I really wanted to prove myself wrong because you sound like you know what you’re talking about. So I went and looked it up, turns out I was right to say what I said. Most of the major games out there report that more than half of their revenue comes from whales and those whales make up around 5% of their paying playerbase, sometimes more sometimes less. And in some games, that revenue is 60-70% of the total.

So that’s why there are 17,000 levels which that vast majority of players wont ever see. It’s because they’re chasing 5% or less of their audience.

But when it comes to games that are much smaller, I wasn’t really exaggerating to say that a small handful of players can outspend everyone else. When you have a player base in the hundreds and there’s like 20 people spending 50% or more in revenue for you, it’s going to affect your road map. In a larger game though, that percent will still mean tens of thousands of whale players.

And maybe your experience was different, maybe the games you worked on didn’t operate that way. But the industry absolutely does. It doesn’t mean you can ignore the 50% of revenue coming from regular players by the way, I’m just saying that the percent that spends enormously has almost the same weight in changing the games road map as the majority of players sometimes. Which is crazy to me.

Here’s the relevant Reddit post that was one of the sources I found.

Candy Crush Saga now has nearly 17,000 levels in it, so you’d be very wrong about that. Your average player might get into the hundreds, above average maybe thousands, but 17,000? They’re fishing for whales and not even that many of them.

This problem is way worse than people think and most mobile games on the store have the sole entire purpose of only hooking a small handful of whales. Then once they do, they mold entire games around just a few people. These companies that run apps like Candy Crush actively change the price of lives per player and watch the statistics of what they’re buying and when. It’s so sinister and the entire industry survives off of gaming addictions and whaling.

There’s a fan made mod for the original, but HL2 has official RTX support I believe

I don’t think most cheats are just for the fun of the game. Most cheats get developed to sell to the huge Asian markets of cheaters. It’s fairly normalized in China and somewhat Japan to cheat in games. And then they get sold to everyone else as well.

Then after the cheats are sold, TF2 and CS2 become vulnerable to bots and idling. Many of the drops you get in those games can be sold, often for a very low price but multiplied by a thousand, it’s worth it for cheaters. And valve doesn’t much care so long as their game reviews are positive because it inflates the player counts of the games and also they can ban the accounts, take away items, and then the cheaters will spend more to get them back on a new account.

They’re reporting 1.00 billion in gross profit as of Q1 2024 so yeah, they make money. It’s kind of impossible to compare much though since they’re the only freestanding music competitor that’s popular.

The closest comparison I can make is using Apples reported figures of making around $9.2 billion in revenue for its 93 million user base.

Meanwhile Spotify is making around 2.63 billion in revenue for its near 3x subscriber base estimated around 240 million. So I wouldn’t say they’re not making money, but maybe you can see why they think they can squeeze a lot more. Best to just unsubscribe honestly, they’ll keep doing this

Alternate theory: The human brain is reacting to unfamiliarity and not alien features. We strongly associate Uncanny Valley with things not-quite human but it’s my thinking that it’s a tribal thing. Nowadays we see a ton of faces of all variations but I bet when we were hunter gatherers, we only saw features of our own tribe. The moment you meet another tribe, I’d bet this response is to create fear of the unrecognized human. It’s also probably there as a punishment mechanism for us seeing faces in everything.

The times that the uncanny effect hit hardest is when you think something is human or is a face potentially before finding out you’re wrong. So that’s my basis for thinking its there to keep us from being mistaken.

You’re close. The real truth is that most average people do not like to date too high above their perceived range of attractiveness. This bears out in many studies but people are attracted to 8’s and 9’s but won’t date them and instead mostly date people that are more normal 5,6,7’s.

Then we look at the opposite side of the coin, 9’s and 10’s don’t even want to date each other. And for good reason. Extremely attractive people often cross a line into narcissism or being too busy to hold a relationship.

So two factors: 1. Most people aren’t extremely fit and so don’t want to date people whose lifestyle does not match their own, we’re all also slightly insecure. 2. Extremely attractive partners tend not to be good partners. The more people that are attracted to you, the less that date you. Also that’s out of fear of competition and effort so it’s not worth it.

What’s funny is that it’s also probably an internal security risk as well. I mean who knows, there’s probably at least one of their internal servers that still accepts credentials or keys from the dead domain. Not to mention their emails probably aren’t transferred.

All of that could be fixed but you’d have to, ya know, not fire your programmers.

I think this is the biggest myth of conversation. People always tell you to search for people whom you share something in common with, but the reality is that nearly everyone shares something in common and there’s no reason to go searching for it.

The key to a good conversation with a stranger is to initially do two things: 1. Ask details about the stranger and 2. Intertwine that with yourself in some way. You don’t even need to share this part.

Good conversations have these things I’ll call “footholds” where you intentionally give each other details shortly after meeting in order to create those ties in conversation. If you ask where someone is from, you should shortly offer up where you are from as well. Or if you ask about a hobby, offer a light comparison to your own.

Once you have enough of these footholds, the conversation should flow freely. If it ever doesn’t, ask the stranger more about themselves. And trust me, just be interested in what they say.

He did demonstrate it that way, specifically with a carrot. And it somewhat worked. The problem is they programmed it to do more and more pressure every time it fails meaning that doing the carrot first actually caused a safety issue. He only moved onto his finger because the safety feature seemed to be working.

