These games should have been like maaaaybe $5 each on the 3DS a decade ago. Maybe $30 for a physical cartridge with all of them bundled.

Source? The article only confirms that he is Israeli, doesn’t mention his religion at all. Because it’s not fucking relevant.

Russian citizens who refused to condemning the Ukraine invasion have faced similar consequence. There’s plenty of precedent internationally for these sorts of decisions. The only difference here is that Israel has been purposefully supplying propaganda for decades to conflate antizionism with antisemitism.

Why are you assuming the religiosity of an Israeli person?

It seems you believe the myths that media wants to tell you about modern courtship. Yes, such shallow people exist. And yes, there are thresholds of hygiene and stability someone should be expected to meet. But a lot of women want to get laid just as bad as men, not for the money or the status but for the sex.

1. My first question about studies like this is always “how do they know this?”. And I while I know I could find the study and dig into the setsils, I don’t have to do that to know that this is the result of surveys taken over this time period. Unless technology develops to grant us a way to monitor and track the sex lives of people objectively and unobtrusively, that’s just the best way can do. So any conclusions drawn really should be “the decline in people’s surveyed frequency of sexual intercourse has gone down over time”. Just to throw out some baseless speculation: could people in the past inflated their answers to appear “cool” or similar? Could there be cultural shifts pressuring respondents to deflate their numbers now? Personally, I’m inclined to believe the results of the study ARE true, but I’m not confident in that.

2. The decline of 3rd spaces, which is a big concept with multiple causes. Car-centric infrastructure, industrialization, women moving to the workforce, capitalism, technology, etc. It has become harder for people to have intimate personal interactions with others who live nearby. I believe the rise of things like social media, dating apps, and now AI companions is less about “hey we developed this new technology to replace and maybe be better than real human interaction” and more about “we need to develop something to replace what we have lost”.

3. Consent. Reductions in arranged marriages and child marriages. Protections and rights for women and children.

4. Economics. Everyone is overworked and tired. I’ve seen this in a lot of the other comments here but I actually don’t buy into this quite as much. There seems to be an inverse relationship between GDP per capita and birth rate, at least recently. Most of Europe, Japan, Australia, the US, Canada, Korea, and perhaps most notably… China. All have experienced declines in birthrates, and in a lot these cases there is good modern data showing the birth rates changing as these economies develop. The countries having the most children are poorer countries.

Now, it could be that these wealthier countries have access to birth control, so this does not necessarily dissolve economics as a factor. But, my own theory is that sex is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment available to humanity (if you don’t factor in the costs of children). So the citizens of these wealthier countries are spending their time and money doing other things. Not just skii vacations or going yachting, but reading books and watching TV.

Seems like confirmation the whole Elon v Trump falling out earlier this year really WAS just pure theater.

The Souls games is another good example I considered bringing up. I’ve only played Bloodborne so far and while I did enjoy it one of my criticisms is that it’s pretty monotone. Even the few NPC’s there are tend to not be very likeable. Everything is dark. Everyone is bad. It’s not even clear whether anything the player experiences is “real” even within the game world, or whether anything the player does accomplishes anything. While I haven’t played the other games I get the impression that they are similar.

I can also think of games that only lean into one side or the others but they do it in a way that I dont mind. “Cozy” games have made an entire genre of this, like Animal Crossing.

Or games where the tone of the game is always dark, but the player and player character both know that there is an “outside” world they can escape to. Resident Evil, Portal, BioShock, etc.

You brought up Metal Gear Solid because it has moments of levity within a gritty military espionage setting, but I think it’s also helped by being set in the real world. If I remember correctly, the end of MGS2 has a boss fight on the roof of a building in Philadelphia and we are shown in cutscenes that the streets below are filled with normal people going about their business, completely unaware of the threat. It’s a reminder of what the player character is fighting for.

Uncharted is another series worth discussing. The first 3 games all kind of blur together in my memory so I could be mistaken, but I remember the first game felt too isolated. I don’t think you really spend much time in a non-hostile environment: it’s all either jungles or ruins or the enemy base. 2 and 3 did a better job of putting Nathan in more mundane and civilian settings: museums, tourists sites, cities, etc. There’s moments where you need to put away your fun and act like a normal person, and that contrast makes the action sequences hit that much harder.

