If they just put the games on any indie storefront and allowed demos, videos, reviews, etc. like any other game, I'd be thrilled to support them. But locking them into a 1-bit $200 gimmick? That's not a good way to get their passion project out. Dwarf Fortress, on the front page these same days... now THAT's a passion project. Arguably X-plane too. Both of which deliver tremendous value for pennies compared to this.
There are some very novel, occasionally brilliant things on HN. This just doesn't happen to be one of them, IMO. Fun at $50, extremely overpriced at nearly $200 considering the competition. No real innovation. A crank that rips off Sands of Times's primary mechanic, except you have to take your hands off the already tiny thing to crank a tinier crank? Cool, I guess...? To each their own.
I'm assuming the worst about a product I've never seen, perhaps, but only because I've used plenty of other products at a similar price point that seem MUCH better: Switch, Vita, various Android phones -- all mature technologies using much better hardware designed with proper adult ergonomics and with huge game libraries. And then for not much more you're into Xbox Series S and Oculus Quest 2 territory. Or for much less, you can get the $60 NES Classic/Sega Genesis Mini/Atari Flashback X with actual proven, authentically historic games for some real nostalgia. Or make your own MAME/Dolphin/etc. cabinet in any form factor you want. I got a Carmen San Diego portable console as an xmas stocking stuffer last year, and THAT thing was awesome, featuring surprisingly retro but functional controls, a beautiful screen, a silly Mac Classic lookalike case, and the full fidelity of the old game. It also cost $20, not $200. Any of those would offer more gameplay and a tremendously better value.
This thing would've been cool at $50, because it's probably built better than the $20 no-name Chinese consoles (https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...). But it definitely reminds me of them, especially with its catalog of super generic games that seem like Wii/Mario Party-style mini games... that you have to wait weeks for. At least those no-name Chinese ripoffs come with dozens to hundreds of games to start with.
This whole thing just screams "marketing gimmick" all around, like so many junky Kickstarter gadgets that come and go to much fanfare (Ouya comes to mind). Why the hell does it cost so much? It's like someone put together an Arduino tech demo and slapped a designer case on it and marked it up 10x. shrug
Again, maybe I'm just not the target market. I'm just struggling to understand who is. Someone else explained it: the makers of these things are apparently famous designers in some circles (music synths, boutique apps). Good for them, I guess, but for a regular ol' gamer like me, no thanks... for portable gaming, I'm much more excited about the Steam Deck or even Stadia/GeForce Now/xCloud on Android + a gamepad adapter.
Does X-Plane feature projectiles at all (guns, missiles)? If so, do those have to be sent over the network to deal with collisions with laggy hit boxes and such?
I mean, I get that. As a throwaway novelty gadget it seems fun enough to splurge $50 on. My first reaction was "oh cool, someone made one of those game emulator in a box things and added designer flourishes, seems like a fun Kickstarter". And then I saw the $179 and was like wtf. My friends would probably see this and just ask why not get a Switch or Steam Deck or old Vita. Even a generic android NES emu for nostalgia.
Remember those single game portable consoles you could get in the early 2000s, like there was battleship and random Atari clones? That's what I thought this was, with a few more silly diversions. It just seems like it'd hold an adult's attention for all of 5-10 minutes. Not worth $179.
If I wanted actual indie games that are worth my time, Steam has a much more enticing selection.
But, I didn't realize there was designer cache behind it. That's worth nothing to me but valuable to some people I guess.
But... why? It's so janky. Looks painful to hold, the games look like crappy flash games in monochrome, and the crank is just going to break off. What am I missing?
Why should we value greatness more than morality? Should the magnitude of someone's impact overshadow the morality of their impact?
Opinions of celebrities don't exist in some sort of extra-dimensional cloistered thought bubble; they influence other minds and affect society in very real and measurable ways. Amplifying the celebrity status of these individuals by cherry-picking their acceptable works will in turn, unavoidably, also amplify their less-acceptable opinions -- though probably not by the same magnitude. But in general the masses are terrible at sorting out "oh, this is a righteous opinion that I should listen to" vs "this is a despicable one by the same person, but I have the intellectual & emotional maturity to be able to compartmentalize it". We're too tribal a species, on the average, for that. Our brains, societies, and cultures have not evolved to effectively handle multiculturalism well, ivory-tower internet freethinkers notwithstanding.
The flipside of cancel culture is moral nihilism, in which speech has no consequence and exists purely as a form of harmless intellectual exercise. But that's just not how it works in the real world. Speech has consequence, and for those wishing to prevent those consequences, sometimes ignoring the speaker and refusing to amplify their voice is the only realistic option they have, if they have no power to censor them outright or sufficiently amplify contrary opinions of their own. A canceled author isn't really very different from a boycotted company; it's a moral vote by a like-minded mass of humans who together value their version of morality more than that author's impacts. It's really not that difficult to not be an outspoken asshole.
Saying "I don't want to read this book" or "I don't want to play this game" because you don't like the author's values is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's very different from, say, government ban lists. So what if someone doesn't want to read Harry Potter or watch Weinstein movies anymore?
Back to the first question: why ought greatness be the measure of a person, instead of righteousness? Our species is largely full of mediocre apes with mediocre thoughts who nonetheless manage to coexist and thrive to some degree, yet are all too often led astray and into peril and evil by the "great" Machiavellian few among them. How does that help anything at all?