You forget this is, by definition, before Facebook. It’s also before any social media became popular. People had never heard the name Zuckerberg, let alone heard what he was like. And people had not had to deal with this type of predatory company. Google was still “don’t be devil”, and Microsoft was a completely different type of predator - one asking for money, not giving things for free.

As others have said: hindsight is easy, but this was a very different time.

Cookiewalled article. Pay with your data or pay with money.

You can buy energy, which you can use to get crystals or exchange for gems. Using the service costs karma, which you get from coins. But don’t worry, you can get coins easily just by using the service, or buy them with gems and crystals.

This whole token, credit, etc thing is modelled off of gatcha game mechanics, and designed to make you forget the actual cost.

Mass Effect Andromeda. It’s a lot better than people give it credit for. Sure it has its issues, but no more than the original trilogy which is so revered. And the game is gorgeous, definitely the best looking ME to date - even with the trilogy legendary edition. The story was good too, it could’ve been the start of a great new trilogy. It doesn’t have Shepard, but female Ryker was a lot of fun.

Thank you so much for the spoiler tag. Although I grew up with Infinity Engine games (and its predecessors in the gold box series), I never actually finished BG2 and am playing through it for the first time now.

Even 25 year old stores still have people discovering them for the first time.

Doesn’t everyone do this?

Calling Steam safe® and failing to mention GOG feels like extremely lazy journalism.

Writing code is not computer science. But instructing an LLM without knowing how to write code is it even less.

Computer science is maths, studying algorithms, understanding the underlying physics even. This does not require coding, though it helps IMO.

“You can’t get that much attention if you want it. I was eating it up. It was kinda fun.”

😂

Until you have to switch between Mac and Windows.

What if you misidentify everything as Superman?

You’ll never guess how much putting “you’ll never guess” into your title makes me avoid clicking your article.

WNE?

Ah, WINAE.

Origins is more cRPG than action.

It’s called Xitter now. Pronounced with sh.

Virginia Foxx sounds like a pornstar name. Just a tiny bit less on the nose than Virgin Foxxx.

Making new friends is exactly what daemon summoning is for.

You mean in all caps? Isn’t that a bit much?

WarCraft 1, very fun.

Not the onion.

Not the spleen either.