A friend of mine wrote some lyrics for a contest, which includes the lines “if I alone remain, what would it mean to fail? Is there still a world to save…”. This comes into my head a lot whenever I’m playing certain games, especially post-apocalyptic games.

I’d say the Zelda series struggles with this. I put in ~40 hours into Breath of the Wild before I got bored and stopped playing. I never got around to defeating Gannon and I think I only did 3 divine beasts. I kept on looking around and asking myself… Why is Link bothering? It seems like the world is doing pretty well without him. The land of Hyrule is teaming with life. Sure, the people of Hyrule are no longer building megastructures or cities, their populations might be smaller than they used to be, but everyone seems pretty happy and unbothered. The evil forces of Gannon’s corruption mostly keep to themselves, so as long as people avoid the ruined Hyrule Castle or the ruined towers they are fine. Sure, there are monsters that spawn in the wild, but there are also just plain old evil humanoids out there too. There’s regular ass animals. It seems like nature, civilization, and even evil itself have achieved a harmonious equilibrium in Link’s absence. There are some minor problems in the settlements, but in the whole everyone seems pretty happy just living their lives. It’s like they asked the question “what if we give up and let entropy take over” and the answer was the most beautiful and vibrant state that we have ever seen Hyrule in.

By comparison, Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess have a much broader range. TP does this very overtly by having the areas cycle through Twilight vs normal states. They establish Link’s relationships with everyone in Ordon Village first, then have Twilight fall and reduce them to cowering spirits. In other areas you see the Twilight version first and then clear it. Majora’s Mask does similar- everything is bright and sunny and cheerful on Day 1, while Day 3 is an active apocalypse. Which then gets reset over and over again.

I would say Skyrim does a decent job of balancing the two as well, though perhaps not as extreme as other examples. Moments in the main quests like the civil war battles and the journey to sovengard are serious and epic, with the fate of Skyrim (perhaps all of Mundus) resting on your shoulders. There’s deep, personal moments like the Dark Brotherhood quest to kill Narfi or talking the ghost of the child killed by a vampire in Morthal. But there’s fun moments like coming across copies of the Lusty Argonian Maid or getting drunk and carousing with Sanguine. The Sheogorath quest line starts out as “OMG so funny and random XD, cheese!” And then dives into the child abuse and subsequent mental illness suffered by one of Skyrim’s last high kings.

They could be in a similar phase of life. I was still 17 when I started college and had a full-time job. A 20 year old could still be in high school if they were held back. This is kind of the range where you can start counting months or talking about how different school systems have different cutoff dates that can mess with things.

I would not recommend 20 year olds and 17 year olds date in general. But it’s very possible for two people of those ages to date without being creepy or having problems.

The image quality is not helping, but I think that’s Turkey, not China.

I’m pretty sure the US is holding hands with Saudi Arabia. Israel could be holding hands with either Bahrain or Qatar, but given the context it’s almost certainly Bahrain. The dogs from left-rjght are France (probably), Turkey (probably), UK, Germany, ???, Italy. With Ukraine in the corner.

My vexillology is failing me on the one dog. The lighter blue plus the small dots that appear to be constellations kind of give me island vibes. It’s almost like if Tuvalu had just a shield with the English colors instead of a full Union Jack (not that Tuvalu’s inclusion makes any sense anyways) in its corner. Doesn’t match NATO or the UN or the EU. Maybe it’s an old flag, or one for some organization I’m not thinking of?

I was interpreting this as a commentary on how these countries are being treated by the US and Israel, not a commentary on how they should be treated. The Trump admin has been treating Ukraine like shit and treating European allies like dogs.

It’s entirely possible that you’re correct and this is supposed to somehow be an anti-Ukraine message, but other than “Ukraine = Shit” I’m not sure how it would tie in with everything else. I’m also not sure why Ukraine is here at all.

If I imagine a Russian trying to cram a Ukraine commentary in here… This seems like a natural spot to repeat the story Russia has been trying to sell that the Ukrainian government is secretly run by Nazis, but the artist chose not to do that.

