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Thaaaat... looks like Venom is a playable character!

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Some people think I am strange, because I boycott games forcing a male character on me, and will continue to do so until the day when there is a halfway equal amount of games with female protagonists out there. I guess there are not a lot of people like me around, because these game still seem to sell very well. :D

29% of male players and 76% of female players prefer playing as a female character.

https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/

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Tingus Goose was at this year's PAX Australia at the Aus Indie Showcase (tons of amazing games there). Love the artwork in this one, and they had awesome little sticker sheets too. Looking forward to it.

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I still wish Valve would adapt the Deck technology to a laptop form-factor. A 14" or 15" screen would be great. Economically priced like the Deck, of course.

And I wish Valve would release a circular trackpad-only (no joystick) variant of the Steam Deck OLED with same pricing.
🙄

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Hrm, I would like to admit that while I talk about the AI bubble bursting, the Chinese stuff is a very different question. That could well prosper, which is something I find worrisome even though at least some of the Chinese stuff is open source.

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snip

Do you want me to generate a microphone for you to drop.

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Man. Those kids are so sweet and wholesome playing fun games together. Not like the ones that used to chase me around the schoolyard hoping to beat me up. Envy.

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Some of the same artists now throwing spite at AI and anyone using it or being even mildly in favor of it, said the exact same thing about Photoshop and why it will kill all art.

I don't think they did, though? There were some people who were upset about art done on software, but they were different people with different concerns. Many of the people upset about AI are generally quite pro-technology.

I think it's also worth noting that in the past, some of the concerns about new technologies have been justified--just because a new technology won, does not mean that its overall impact was positive. It just means somebody made money from it. Success and beneficial impact are two different topics.

You can go back, for instance, to the water mill. Water mills were often imposed by feudal lords. Water mills ground flour more efficiently than hand mills, they harnessed the power of water to replace human muscle power, but that's not the main reason feudal lords liked them. Feudal lords liked them because they were a central point peasants had to bring their grain, where the lord could tax it. In order to force peasants to use this central point, feudal lords actively outlawed hand mills to stop peasants from grinding their own grain at home and not paying tax. Clearly the peasants would have preferred to use the less-efficient hand mills and not pay the lord, or there would have been no need to ban them. By the time the feudal period ended, hand mills were largely obsolete; the water mill had won the technological battle, which was really a political battle. But that wasn't actually a good thing for the peasants.

Generative AI is also a very political technology, and if it succeeds (which does not look like happening, at least in the current iteration) any benefits will flow overwhelmingly to uber-wealthy oligarchs. Some other benefits will go to people who, like me, can't do art, or who, like some other people, can't write their own essays. But costs will go to a lot more people than benefit and will be much more serious. A lot of the objections to LLM AI are essentially political in nature, and I think anyone should think two or three times before choosing to be on the oligarch side of those politics. Most other AI criticisms are about an observed dumbing down of what's on the internet from AI "slop", which does seem to be a very real phenomenon.

Photoshop was not a very political technology; it did not really shift the category of people who were doing art or how much money they made from it; to the extent that it made artists or graphic designers more productive, that mainly led to a "speed-up" in what was expected of artist production, and thus an inflation in how much art assets could be produced for any given project. Objections to it were mainly about artistic sensibilities, about the "feel" as it were of doing art, about the general idea of heightening and computer-orienting the technology around creating art. It was the kind of stuff we call "Luddism" even though it quite specifically isn't--Luddism has come to be associated with the idea of romantic, instinctive dislike of technology, but actual Luddism was about politics and the very real fact that industry was turning independent craftspeople who made decent livings into impoverished factory workers who worked 12 hour days in incredibly bad conditions. I do have some sympathy, to a point, for general appeals for less technology in our lives, but it's a quite different argument.

Just because people A didn't like technology A, and people B didn't like technology B that had applications in the same field, doesn't mean people A had the same concerns as people B, let alone that they were the same people.

