#I do think some people want a game

[intramoon]

Just my thoughts on InZoi (that no one asked for) ...

I am not a cynic but I am skeptical of any new "life simulation" games. And that's not to say I don't want The Sims to have a competitor, I think EA needs a competitor for The Sims. For the price tag of The Sims, EA needs pressure on them to address their complacency (with game content, the growing issues with paid content, etc). InZoi is far from that. At face value, I think the gameplay is unimpressive. I can understand why people are drawn to an in-depth, hyperrealistic character creation but to what end? The inclusion of AI, even if just for primarly patterns/textures, is an increasingly slippery slope. It's just for patterns ... for now, but how will AI provide shortcuts for the company in the future? That's one of my concerns and I think it's a bit shady for the company to have this feature. Any kind of AI generation has significant environmental impacts and contributes to art theft/the distribution of AI that has burdened the art community. I struggle to find a justifiable reason for the game having AI because I don’t think there is one. If you consider the computer that is needed to run a game with graphics like InZoi, the game isn’t accessible to people with “lower-end”/older PCs. An issue The Sims team had to address with the Sims 4 ie. the change in graphics and the game no longer being open world. I like that more people can play The Sims without needing a PC that is worth thousands of dollars. I keep seeing the comparison of InZoi to GTAV NPCs. As someone who has spent a lot of time playing with friends on GTAV FiveM servers, even those servers have better gameplay than I’ve seen with InZoi. Not to be funny but InZoi reminds me of those invasive 3D p*rn game ads.

The other aspect of InZoi that bothers me a little (maybe a lot) is the stark difference in how “regular” simmers are reacting to InZoi versus how some content creators/custom content creators are reacting. It’s a little frustrating for the people, even if through EA’s allotted 21-day early accesses, who make hundreds if not thousands of dollars off the community aren’t acknowledging let alone addressing the glaring concerns users have about InZoi. It seems many of them are going to brush these concerns aside for the opportunity to mod for the game (a game to me that doesn’t seem to value artists' work) and worse case scenario will jump ship to InZoi if Simblr takes issue with it.

It’s … interesting.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanessa TOTALLY got those Tapes for the FNAF lore..

[lucabyte]

Taking pride in One's own appearance.

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[strawberri-draws]

shuichi posting

[swampthingking]

andrew’s definitely gotten in trouble with his pr manager for tweeting things along the lines of:

“no mania inducing medication will compare to the euphoria i will feel the day donald trump drops dead”

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[shimmershy]

Buttercups and Golden Flowers

[silusvesuius]

nnnnnnnnnnnnno maa'am

[lumiereswig]

I'm still seeing a lot of angry takes in the tags about how excessive Watcher's current costs are and how all fans really want, apparently, is "just shane and ryan sitting in a basement" back again. While I do think Watcher is probably spending over budget and that's a real issue, a lot of the takes I'm seeing show a fundamental misunderstanding of how video production works and where costs actually lie. So a few quick things that I just keep seeing that are bothering me:

It was never just Shane and Ryan in a basement. BFU did a great job selling that conceit and making sure you never saw anyone beyond them and maybe TJ, but they absolutely had other crew members with them on ghost hunts and they didn't do all the work on BFU themselves. This Q&A from Season 2 lists 36 people on staff for Buzzfeed Unsolved. It's fair to make arguments that Watcher may or may not need 25 people, but those arguments should not be coming from a place of "before it was just Shane and Ryan and nobody else."

If you don't know how many people are needed to make a professional video from a TV/film standpoint, you will not have a reasonable grasp of why Watcher wants to keep 25 people on staff. Sure, some YouTubers get by with a ring light and a contracted editor. The Watcher team have stated repeatedly that they do not want to work as just YouTubers and see themselves more as a production studio—so why do people keep referencing the YouTube model to understand their business? This is like asking the local shake shop why it doesn't function like the kids' lemonade stand down the block. The item category is similar but they're not trying for the same products or process.

