BadlyDrawnRhino

A professional tennis serve often reaches speeds up to 230km/h, with the fastest recorded being 263km/h. So yeah, the balls wear out quickly.

When Neopets first came out, I used the entire month’s data allowance in a day. From memory I think we only had 100MB. I wasn’t allowed to use the internet with images turned on after that. Luckily by the time Runescape came out we had a much higher limit.

If you’re a newsletter subscriber, check to see if you have received a voucher for a slightly higher discount. Couldn’t tell you the difference, I have to wait for my refund request to be processed.

Oops, straight to jail.

I’m not sure if this is poking fun at Starfield, or the way Bethesda constantly rehashes their games as “Anniversary Editions” with the fanfare of a brand new release.

Surely it’s less immoral than turning them into a zombie minion without their consent?

Top 3 is hard. I’ll start with the first three that came to mind, in no particular order:

• Witcher 3

• Star Control 2

• Monkey Island 2

But there are so many that I could have listed instead.

The Commander Keen games are amongst the first I remember playing, I loved those and played through them so many times.

Baldurs Gate 3 was such a masterpiece, it probably could bump W3 off that list.

Although, Ultima 7 was the first RPG I played where I became properly immersed in the story. The world, the characters, the way the mystery of the main story unfolds. And it is actually a really good jump-in point for the series as it’s set a couple centuries after number 6.

Fallout 1 also could easily make the list. I loved the way such a small and intimate quest for your vault unfolds into something bigger.

But the large corporations are handling that side of things already. If the lawsuit goes in the favour of copyright holders, AI companies would in theory have to do something to avoid using copyrighted material, or pay for the usage. Of course, there’s every chance that they may end up avoiding using copyrighted material from anyone big enough to fight back, and just profit off of the works of artists without the resources to stop them doing so.

You’re not wrong, but if they win against AI, all artists will benefit because of the precedent that it would set.

What I think will actually happen if this is looking to not go in the tech bros’ favour is that they’ll settle and make a potential deal with large copyright holders for ongoing usage, and that would screw individual artists.

It’s also interesting to include Luther in there. Luther is the embodiment of an anti-hero, and is constantly getting into trouble for disregarding due process. He’s certainly not lauded as the hero in the end.

I’m not familiar with too many of the other shows portrayed, that just stood out to me. I don’t doubt that there are some instances where “copaganda” plays into it, but I think it’s more likely that due process is kind of boring to show on screen, it’s just more entertaining to have the main character do whatever it takes to solve the case. And really good cop shows explore the negatives of doing so just as much as any supposed positives.

Inside is currently 90% off, so good time to buy it anyway. Limbo is full price, but it is a great game and well worth it in my opinion.

The original Duke was much closer to what you described, funnily enough. Go back and play Duke Nukem 1 and 2, before the 3D era when they made the misogyny of the character much more overt.

That’s fair. I was thinking more about the overall aesthetic, as it’s a bit more stylised rather than leaning towards realism like in 1 and 3.

They are remaking the first game, but I don’t know if there are enough details about it yet to know how extensive the overhaul will be. The second game doesn’t need one.

We’ve known about the dangers of climate change since the 70s. Is it really any wonder that after five decades of inaction, the “rhetoric” has changed from “Hey, maybe we should work to reduce emissions” to “A lot of people are going to die if we don’t take action right now!”

To be fair, half of the AAA gaming industry is all about trying to clone the latest successful game with a new coat of paint. Maybe using AI to make these clones will mean that the talented people behind the scenes are free to explore other ideas instead.

Of course in reality, it just means that the largest publishers will lay off a whole lot of people and keep churning out these uninspired games in the name of corporate profits, but it’s nice to dream sometimes.

Trebuchets aren’t really a tool for defence. They have tremendous range and aren’t exactly speedy to load, aim, and launch.

Unless you meant defence in the same way that a country’s military operations are known as “defence forces” regardless of intent, in which case carry on.

I never owned a NES, but had a SNES and my brother also borrowed his friend’s Mega Drive (Genesis for those of you in the US) from time-to-time. All of us would blow the connectors on the cartridges, regardless of console. If anything went wrong with a game, the first step to troubleshoot was to take the cartridge out and give it a good blow.

It was never about how the console actually worked, a five year-old isn’t going to logically think about that. It was all about a perceived performance increase by doing it.

That’s an oversimplification. All works are derivative to some extent. There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from something, to taking the characters and setting from something. Particularly if you’re intending to make a profit.

If an author makes something that a large number of people enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to make money off it for the rest of their life? Why exactly should an individual give up the rights to their creation simply so that someone else can use their characters and their worlds?

To be clear, I’m talking solely on an individual level. I think the system we have where a corporation can own an idea is very broken. I’m also talking about this from a perspective of the world we currently live in. In an ideal world where money wasn’t the endgame for survival, ideas would flow more freely and nobody would need to care. But that’s not the world we live in.

I think an argument could be made to set it to the date of death of the author. I agree with the other guy that it should only apply to commercial works though.

I also don’t think that the copyright should be transferable. The trading of ideas is an absurd concept to me. But then us humans do a lot of absurd things so I guess it’s just par for the course.