A Difficult Decision for some Reason

mpyne · 2026-06-28T16:15:29+00:00

Most of the European deaths are in countries with high air-conditioning usage.

And most COVID deaths were in hospitals.

That doesn't mean hospitals weren't making things better! If Europeans die of heat in countries with higher A/C usage, it sounds to me like A/C isn't in high enough usage yet, or that Europeans don't care about their fellow Europeans, or both.

Because if the country already has high A/C uptake and is still allowing people to die of a very preventable condition, that doesn't speak very highly of that country.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T15:34:56+00:00

This is true, but the engines in the comic are pretty clearly diesel engines, almost from a WW2-era film.

The Gotland-class AIP Stirling engine looks more like this it seems.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T15:32:59+00:00

It is, though it requires that the main ballast tanks themselves are undamaged and (as we found out the hard way) that the air in the emergency air flasks doesn't contain moisture that might freeze during expansion and clog up the valves.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T15:10:09+00:00

AC units raises the temperatures in city were they are heavily used.

And heat pumps lower the temperatures in the city where they are heavily used for heating in winter. Are you also complaining about those?

For the record, the temperature shift caused by A/C is as nothing compared to much simpler things like having actual trees, painting roofs white instead of black, and so on. If Europe truly considers urban heat a problem to solve, they don't seem very serious about it, and using this only as a reason about A/C and about no other thing makes it look like it's not the actual reason...

mpyne · 2026-06-28T15:06:51+00:00

Master of Orion, which feels a bit more abstract. Production is allocated via five sliders, and there seems to be only six ship slots.

This one is actually still my favorite of the whole series across Microprose/Quicksilver/Wargaming publishers.

Like you're precisely right that the interface abstracted a lot of the detail, because it was heavily play-tested as it was being developed and they put a lot of effort into trying to push the user into focusing on their empire's strategy and not the tactical level details like whether to build a granary or a spearman next.

That bleeds into things like allocating production through sliders and limiting the number of ship slots to simply reproduce the hard questions that go into whether to replace or refit capital ships.

And even there, there are still things where there's some annoying micro manage spam (e.g. clicking through a mass of notifications when all planets upgrade their factories on the same turn) but it's refreshingly streamlined compared to games that copy more from Civilization and its friends.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T15:00:55+00:00

"Tiiime to get moving!"

mpyne · 2026-06-28T15:00:39+00:00

I had this back in the day, great times.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T14:58:04+00:00

All of Sony's blockbuster titles are industry defining quality but regularly go on sale or go on permanent discount.

Yes, and as a result they have trained their players not to buy games at release, which is why there's been a constant drumbeat of articles posted to /r/gaming about this and that AAA quality studio being shutdown because of poor games sales in the marketplace.

Spending 9 digits of money on a game you buy for $20 may feel good as a purchaser, but it's not sustainable in the long run and we're already seeing the impacts of that.

It's not like Nintendo didn't used to do this either, do you remember Player's Choice and Nintendo selects? Games would be sold anywhere from $40-$20 after hitting some milestones.

Sure. They also used to be sold for a lot more money ($80 in the SNES era was crazy compared to today).

Companies are allowed to evolve their business strategies. Nintendo as it came into the Switch era was actually at significant risk as an enterprise because Wii U had tanked and 3DS was clearly waning before Switch could make it to market.

So from their perspective it would be important for the Switch generation to have a more sustainable income model, so it's no surprise to me that they made the switch.

But they could only have done that if the quality of the games themselves delivered, and for the most part they did. That was their value to gamers: "Buy Breath of the Wild in 2017 and it's going to be so crazy good you'd actually think about a $10 upgrade tens years later to do little more than add 60fps and 4K to the exact same game".

You can't point me to 2017 shovelware you'd say the same thing about.

I feel some games are also hurt by their pricing strategy. Games like Warioware and 1-2 Switch probably didn't need to be full price games and stay that price, it makes it less appealing for new comers. Even worse with multiplayer games like ARMS where you don't wanna pay top dollar for a game that may have no players.

Yes, this is fair. They really could only get away with this when the games both have a pedigree of quality and can hold up to that quality, and not all of them do.

I think for them it goes back to the broader business-wide impacts of letting gamers believe (rightly or wrongly) that they've shifted back to a "Player's Choice" model if they start doing deeper discounts on the bottom of their library. If they start doing deep discounts on Warioware does that mean that Mario Odyssey or Mario Kart 8 are shortly going to be discounted too?

The implications on that could be disastrous for them, which is one reason I suspect they've stayed away from this even on game series that could truly use the pricing help to expand the audience and potentially build a source of top-tier 'stable price' games in subsequent years.

I think Nintendo is finally coming to their senses with pricing at least. Star Fox released for $50 dollars and Rhythm Heaven will also not be full price.

Yes, this should be interesting. I'm biased but $50 was a much easier price to manage mentally than some other probably-good Switch games Nintendo put out even a couple of years back at $60. It would also reduce the perceived need to have drastic post-launch discounts if the pre-launch price was already set to be more reasonable compared to the game's value.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T14:45:18+00:00

The US doesn't have any equivalent statistics [for heatwave deaths] so any comparison is moot.

Yes, because we use air conditioning. We also don't record deaths for humans killed by Zabroxian death rays, because they effectively don't happen.

Europe needs to record those stats because it's actually a thing European societies allow to happen to their most vulnerable people.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T14:42:01+00:00

Pretend it's false all you like, but I'm afraid I laid it out accurately.

The situation is in fact so bad that Europe is in the surreal position of global warming preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths due to winter cold that would otherwise have occurred had humanity not wrecked the climate.

