I’m kind of in that boat - digital art, and so on more. I never understood buying a computer monitor of over about 22" that was 1080p resolution. I want decent colour reproduction - I get it, it won’t be perfect unless you spend a fortune but it should be at least decent.
120hz w/ good HDR support is fantastic for content that supports it, and 240hz is just buttery smooth. Variable refresh is pretty much a must for modern gaming.
In a round about way? Maybe. But no.
The first commercially available variable refresh monitor came out like a decade ago, needing expensive bespoke hardware to drive it. Now? We are at a point we are reaching commodity level costs. And yet we still have piles and piles of bottom tier and crap tier products being shoved onto the market.
Sooner or later, the machines and production lines for making those monitors will need overhaul, and at that point - it would 100% make sense to just go to variable refresh.
The reality is, the benefactor is you - if you get a GPU upgrade: You get more frames. If you don’t, variable refresh can still provide a smoother better game experience. This is especially true as frame generation, and upscaling techniques have gotten extremely good in the last few years.
you don’t need to upgrade the GPU to benefit
I want to spell that out clearly: AMD doesn’t need you to buy a new GPU to benefit. NVIDIA doesn’t either. But it also means, if you buy a new monitor that is variable refresh today - when you upgrade your GPU, you get to really take advantage.
Where my perspective comes from
I did the monitor upgrade before a GPU upgrade a few years ago. Variable refresh is king. HDR when the content supports it is amazing - provided the monitor has decent HDR support (low end monitors… don’t).
Given that I had my previous multi-monitor set up for over a decade, and went through 3 system builds with it - Your monitor is something that is going to hang around, and have more impact on your overall experience than you realize. Same with the keyboard and mouse. Unironically the part that you can likely get away with cheaping out the most on in your first build is… the GPU. Decent CPU will last a good 5-6 years at least these days. So get a decent monitor, get good peripherals - those will hang around when you upgrade the GPU. Then start that CPU - GPU - GPU upgrade cycle where it’s CPU, then GPU, then GPU, then back to the CPU. The reality is, once you have a base system - storage carries over, PSU can cycle over a build, the case can be reused.
So I guess what I am saying is: Spend the money on the things liable to hang around the longest. It will lead to a better overall experience.
What Big Publishers think make good games:
What ACTUALLY makes a good game:
This is ultimately why a relatively small team producing an Indie game can create a 10-20 hour expierience, sell it at like 20-40$, have a total of like 5 people work on it start to finish, basically have no marketing budget, fire off an early access when they have a reasonably complete product where they are largely doing core gameplay refinements, and doing bug fixes… and end up selling like 2 million copies. It’s also why your first game will probably suck, so will the second one. But if you refine the process, get feedback, and figure out how to improve the process: You can do it.
The problem with big publishers is the executives look at the big newest game and go “WE NEED TO MAKE THAT” not understanding that players will play just about every genre IF IT IS GOOD. I mean, seriously until Baldur’s Gate 3 came out a bunch of people were like CRPG’s are dead… no, there just were not any good ones coming out.
How AI can make a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 even better… and why EA (probably) won’t figure it out*
A Company like Larian is passionate about the game world, the player expierience, the interactions, and creating a very systems (read: Game loop driven) driven game. The amount of interactions that happen in Baldur’s Gate 3 that occure because the game is based on systems, and the pieces are present - enabling players to just experiment is incredible.
If you take something like UE5 with it’s newer tools for filling in terrain, the lighting engine, and more - and hand that to a company like Larian you aren’t going to get a lesser product. Instead - you might very well end up with Larian going “Alright, we need a mount system, and an improved interactive camp system where the party has hirlings and the members of the party in the camp are defending it”. And suddenly the Shadowfell is a huge expansive place that is dark, dangerous, and explorable - not just with bespoke places, but just stuff team members slapped together, random encounters, and more. You might even go to a more Milestone experience system - just to enable the flow to feel better. You could have an AI trained to have relevant conversations about events going on, weather, and more - and it could be seeded and filled out so that you aren’t really sure what will be said.
