Kinetic Zen

In no way a professional anything, yet here I am regardless.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@JoyceCarolOates If it's any consolation, some big chains are ditching self-checkouts, if only because of increased theft.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@VitoComedy Nothing more Christian than enjoying watching people condemned to an eternity of suffering in hell.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@ateotbray This guy's attitude is why black male characters weren't allowed to be anything besides soulful saints from 2016-2024 or so: every personal slight attributed to the character by the writer somehow got Shanghaied into a struggle session about "racist stereotypes".

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@pipkinpippa Escalade is an abominable rectangle

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@pipkinpippa I tried to read the Backrooms wiki once. My IQ may never recover.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@ClioAite @nerissa_en Okay, but where does the Fisher King enter into all of this?

[Utah teapot 🫖 @SkyeSharkie]

they never tell you about this one

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@AnalyticaCamil1 We lost so much after our regression into intellectual & emotional infancy after 9/11 happened.

America still hasn't recovered, especially not after weathering blow after blow of successive crises & indignities, from the GWoT to the opioid crisis to the Great Recession to Covid.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@chainsawdollie About 13 years ago, when I was still working a terrible office job doing frontline support, I saw a printout from a senior manager detailing the payments he'd been making to an attractive (married) young woman at the company. He covered her rent, oil & gas, transport, etc.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

I don't think anyone actually believed the publisher didn't spend a significant amount of money: publicizing the game, negotiating rights, etc.

Multibillion-dollar industry giants like MS & Sony can't be bothered to put this much effort into their small partners' releases. Isn't the conclusion to take away that those companies are just bad at representing developers, rather than acting like employing PR firms and influencer marketing concerns is somehow insidious?

I'm unconcerned with the development or "quality" of the title; if I were a small developer, statistics like this would just make me want to work with Annapurna instead of the other medium-to-large sized publishers that do a much worse job representing their talent.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@GiveMeBanHammer If anything, Annapurna's just highlighting how bad at their jobs the huge AAA publishers like Sony & Microsoft are, since they wouldn't go half this distance for any indie or middle-market studio.

Arrowhead had to make Helldivers 2 a success for Sony to even pay attention.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@GiveMeBanHammer Okay, am I supposed to conclude that Annapurna Interactive should be worse at its job as a publisher by not using its considerable wealth to publicize its client's game?

Irrespective of any discussion of quality, this seems a great argument for other indie devs to work with them

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@tenmamaemi I think it benefited greatly from a watch in a dead silent IMAX theater.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@Slatzism What is this Shape Store hyper-reality?

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@RobertSecundus Robert Pixels III

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@JakeTheHiGuy @MizusPuddle Don't yammer your uninformed opinion into the void if you not only know you're ignorant on the topic, but are consciously intending to remain so.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@dorkdummy @SwannMarcus89 The alternative to neoliberal policies isn't identity obsession; it's a return to a broad-based, class-first material conditions focus that appeals to everyone, instead of subdividing people into little boxes based on race, sex, or beliefs.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

@hitman2b1 @LifuLifuVT Correct. People want to impose community standards based on their own opinions or prejudices without realizing vtubing is just digital puppetry, nothing more, and can mean or be anything encompassing that broad category.

[Kinetic Zen @kinetizen]

You don't need to QRT every single reply. Implying that the lab leak was deliberate goes against any evidence or testimonials during the pandemic inquests -- someone involved would have talked or written details down if there were any truth to those claims.

If you want to know what *did* happen, Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" should convey a pretty good framework of how state & corporate actors capitalize on tragedies for their direct material or power consolidation benefit.