A New Chapter for The Fun Pimps and 7 Days to Die

[Jost Amman]

If you are using AI without checking and context the results are unreliable.

And if you're making claims on how I'm using AI without actually knowing how I use it, your response is silly.

One of the reasons that certain of these examples did fail was that people cheated the system by just buying a second car, the increased number of cars was mentioned as being reason of the failure. Indeed, you don't need to travel the world yourself but a bit of first hand experience does help

Ah! I know, right? Reality... who needs it?

By the way, as Meganoth did, you completely ignored my comparison between the car industry and the game industry (or simply felt it was so irrelevant for you that you didn't need to reply). Good job.

Sometimes I wander why I waste my time discussing with people that don't really want to have a honest discussion.
Most people have the tendency to make counter points just to "win" an argument instead of discussing the topic.

 

[theFlu]

You're a GREMLIN! And you have been fed after midnight and thrown into water!

Well, here you're confirming to me the type of guy you are ... you'll write out the first thing that comes to mind with no "internal testing" ... if I was tossed into water, there'd be a whole host of me.

 

[Lax]

I bought a game called "Memories of Mars". Was a pretty cool game until about a year or 2 ago they decided to abandon the online servers and now the game is vaporware. It's literally sitting in my gaming library and I can't play it at all.

Compare that to the physical copies I still possess of the original Deus Ex and System Shock 2, both I can still drop in a cd drive and play to this day. We are indeed living in different times now.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

Most people have the tendency to make counter points just to "win" an argument instead of discussing the topic.

"Most people don't listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." -- Stephen R. Covey Of course, that's also ancient wisdom repackaged and sold today as "self-help."

I'm not sure how the car industry comparison really applies or comes in myself. They produce physical products. I'd think that has more to do with planned obsolescence and the unfounded belief that technology will solve all our ills when there are no silver bullets.

Most people aren't thinking about the shift from a product to a service economy, I don't think, largely enabled by the shift from physical to digital. I think we've become overly reliant on the tech sector myself.

 

[Jost Amman]

I'm not sure how the car industry comparison really applies or comes in myself.

In both cases the user/player reasonably expects continued use of something they paid for.

 

[Riamus]

Well, here you're confirming to me the type of guy you are ... you'll write out the first thing that comes to mind with no "internal testing" ... if I was tossed into water, there'd be a whole host of me.

Please... no!

I bought a game called "Memories of Mars". Was a pretty cool game until about a year or 2 ago they decided to abandon the online servers and now the game is vaporware. It's literally sitting in my gaming library and I can't play it at all.

Compare that to the physical copies I still possess of the original Deus Ex and System Shock 2, both I can still drop in a cd drive and play to this day. We are indeed living in different times now.

That's not a great comparison. I can also still play those games through Steam or GOG without owning the physical copies. And if you're saying that older games don't have issues with becoming vaporware, that's also not true. There were games in the 90s that required an online connection to play and when those servers shut down, they were never updated to allow offline play. In some cases, hackers managed to change the games to allow playing them offline, and for some of them GOG or Steam has updated them to work now, but there are plenty of games that can't be played anymore even if you have a physical copy of the game and a computer old enough to be able to play them. That last part is particularly frustrating at times... There is one game I have the disk for and would love to play that just won't run correctly on a modern computer. There is another game that I played years ago and that I'd buy today but it won't run on a modern OS. Doesn't matter if you have a physical disk or you have a digital license. Any game that requires online servers that are then shut down and isn't updated to work without those servers is not going to work regardless of having a physical or digital copy of the game.

In both cases the user/player reasonably expects continued use of something they paid for.

Neither says you can use it forever. Many car parts are discontinued and although you may find alternatives, that may not always be possible for rarer cars, so when something breaks, you may have trouble fixing it. Cars are guaranteed to start falling apart and unless you can keep "updating" them so they continue to work, they will stop working even though you paid for them. A game or other software may also stop working when you update to a new computer or a new OS unless you update the game or software to work with the new system.

