Jezzick

The first rays burst over the horizon, as the singularity dawns once again...

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

I was worried about my soul, being raised in Texas around Bible stuff all my life, but I deal with backups of users computers all the time at work, and I had the thought

God has backups. We are made (in) his image.

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@_Momologues_ @HedgieMarkets Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Has literally this exact process as a major plot point

https://t.co/IdpMMZje5p

[LISA🦋 @catmoaaw]

My cat was staring out the window, so I joked, "Let me know if the Amazon guy gets here.

Ten minutes later she hit me with the sharpest, most urgent meow I’ve ever heard. Looked outside, and there's the truck.

I am currently negotiating terms of lease with a creature that doesn't pay rent.

[Conrad Bastable @ConradBastable]

quick thesis: "kids today aren't even playing videogames the way we were, millennial relationship to gaming is now a cultural relic, like listening to the radio or drive-in movies"

TL;DR -- Millennials are the new boomers, Halo is Woodstock, WoW is the iPod, Dad gamers are the only "gamers" left by their own definition (& they don't have time to play anymore), the kids are all cracked out on Live Service Slop platforms that they can't escape and don't want to, competition is dead, E-Sports is dead, creative content is dead, screaming down the mic is dead, couch co-op with your friends is dead, couch co-op with your Dad is dead, AAA games are dead, consoles are dead, Game Pass is dead.

And at the end of the day it's all because, if you squint, the kids don't play games anymore.

long thesis:

supporting industry stuff:
- industry publications say average gamer is now ~37, up from 29 in 2004
- they also note that kids <12 have seen the largest drop in videogame engagement post-pandemic of all age ranges (-6%)
- Pew's 2008 report says "Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games", whereas their 2024 report says "the vast majority of U.S. teens (85%) say they play them. Just 15% say they never do"
- Gen Z's favorite games are Minecraft, CoD, GTA, Fortnite, and Roblox
- PC gaming has a notably larger share of the overall market now vs. console gaming
- Console game sales were 4x-6x PC game sales back in 2004
- PC game sales were 1:1 with Console game sales last year
- Everyone being stuck at home in 2020 seemed to permanently inflect things here, with PC game sales stagnant from 2015-2019 but then becoming the dominant source of industry growth since
- Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2011), & Fortnite (2017) are top 5 gaming IPs for Gen Z....
- ....these are more live-service game-hosting platforms that actual games themselves
- Newzoo has a 2026 report saying only ~13% of gametime went to new releases!
- 2/3rds of gametime went to >6 year old games!
- That same report did an analysis comparing playtime concentration across PC/PS/Xbox platforms and their Top 20 Games vs. the long tail of their library (it's a really good report)

Note on the recent restructuring: for Xbox it was called out specifically that Game Pass caused a redistribution of playtime away from top titles and towards the long tail, without any actual expansion of the total audience/playtime.....basically, Game Pass nukes Xbox's ability to monetize it's big blow out titles without any offsetting gains from expanding the market.

oops.

supporting game stuff:
- let's call it the "Roblox" problem -- all the kids exist within a massively multiplayer online gaming ecosystem, with play, creation, socialization, and monetization all embedded in one platform
- the creation angle and the monetization angle also i think encourage parents to view these games as "educational" more so than, say, Call of Duty, and are therefore more willing to encourage their kids to play with time and/or money
- there is no clear off-ramp from this platform
- you can have totally new gameplay experiences within it, with low friction adoption
- as this platform captures a larger and larger share of player attention, it sucks the available playtime & monetization out of the rest of the industry
- this process naturally changes the incentives around making games, including what kind of games get made, for what audience, and targeted at what price point
- we got legions of "WoW killers" and "Halo/CoD clones" in the early 2000s because those games were platform beasts of their own...
- ...and so now we're years-deep into every financially motivated major game studio trying to figure out how to build a "Roblox" of their own, aka Live Service Slop 24/7, 365
- the fans might hate it but there's a giant pile of money labeled "Live Service Slop" in the middle of the room and it's clear to publishers & studios that the prize is there, if only they can be good enough to claim it
- [of course, all millennials know that WoW and Halo both killed themselves, nobody ever steals the crown by copying it]
- and so while all this is happening, it's opened up a previously under-served niche in the "lower-mid price point indie-to-double-A targeted niche game"
- Palworld, Enshrouded, Schedule I, Silksong, and so on, were all in the very top % of revenue-earners for newly released PC games in the year they dropped
- In console land, Space Marine 2 just blasted a quarter of a billion dollars in revenues of a budget way smaller than a typical AAA release
- If AAA studios had been dropping Halo/CoD/Gears-style games every other year chasing success, the niche for Space Marine 2 wouldn't have really been there, not at the same scale
- I think there's a similar effect even with BG3, whose awesome success likely would've been a little lower (though still great) if fans had gotten genre-adjacent Skyrim & Witcher sequels already
- but instead, we have the "Roblox problem" (Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, GTA), where cross-platform self-contained game-related live service platforms have monopolized huge chunks of (younger) gamer time and money......and warped the kinds of content big studios try to make in the process

