers. While I will say that Steam, at present, is leagues better in that you must download the game purchase in order to play it (meaning, you have a direct copy of the game on your hard drive, which will remain there even if the game is removed from the Steam store), it is not outside the realm of possibility that this could change in the future.

That said, publishers having their own launchers, I'm sorry to say, has absolutely nothing to do with their fears over "the valve guy" retiring (his name is Gabe Newell, by the way), and significantly more to do with making more money. These publishers figure if they can get you, the consumer, to buy their games directly from them, they can make 100%+ of the money, instead of having to pay Steam a percentage for any transaction. Due to the limited scope of these Publisher-run launchers, purchasing a game from them is even more volatile than purchasing from Steam (at least in the current climate), in such that if the Publisher suddenly finds their launcher is not bringing in customers (which, on average, compared to the draw of Steam at present, they generally don't) publishers could simply drop their launchers and the catalog of games you, the customer, may have purchased from that launcher would go with them... again, yes, this could happen if Steam went down, but presently, pound for pound, the publisher's launchers are far more likely to fall than Steam will.

Also... for any of these services (Steam or publisher launchers), you have to download the game locally in order to run them. The games are not streaming as most movie and music content is. As such, once you install a game, you could crack them to remove any DRM attached to them (barring any game that's strictly online), then, yeah, you can self-host/store these games yourself all you want. If you buy games from GOG they make this even easier for you.

This is what makes this technology anxiety inducing at best...

So, for yourself, you have no issues seeing the artificiality of the image due to your extensive exposure to and knowledge of photographic principles. This is fair... that said, I have read your earlier comment about the various issues with the photo as well as this one about light sources, and I keep going back to scrutinize those elements, and... for the life of me... I cannot pick out anything in the image that, to me, absolutely screams artificial.

I'm fairly sure most people who look at these verification photos would be in a similar boat to me. Unless there's something glaringly obvious (malformed hands, eyes in the wrong place, a sudden cthulhu-esk eldritch thing unnaturally prowling the background holding a stuffed teddy bear) I feel most people would accept an image like this at face value. Alternatively, you'll get those same people so paranoid about AI generated fakes they'll falsely flag a real image as fake because of one or two elements they can't see clearly or have never seen before.

And this is only the infancy of AI generated art. Every year it gets better. In a decade, unless there are some heavy limitations on how the AI is trained (of which, only public models would ever really have these limitations as private models would train be trained on whatever their developers saw fit... to shreds with what artists and copyright said), there would probably be no real way to tell a real image from a fake out apart at all... photographic principals and all.

Interesting times :D

I mean... The Enterprise is always doing questionable things with that deflector dish.

My head cannon says the Enterprise explored a wormhole to the Farscape universe, did a reverse gravaton beam on Moya, then immediately went back through the wormhole... And that's how Moya got pregnant.

Would also explain why all starships in the federation, after that point, were female (no dangly deflector)