If guaranteed minimum income and universal healthcare were a thing, I think so many of my programmer colleagues would immediately take low-income sabbaticals to write high-quality good-ui users-first free and open source software that it would inspire tedious "how was it possible?!?" medium dot com thinkpieces for years and years
@datagrok Except the other half would write horrible computer games that nobody wants to play,,,
@amsomniac @datagrok There can be only so many games with a cult following at a given time, and that number doesn't grow with the number of games being developed.
with respect
> cult following at a given time
IMO misunderstands the full breadth of what 'cult following' can imply -- sometimes it grows over time, much as films these days occasionally flop out of the box office and then 'somehow' find an audience (read: a Hollywood studio wasn't interested in actually marketing it effectively)
so it's entirely possible that as this iteration of games matures, some games will "meh" on release, but get new life down the line
@sydneyfalk @amsomniac @datagrok I'm not saying that this time has to be at the release. I am myself a big fan of some games that were never properly released, but just kinda grew organically over time. But there can be only so many popular games at a given time, and the fact that we are now globally connected and there is only a single huge market for this doesn't help.
> But there can be only so many popular games at a given time
Again, while technically true, I don't think the upper limit's been found yet. There are hundreds of 'popular' novels on Earth at any given time, for some values of 'popular'.
Will there be only a dozen specific AAA games that are considered 'big deals' any given year in the United States? Sure. But popular is more complex than whether the subset of US gamers decides Crosshairs 62 is one of those.
@sydneyfalk @amsomniac @datagrok You convinced me, thanks.
@sydneyfalk @amsomniac @datagrok No, it's honest, sorry. I realized that I was using a flawed definition of what "successful" means.
Well, cool. :) I like when what I'm saying isn't troubling in some way, and I wasn't assuming either possibility, just recognizing both. ^_^
(I'm a moderately successful indie author and perpetual failure through life, so 'success' is one of those things I've spent a lot of time ruminating on.)
Happy to help! ^_^
@deshipu @amsomniac @datagrok
I can't tell if that's a sarcastic "yeah stop talking to me" or a literal "those are good points" response, but it's okay if you don't wanna clarify, I didn't really have anything else to say. ^_^
Be well!