You know perfectly well what conclusions it’s trying to get you to draw, though. Don’t play dumb with that ‘it’s just innocent data, no motives here’ schtick.

Not looking forward to having to remember what I was doing before the break and getting back up to speed, which always takes a couple of days.

That said, I generally look forward to returning to a regular schedule. The rhythm of the working week helps keep me grounded and I miss it when it gets disrupted.

Because people want (need?) someone to blame, and the easiest person to blame is someone who isn’t like themselves.

We already don’t have birthright citizenship in the UK, which I guess makes the study results even funnier (in a sad way).

Even better, STK started after SuperTux and still released a v1.0 first - 6 years ago.

It’s apples to oranges really, but a funny comparison.

The sheer amount of finagling required to get older games working on modern Windows is a big reason why projects like ExoDOS and ExoWin9x are so important for game preservation.

Getting these games to play from their original media is only going to get harder over time; eventually, playing archived/preserved digital versions will be the only way to experience them.

It is wild to me that SuperTux has been going for 22 years and still hasn’t hit 1.0.

They started this project the same year Double Dash, Vice City, and Call of Duty came out.

I don’t really mean that as an insult, by the way - it’s just kinda crazy that this 2D platformer project is still going and, apparently, still not done.

I’d think it’s obvious that downloading isn’t illegal in every case, otherwise you’d never be able to watch/listen to any media online.

A differentiation is necessarily made between authorised and unauthorised downloads, such that buying and downloading an album on iTunes is legal while torrenting that same album is not.

Music on YouTube is authorised via licensing. That’s why videos get routinely flagged for using copyrighted music without permission (and sometimes even with permission due to overzealous or malicious DMCA claims, but that’s a separate argument).

I imagine they’ll try to make this increasingly difficult; maybe even impossible.

I’m a professional writer for video games - not exactly the same, but hopefully still relevant enough!

A couple of things that you might find helpful:

1: Loosen up with freewriting

There are guides online, but essentially it’s about setting a time limit (e.g. 10 mins) and then writing whatever comes to mind until the timer ends. You can use pen & paper or a computer.

The single most important thing is that you do not stop writing; even if it’s total gibberish or repeating the same word over and over. Do not stop. Do not go back and edit. Keep writing. Early on, you might fail at this and realise you’ve stopped writing or gotten distracted. Don’t beat yourself up if it happens, just acknowledge and then keep going.

Only after the timer ends can you then go back and review what you’ve vomited onto the page. Most of it will be crap, but there will be some flashes of light: a gem of an idea, or a nice line of dialogue. Highlight those things (I like to put an asterisk in the margin). If there’s nothing at all, don’t sweat it - that’s part of the process too.

Try to do this once a day like a routine; for me it works best as a way to warm up each morning. I sometimes prompt myself with a random word, or a writing problem I’m trying to solve that day, but it doesn’t matter if you ignore the prompt. The whole point is learning to let go and just put some words - any words - on the page.

It will feel ridiculous at first, but the more you do it, the better you get at turning that stream of consciousness into a fountain (or at least a trickle) of ideas, and it will help enormously with learning how to turn down the volume of that inner critic that tells you to constantly edit your work before it’s done.

2: Write flash fiction

If you struggle with plotting and getting things finished, don’t keep setting yourself up for failure by trying to write long stories. Lean into your strengths and write shorter ones instead.

I have a lot of fun with flash fiction, which typically runs to around 1,000 words; a story on a single page. There’s a bit of a learning curve in knowing how much you can fit into that form, but it’s a lot of fun and allows you to really laser-focus on a specific scene or conversation. It will allow you to build a vast body of work quickly, jump between ideas based on what interests you in the moment, and make you a better writer in the process.

Find prompts or a prompt generator, or join one of the many flash fiction communities online for extra support and encouragement. Read flash fiction and short stories in general to get a feel for what’s possible - I adore Hemingway and Raymond Carver.

Kids these days don’t know the horrors of wrangling IDE ribbon cables and fiddling with jumpers.

You forgot rule 5: If you can’t think of anything insightful to say, be sarcastic and dismissive instead.

So many people here (as on Reddit) seemingly can’t resist the urge to drop an oh-so-clever zinger so they can watch the updoots roll in with zero critical thinking skills required. It’s tragic.

Usually it’s combined with rule 1, so they’ll be reacting to something in the title without realising the article explained what they’re griping about. Confidently incorrect, always.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad take, but it’s worth pointing out that lots of games miss internal deadlines and waste time ‘spinning their wheels’ but still turn out good or even great. The difference is that you don’t usually hear about it, whereas here some of the team are obviously pissed enough about the crunch that they went to the press.

Crunch is always bad and is an indication of poor project management and/or unrealistic expectations, but issues with scope or major reworks aren’t always a death knell either. I’ve seen plenty of games go through that and come out the other side better than before.

Demo in this context isn’t a consumer-playable ‘demo’ in the sense that most people understand; it means a playable internal build with specific targets for what must be included. Internal demo milestones are often linked to project funding and approval to move forwards, so there is a tangible risk if they fail to deliver.

Presumably the current state of the game is behind where it needed to be to deliver that demo, so they’re now crunching to finish it on time.

Whenever they add new symbols to Unicode, for a start.

Probably other reasons too, on occasion. For non-Latin languages with thousands of characters, I’d imagine certain unusual combinations occasionally get discovered that need rendering tweaks? Things like that.

Except there won’t be much of a consumer market to come back to, due to the aforementioned economic devastation.

Yep, and the option to filter them is already in settings and has been for some time.

I wouldn’t say it’s suitable for kids - there’s a lot of innuendo and crude visual gags. Mid/late teens probably fine, but it’ll depend on your tolerance.

Bad news: I got cream cheese everywhere

Good news: this smoked salmon has never been cleaner

When you think about it, it’s not really that different from learning to read faster, which is a valued skill.

(There’s an argument to be made that for many things you’d be better off reading rather than watching YouTube vids at 4x but let’s not focus on that.)