Ask Lemmy

I might just join you in that game, it looks cool.

I've been playing starbound again and feels like the game has been abandoned for the last 10 years, but steam db says there's still about ~800 players so that's not so bad.

This is a great topic! I have more than one kinda odd hobby.

I got a bunch of old newspaper comic strips of Mary Worth from 1947 and 1951 (almost two full years’ worth) that I’m putting into ~3”x12” poly bags so I can read them more easily. I need to put them into a book of some sort.

I also got some color Sunday strips from 1951 but they’re a crazy size so I may need to put those in a separate book.

I think they’re so cool though! The strips have ads on the back from the time period.

I’m an avid reader, and I like reading in original language. That has brought me in a variety of rabbit holes, including trying to learn Russian, then Japanese. Unfortunately, I forgot most of it. I also forgot most of my ancient Greek, but my Latin is still vaguely useful. My German and Spanish never reached the “I can read anything” level, that is a shame because I really want to read the Don Quixote and Goethe... But I’m proud to easily read in 3 languages, struggling in 2-3 others (depending how much dictionary use is allowed).

I haven’t been able to find a community of people that like this. Most like a specific culture and go deep into a single language.

Wold Newtonry

How to use game design for education around political and social issues and complexity science

Edit since a few people asked: I don't have good answers for this yet, but some thoughts:

• According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
  • Some excellent examples include Wintergreen and Bloc by Bloc. Basically any storygame can, if you want it to.
• Games are basically a voluntary and temporary acceptance of an arbitrary set of rules, with an arbitrary goal that you strive to overcome. They often include metrics that tell you how well you are doing. To some degree, the same can be said about modern bureaucracies (albeit less voluntary and temporary), where the metrics might be KPIs or money.
  • Games can satirise this in educational ways, e.g. this was the purpose of The Landlord's Game (the precursor to monopoly)
  • This is another C. Thi Nguyen thing - really worth listening to his podcast episode on the Ezra Klein show.
• Some games show amazing emergent complexity. That is, complexity that isn't due to underlying complexity of the system parts, but emerges as a result of their many interactions, like turbulent eddies, or bird murmurations.
  • Go/Baduk is an extreme example of this. 2 rules that have produced 3000 years of culture surrounding one of the most difficult and engaging games I know.
  • Tak is another example that's a lot easier to learn (because it doesn't require building up a bank of pattern recognition)
• TTRPGs are also super interesting to me, because narrative is one of the tools that the human brain has developed to help understand complexity. I don't think they exhibit emergent complexity so much, but they bring in a lot of complexity via the players' life experience, and via the setting/world.
• Different game mechanics and story tropes provide different affordances - that is, they allow or encourage some behaviours, and disallow others.
  • No one ever forments a revolution in monopoly, right? Why not?
  • Affordances is an excellent frame for understanding how agency relates to systems, because all systems have attributes with affordances (and constraints). What are the affordances of a capitalist democracy? I think games are an ideal vehicle for explaining affordances easily.

There are probably plenty more links. I've been playing some of those games for years, but am still relatively new to some e.g. story games. And I'm just starting out looking in to game design..

edit 2: also, a plug for !complexity@lemmy.world

I really like this one MUD. I’m super casual. I guess about 200 people play. Which in the grand scheme of things is almost no one.

One of the very first mud games, mud2 by Richard Bartle.

http://www.mudii.co.uk/

I am the only person I know IRL that plays soulslikes and rougelikes. Even online, it seems like it's not a lot of people compared to other genres and series. Especially so on smaller places such as here.

There was a very short lived time when I was the top ranked player of Shootmania in the entire US, tho. Because I was the ONLY US player at the time lol

Pure math, finite automata, math rock, analog synthesis, knitting (in my demographic), video games from before we knew modern UI and game design... to be fair, none of these communities are non-existent, but they're pretty niche even among my weirdo friends.

I love listening to political music in languages I dont speak, I have music saved from 74 languages (so far).

Maybe ambient funk, a sub genre of São Paulo's funk bruxaria that is a sub genre of Brazilian funk.

Bet all the views on this song are mine putting it on repeat

https://youtube.com/watch?v=G1UoyoFBb0o

There are like only 3 producers of this genre of music.

I really like the souped up versions of mom cars that they make before there's a model year redesign.

My dream car is Mercedes R 63 AMG.

Also a big fan of Station Wagons, but that's not that rare among enthusiasts.

I like learning writing systems, but I only know 4 of them, and two of them just for playing original Pokemon games in Japanese.

... Half of the rhythm games I play I've either never run into anyone else or like 1-2 random kids playing them. I've legitimately never met another person playing CHRONO CIRCLE, and only 3-5 year olds playing DANCE aROUND. Could just be an issue with Round 1 exclusive games though... also new arcade games are typically not that popular outside of Japan

On unrelated note, a slight flex... Backpack Hero is an inventory management roguelike that has been in early access for a while & was regarded pretty highly. When the game first came out of early access, I remember 100%ing the game in like 2-3 days, and Steam achievements suggest that 0.0% others have had the end-game achievements. I still think about that sometimes... (They do have a community now I think)

When watching incest porn, I try to figure out how everybody can be in a step-relationship with everybody else there. How is it possible for step-mom, step-dad, step-bro and step-sis to all live in the same house with no one else?

Freestyle GunZ (fgunz.net) its an old game but it checks out.

BallisticNG maybe. Its like wipeout but very few players on steam, maybe 100 concurrent.