The reason a company like EA won’t is at the end of the day - doing those things, needs time to figure out how to work it, how to catch errors, bug fix, improve training data, and a lot of testing to validate. EA just wants to shot gun out whatever seems popular and profitable at the time - instead of creating a unique experience that players will engage with. And that is because EA is ran by Marketing folk and MBA’s instead of Game Dev’s and Systems Designers.
Nah, The Stock Market is basically gambling, just - it’s result time is measured in days, weeks, months, and years, depending on the investment strategy you are after.
When you get a state where a group of people have a TONNE of money, and want to put it somewhere to avoid it depreciating to inflation, that money gets put into whatever the considered safest bet is. The issue is, when you have only a handful of big safe bets - those end up being the option everyone dives on, leading to overvaluation relative to the actual performance of the company. This is what leads to future price corrections.
Companies doing hedging and so on are just a part of the puzzle.
I would suggest you actually go read The Wealth of Nations. Fascinating read. Then go take a look at who Adam Smith was, the conditions he lived in, and the world he lived in. Because while a lot of people are TOLD about adam smith, it is frighteningly few who read the works or study the history to which it was written.
We haven’t had the Capitalism that he wrote about for the better part of 200 years. What we have is a system that protects ever fewer corporations through protectionist policies that allow for monopolies to be shielded from competition. This is functionally what the extention of Copyright Law has enabled.
Make it make sense. Market Makers are juicing this thing. US stock market is hilarious
I’ll try. But… It’s complicated, and so this - despite being a wall of text, is going to be a rather over simplifcation.
The first thing to understand: The Stock Market is a form of Gambling. Valuation is based on historic trends, and Speculation of where it will go - the more information you have, the better you can guess - but it is still just a guess because competitors exist, and competitors sometimes purposefully misslead (ex. Sandbagging performance numbers, or releasing only lower tier products with a rebrand of top tier product, and so on).
Right now - Housing is in a bit of a strange state, with housing shortages leading to increased prices might sound like a great thing for real-estate -however, there is a growing call to ban corporate ownership of residential properties, ban short term rental projects, and so on - all of which when actually happens tends to drop real-estate prices (not immediately). The growing discontentment with HOA’s also makes these types of organizations less desirable.
Another thing happening in the general wider market - Failing Media companies. People are distrusting the mainstream news more and more. People are fed up with the state of movies coming out of say Disney, or Warner Brothers - to the point a while back now Warner Brothers brought in a new CEO who canned a pile of complete or near complete projects because it was deemed cancelling already finished products would be less harmful and less costly than releasing them in the long run. And that is all BEFORE the writer strike, situation with actors, and so on.
And if that isn’t all: Shipping from China to the rest of the world got more expensive - due to conflict in the middle east, and the Houthis firing rockets and such at commercial ships in the area - shipping companies have largely diverted. What this means, is Higher Fuel, and Lower Turn around times on each ships journey.
If you put this all together - what you are going to be looking for as an investor is a company that: 1. Is likely to grow, or be stable. 2. Has a strong stake in it’s respective industry relative to it’s competitors. 3. Has a Track record for creating profit. 4. Is less volatile in regards to shipping costs etc (as in: produces something companies NEED). And NVIDIA checks every one of these boxes - at least, for now.
TLDR: Shorter version? There is a lot of demand for NVIDIA stock do to it’s relative perceived stability, and chance to grow - and NVIDIA isn’t splitting it’s stock or whatever else in order to sell more stocks at a lower price.
EA 8 years ago: Ya.
These days they are managing to publish some good stuff. But two things: 1. I’m waiting on player reviews. 2. If I never hear about the game - you failed to make sure the market was aware.
Capitalism isn’t to blame for this. The Individuals who buy it are.
I bought DIV, I got value out of it. I won’t be buying micro transactions, and unless D4 sees one hell of an overhaul to it’s end game and encounter design - I won’t be going back ever. Comparing it to other games I have purchased in the last couple of years, I would say DIV is the game I have gotten the LEAST value out of, which is surprising considering historically Blizzard games tended to be the top tier in terms of dollar per hour of enjoyable play time I got out of said games.