supporting adjacent stuff:
- there's also a whole cloud of adjacent areas that are impacted as a result of the above
- picture everything as a big web and these nodes as farther out on the web
- but you see a related decline of "E Sports" and the rise instead of "Influencers", as community figures with large audiences they can monetize become higher status than ultra sweaty competitive pros
- the decline of competitive online culture has also coupled with intentional pushes by studios and their hardware platform partners to reduce online toxicity, changing the culture of online spaces
- the decline of forums & reddit and the rise of ig/tiktok/youtube has turned third-party game-content-ecosystems into more pyramidal "one mega influencer" structures
- chasing the Live Service dragon has led to a massive decline in couch co-op ("local splitscreen") titles, which reduces a certain KIND of gaming experience that, while not the norm from a playtime POV, was nonetheless an integral part of millennial gaming
- the above also makes Family Gaming a lot harder with kids, as what was once an expected default across most games has moved into a separate genre reserved for "Girlfriend Games"
- game-related content has been nearly totally evaporated by Twitch (which is itself in the process of being evaporated), short form video, and "creator talks at the camera" long form video
- "Machinima" and "Parody Game Songs" and "Montages" are both bizarre millennial cultural content that seems egregiously lacking in disaffected irony to the younger audience
- it's covered extensively elsewhere so wasn't worth jamming in here too much, but the explosion of MTX means in-game "status" derived from earned rewards & achievement, such as it is, has been nearly totally replaced with purchased status...and in so doing, game studios have *totally* devalued the actual status that playing their game used to convey
- we're already dealing with a young generation who is hyper-cynical, hyper-financially oriented, ""crypto-native"" and spammed with ""prediction"" markets 24/7...so to have yet another part of their lives see its earned status replaced with dollar-signs and a casino logo likely seems totally normal to them

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@fwmarqix Phoenix Download

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@waltwhitmangoth @DocPriyamMD My son is 4 with Type 1 diabetes we treat it but it's very difficult to regulate the little guy is ripping off sensors and sneaking snacks but when his blood sugar is on the high side I can smell the sweet like wine fermenting smell my wife cannot

[Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 @peterwildeford]

"I Locked 100 AI Researchers In A Datacenter Until They Solved Alignment"

[Kevin Lin @quasicoh]

Ted Chiang should watch the movie Arrival to better understand the nuances of interacting with an alien life form and its potential implications.

[𝖒𝖔𝖌𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖌 @wanted4mogging]

i am endlessly fascinated by nuclear detonation footage

i have a morbid infatuation with them, i think that nukes are the most magnificent thing humanity ever invented. this is not to moralize them, say they are good or bad, they are just awe inspiring

an egg sac of spiders once hatched in my kitchen. i am nice to spiders, i really am. i am hospitable, i tolerate their presence, i let them live, but this was too much. they invaded my space and they abused my kindness

i picked up my vacuum cleaner and i enacted upon these spiders what could be seen as a genocide, sparing not a single one dangling down from the ceiling. they had just received the gift of life and i had come to end it before they ever even had a chance

