Yeah I tried tabby too and they had like a mandatory "we share your code " line and I hoped out. Like if you’re going to do that I might as well just use claude

Of course they do. Marketers saw barbenheimer and have been trying to remake that magic. Corporate can’t just have a social phenomenon like that and let it pass now they need to manufacture it.

Hell it’s not a mistake they’re releasing these two big movies at the same time. You think 10 years ago they would have released on the same weekend?

I’ll bite. (Note I do notice you do have a 12 day old history, and we have had a wave of spammers trying to incite bullshit, so we’ll see how this goes)

So, why play long games? Why read long books? Why watch long movies?

For me, I like a good well-told story. A game like Red Dead Redemption 2 has such a good story that it is worth investing 120 hours into. It’s protagonist, Arthur Morgan, is so well written that he is arguably the most well-written fictional character of all time. Over the course of 120 hours you get to know him so intimately that you truly feel like you know and understand him, and over the story that will both make you laugh and cry, it culminates in an amazing climax, truly a story that could only be told over 100 hours.

To answer your other points:

For me personally, I tend to look at things in terms of costs and benefits. Through that lens, most games seem like a bad deal

This goes counter to what you said at the beginning, they are actually ridiculously cheap compared to other forms of media. Going to see a 2 hour movie now costs about $18 in the states, that’s $9/hour. RDR2 was $60 and for only the first playthrough of 120 hours that’s $0.50/hour of entertainment value. Now, take playing it multiple times and it’s one of the cheapest forms of entertainment. (arguably the hardware to run it needs to be calculated in, but it depends on preferences etc etc etc)

When I was in HS, I had a band. Has that type of interaction simply been replaced by video games?

No. Apples and Oranges.

I really want to understand the interplay between video games and psychology.

I like good story telling. I like being enveloped in my media, and feeling truly immersed. Gaming does that in spades.

Cuz it seems like FPSes are dominant whereas not too long ago they were a single niche among many niches.

Maybe in your friend group they are, but in the circles I’m in it’s simply not true. Everyone is different. Everyone has different preferences. I just played Dispatch over the weekend, a fun 8ish hour romp that also made me both laugh out loud and well up with tears, it was an adorable game. I see 98% positive ratings on it with almost 100k reviews, so I don’t think we need to jump to “FPS is dominant”.

Because it was their fault of course!

Of course it is. Anything that does even moderately well the executives start thinking not just franchise, but universe

Wait they complain about the volume issues while also not using their soundbar?!

Simply that you’re spending more time watching their content instead of something else makes them more money

People are out there getting scammed into buying the shittest panels available and now the media itself is being compromised because they’re the biggest market.

I sold TVs at best buy now 15 years ago and this was it. It didn’t matter if it was 20 dollars more, I’ll say at least 70% of the people I talked to would not be interested. It’s cheaper? Sign me up. “But for 20 dollars you can have an actual good tv, with like, a good picture and everything”. Nope, they’d happily leave with their crap. Please just save for one more month, come back, and buy something worth the money instead of throwing it away on garbage.

What’s even worse is sound. I hear so freaking often “they’re making the sound terrible” “I have to constantly turn it up and down”. 99% of the time when I ask them what they did for sound they say “I just use the TV speakers”. Well there’s the freaking problem! You’re listening on speakers that are slightly better than those you’d find in a tablet. TV makers will make it as cheap as possible, and speakers don’t sell TVs. I’m not even saying do something like surround sound, just something that was made with sound in mind like a sound bar, hell even computer speakers are going to be better than the pieces of tissue paper they call speakers in your TV. You go buy any sound device, even a cheap soundbar, and the quality will go up. Again though, people will just complain, say it’s horrible, and even when presented with a very reasonable option, they will opt to save a few bucks. Even if it’s an investment they’ll be sitting in front of for years, nope 20-100 bucks more is not worth it.

I haven’t seen stranger things on my C… something, but I do remember tuning it quite a bit, making sure HDR was enabled and I calibrated with dark images for a while.

