Yes, as soon as models come out that can write properly, we'll all instantly get over it. Until then we'll be having this discussion over and over, as many times as it is necessary.
There are already more game dumps and mods than anyone can play in single lifetime. There are plenty games without DRM and always-online protections in GOG alone.
You'll never be able to agree on where that line should go. First because there's a cultural component to it. I'm from Spain so I can only talk for myself, but while he uses rude language, nothing I've ever read from him ever seemed particularly offensive. And second because any activity involving a large group of people will need some amount of toxicity if only to prevent other toxic people from derailing it, and since nobody thinks of themselves as the one that is being toxic to the project, there will always be some friction. You might not like fevers either, but they are necessary for a functioning immune system.
Top 5 games on steam alone account for 50% of the player base, their player base estimations are (as per Google) 4-9% female for the most played (Counter-Strike), 3.5-6% for the second one, <15% the third, ~25% fourth, ~10% fifth. Of the other games in the top 100 about 75% are other equally male-skewed games, and that makes for more than 90% of all players. You might not want to make assumptions based on that "little to no information", but I'm more than happy to, because it's obvious. Your 20 years might not line up with that, my friends list does not align with that either. But that doesn't change the very obvious reality that Steam is mostly guys.
Anyway, I don't particularly care about discussing with you because you obviously enjoy your head buried in the sand, so I'll leave you to it. I just wanted to make sure anyone who ends on this thread can see that just with some quick napkin numbers it's trivial to estimate, with pretty good confidence, what should already be obvious to anyone who has ever been on Steam: that it's a sausage fest.
Obviously when they make an ad they'll hire actors and show whoever they want, because it makes their product look good, or it aligns more with the image they want to project, or whatever. That is fine.
My comment was because the thread went down the topic of what the actual player base of Steam is like and whether the ad was reflective of that. I just pointed out that it's very obviously not reflective because it's easy to tell what the actual user base is like just from public stats and extrapolating a bit, even being very conservative, it's mainly guys.
Cool story. Obviously wrong. You only need to go on steamdb and use two brain cells:
Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, PUBG and Apex Legends are almost 50% of the active players on any given day. They're PVP games, and their playerbase is >=90% male (it's obvious to anyone who has played them but you don't need to take my word for it, it's easy to verify). So the only way for what you say to be true would be for all other games on Steam to not by played by guys at all, which is not the case cause the "long tail" of Steam is Path of Exile, EA Sports, Forza Horzion, Cyberpunk, Destiny, etc.
Yes, there are other games that have a more balanced player base. There's Stardew Valley and others like that. Just go look at their player numbers, they're dwarfed by the most played. Steam player base skews massively to guys, anyone who things otherwise is wrong, and if the person that I was replying to doesn't see the same stats it's obvious that they're just in a bubble.
I'm not clearing up confusion, I'm letting you know it's pretty easy for everybody to see that you're wrong. If you want to continue being wrong just because the method used doesn't meet your very rigorous standards, suit yourself. Emperor's new clothes and all that.
Go on Steam, look at the most played games right now, look at the demographics for those games.
Or pick some player profiles at random, count how many girls vs guys you find (very easy to tell with high accuracy just by looking at the games they play, yes there are exceptions but they're actually quite rare, I promise you can get >90% accuracy after you do a few).
Steam user base is at least 3/4 male by user count, probably even more by play time.
Same. We replicated some data from Postgres, it was easy to set up, similar enough that the transition was trivial, and really good performance out of the box. One of those good "use the right tool for the job" experiences.
You can't justify trillions of market cap just serving the US market, and they've just kneecapped their ability to compete anywhere else, it would be delusional to invest on something like this thinking it's going to be a free market, you'd just be indirectly funding the US government ability to use AI against others, especially if you are a non-US citizen (or a subgroup of US citizens they don't like). The near-term world-ending is just pure marketing, they haven't shown anything nearly as impressive as they've been promising, and the software they've produced so far with near infinite access to agents has been very impressively bad.
Yes, there have always been bad programmers. The only difference is that now thanks to AI anybody can be a bad programmer. You've got people out there contributing sloppy code like only a bad "10x engineer" could do before. Good code is still hard to write, and from what I have seen in 3 companies so far, the people who write good code with AI are pretty much the same ones that were writing good code before AI.
On the other end, I live very frugally and when I spent six months without work I calculated how much my savings would last with my no job level of spending and it was 21 years. So anyone who wants to learn to live frugally would be wise to start doing so while still working, because that's when it's the easiest.
I watched a video about Japanese cling wrap, and it showed the box has a plastic lip on the part of the lid that's used to cut the film at the desired length. Here in Europe all the rolls I've ever bought came in a paper box which just had a serrated paper edge that gets dull after using it three times (which is not surprising because paper bends easily). I think that probably makes a bigger difference than the material itself. Eventually I got a plastic case for the wraps and I just throw away the cardboard box, but I know most people here use the paper box and would probably be amazed if they tried the Japanese one.
This scene from Ubik has been coming back to my mind very often recently:
The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door
said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.
Yes, first they'll focus on normal dodos. Then, they'll try very large Dodos. After that, very, very ancient dodos. Followed by island dodos. Then they might set up a whole island that people can visit, full of all kinds of dodos. They'll do tours with self driving cars so people can see all the dodos from a safe distance.