Living under capitalism is living under the yoke of devils. You cannot escape them, and you sometimes make deals with them, whether because you have to, or you think the deal will work out for you. But that doesn’t mean you should love the devils, and if you can get away from them you should.

Yeah, most people’s phones or shoes or whatever probably have some dirty pasts, but that doesn’t mean we should just give up on making any kind of good or moral choices. We’re locked into capitalism, and we will have blood on our hands whether we are aware or not, but using that as an excuse to give up on trying to do better is not a coherent moral position.

I think there’s a significant difference between “any shoe I try to buy is shady, and if a wholesome option even exists it is incredibly hard to find/buy/pricey”, and “sure Amazon workers literally die in warehouses, but next day shipping on my random knickknacks is soooo convenient!”

There exists real and valid use-cases for prime, as several other people in this thread have expressed. But just shrugging and saying “eg whatever” because you want to save $1 on random junk isn’t one of them.

I love RimWorld, and I love DRM-free, but RimWorld on GoG is a mistake.

Instead, buy RimWorld directly from Ludeon. Then you get both DRM-free files from them (to enjoy in the fallout bunker), AND a steam key (so that you can easily enjoy the metric boatloads of modding content on the steam workshop).

I’d hope so. Unlike digital implementations, TTS is literally just the same board game, but on a digital space. Scripting etc can help, but it’s still the same at the end of the day. I don’t count digital apps in my board game tracking app, but I do count plays on TTS, as they really are just the same thing, different place

IMO two different things can make a game heavy, and having either is enough even if you don’t have both.

First, is complication of decisions. This is the classic “heavy” angle, how much thinking you have to do each turn to execute your strategy.

Second, is the actual meta aspects, such as rules, or pieces, or setup. A game that is literally heavy by weight is highly likely to be heavy, especially if combined with lots of rules or pieces or exceptions. Even if the turn-to-turn is relatively simple, the act of setting everything up and having to learn & remember a whole slew of rules can make a game heavy

Oh man, this takes me back. I’m going to share my favorite GW2 memory, because I can.

I was playing my main (a thief), wandering around some zone or another. I happened upon a cool looking elite and tried to take it, but it was too powerful and I had to retreat. After I did so, I noticed another player arrive and also go for the elite, and decided I could jump in with him and get the loot too.

We killed it, I don’t remember the loot, but what I do remember is the strange portal opening…

We enter, and are teleported to a bizarre other region. We regroup, and spend some time exploring before accidentally finding a portal out of the place and being teleported to random spots in the region.

We immediately /pm each other and regroup at the elite, both eager to find what’s really in that other place. Cue 2+ hours of exploration, solving jumping puzzles, and just camaraderie with this stranger I’d never met exploring a beautiful and mystifying area. Finally we reach the prize, a big chest of loot and an achievement, and teleport out.

I never saw them again, and I don’t need to. It was such an amazing experience, just raw human connection and exploration, happening by pure coincidence in a game I played exclusively solo. I enjoyed a lot of things about GW2, but that one memory will always stick in my mind, and I haven’t found an experience like that since