The "gold dusted food" is not the big budget sink you think it is. On most TV shows I've worked on it's normal to partner with businesses that are shown onscreen and work out a deal where the price of the product (in this case the gold food) is reduced or eliminated in exchange for the free publicity. Watcher very likely made a deal with every restaurant it worked with to make the Korea trip affordable for the company. The real budget spends are on things you're probably not seeing but that still matter: camera and lighting equipment is expensive, insurance for that equipment is expensive, business overhead and paying your staff are expensive. So again—it's fine to critique Watcher for the streaming plan and the perceived budgetary issues, but go into this knowing the costs might not be coming from the things you see onscreen.

My source is that I work in TV and film and actually have a clue on how the industry functions. Again, 36 people worked on Unsolved (and those were the people mention in Season 2—who knows how big the team blew up past that in later seasons). Entertainment work is real work, and demands decent equipment, competent staff, and the same types of business and budget problems you'd find in any other business (overhead, staffing, etc.). Feel free to critique Watcher's business model, but first try to understand where that model is coming from and what goals it's attempting to serve.

[dykedvonte]

I just realized some people are confused about events in the alluded to past in Mouthwashing, particularly about how long the crew has been working together.

The only person who is truly new is Daisuke and it’s why his dynamic with the crew and role in the story is very unique and somewhat distant. Curly didn’t just get Jimmy this job on the Tulpar, he got him the job with the Pony Express. He’s been his copilot for probably a couple of years but still not as long as they’ve been friends. None of them are new with the freight industry, Anya and Swansea especially have been doing this for years, together.

Jimmy is the newest on the regular crew, maybe just a few assignments, but it’s not his first time working with them. I think it’s just something important because this isn’t just one bad mistake that snowballed with giving Jimmy the job. None of them thought Jimmy would do anything, no matter how off-put by him they could’ve been, since he hadn’t done a thing since being there. Generally unpleasantness isn’t a crime and he’d be aware of that.

It was a festering thing and a sort of forced trust they had to give him that he knowingly took advantage of. He was the black sheep and still a wolf under the wool. He expected when he lashed out, that he had been there long enough for it to be looked over completely. Got too comfortable in the space he inserted into and did a lot of damage with his claws when he felt he was going to get shaken out.

[nebuladreamz]

The voices are loud and I am WEAK

[slymanner]

Look all I'm saying is if that a shadow game can work THAT well and be so well designed story wise and gameplay wise

HE can work

[14dayswithyou]

tell ren to turn his location on👉👈

I saw one of the posts of how ren does get jealous of pets being loved over him and alll that so now I have the thought of the one meme of ‘ah yes, me, my partner and their [enter normal pet size] foot [pet]’

I don’t have anything else, it did pop into my head though and I thought I’d share with the class.

⌞♥⌝ ItsNotVivy on Twitter actually made that exact meme with Ren a looong time ago!!

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The fans: Ugh Sonic was just so preachy. I mean obviously he's supposed to be the good guy, so any uncomfortableness I feel here and any way I feel like Sonic's choices are framed as being why some other people have shitty lives is just bad writing because he is obviously supposed to be right always, but this characterization makes no sense. Isn't he right for the things he did?

Ian Flynn, using Kitsunami to say the (barely even at this point) quiet part even louder: Hey it's almost like ever since the Mr. Tinker event we've been purposely running with the critique of Sonic as being more selfish than he appears. Sonic is upholding a system of Eggman v Sonic that currently benefits him and shuts down talk of how to improve the current system because he likes his own personal enjoyment and he's attached enough to Eggman that he'd rather Eggman pretend to be a good person than be stuck in prison for life. He doesn't even quite practice what he preaches. We are trying to show that the current hero v villain system and Sonic's recklessness currently affects some people poorly and that Sonic isn't a perfect hero.

[puppyeared]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way