And there’s no Russian flag. That makes it harder to figure out if this is Russian propaganda or not. Which may be why they aren’t included, or it could just be that the artists didn’t think they were relevant because they’re really trying to show how the US is controlling these other nations to prop up Israel.

Trying to look up J. Michael Springman, the only thing I can find is this guy. I’m not sure if this is the artist or not, and if it is I’m still not sure whether he would be pro-Ukraine or anti-Ukraine.

The whole inclusion of Ukraine is definitely weird. The cartoon would probably be better off without it. I’m just not sure I have enough info from the comic itself to fully conclude the artist’s intention here.

Honestly there were some food points back then. A lot of people simply are not able to wear headphones responsibly. It’s only gotten worse with noise cancelling technology. The ability to ignore the outside world is great when you’re in a safe space to do so, but people doing it out in public or while driving are absolutely mad.

The quotes about “breaking societal connections” or whatever are funny to me though. Because that was happening at the time, but it had far more to do with the erosion of 3rd places and the rise of car-centric infrastructure than it did headphones.

I gave my opinion and you have not changed it: I would still say that the Deck’s triggers are better than the Dualsense’s.

I see two possible explanations:

1. Class warfare. The same people banning porn are the ones banning abortion, banning homosexuality, banning gender transitions (although they never seem to ban the same therapies for cis people), banning sex education, banning contraception. All of these attacks on individual sexuality are to try to push people into unprotected heterosexual sex. At the same time, these same political groups have been attacking both parental support systems and child labor laws. They want parents too desperate to rebel. They want children working. They want a larger supply of labor: more supply means more competition amongst workers for wages, which means the labor is cheaper.

2. Power. Maybe these payments processors don’t actually care about pornographic games. But attacking pornography in the name of “defending women and children” is easy to sell to the public and sets a precedent for these payment processors violating neutrality. So eventually they will move to banning games that are too violent (well, they’ve already been trying for decades). Then it’ll be games that are too “extreme” or promote “terrorism”. If these payment processors don’t see any consequences soon, I expect in the next 5 years they will try to take down any games that are anti-Zionist. Maybe games that are pro-Ukraine. In 10 years it could be any sort of left-leaning game. Disco Elysium for promoting communism. Horizon for depicting climate change. Stardew Valley for allowing same-sex relationships and being anti-corporate.

Notice that these discussions never seem to apply to copaganda. It’s perfectly fine to be violent and bloody as long as that violence is authorized by the state. The US Military offices have a well-documented relationship with Activision for Call of Duty, so you aren’t going to see any of these groups call for CoD to be banned.

I mean, that’s just diving into the classic Console vs PC arguments that have been going on for years. My point is that it’s gotten worse for both. We can argue all day over which is the best way to go in 2025.

What I think we CAN say for sure is that buying any sort of gaming device in 2019 is better than any option in 2025. I’m using 2019 because that was the year I built my PC for $1k total, and that holiday season I bought my PS4 - a slim model that came bundled with Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and The Last of Us 2 all for $199.99. Either of those deals blow pretty much anything today out of the water.

I guess profits are up, the PS5 is selling well so far, and it looks like the Switch 2 is tentatively on place to be one of the better-selling units of all time. Maybe the average consumer just doesn’t care about the bang for their buck- they just want the new shiny thing.

I can’t name a single PS5 game I’d want to play that doesn’t already look and run better on my PC

The keyword here is “my”.

It’s not just the console generation that is suffering. PC gaming is dying too. Crypto dealer the first blow, now AI. I’m still running an RX580 that I bought for $180 back in 2019. I was planning on buying a 9700XT at launch this year. Still not a great value- an MSRP of $600. Adjusted for inflation that’s still ~2.6x the price and it’s not going to give me 2.6x the performance. But even then it was impossible to find a card for $600 - even months later the cheapest one on nowinstock is $700, and those are hard to find. That’s JUST the GPU - you still need another grand or more to build a decent PC around it. Even with this price increase, the base PS5 is $550.