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The top 5 LLMs are all Chinese-made these days and most of them use a fraction of the parameters the Western models use (to the degree you can run them on machines easily within reach even for smaller companies, no AWS needed).

interesting.. & Compounding that, in the west we will Might see (after a certain time has past ;) ) a move to regulate Ai across the board as a bulwark against things such as identity theft & misrepresentation, updated intellectual property law, political propaganda. So then, how does Ai stand if that should happen if all the unregulated models and a lot of servers clusters are located in china ?

Would that matter in terms of digital warfare, propaganda ? Could we see a restriction on china Ai too ?
Genuinely asking as i have no idea how the chips would fall.

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Had to switch to GE-Proton, otherwise it wouldn't start...

And a bit of meta-progression would be nice. Just replaying things over and over again gets a bit old after a few games.

Generally cool game though.

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It does to some people. Whether they have a choice or not ? Well, being informed about the inclusion of Ai at least for now will help people make their own ethical choices.

Fair enough. Everyone has their own standards of what they accept and don't. Some people think I am strange, because I boycott games forcing a male character on me, and will continue to do so until the day when there is a halfway equal amount of games with female protagonists out there. I guess there are not a lot of people like me around, because these game still seem to sell very well. :D

that cost of generating those will suddenly be REALLY high

I skimmed that article quick, and while the numbers seem correct, that's because US/Western-made AI models all seemed to have been developed as if resources don't matter at all. Chinese-made models are taking over, among things because they can be trained and run for a fraction of that cost. The top 5 LLMs are all Chinese-made these days and most of them use a fraction of the parameters the Western models use (to the degree you can run them on machines easily within reach even for smaller companies, no AWS needed). Open AI and Anthropic are basically dead in the water, and unless they pull something really amazing out of the hat near year, they will be out of business.
In the end, there is absolutely nothing about that article that made me agree with the "haha, it's going to blow up!" prediction. People will realize that just throwing more computing power at the problem isn't sustainable and develop models cheaper to train and operate. Like China already did.

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Because in the end it doesn't matter what made a game as long as it's fun to play.

It does to some people. Whether they have a choice or not ? Well, being informed about the inclusion of Ai at least for now will help people make their own ethical choices.

Pretty much every transformative technology destroys jobs and businesses. That's normal. People who feel threatened by said new technology typically turn into haters, thinking they can stop or at least delay it. That has never worked.

it may not have worked to completely stop a technology (and that's not really what most people are concerned about), however societal outcry from the public & general activism has enabled legislators to protect it's citizens from the worst impacts of said technology, or at the very least install guard rails.

This carte blanche attitude of "suck it up, it's here deal with it" , "you are obsolete" and then "your a hater " if you don't agree, is a kind of thinking that leads a very bad political climate. When there is no informed consent.

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^ That's exactly what I'm sincerely hoping for as well. That it'll eventually (can that be ... like ... tomorrow pls?) bankrupt all the major players and the whole thing will collapse / burst. There'll be a million apps & services that suddenly have features ripped out of them or become hideously expensive. Which will just mean people won't use them or they'll be delisted.

Like for instance, shitty game devs that currently use free (or almost free) ai to generate background art like pictures on the walls or something in an rpg ... that cost of generating those will suddenly be REALLY high. It will then once again go back to the artists to create those background art on the walls. Like it should have all along damnit.

also side note: Ed is so great. His podcast is worth a listen as well.

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My worry is that all this strain on the eyes of younger folk will cause them to need reading glasses even earlier than I did.

It wouldn't be that way round. The folk wisdom is that focusing too much on close things when you're young affects the ability to focus on things far away - the short-sighted bookworm stereotype. Becoming long-sighted - unable to focus on objects that are close - happens as you get older, regardless of whether you've ever been long-sighted, short-sighted, or neither, when you were younger.

If you need your glasses to read a phone or a book then you'll also need your glasses for the Deck.

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@Purple Library Guy

Many older people have this problem worse than I do, plus not great sight in other ways; a Deck just isn't going to be that usable for them--not because anybody's done anything wrong, just because that form factor isn't going to work for them.

That explains it quite nicely. It's not just the size of the text but all that fine detail in such a small image. It strains the eyes. You start to feel it more as you get older.