A game that requires an online server to function and the server is disabled will cease to work unless someone can update or change the game to work without the server. If you buy a trolley that requires an overhead electric wire to function and the city removes all of those wires, your trolley won't work anymore unless someone can update it or change it to work without the wires.

In the end, it's really not any different. It's just different terminology. You never expect something you buy to always work. You expect it to need to be replaced at some point. Doesn't matter if it's physical or digital.


---

Now, since the above comments seem to suggest I'm fine with licensing versus ownership, let me clarify that I don't like licensing. I prefer ownership and I have a lot of physical games and other software. But I also recognize that a digital license doesn't inherently make your purchase any less usable than a physically owned copy. The exception being a situation where a company that you licensed the game/software from shuts down or loses their license to allow playing/streaming/using that software or game anymore. Having a physical copy makes is possible to not get stuck in that situation. But that doesn't happen often. What are the chances Steam shuts down entirely and you lose all your games? Very low. And Steam is pretty good at making it so you can keep playing games you purchased even if Steam can no longer sell those games. You might not be able to buy it anymore, but if you own it, you can usually still play it. That can vary from game to game, but they usually do a good job with that.

I'd rather we still owned the software we buy, and I treat any software I buy as if I own it... I don't really care what the TOS or EULA says I can or can't do with a game I buy and play offline. But I appreciate the ease of getting games from Steam and GOG and elsewhere compared to how it used to be.

 

[Nukem_ded]

Sorry for using AI, but is much easier to get data points this way than just searching the web over and over.

so you are happy to use the brainwashed corporate view to force a win on your unresearched opinion?
ai aint research. its asking the mega ■■■■wits what they want us to hear

 

[Jost Amman]

Neither says you can use it forever. Many car parts are discontinued and although you may find alternatives, that may not always be possible for rarer cars, so when something breaks, you may have trouble fixing it. Cars are guaranteed to start falling apart and unless you can keep "updating" them so they continue to work, they will stop working even though you paid for them. A game or other software may also stop working when you update to a new computer or a new OS unless you update the game or software to work with the new system.

Again, you didn't read my reply.

Why you guys just reply to my last statement but completely miss the conversation as a whole?
If you don't know what you're replying to, simply don't reply.

In one of my first posts in this conversation I explicitly stated that sometimes you can't fully use your car (e.g. banned to circulate on some days) even IF your car is still perfectly working. You see? This makes your reply useless.

 

[Jost Amman]

so you are happy to use the brainwashed corporate view to force a win on your unresearched opinion?
ai aint research. its asking the mega ■■■■wits what they want us to hear

You have A LOT to learn about AI my friend.
Do you think I didn't do my due diligence before starting to use AI?

Sure, if you don't know better you simply type in what you want to know into the chat and get the reply "they" want.
If you DO know better, you skew the AI into using whatever sources you deem acceptable.
But I can understand your distrust, is partly well founded.

 

[Nukem_ded]

You have A LOT to learn about AI my friend.
Do you think I didn't do my due diligence before starting to use AI?

Sure, if you don't know better you simply type in what you want to know into the chat and get the reply "they" want.
If you DO know better, you skew the AI into using whatever sources you deem acceptable.
But I can understand your distrust, is partly well founded.

omg
you are totally screwed in the head if you think you know how ai works
distrust is totally well founded
hail elon!!!!

 

[Nukem_ded]

You never expect something you buy to always work

ummmmm, yes , i do

 

[Jost Amman]

omg
you are totally screwed in the head if you think you know how ai works
distrust is totally well founded
hail elon!!!!

I see. You're one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks AI is an alien evil entity, and not just the latest tool in the toolbox.
The problem with you guys is that you ruin also all fair criticism against future AI implementations.

The industry will treat any criticism as "conspiracy theory" exactly because generic irrational ignorance like yours undercuts any rational discussion on the matter.

 

[meganoth]

Reread my previous comments, you evidently missed my point.

If your language was ambiguous or if the language barrier made me misunderstand, rereading often doesn't help. With not even a pointer what I should reread this is equivalent to no reply at all.
EDIT: Oh wait, I see what you meant now. Still, instead of saying that I just want to win an argument you could have simply told me in 4 words. I am not perfect.