"if you are always worried about crushing the ants beneath you won’t be able to walk"

superior beings crush and annihilate inferior beings, this is the law of nature. a superior being can only sympathize with and accommodate the inferior being as far as is convenient to them, as far as their tolerance can extend. ultimately, the small is always at the mercy of the gargantuan. life is hierarchical

what i did to those spiders is beyond their comprehension, one second they were spinning their dragline and the next second they were sucked into a vortex of air and thrown instantaneously into a dust collection bag, and this was where they would lay down and die

you are a person, you are alive, you have hopes and dreams and an entire timeline and branch of unique experiences cascading into the timelines of others, affecting the whole world around you, with boundless potential and a story yet to be written and- it's gone. you didn't even realize it, and now it's gone

in an instant faster than you can even comprehend you were vaporized by a ball of plasma, everything you could have ever been and everything you ever hoped for has ceased to exist; you were there and now you are not. you have been made completely and utterly insignificant

a colossus was summoned in the blink of an eye, his rage painted the sky red shining brighter than even the sun. a plume of smoke larger than a mountain has replaced your surroundings, it happened faster than any living thing can comprehend. a god of destruction has stepped on you and he feels nothing, he doesn't even know you exist

it is not a bad way to die perhaps, it doesn't hurt and you don't even have to experience the fear of the leadup. maybe in the instant before it happened you were experiencing the greatest moments of your life, maybe you died happy

is this better than being stabbed? is this better than being burnt alive? is this better than drowning?

those deaths are horrifying, they give you time to feel fear and reflect on your existence. "is this really it? is this how i go?" your fear and pain, they affirm your life. the spiders i vacuumed felt no fear, they could hardly even be considered conscious, but when you feel pain and when you desperately try to survive, when your death paints a scene that sparks terror into an observer, you prove you were a being whose life had value

to be robbed of that chance is to be made an insect. the mushroom cloud is a hiker, he is walking his designated route, and you happened to be the ant underneath his boot. you have been humiliated, you have been stripped of your value, you have been made into an inferior being. a superior being has crushed you

the nuclear bomb is the complete trivialization of human life, it is the closest humanity has come to creating a god. for all of its evil i almost see it as the height of human achievement, it is the complete subversion of the natural order. we created the ability to summon a natural disaster, otherwise referred to as an act of God, in a fraction of a millisecond

it is one of our species' crowning achievements

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@viemccoy I have branches on the field theory tool that do this for my Twitter, reddit, HN, GitHub stars, and my browser bookmarks.

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@RileyRalmuto @charmcli I am @charmcli pilled

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@RileyRalmuto Check out VHS by @charmcli

Great for high quality terminal gif or video.

I just love all their products. They are what stop me from 'rewrite it rust bro' everywhere lol

[𝖦𝗋𝗂𝗆𝖾𝗌 ⏳ @Grimezsz]

Landian philosophy has reigned for so long because he's actually just one of the best living poets. Now that the pope is an equally good poet suddenly the cold god feels less inevitable. The power of art is very evident in this battle

We probably shouldn't have defunded so much art and told everyone it's a waste to study humanities

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@littlebitspace I agree, it makes me so excited to see, it's very cyberpunk

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@LemonSqueeze09 @blueprintcartel @i_am_eth @V7700SN @titloaz @PetaniAirdr0p @Space_SIGINT @audiomc @tombielecki That's amazing bro tysm

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@RileyRalmuto https://t.co/qxC5IRjv5L

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

Diane Reed Slattery - The Maze Game

https://t.co/Oh5Z6ihRu4

"Glide forms are built from a single element, the half-circle, into morphing mazes of great complexity. In the story world of The Maze Game, the glyphs are the field of meaning on which The Maze Game is played."

In this language of symbols, each glyph contains a verb, noun, and adjective meaning.

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@neural_avb @0xb1ob https://t.co/nZRo6W3Iar is great

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@LemonSqueeze09 @Teknium @NousResearch Yes me too! I would also like to be on the list thx

[Jezzick @JezzickRose]

@MisterNoComents Isn't this fraud and illegal?