I have noticed that when I'm looking at a fine print label, and I bring it closer to try to read it, I lose focus just before it gets close enough. That didn't happen when I was younger

Yep, that's how it manifested for me. Eventually, that led to occasional use of reading glasses. Now, the glasses are necessary for all my reading.

My worry is that all this strain on the eyes of younger folk will cause them to need reading glasses even earlier than I did.

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@Cybolic

I've actually started using XR glasses more and more with the Deck

Fascinating idea. Glad it works for you, but ... the price! It costs the same if not more than the Steam Deck itself!

How are these glasses for people who are prone to vertigo/motion-sickness though?

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AI will become a tool like Photoshop or a calculator.

I suspect a lot of what you're saying has the potential to be true. But the reason people quite reasonably despise AI in particular, and definitely don't hate Photoshop or calculators, is that those products aren't destroying the planet.

Also, they're rarely forced on you. There are alternatives to these things (that doesn't quite work with calculators as an example, but hey ho - spreadsheets, or abacuses. Okay!) and so these things have to provide real, measurable value before you buy them.

Finally, they didn't absolutely piss on existing creators by stealing their work (and hence livelihood) in order to exist.

I sincerely hope the article below is spot on, and that AI is absolutely unsustainable in the medium or long term. The only reason it exists today is because big tech is front running the costs in the hope to establish dependency, so that when they price this tech according to its actual cost, there are enough subscribers unwilling to do without the tech, and they'll pay up.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/costs/

Fingers crossed.

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This is good especially considering Microsoft sent their "Xbox" handheld out to every content creator with even a small following.They're undoubtedly hoping influencers will do a lot of the promotion work for them.

but i still think microsoft is dumb for not puting an killer price like 100USD.

Microsoft said ASUS set the price. After all, despite the Xbox branding, it's still an ASUS product.

Anyway, I don't think the "play everything" claim is as much of a flex as they think it is. Yes, there are some people who really want to play fortnite on a handheld, but realistically, anyone serious about online competitive gaming has an expensive mouse and keyboard, a high-refresh rate monitor, etc. Casual folks love the Steam Deck, and I don't think that's going to change for a more expensive handheld that still has Windows on it, despite the Xbox branding.

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The problem isn't just the lack of oversight, it's the ethics of it. People losing jobs due to AI, all the AI generation being trained on the works of others without their consent.

Pretty much every transformative technology destroys jobs and businesses. That's normal. People who feel threatened by said new technology typically turn into haters, thinking they can stop or at least delay it. That has never worked.

Some of the same artists now throwing spite at AI and anyone using it or being even mildly in favor of it, said the exact same thing about Photoshop and why it will kill all art. They're all using it now. And it hasn't killed art. It just made it different.

I wrote a lengthy post a while back why I really don't think that AI will ever replace human art. Or writing. Or coding. But if you guys insist on not buying anything remotely touched by "AI slop", as some of you refer to it, you will soon find yourself unable to buy any games at all anymore. AI will become a tool like Photoshop or a calculator. Everyone will use it at least in some capacity, because the alternative is losing your job or business. You think you can avoid games using AI even now? Think again. I am not aware of any professional software developer not using AI at least for some mundane tasks already. Maybe some are still out there, who knows. But fewer every day. Chances are that the vast majority of games already have at least some AI generated code in them. Just because you can't see it and its less obvious than art doesn't mean it isn't there. And soon you will be unable to identify AI art assets by counting fingers of characters on the images, too. It's hard to enforce "have to declare AI" rules, if not even experts will be able to tell the difference. And we're about 2-3 years away from that.

Technologies always had that tendency of not letting people stop them by hating them or people using them. The more constructive approach would be to talk about how to compensate creators for their works being used for training (just put a tax on the providers of commercial/non-open source models, really). Because in the end it doesn't matter what made a game as long as it's fun to play.