On top of that, you only read the part of LEZs that you needed to make your point and ignored the shortcomings.

If a comparison uses a faulty example then the comparison may not work. And by the way, a major shortcoming of your comparison was already mentioned, should I just rehash arguments already given? But ok, here is my argument:

1) The comparison differs in that a government (which didn't sell you the car) disadvantages specific cars. And provided only specific pollution-heavy cars are involved in the measure, it actually works. They get rid of them in the long term and because they additionally help with pollution in the short term. Beneficiary in this case is "the common good".

Again, the pollution reduction works to reduce pollution but only in the short term. Add to that the long term effect. Ergo it can be effective, but with large drawbacks. If simply all cars are involved in the scheme though it really only has a short term effect and is a highly dubious measure to conform to environmental limits, but it doesn't seem that way in your case, or does it?

All those differences are important: Individuals being disadvantaged for the common good is necessary, otherwise most infrastructure could not be built. Almost all laws issued disadvantage some people, but new laws still need to be made.
In the case we compare that to, i.e. the game stopping to work, only helps the company who made the game. It is one side of a bussiness deal doing something unexpected afterwards to get a better deal.

Unexpected: The EU have continually increased environmental demands on cars in the last 20-30 years (to put a price on environmental damage, necessary in a market where everything that is limited needs to have a price). Anyone could have extrapolated that any car conforming to laws at the time would get less and less "acceptable" during its lifetime. Worse if you bought something that just scraped through, less so if if it was in the best category of environmental classification. The exact way in which it was disadvantaged was not predictable though.

In the case of a single-player game you can't really foresee the end. Except if the game needs costly servers, then you could observe player numbers and make a guess when those numbers drop so much that the company will think about closing shop.

In ant case LEZs are irrelevant to my example.

I would argue that even if a particular city makes a mistake in choosing the method, a successful method would show that the measure in general (disadvantaging individuals for a common good, to preserve the ecology) is not useless. Just because someone built a car that can't drive doesn't mean it is useless to build cars generally.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

You're one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks AI is an alien evil entity, and not just the latest tool in the toolbox.
The problem with you guys is that you ruin also all fair criticism against future AI implementations.

Public views on AI itself vary wildly, not so much the commercialization of (and over-hype about) it. Hopefully, once the hype dies down, the tool that's been sold as a demigod that can do anything a human can do better -- especially "create" art -- will die down with it. It's already wreaking havoc in creative industries, which is kind of an oxymoron from my perspective, but there we are. I don't think concept artists and narrative designers in the video games industry, for example, have been disproportionately affected by industry layoffs for no reason. I think a good portion of CEOs think they're unnecessary because they believe AI can do what they can do, which it most emphatically cannot because it doesn't possess an imagination, and they can save costs by replacing artists and writers with AI. Things like this are bound to be widely realized at some point. Or, at least, I hope so.

A glorified search engine and repetitive task emulator is what the commercial variety is. I imagine implementations being made now in key sectors will be scaled back when CEOs begin to realize it's not the human employee replacer it's being sold as.

I don't think there's any question, though, that the tech sector wields far too much power and influence over all our lives at the moment. Jeffelon Zuckergates didn't pour millions of dollars into Trump's presidential campaign because they like the guy. They were currying favors, namely favors related to deregulation. In fact, Elon was tweeting his glee every time he shut down or compromised a regulatory agency, e.g. the Consumer Financial Protection Bereau and the Environmental Protection Agency in the US. As far as I can tell, the whole point of DOGE was to complete the deregulation project and cement corporate rule into place.

If the rest of the tech bros think they can escape the jurisdiction of any and all nation states by setting up "network states" anywhere on Earth they can (being that they can't to Mars, atm, of course), Elon is thinking bigger: just turn the US into a network state. Thank goodness he's out of there. We certainly didn't elect him, but the damage to regulatory agencies is done, as they say. Personally, I think the tech bros' escape plans will fail. Who wants to be one of their serfs in a "trans-gov"?

