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CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

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141–150 of 252 posts

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the trend in tech/games/media is about stimulating the reward system, requiring less attention span, and monetize from it. Social media recommendation systems, mobile games, competitive games that finish in half an hour, etc. Alternative exists, but probably won't make that much money...

> requiring less attention span How ? Competitive gaming requires intense uninterrupted focus for 30 min to 1 h periods (which is what got me out of it).

Competitive games and Competitive gaming is not the same thing though. You can play competitive games without being a Competitive Gamer.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least not unusual for many companies but there are proponents of a different philosophy [1]. The idea is that drawing a clear line between outside and inside became futile and you are much better off with an approach that recognizes that fact. Their somewhat provocative slogan is: "The perimeter is dead" . For those working at FAANG: Do you have a corporate VPN? Do you use it? Do you need it for your daily work? […

Apple uses a VPN. Most stuff needed to get work done (version control, e-mail, bug tracker) is behind it.

Well, Apple is not exactly know for being first movers in tech. I'm sure they'll refine the approach in a few years.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a different kind of addiction. Factorio is the ultimate nerd-snipe[0] for a large class of people who enjoy flexing their brains. The addictiveness is a side effect the developers maximizing having fun (for the aforementioned subset of the population). When people talk about "making games as addictive as possible" in the general and pejorative sense, they usually mean something else: they mean that the optimizat…

I disagree with this notion. The primary reason why Factorio doesn't feel unethical or exploitative is because the kind of addictiveness it exploits is one that uses your brain, whereas the kind of addictiveness these "unethical" games exploit is one that feels more dumb and low brow. It has nothing to do with it being win-win like you mentioned. There's this bias where games that are extremely addicting but that app…

And I disagree with your take. I've played a lot of videogames in my life, plenty of them feeling "more dumb and low brow".

For instance, as a kid, I've spent some ridiculous amount of hours playing Unreal Tournament (and to the lesser degree, Quake 3 Arena) - some of it with friends in an Internet cafe, but a lot in single-player mode too. I'd consider these two games to be pretty addictive for their time. But they were addictive because they were fun. Not because they tried to lure me in with skinner boxes, keep me in with time-gating, and monetize me with microtransactions.

Or, more recently, I've spent countless of hours playing 2048. At some point it became my go-to activity for every moment I wasn't actively concentrating on something. It may sound like an "intellectual" game, but in reality it's pretty braindead once you get the gist of it. You could probably say that the time I spent with it was unhealthy, but again, at no point it tried to be anything but fun. There were no features in there designed with exploitation in mind.

Or, roguelikes and roguelites. Between Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and RimWorld, I'm probably approaching some 1000 hours of total play time. Both are fun and addictive, in the positive sense. Neither has any of the addictive money-making features in them.

I could go on. But the point is, I maintain that ill intent is a better way to categorize games than "addictiveness". And I hate to invoke the "you'll know it when you see it" cliche, but the difference between the games designed to be fun and the games designed to milk you is glaringly obvious. Entertainment has value, and good entertainment tends to be addictive (it's pretty much a tautology). But it takes more than good entertainment to create a problem.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#145

Sucks. I liked cyberpunk, if only because of the story. I like games with decent - excellent stories. Sure, I wish cyberpunk could’ve been even better but it was enjoyable. It’s hard to find games with good stories and lore nowadays, I think.

Is it though?

Out of the top of my head: pillars of eternity, divinity original sin 1/2, what remains of Edith finch, firewatch...

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#146
post #63
post #52

Reading the replies there tells me I did the right thing when I decided against a career in game development over a decade ago. It looks like a constant war between developers and gamers now. Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems. Which has r…

It doesn't always have to be like this though. Look at Factorio – the devs are happy (looking from the outside, but they are always very enthusiastic about how they love the game), the community loves it (there are infinite remarks of people who sunk thousands of hours into this game, all for a single payment of 25 €), and they don't seem to have any financial issues either. I have not seen many disappointed people a…

I hate to be that guy, but there is a massive difference between a game like Factorio and a game like Cyberpunk. Of course we all know that, but it has an impact on the quality, etc. The technical complexity of CP requires many different technologies to work together, and that draws a large amount of gamers-- Factorio is and will remain rather niche.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#147

Sucks. I liked cyberpunk, if only because of the story. I like games with decent - excellent stories. Sure, I wish cyberpunk could’ve been even better but it was enjoyable. It’s hard to find games with good stories and lore nowadays, I think.

>It’s hard to find games with good stories and lore nowadays, I think.

Let me introduce you to Disco Elysium. You're welcome.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#148
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how a company being hacked is ironic?

They recently released a game called Cyberpunk. I haven't played this game myself, but the genre usually involves hackers as protagonists fighting corporations as antagonists.

The game indeed includes both hacking and fighting antagonistic corporations.

(Also technically the game is called "Cyberpunk 2077". "Cyberpunk" is both name of the genre and name of the series of which it is a part of.)

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#149
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't always have to be like this though. Look at Factorio – the devs are happy (looking from the outside, but they are always very enthusiastic about how they love the game), the community loves it (there are infinite remarks of people who sunk thousands of hours into this game, all for a single payment of 25 €), and they don't seem to have any financial issues either. I have not seen many disappointed people a…

When it comes to Factorio, I've seen some backslash/hate from gamers for dev's decision on never putting Factorio on sale.

Some people will always spite you. It's not open source either (hey, CDPR games might be, soon!).

To be fair here, their reasoning is that Factorio is worth the 25€ and that they don't want people to feel cheated because they missed out on a lower price. I don't think that's bad in any way.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this notion. The primary reason why Factorio doesn't feel unethical or exploitative is because the kind of addictiveness it exploits is one that uses your brain, whereas the kind of addictiveness these "unethical" games exploit is one that feels more dumb and low brow. It has nothing to do with it being win-win like you mentioned. There's this bias where games that are extremely addicting but that app…

And I disagree with your take. I've played a lot of videogames in my life, plenty of them feeling "more dumb and low brow". For instance, as a kid, I've spent some ridiculous amount of hours playing Unreal Tournament (and to the lesser degree, Quake 3 Arena) - some of it with friends in an Internet cafe, but a lot in single-player mode too. I'd consider these two games to be pretty addictive for their time. But they…

Well, I still disagree. I've also played lots of games in my life so I also think I know what I'm talking about.

You view roguelikes and roguelites as positively addicting because of your personality and the fact that those games test for the traits you care about, not because they're objectively better than other games that focus on another trait.

You probably don't view MMORPGs where the entire point of the game is just grinding mindlessly for months or years as positively addicting because your personality isn't the type that would like that, but there are tons of people in the world who aren't like you and like the average HN reader who would agree with you.

I've written more extensively about this before so I feel like keeping arguing here might be pointless, but in case you're curious for a more full version of the argument: https://github.com/a327ex/blog/issues/66

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