Onto Capitalism. Capitalism needs two things to function:
A Basic Standard of Living Provided by some entity - historically the Church served this purpose. But currently there is nothing that actually serves this purpose - Welfare is a poverty trap, minimum wages require multiple full time jobs in many places, and where housing is affordable - jobs are lacking in many cases.
Supply + Demand Market Considerations - if you make a product people don’t buy: You will fail. If you over charge, a cometitor can move in and steal your lunch money. The reason we have IP laws (Patent, and Copyright) is duplicating hard work done, is far easier than doing your own work - so, we protect the human labour component (which is why I do think AI generated art should NOT be copyrightable, but the AI models and the work that goes into selecting assets to train the model with, fine tuning the weighting, and creating filters to attain desirable outcomes - that is reasonable to copyright).
The failure of NeoLiberalism, and the Industrial age in general is we took the responsibility the Church and the Tithe that was paid to it away from the church, replaced it with work houses with piss poor conditions, and allowed a blaming of unforutnate individuals who couldn’t find work - and blamed them for being lazy, instead of treating them with respect and dignity as every human should be treated.
By the way: This is why, I support the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Scrap Welfare, Scrap old age, Scrap food stamps. Universal basic income - and give people the power to find meaningful work. Give people the foundation to take a risk in starting up a small business to improve their lot in life where work is slim pickings, or all the employers are asshole middle managers that are instructed to pay piss poor wages. Capitalism actually would be liable to work FAR BETTER. And besides - you would likely see crime rates in plenty of places basically drop off a cliff as people would not need to turn to crime to ensure they can make rent, keep a roof over their head, or just pay for food.
Capitalism is not the problem. NeoLiberal Ideology is. A Failure to put in working policies to help actual people is a problem - and the “left wing” and “socialist” parties of the last several decades have all failed to bring meaningful positive change to the working class. But that should surprise no one given the track record of left wing authoritarian regimes.
Nah, Skyrim had less loading screens. And I wish I was joking about that.
There was a time when high school aged kids, especially more rural area’s, would have a rifle in the vehicle they went to school in, and would go hunting after. The rate of school shootings was extremely low and rare. So - I ask: What changed?
We’ve had machine guns accessible to people since the 1920’s, we’ve had the know how to make guns with supplies from a hardware store since like the Irish Revolution. So it’s not an accessibility issue.
Wealth Disparity, More parents with multiple jobs, commodification of housing, gentrification of neighbourhoods. That all started happening in and around the 1960’s really. Beyond this - leaded gasoline, given lead poisoning and exposure to such has been linked to lower empathy. And then there is my favorite: This cultural shift to seemingly rejecting personal responsibility - and why? how? The answer is how we are educated. What we are taught. And as a society - we voted for these changes, either purposefully or through complacency.
I’m not saying you should be allowed to go out and buy a minigun and all the ammo. What I am saying is that guns aren’t the problem - it’s the cultural back drop that is being ignored. The changes between then and now that have been demonstrably negative. And yet - the negative parts aren’t being discussed or dealt with because ultimately those in power, lacking empathy for the average person, profit from this entire situation.
It’s time we as a society tell the capitalists to shut up until basic needs are covered (food, shelter) - and tell the socialists to shut up because the USSR is a failed state. And tell the Corrupt unions to rethink their priorities. And Finally - it’s time for a new labour movement.
You know what got labour laws passed and happening in the US? Guns. So bad was the violence against labour movements that the labour movements started showing up armed and being willing to shoot first and ask questions later to the point that the government HAD to act, HAD to listen because the economy was being threatened. The reason strikes work is ultimately because it threatens companies economic viability, and it’s why we need anti-scab legislation.
It turns out that mixed-market economics is the way to go. And somehow, even back in the day - under a different format, even Adam Smith had some understanding of this. After all: The church was responsible for the charity work, and it was a MANDATE BY GOD to give like 10% of your earnings to the church. Of course - the Catholic Church is well known for hording wealth and trying to keep knowledge as the exclusive domain of the church but, well… things went sideways, the church stopped, greedy people took over and no one stepped in to fix the situation leading to toxic environments during the industrial revolution that were exploitative. And this is why we need legislation to protect against this.