That being said, going back to Netflix, they’ll happily sacrifice quality for a better bitrate. I usually buy the Blurays

This is one of those things that you know something looks wrong or cheap, but you don’t know why. Once you know though you can’t unsee it, and it’s absolutely horrible.

I think a lot of people have tvs that can’t handle darks well, so things like the dark knight, game of thrones, I remember the departed especially, if you have a lot of shadow it won’t show at all. So there was already a push from consumers to make things “easier to see” at the expense of good cinematography.

Netflix though is the worst because they encourage and actively push for people to watch big block uster hits on their phones and tablets while commuting or out and about. Turns out big movies don’t really look great on a 4.3 inch screen, and so my tin foil hat theory is all this over brightness is to make things easy to watch on formats that aren’t good for them.

But line must go up. They make more money when you watch a big budget drama on your cracked iPhone, so screw actual good lighting. Otherwise you might watch a YouTube video or social media instead of giving them views.

(If you like movies at all and you are getting a new TV, just get an OLED. Trust me. Just do it. It’s more expensive yes but you just need to. Movies look so much better. I even got the wife begrudging approval that even she admits it was worth the cost. There’s so much you’re missing on the dark range, and it’s insane how ina dark scene there is no backlight, there’s just nothing, the panel is off, it makes the watching experience better)

The whole solar system destroying weird thing seems pretty interesting and got me to read the book.

kind of

Personally, I get a tone of Amazon MGM did more telling than discussing with him. On top of that I do think the reveal is on par with Vader, or Gandalf, because it does change the rest of the story from that point onward.

My opinions on these, take or leave them

Send Help looks interesting, but I’m biased because I absolutely adore Rachel McAdams in everything she’s done. (Okay fine True Detective season 2 was…)

Project Hail Mary I’m so pissed at their marketing team for ruining the big spoiler after reading the book. Those fucking morons said “We don’t think it’ll effect people who haven’t read it.” I was talking with my wife who also read it, for those who haven’t read the book, the spoiler is so bad that it’s like revealing that Gandalf comes back in Two Towers. It completely ruins the entire tone of the first half of the story. I… I just can’t even comprehend how stupid of a decision it was to just spoil the entire goddamn story in a 3 minute trailer. Seriously why go see it even?! You know the entire story already! There’s literally no point! Guh I’m pissed about that. Get 3 marketers in a room and they’ll be able to ruin anything they touch.

Devil wears Prada 2 may be good, but I’m also disappointed in Anne Hathaway getting that new Instagram-style plastic surgery. IMO it just ruined what made her charming and unique, and it sours me on seeing the sequel.

Coyote vs. Acme: I’ll watch, but I’m not sure how I want to support WB after they screwed with it so much.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping: Seems like something great to watch on a plane.

Dune: Part Three: The only item on the list I’m legit a bit hyped for, and it’s because we have 2 solid installments that proved the quality.

As long as they offer DRM free games I’ll buy. No sense worrying now about something that may not come to pass. They’re still a massive underdog who have seen epic and ea fail at stores, and they know their edge is DRM free

As soon as they give up DRM free I’ll stop giving them money

For everyone here, this is true, and I’d recommend buying a couple drives for quick replacements. If you don’t you’re gambling that 1) a replacement drive will be available and 2) that it will be affordable.

Keep a few spares lying around while we get through the ebbs and flows of the market. As K said, a person is smart, people are dumb and panicky. If ssd and storage prices rise, people panic and our hdds will rise too.

Prep now and thank yourself later.

I see there’s still a pro version though, that’s how Insomnia started and features have slowly been leeching to “pro only”, is that a worry with this one?

Wow, a true Lemmy wooosh moment. I think you missed the point of, well, the movie

Same, read that and thought “oh sweet I can see Dune”

Oh it’s no secret, studios saw the cultural phenomenon of barbenheimer and now try to manufacture it for profit. They did the same with wicked last year with some other flop of a movie. They’re actively trying to make it happen again, trying to seem young and hip.