T w e n t y S i d e d

You might remember that last week I enjoyed another round of mockery at the expense of No Man’s Sky. It’s become something of an annual-ish tradition around here. In this case, the application exhibited baffling windows behaviors that forced me to track down and edit settings files to get the thing to start.

Then in the comments of that same post, Mephane listed some mods that really improved the game.

Wait, modding NMS is a thing? I never even looked. This game is obviously using an extremely idiosyncratic custom engine and I sort of assumed that modding would be impossible. 

But as it turns out, there are lots of mods for No Man’s Sky. Sadly, this is an unfortunate time for me to revisit the game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Whole New Sky”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So last time I talked about why I hate lootboxes so much. Now the next most obvious question is, “If Shamus hates lootboxes so much, why is he so shy about calling for regulation?” Or perhaps, “Why is he always talking about how ‘people’ will want to regulate them, without naming himself as one of those people?”

The first and most obvious reason is that doing so is an explicit political position and would violate the no politics rule. It would be really obnoxious for me to prohibit public policy debates and then spend my time advocating for specific public policies. That would turn the No Politics Rules into a “You’re not allowed to disagree with me” rule, and that’s a fantastic way to frustrate and alienate people.

But Shamus, 99.9% of us agree on this topic. It ought to be safe to talk about.

Maybe? I don’t know. Magic: the Gathering and Hearthstone are games built around “lootboxes” in the sense of paying money for a chance to win desired items that are impossible or impractical to obtain through gameplay. I’m not a player and I don’t particularly care about the games, but it’s still a game that healthy, consenting adults are able to enjoy. Moreover, there are plenty of people who enjoy the occasional lootbox. “Hey, I like this free game and I want to support the creator, so I’ll buy a couple of lootboxes and maybe I’ll get something cool.”

I don’t want to see those people lose access to the things they enjoy. I don’t want their games turned into collateral damage in a war against Battlefront II style lootboxes. Again, if I get up on my soapbox and advocate for banning your thing because doing so might make my thing better, then suddenly I’ve made myself your enemy. I don’t want to take anything away from those people. Moreover, I don’t want any of those people to think I want to take anything away from them.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Lootbox Problem Part 2: Why is This so Dang Complicated?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.