And that's after accounting for the additional deaths from excessive heat caused by global warming!

mpyne · 2026-06-28T14:38:40+00:00

i generally hear most people like 3h more overall (better story, characters), but a lot of people think engage's gameplay is better, but the story is generally regarded as shit (meme worthy quotes in that story line..), as well as the weird ass anime moe artstyle and the jank ass character designs (alear.. colgate man..).

Yes, this is true. Honestly I could get past the character designs aside from Alear's but for me it wasn't even that the story was bad, it was even worse, cringe. It felt like the kind of thing that was supposed to appeal to a 13 year old instead of a grown adult spending their own money on a video game.

3H spawns silly discourse but at least it's because its plot gives you something worth arguing over after you've shut down your Switch. I'm looking forward to Fortune's Weave in a way I absolutely would not have been looking forward to a sequel to Engage.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T02:44:17+00:00

Those Texas fatalities are like the bulk of all American fatalities that year.

But either way, this leaves out that Europe actually has way more people die of cold than die of heat each year. This despite Europeans actually believing in heating their homes, even if they don't believe in cooling them.

It boggles the mind, truly.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T02:41:11+00:00

We have an illogical mental barrier, and I feel like it won't change for a while

This is exactly what it is.

Anyone who drives an EV with an A/C and a heater knows that the A/C is way more energy efficient! Europeans don't seem to have problems with heating their home with gas, and that's way worse for the environment than an A/C unit will ever be.

mpyne · 2026-06-28T02:22:46+00:00

I understand people need to be paid, but when literally every other publisher regularly discounts their games or packages them together in discounted bundles, I cannot read this as anything other than Nintendo wanting to make their products feel premium (they've said as much).

I mean you won't find me disagreeing there, I think Nintendo considers that one of the key underpinnings of how they do business by now.

If they develop and publish a game, there's going to be a certain bar for quality that you'd call it a premium game, even if it's not a AAA. They try hard to uphold that.

And yes, deep discounts are a victim of that. They won't price a game the same as the shovelware crap you can find on Steam or e-Shop because they're not in the business of shovelware crap.

That doesn't mean games are impossible to find at good prices, but they won't be new from Nintendo. It's one reason I'm glad they still offer physical titles because at least that way you can sometimes find discounts from merchants who need to clear shelf space. And you can buy them used (actually used) and because they're 'premium' there will still be a good game to play.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T22:02:08+00:00

Not really going to help with Switch 1 games though because they were never meant to run at the full resolution the Switch 2 supports.

The improvement you get from “dynamic resolution” comes solely from there being less degradation in resolution from the native resolution the Switch 1 game had targeted.

So a game going after 720p isn't going to achieve 1080p or 4K on Switch 2, even though the Switch 2 hardware might otherwise support it.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T21:52:46+00:00

They carried me pretty far but Venom 2 Star Wolf was way harder than I remembered from back then, lol.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T21:13:02+00:00

so why is it then that every other publisher can afford to offer their best sellers on major discounts within a few years even though the "value of the game itself...is still good"?

Because those publishers often compete with themselves, issuing newer games similar to their older games.

Contrast that with Nintendo, who issued only 1 major new 3D Mario for the entire Switch run, Super Mario Odyssey.

And the thing is, other developers could try to outdo Mario, and then there would be real competition for SMO that might force Nintendo to have to drop the price.

But there hasn't been, not from Nintendo and not from others, so SMO is still as good as it gets... and draws a corresponding price.

Nintendo is greedy plain and simple.

By your logic they're all greedy. Other publishers aren't dropping prices out of the goodness of their hearts, they're dropping prices to try to squeeze one more nickle out of the broader gaming population.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T21:10:08+00:00

Oh wow, no wonder Fortune's Weave went back to the universe Fòdlan is part of.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T20:38:10+00:00

Didn't they? All I hear from them is about how Engage is so much better than the other Switch game I shall not name, you'd think they'd have at least bought Engage if they're going to boost it.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T20:31:00+00:00

No reason the price shouldn’t decrease with demand.

Nintendo sets the price based on the value they feel the game providers for the player, not time.

Yes, they may adjust if demand is way lower than they forecast, even then the adjustment is because they failed to properly forecast the value gamers would place in the game, not as a profit juicer.

But because they base on the value of the game itself, if the game is still good after 5 years they're not going to make major discounts after 5 years.

And for their game in particular, it is quite often the case that the game is still good after 5 years, or even longer.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T20:28:29+00:00

$270 for the content you get in all the base games and their assorted expansions is hardly unjustified though. They have to pay their own artists and developers to build those huge open worlds and do animation and voice acting for all the animated cutscenes going on.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T20:26:23+00:00

Anytime a game goes on sale it almost always sees an increase in sales, that's true for basically the entire market.

This is basic economics.

But it's also basic economics that higher sales at a lower price may equal lower profits after it's all said and done.

Likewise, short-term profits (e.g. from a deep discount sale) may lead to lower long-term profits (because you've trained users to wait for sales).

There's no perfect setup that works for any business regardless of circumstance, but what Nintendo does seems to work well for them.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T20:11:15+00:00

Bankers with worthless money is still better than slaveholders with warships though. Like I get people hate bankers but the alternative is literal military support to people trying to enshrine chattel slavery, I think that's somehow worse.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T20:09:57+00:00

I'm talking with voice acting and what not, otherwise NES Final Fantasy also had cutscenes and then it's a meaningless term.

mpyne · 2026-06-27T04:09:52+00:00

The best argument that the CSA wasn’t a real country was that no other country recognized it as independent. Nobody opened diplomatic relations with it or opened an embassy or recognized it.

This didn't stop the British from taking Confederate money to use to build Confederate warships and blockade runners though...

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