Video games made in the USSR (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#121

Post by komali2 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

> For a Soviet citizen, not yet familiar with how the market economy worked, the game was a sort of guide to capitalism.

It's not like people just didn't know how market economies worked, especially when this game was made. There were still individual and family enterprises in the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprises_in_the_Soviet_Unio...

And by the 90s "blue jeans" integration was to the point that we shouldn't pretend Soviet gamers would be agape at the intricacies of capitalism in the wee simulation in Kommersant lol.

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#122

Post by komali2 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 2:48 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #87

qsort wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The association "USSR = Russians" is part of the systematic attempt by the soviet regime at cultural (and sometimes literal) genocide. The 90th anniversary of the Holodomor was just two weeks ago.

Holodomor was not genocide. Communists were internationalists and judged people based on their social class, not nationality. Many areas of the USSR, including in Russia proper, did experience precisely the same level of suffering and death from hunger. Also, food requisitions in Ukraine which led to Holodomor were organised and conducted by native Ukrainians. It is easy to look up that most senior party and NKVD pos…

You are stating some of the objections to the argument of whether Holodomor constitutes a genocide, (minus the "there were ukranians in senior party positions," this seems a weak new argument to me, especially considering group 13: there absolutely were Jewish people working with the Gestapo), however I agree with Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide," and believes the famine was planned by Stalin because he feared Ukrainian independence.

Poke through the wikipedia article on the subject, it's well sourced, and I think anybody can see that though there was famine across the USSR at the time, the situation in Soviet Ukraine was unique for many reasons, including in terms of how hard they were hit by the famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#123

Post by unmole » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 2:59 AM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #28

flandish wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could say similar things about the differences between tiktok algorithms in the US vs China.

The Information had an interview of the founders back when it was called Musical.ly. When asked why the service was not available in China itself, they responded "Oh no, Chinese kids must study".

That makes no sense. Musical.ly most definitely was available in China.

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#124

Post by pbj1968 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #48

mafuyu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creator, Alexey Pajitnov, was eventually able to see some money from his creation after emigrating to the US and cofounding The Tetris Company. The Gaming Historian channel has a great documentary video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8

Kind of a tangent, but it'd weird to me that this man chooses to transcribe ж as j in his surname. Typically ж would be zh, and I think of j as a palatal consonant. I had to look up the Cyrillic spelling of his name to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding. I guess some English speakers would be more comfortable with J for that sound.

Takes a special kind of person to correct another on the pronunciation of their own name.

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#125

Post by justsomehnguy » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 3:12 AM UTC

augustuspolius wrote: post #85

alwayslikethis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "genocide" is the right term here. It is part of a wider man-made famine, which is an act of great evil perpetrated by the communist regime, but it affected all parts of the southern USSR, including areas with mainly ethnic Russian populations. For more information, you may want to read more about the policies that led to this event, such as "dekulakization"

I am aware that genocide is a disputed term in this context. I lean towards it because the famine disproportionately affected Ukrainians (and Kazakhs) and was at least in part not mitigated intentionally to punish minorities with a stronger anti-Soviet sentiment.

> I am aware

Yet you use it.

> I lean towards

Maybe because you just want to use it? Just look at the map[0], read the legend. Explain who were the people in 18, 17, 11 regions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_en_URSS_1933.jpg

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#126

Post by justsomehnguy » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 3:18 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #2

This website gives strong Russian propaganda vibes. Apparently it is owned by the Russian state. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_Beyond Given all that's going on, I found it jarring that it uses the Russian spellings of Kharkiv and Kyiv. I did find the content a little interesting. The other articles on that site seem rather strange, like they exist purely to give westerners more favorable views of the Russian…

Do you use a proper spelling of the of Paree?

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#127

Post by DenisM » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 3:23 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #48

mafuyu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creator, Alexey Pajitnov, was eventually able to see some money from his creation after emigrating to the US and cofounding The Tetris Company. The Gaming Historian channel has a great documentary video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8

Kind of a tangent, but it'd weird to me that this man chooses to transcribe ж as j in his surname. Typically ж would be zh, and I think of j as a palatal consonant. I had to look up the Cyrillic spelling of his name to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding. I guess some English speakers would be more comfortable with J for that sound.

He might not have had a choice in the matter - the passport issued by the Soviet / Russian authorities had the spelling chosen by the authority, not by the person.

It’s possible to change your spelling in the US documents but now different documents have different spelling.

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#128

Post by asveikau » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 3:48 AM UTC

pbj1968 wrote: post #124

asveikau wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a tangent, but it'd weird to me that this man chooses to transcribe ж as j in his surname. Typically ж would be zh, and I think of j as a palatal consonant. I had to look up the Cyrillic spelling of his name to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding. I guess some English speakers would be more comfortable with J for that sound.

Takes a special kind of person to correct another on the pronunciation of their own name.

The pronunciation is not something I'm disputing. I'm talking about romanization of the Cyrillic alphabet. There are a few established standards, ж is typically zh or ž, and j has common use as a different sound.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian

In that table, literally none of the standards cited use j for ж. J is often used for й, or part of я, ю, ё.

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#129

Post by nradov » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #55

anotherstalker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to highlight interesting examples and industries for us unlearned?

The sole Russian Carrier today was built and docked in Ukraine. When the USSR collapsed Russia stole and basically destroyed it out of sheer incompetence.

True, but even if Ukraine had retained the Admiral Kuznetsov they wouldn't have been able to afford to operate it. They don't have the infrastructure or escort vessels that would have been needed. So, if they had kept the ship it would be rusting at the dock or broken up for scrap (which would be better for everyone).

Re: Video games made in the USSR (2020)

#130

Post by HideousKojima » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 4:18 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

asveikau wrote: post #2

This website gives strong Russian propaganda vibes. Apparently it is owned by the Russian state. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_Beyond Given all that's going on, I found it jarring that it uses the Russian spellings of Kharkiv and Kyiv. I did find the content a little interesting. The other articles on that site seem rather strange, like they exist purely to give westerners more favorable views of the Russian…

Written years ago when, let’s admit it, most of us were still writing “Kiev” because we didn’t know better and were, of course, ignorant.

I mean, I don't call Germany Deutschland either, so I don't really think it's ignorance. Nor do I call Prague "Praha" except when I'm actually speaking Czech. Kiev is much easier for native English speakers to pronounce, and I'm not going to switch to a more unwieldy pronunciation to make some sort of political point.