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All that still doesn't necessarily make a game on Deck usable with older eyes. The basic thing about the Deck is that it makes up for the smallish screen by being closer to you than a big screen would be. But, lots of older people can't focus from close up. I myself don't have this problem big time, but I have noticed that when I'm looking at a fine print label, and I bring it closer to try to read it, I lose focus just before it gets close enough. That didn't happen when I was younger, I could focus from quite close in. Many older people have this problem worse than I do, plus not great sight in other ways; a Deck just isn't going to be that usable for them--not because anybody's done anything wrong, just because that form factor isn't going to work for them.

elmapul, I do think maybe it's getting to be time for a Steam Deck II. Maybe a couple of recent/upcoming chips and stuff make it worth while? That and Valve are going to need to strongarm the anti-cheat situation somehow.

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What is this, the 80's again?!
Seriously this is looking amazing. As a life long comics geek and Marvel fan (not MCU), this tickles my fancy.

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I can't wait! I'm so excited!

Hades, Cult of the Lamb are huge favorites of mine. The story-lines & artwork are amazing and I enjoy the side-work. The new DLC seems to give us more stuff, so... yay!

Honestly, I wish there was an explosion in the genre.

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i think its a bit too late for that, because the competition "can play everything", and its geting close price-wise (i mean the rog xbox ally normal edition, not the x version), this will help sell those games that get verified but not help put an spotlight on the deck, valve time is killing the deck/steamOS momentum.


but i still think microsoft is dumb for not puting an killer price like 100USD.

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they need a better quality control/polishment for the content.
some content is pretty beautyfull (or good in the case of the musics) other is not that much / bad.
i think the "adventure mode" should be a curated experience instead of the current mess, then the aditional content be treated as if it was Free DLCs or Mods.

i know they rely mostly on volunteers work, so im asking too much, but still...

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Lovely looking game, and feels a bit more accessible than similar types of this genre.

That link you posted made me think that it would be wonderful if Steam could create a symlink, during PFX creation, for all that dross that makes finding the actual game content so tedious.

So create a "game" symbolic link for:
drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/TheFarmerWasReplaced/TheFarmerWasReplaced

And that way, instead of
steamapps/compatdata/2060160/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/TheFarmerWasReplaced/TheFarmerWasReplaced/Saves/Save0/

You'd just have:
steamapps/compatdata/2060160/pfx/game/Saves/Save0/

A boy can dream.

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I believe the problem is that buying a piece of media and feeding it into an algorithm to create a model isn't considered copyright infringement because the result is a piece of software rather than a copy of the original piece of media.

You're probably right, but that just means that copyright law needs to be updated.

If they want to create a new AI that's a great interior designer, but the creators of that AI need to knock doors and be shown the insides of people's houses - let's face it, they'd be told to do one.

The issue here is that they didn't have to knock doors and be let in. They just scraped everything they could find on the internet and considering all that data "free".

Even when it was provably not free, such as when Meta, absolutely scumbags that they are, scraped terrabytes of LibGen for pirated books, to train their shitty model. And then the ball-less judge ruled against the authors. Nothing about them breaking the law by torrenting LibGen, nah, just a weak excuse about "not dilating the market through their actions". Holy fuck, Zuckerberg makes me feel physically sick.

If you're still using Facebook or Insta after this, you have no soul. I can't judge you for Whatsapp because I know from personal experience how difficult it is to get people moved to alternatives, when they just don't care.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/26/meta-wins-ai-copyright-lawsuit-as-us-judge-rules-against-authors

Remember Kazaa in the early 2000's? Remember that single mother being sued into oblivion because her son shared songs using it??

In Duluth, Minnesota, the recording industry sued Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 30-year-old single mother. On 5 October 2007, Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies (Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.) $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they had focused on in this case.

(Where are those guys? She ended up owing over £2M - which was reduced to around £45K after YEARS of retrials because who the fuck thinks that anyone should be fined £2M for downloading/sharing files in 2003. Insane.)

Anyway. Clearly anything on the internet is free now. So that's nice.

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I really like this! I don't think I ever do anything with the steam labs so thank you for highlighting.

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This looks so cool! Definitely on my wishlist for the Deck. Of course, after I get to Quartet.

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Most text in most games is around the size of text on a phone or a paperback, or bigger. The OLED screen is marginally bigger than the LCD screen.

... and there's a Steam Deck verification category like "text hard to read".

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It's great and it gets much deeper that I initially thought.
In-game documentation at some parts is great, but other parts it's lacking.

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