UBI is an inevitability sooner or later - and it can act as a general replacement for the payouts of welfare, old age, and so much more. Sure, we need social assistance programs, but imagine how many people out their would be happy to take UBI, Work part time, and commit 10-20 hours a week just helping other people: I know many of them. But under the current environment - it doesn’t happen, and so our elderly get neglected, those down on their luck get ignored, and it’s a struggle.
We as a Society need to do better.
And doing better fixes the vast majority of crime - including gun crime.
TL;DR: Guns aren’t really the issue. The issue is the societal back drop that has changed arguably for the worse do to creating higher degrees of wealth disparity, and a greater degree of poverty which is directly linked with increased crime.
SC:BW, Vanilla WoW, WC3 + Frozen Throne, D3: Reaper of Souls (the original had um… RMAHitis that needed fixing), SC2 - campaign pretty good, multiplayer had various problems until several patches into legacy of the void, but overall pretty fun. Oh, and Overwatch was a blast when it first launched, and I mean before the competitive scene was pushed, before the forced que roll BS and all of that. Honestly, one of the best parts of Overwatch 2 is the open role que - where you get decent and interesting comps, and usually have balanced outcomes until change is needed - it’s just fun chaos. Just don’t pay attention to the battlepasses.
If you play casually, and don’t treat the games as forever games - blizzard makes decent stuff… mostly. The issue is, under activision, and especially in the last few years, the push for hyper monetization has left a sour note in everyones mouth… and it’s showing. But we love the IP, and we want to play through the story.
This is where the hope for Microsoft leadership comes in. Microsoft wants gamers - they want to expand the player base. And functionally, this means while monetization is useful for funding development, being aggressive with monetization is generally bad. And really, we have seen in the last year or so at least from the WoW team some pretty awesome changes in the systems, with a renewed focus on evergreen content, and persuing making the game more fun to just like… play.
Is Blizzard perfect? No. They have had some missteps. Should you pre-order a game? No. Pretty much never. But Blizzard has not completely flunked out to a point where disregarding their game releases (like Ubisoft) is warranted just yet. And given what we have seen from blizzcon, from various interviews, well: I’d say - while you should take everything said with a pinch of salt, I’m optimistic blizzard after a half decade or so of making some lacluster products, is heading in the right direction. Because lets face it: Microsoft wants the Late 90’s to early 2000’s blizzard, not the Activision blizzard. Because late 90’s to early 2000’s blizzard kicked ass and chewed bubblegum while swimming in cash that players wouldn’t stop throwing at them.
And so we get to a truth: Nostalgia - a LOT of people grew up on blizzard games. We met lifelong friends, formed relationships with people around the globe, ran into people from all walks of life, learned to be better leaders, better team mates. We Grew up.
Blizzard isn’t just another company - they created a gold standard of RTS, they established ARPG’s as a Genre, and they took the concept of an MMO and created something that resonated with people across generations, income brackets, career paths, and so on.
To FINALLY ACTUALLY SIMPLY ANSWER THE QUESTION
Many people buy blizzard games because well, these IP’s are our childhood. They are our pass times of happiness when things were stressful, or not so great. They were the way we connected with people we couldn’t feasibly go and meet up with.
For awhile Blizzard and playing their games wasn’t just entertainment - it was, in a way, a life style. The Clans of BW, the Servers of D2, and the Guilds of WoW.
And hell, I learned I needed to grow the hell up, from a guy who told it to me straight when no one in my actual damn life did. Ya, I’ve largely moved on, the guild fell apart, we went different ways. But there will ALWAYS be a place in memory and the heart for those people.
I have an Odyssey g9 and it has a 1000R curve - and sits about 3 feet from my face and that feels about right. At a guess - at 800R it is a bit too tight to sit far enough away to have a proper wheel and such in between you and the display.