I don’t think so. The Xbox ecosystem is about to stop existing the way it exists right now, likely turning into Steam Machine type boxes. Then GamePass has already been discussed as expanding platforms. So really MS is just aiming to sell GamePass which they can’t do through 3rd party deals so they buy their own studios and rely on their ROI by way of subscription sign ups.

It’s not like the things they make are exclusive either, they could be doing the Epic Games (gross) model of exclusives but MS really hasn’t been doing much of that. Which means they’re acting more as a game publisher for sales outside of gamepass and therefor do want the ROI from these studios.

Kind of. They’re asking you to pay for maximum possible bandwidth but make no claims about how long you can use that max bandwidth. Packets are only a convenient way to measure a percentage of max bandwidth use over time.

I think we’ve just stumbled on an issue where the rubber meets the road as far as our philosophies about privacy and consent. I view consent as important mostly in areas that pertain to bodily autonomy right? So we give people the rights to use our likeness for profit or promotion or distribution. And what we’re giving people is a mental permission slip to utilize the idea of the body or the body itself for specific purposes.

However, I don’t think that these things really pertain to private matters. Because the consent issue only applies when there are potential effects on the other person. Like if I talk about celebrities and say that imagining a celebrity sexually does no damage because you don’t know them, I think most people would agree. And so if what we care about is harm, there is no potential for harm.

With surveillance matters, the consent does matter because we view breaching privacy as potential harm. The reason it doesn’t apply to AI nudes is that privacy is not being breached. The photos aren’t real. So it’s just a fantasy of a breach of privacy.

So for instance if you do know the person and involve them sexually without their consent, that’s blatantly wrong. But if you imagine them, that doesn’t involve them at all. Is it wrong to create material imaginations of someone sexually? I’d argue it’s only wrong if there is potential for harm and since the tech is already here, I actually view that potential for harm as decreasing in a way. The same is true nonsexually. Is it wrong to deepfake friends into viral videos and post them on twitter? Can be. Depends. But do it in private? I don’t see an issue.

The problem I see is the public stuff. People sharing it. And it’s already too late to stop most of the private stuff. Instead we should focus on stopping AI porn from being shared and posted and create higher punishments for ANYONE who does so. The impact of fake nudes and real nudes is very similar, so just take them similarly seriously.

In every chat I find about this, I see people railing against AI tools like this but I have yet to hear an argument that makes much sense to me about it. I don’t care much either way but I want a grounded position.

I care about harms to people and in general, people should be free to do what they want until it begins harming someone. And then we get to have a nuanced conversation about it.

I’ve come up with a hypothetical. Let’s say that you write naughty stuff about someone in your diary. The diary is kept in a secure place and in private. Then, a burglar breaks in and steals your diary and mails that page to whomever you wrote it about. Are you, the writer, in the wrong?

My argument would be no. You are expressing a desire in private and only through the malice of someone else was the harm done. And no, being “creepy” isn’t an argument either. The consent thing I can maybe see but again do you have a right not to be fantasized about? Not to be written about in private?

I’m interested in people’s thoughts because this argument bugs me not to have a good answer for.

I just don’t see why you’d make the creation of this stuff illegal. Right now you could be easy photoshop to put people’s faces onto dirty pictures. It hurts zero people and also takes a similar low amount of effort. As long as you keep it to yourself, society should not care.

Making it illegal also seems kind of dumb when you can just hold someone civilly liable for this stuff if they’re posting nude photos of you, real or not. I don’t see the issue of any of it if we enforce these photos spreading as if they were real and let people collect damages.

No problem!

More like:

“Hey OpenAI, can you give me a brief description of life in ancient Egypt?”

“Certainly, I’d be happy to provide an explanation about Egyptian life! But first, I’d like to thank today’s sponsor: RAID: Shadow Legends™.

RAID: Shadow Legends™ is an immersive online experience with everything you’d expect from a brand new RPG title. It’s got an amazing storyline, awesome 3D graphics, giant boss fights, PVP battles, and hundreds of never before seen champions to collect and customize.

I never expected to get this level of performance out of a mobile game. Look how crazy the level of detail is on these champions!

RAID: Shadow Legends™ is getting big real fast, so you should definitely get in early. Starting now will give you a huge head start. There’s also an upcoming Special Launch Tournament with crazy prizes! And not to mention, this game is absolutely free!

So go ahead and check out the video description to find out more about RAID: Shadow Legends™. There, you will find a link to the store page and a special code to unlock all sorts of goodies. Using the special code, you can get 50,000 Silver immediately, and a FREE Epic Level Champion as part of the new players program, courtesy of course of the RAID: Shadow Legends™ devs.”

Not OP but here’s what I could find

Any job where you deal with construction or dirt or sawdust will absolutely clog those ports if left in pants facing upward.

This is only partially true. Reviewers know that the exact build and exact code aren’t final when reviewing, that is true and normal. The reviewer does however expect that gameplay systems, graphics, audio, and the rest are mostly complete with only minor tweaks needed. The game should be 99% done by the time reviewers have it.

Yet nowadays the game is not 99% done. This even applies to huge day 1 patches. Like great you patched stuff but also reviewers can’t assess performance and bugs properly for consumers that way. Same is true of monetization which is a huge factor for enjoyment in modern games.