I’m not trying to make this a console vs PC thing. They all suck right now. The only good values for gaming is on the fringes. The Steam Deck was an incredible value when it launched, and only looks better today. Other cheap, low-powered solutions like Chinese handhelds and android TV boxes loaded with pirated old ROM’s. Mini-PC’s that are good enough to handle 5-10 year old PC games… At 1080p or less with the settings turned down bit. Maybe an Xbox Series S might be a decent short-term value, especially if you are a person who loves game pass or just wants to play free games like Fortnight.

It’s looking bleak. Not just videogames but everything. Food, medicine, clothing, housing.

I’m not sure what you mean? The Steam Deck, and a TON of other controllers have analog triggers. Sony has been using them since the PS3. The GameCube used them, though Nintendo has gone back-and-forth on analog vs digital triggers. Every Xbox controller has had analog triggers. Most VR systems have analog triggers. It’s hard to speak for an entire industry, but I think most 3rd party controllers have analog triggers unless they are soecifically intended to replace a Nintendo one that doesn’t have it (like the JoyCons).

For the ADAPTIVE part… Yeah the Dualsense has it and nothing else does. I suppose where you and I disagree is in judging how important that is. To me, that was a fun little gimmick in Astro’s Play Room and Ratchet & Clank, but I can’t even remember any other games supporting it. Even in those games I thought it was a bit tiring on my fingers after prolonged periods of use. If we could knock $10 off the price of the Dualsense by removing it I would totally do that. It’s also worth noting that 3rd parties like 8Bitdo have similar hair-trigger features that physically reduce the travel distance and turn them into digital inputs.

When it comes to all the other aspects- the material, the springs, the radius, the shape, the texture, the ability to customize in software - in my opinion the Deck is better than the Dualsense in all of those areas.

I don’t mean to come across as hating on the Dualsense. It’s a great controller and my 2nd favorite behind the Deck for most games. I actually bought a Dualsense for PC use more than a year before I bought my PS5. For triggers specifically,

For me personally, I would compare adaptive triggers to other gimmicks like analog face buttons, the light bar on the Dualshock 4 (which was ironically way better on PC than PlayStation), the built in speaker and microphone on the Dualshock 4 and Dualsense, the WiiU, the 3 prongs of the N64 controller, the VMU of the Dreamcast, the IR camera on the Right JoyCon, NFC readers, etc.

Somewhat related was that I did not mention haptics in my original comment. I’d say the Dualsense has the best haptics, but the Steam Deck is a close second. This is another feature where it’s cool when the Dualsense uses it like in Astro’s Playroom, but it’s so rare for games to actually use it in interesting ways that it doesn’t matter much. With the Deck, it’s quintessential to how the track pads work, and the operating system itself makes great use of it. It can’t do all of the spectacular haptic details, but the Deck has a nice subtle approach that makes the whole thing just feel more substantial. The Dualsense uses haptics for immersion while the Deck uses it more for feedback and feel.

The Steam Deck, in all its variants, has sold under 4 million units as of February .

The PS5 has sold over 80 million units. Even the miserable Xbox Series has over 28 million units sold.

All use custom AMD APU’s. Valve is more than an order of magnitude away from even competing with Sony. And we haven’t even touched on laptops yet.

But also compared to desktops… I can’t find how much AMD in particular did, but I can see that 251 million desktop GPU’s were sold in 2024. I don’t know how many Deck’s were sold in 2024 by comparison, but given that the total fron the 2021 launch to early 2025 is estimated at 4 million units on the high side, it’s not even blip on the radar. It’s not a statistically significant amount. The Deck is absolutely miniscule in comparison.

What gives you this idea?

AMD just launched the 9700 and 9700XT earlier this year, with MSRP’s of $550 and $600. They’ve faced a ton of consumer backlash because MSRP cards were virtually nonexistent. Most of the graphics cards actually produced were retailed for hundreds of dollars more, and many were then scalped on top of that.

NVIDIA has been even worse, just cranking up their prices with very little performance improvement. Tons of issues with their power connectors damaging cards. Most of the company’s focus has been on AI, and gamers have been left out to dry.

So yeah I think now would be a terrible time for a steam machine. Unless Valve can somehow get their hands on some unreasonably cheap silicon.

I hear you, but I’m not willing to trust the charger in there even with a 3D printed insert. Give me a proper pocket with a snap, Velcro, zipper, clip, etc.