I just want to point out that I wasn’t the person calling them morons.

To be fair, I think a lot of this is people being self-centered (which I get is an insult too), but perhaps I’m being pedantic at this point. Lol

On that point though, people that voted for Trump I feel are self-centered because they think it will help them personally, ignoring all the other lies and/or bigotry he’s said. The people that didn’t vote though are just as self-centered for not taking the time or being too apathetic to get their vote in, knowing that he would harm people if he got elected.

While education and public services that promote education are being funded less, the average American has access to the internet via a computer or smartphone.

Yes, you still need to be educated on knowing how to do proper research, but a simple search of, “how do I research” gives some good results.

At this point, people just want to think they’re right and never check other viewpoints or even look at themselves and why they believe their own beliefs. In my opinion it’s a culturally inherent thing about “rugged individualism” instead of anything about a failing education system.

Finally, being empathetic towards other races and cultures takes 0 education. And if you want to know if you’re on the right or wrong side of something, it takes barely any effort to search and learn about it.

I would love Andy Beshear to be the VP. He handled the Covid pandemic awesomely in KY and has been doing a lot of things for greener energy / extreme weather responses. Also, he values education and universal preschool. The only thing I fear is that if he does become VP, KY is going to choose a conservative governor that undoes all he has done.

While I understand that I’m giving up “owning” the game, Steam has a good track record of trying to make users happy. It being a private company means that it’s beholden to users rather than shareholders. In this instance, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, at least for me. I don’t have enough space in my home for the 100s of games I have on top of not having to worry about disks getting scratched or corrupted. Then I also don’t have to worry about downloading game patches from a 20 year old site that may or may not still be up (AoE 2) to keep playing on a modern OS. Also, there’s a centralized space for users to communicate, upload mods, host servers, etc. without having to jump through different hoops for different games (Hamachi, GameSpy, etc.).

That being said, I appreciate that there are alternatives for people that feel differently. And I appreciate there are alternatives and competition (even people like you) keeping corporate greed in check and making Valve have to work to stay good for users.

When Gabe Newell dies or leaves the company though, I’ll be watching closely to see who the new CEO will be and figure it out from there.

Just taking random assets from the Unreal store and jamming them together to make a quick buck or releasing a game with different-colored models is “ripping”.

After playing Palworld for about 15 hours, I can confidently say that it has gameplay elements from a lot of different games, but they are integrated together seamlessly (at least for an Early Access title) and expanded upon. Pals aren’t just something you capture and sit in a PC forever. They have different stats that actually help you while exploring (running/mining faster) or help keep your base running (water your garden better). You are also incentivized to keep catching more to level up your character and level up your party.

It also has elements from Zelda with the climbing, exploring, and gliding. It has elements from ARK with leveling to get new crafting recipes and upgrading stats. It has elements from Elden Ring, like you can roll to dodge. Wait, that’s a simple mechanic…

Just like every game I’ve mentioned so far, they have elements from other games or simple mechanics that other genres have. They’ve used them cohesively and expanded upon to build a better game. Palworld is no different. Is it game of the year? Probably not. But it’s a fun game that isn’t as derivative as people are trying to make it seem.