"The dystopian science fiction we all loved was intended to be a warning, not a how-to manual." -- Wil Wheaton

 

[Jost Amman]

but the damage to regulatory agencies is done

You mean the ones that has been proven waste BILLIONS of dollars against the interests of the USA?
I'm very glad they "damaged" them.

A glorified search engine and repetitive task emulator is what the commercial variety is.

I agree with this.

 

[Jost Amman]

If your language was ambiguous or if the language barrier made me misunderstand

We both read and write proper English, that isn't the point, is it?
Thoughts, when put down in words, can be misunderstood and misinterpreted all the time, that's life.

Beneficiary in this case is "the common good".

You're so naive...

You still think the government works for "the common good"?
Really? What are you, a communist?

I guess you didn't read the part where I pointed out how laws are approved both for the cars, and the gaming industry.

Anyone could have extrapolated that any car conforming to laws at the time would get less and less "acceptable" during its lifetime.

The problem is not that old cars aren't up to new regulations, the point is they should have the existing cars reach the end of their life cycle naturally (or be voluntarily replaced by their owners) without forcing people to spend money they don't have just to keep "up to date" wit the latest climate change scam.

 

[Matt115]

Interesting if next title will be more serious similiar to Blight

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

You mean the ones that has been proven waste BILLIONS of dollars against the interests of the USA?
I'm very glad they "damaged" them.

You don't think Elon's interest was entirely self-serving? Well, that's your preogative, I suppose. I think it was.

You still think the government works for "the common good"?

I know you're replying to meganoth, but.... Has it ever? Well, maybe at least partially in the US in the past, but not so much anymore. Mostly, it's worked for the companies that own it at any given time of late, imo. The "Citizens United" (heh, "citizens") ruling needs to be overturned, else America's transformation into Democracy, Inc. will continue unabated.

What was the subject of this post again? (Let me scroll up.) Oh, yeah. 'A New Chapter for The Fun Pimps and 7 Days to Die'....

 

[Gamida]

Please... no!


That's not a great comparison. I can also still play those games through Steam or GOG without owning the physical copies. And if you're saying that older games don't have issues with becoming vaporware, that's also not true. There were games in the 90s that required an online connection to play and when those servers shut down, they were never updated to allow offline play. In some cases, hackers managed to change the games to allow playing them offline, and for some of them GOG or Steam has updated them to work now, but there are plenty of games that can't be played anymore even if you have a physical copy of the game and a computer old enough to be able to play them. That last part is particularly frustrating at times... There is one game I have the disk for and would love to play that just won't run correctly on a modern computer. There is another game that I played years ago and that I'd buy today but it won't run on a modern OS. Doesn't matter if you have a physical disk or you have a digital license. Any game that requires online servers that are then shut down and isn't updated to work without those servers is not going to work regardless of having a physical or digital copy of the game.


Neither says you can use it forever. Many car parts are discontinued and although you may find alternatives, that may not always be possible for rarer cars, so when something breaks, you may have trouble fixing it. Cars are guaranteed to start falling apart and unless you can keep "updating" them so they continue to work, they will stop working even though you paid for them. A game or other software may also stop working when you update to a new computer or a new OS unless you update the game or software to work with the new system.

A game that requires an online server to function and the server is disabled will cease to work unless someone can update or change the game to work without the server. If you buy a trolley that requires an overhead electric wire to function and the city removes all of those wires, your trolley won't work anymore unless someone can update it or change it to work without the wires.

In the end, it's really not any different. It's just different terminology. You never expect something you buy to always work. You expect it to need to be replaced at some point. Doesn't matter if it's physical or digital.


---

Now, since the above comments seem to suggest I'm fine with licensing versus ownership, let me clarify that I don't like licensing. I prefer ownership and I have a lot of physical games and other software. But I also recognize that a digital license doesn't inherently make your purchase any less usable than a physically owned copy. The exception being a situation where a company that you licensed the game/software from shuts down or loses their license to allow playing/streaming/using that software or game anymore. Having a physical copy makes is possible to not get stuck in that situation. But that doesn't happen often. What are the chances Steam shuts down entirely and you lose all your games? Very low. And Steam is pretty good at making it so you can keep playing games you purchased even if Steam can no longer sell those games. You might not be able to buy it anymore, but if you own it, you can usually still play it. That can vary from game to game, but they usually do a good job with that.

I'd rather we still owned the software we buy, and I treat any software I buy as if I own it... I don't really care what the TOS or EULA says I can or can't do with a game I buy and play offline. But I appreciate the ease of getting games from Steam and GOG and elsewhere compared to how it used to be.

Some of what you said in your first paragraph got me thinking.
I am in the sort of in the situation you mentioned. I do have a ton of physical copies of some game that I bought years ago. They are on 3.5 inch floppies. I think the company use to be Sierra-On-Line but was shortened to just Sierra I think.
I have copies of Kings Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. (Yes, were lots of games called Quest back in those days)
I do have some older computers that still have the floppy drive on them but not sure if they still could play those games.
So technically I still do own the games but can't play them.
I also bought the Leisure Suit Larry series back then and have them on floppies so am in the same situation with them.
Now with LSL I did see them on steam and did purchase them again. (sadly I haven't even started a playthru yet of those)
So they were somehow able to be reworked(?) to work on modern system so I can play them on my computer.
The problem is like is mentioned. Even though they never in past and never in this day need to connect to a server for me to play, if Steam
went out of business I would lose access to them again.
This also got me wondering how it all works. If multiple gaming sites sell the game. For example if Steam, HB, etc sell the same game and Steam goes dark. Will the people who bought it from HB still be able to play and those from steam not? Even if the game could be played solo?
I am just curious how all this works.

 

[Riamus]

Some of what you said in your first paragraph got me thinking.
I am in the sort of in the situation you mentioned. I do have a ton of physical copies of some game that I bought years ago. They are on 3.5 inch floppies. I think the company use to be Sierra-On-Line but was shortened to just Sierra I think.
I have copies of Kings Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. (Yes, were lots of games called Quest back in those days)
I do have some older computers that still have the floppy drive on them but not sure if they still could play those games.
So technically I still do own the games but can't play them.
I also bought the Leisure Suit Larry series back then and have them on floppies so am in the same situation with them.
Now with LSL I did see them on steam and did purchase them again. (sadly I haven't even started a playthru yet of those)
So they were somehow able to be reworked(?) to work on modern system so I can play them on my computer.
The problem is like is mentioned. Even though they never in past and never in this day need to connect to a server for me to play, if Steam
went out of business I would lose access to them again.
This also got me wondering how it all works. If multiple gaming sites sell the game. For example if Steam, HB, etc sell the same game and Steam goes dark. Will the people who bought it from HB still be able to play and those from steam not? Even if the game could be played solo?
I am just curious how all this works.

No, you can't play games you buy on one platform (e.g. Steam) by using another (e.g. GOG). However, if Steam were to go down, there is at least a very good chance that another company like GOG or Epic will take them over and then you'd still have access. Steam makes too much money for them to just disappear entirely. Someone would take them over. How that would end up affecting people is entirely unknown, of course.

I also have the disks for the entire Space Quest series and the Police Quest series (only up through the first SWAT). I imagine those disks are no longer readable after ~40 years since magnetic disks fail over time. But I have Space Quest on Steam and could easily get the others if I wanted them. GOG has them as well. I haven't looked into other platforms. Those games are also found on abandonware sites. I know that the Space Quest series (minus the final game in the series) worked fine using SCUMMVM years ago. The last one had problems with one scene in the beginning where the speed of a modern computer would cause it to crash and, at the time, even DOSBOX couldn't reduce the computer speed below 1%, which wasn't enough. That may have changed by now since that was probably 20+ years ago now. But Sierra games are ones that are not likely to every be unavailable... at least for a very long time. They are too popular and between SCUMMVM and DOSBOX, not to mention the online platforms like Steam and GOG, there's little chance they'll stop working. It's the lesser known games/developers that have the higher chance of disappearing.