And yeah, it’s the same old “they really knew how to make * in the past”. Houses, bridges, spoons, video games, whatever. It’s just that the well made ones survive, and the badly made ones don’t.
Idk, there’s certain structures like the pyramids where you gotta give credit where credit is due.
They really knew how to make some shit.
You just listed a bunch of animated children’s movies?
If you’re looking for actual examples there’s Silent Hill, Fallout, or The Last of Us.
I get where you’re coming from.
B. The game is a product that they want to sell to more people, adding difficulties sells more
Sure. Not not necessarily untrue.
I don’t see the issue either way
My stances is forced here. I support the artists.
Unfortunately, supporting artists means sometimes you have to disagree with the businessmen when the two groups disagree.
Selling microtransactions and skins and deluxe editions and pre-order exclusive content, etc, etc all “sells more” (or at least makes more money).
If the artists feel for whatever reason adding more difficulties is too much to manage or prevents them from making the experience they want to make, I have to take the side of the artist.
There’s always going to be an argument the product needs to change to make more money, that’s not the art I find super interesting.
Why care what audience it’s conforming to, you’ll either enjoy the game or you won’t?
Because I think of the people who make games as artists and it pisses me off to think of some guy in a suit pressing his fingers into the Mona Lisa and pestering Da Vinci to make her smile and show cleavage so it can sell more.
I get that a business needs to make money, but those should be decisions the artists are in the room for at least.
If it’s A I don’t care, if it’s B I do.
I have to be honest here and say I don’t understand where you’re coming from at all.
Thats okay! Thanks for asking. I’m coming from the place that video games are art.
If games are art, then I choose to support artists, even if they want to make weird or unconventional art. If an artist has a vision which clashes with my own I want them to be able to follow their vision that instead of always conforming to “general audiences”.
As to the rest of your comment I already said first thing accessibility options are good so I’m not sure what got miscomminicated there.
The problem with Ghostbusters (2016) didn’t have anything to do with having an all female cast
That’s what I just said.
If women arent the ones greenlighting these movie, directing them, or even writing the script, how could they possibly be the problem?
I listed a bunch of actually good “woke” media. They were made by a trans and black creators but if you want examples of women being funny look at Veep, the Good Place, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, etc.
The problem as I pointed out is a predominately white male board member of business grads who feel having an all female cast is all they need to market a movie, so they can skip giving a shit about the product.
it was more about the timing of the jokes, the lack of slow quiet scenes to build atmosphere, and the effects being crappy unmemorable CGI
Because Sony can’t make a movie to save their lives. Look at Morbius, Kraven, Madame Web, etc.
There was a time in the early 00s/10s where society said “any representation is good representation”.
Movies like Black Panther and Get Out were inherently going to do well because they catered to an audience demand that had been long underrepresented.
Nowadays there are actually good movies in competition. We dont have to settle for bad representation. If you want a horror movie that’s an allegory for not transitioning you can watch it, if you want a vampire movie where the vampires are an allegory for racism and white exploitation that’s in theaters right now.
Spotting background character 1 and 2’s gay kiss in Disney’s reboot of Buzz Lightyear feels a lot less exciting to me.
When a bunch of white board members decide to make a movie “for women” and resurrect a dead IP and start forcing a script, that will be inherently more shallow than going to Amy Poehler and asking if she has an idea to pitch.
This is why Marvel succeeded in giving Ryan Coogler a higher degree of creative control for Black Panther than Sony did for any of the female cast in Ghostbusters.
While I’m enjoying diverse films like Sinners and I Saw the TV Glow, if you’re more interested in Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid, or Disney’s live action remake of Snow White, go right ahead and watch it. I’m not saying you can’t.
But the idea you have to “support it” is nothing but marketing. I don’t think you’re really supporting diverse stories, I think you’re supporting corporations who exploit diversity and intentionally rage bait the worst racists imaginable for free marketing instead of investing the areas that you point out would make the movie better.
Accessibility options are good.
Agreed.
Not everyone is a god gamer with the reflexes of a 14-year old hopped up on Adderall and Red Bull. Some people just want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere of a game and it should be normal for us to let them.
Not everyone just wants to enjoy the story. Some people want a challenge which requires the reflexes of a 14 year old hopped up on Adderall.
Why should every single game be changed to suit your specific play style?
Instead of demanding their games change, maybe you could just accept its okay some audiences have different likes than you and just play the ones that cater to your style?
Imo there are two types of “wokeness”.
There is a diverse inclusive story by someone with an underrepresented experience who partially lived that story and has a unique perspective and ideas.
And then there is a “diverse” story constructed by an all white male board of execitives who think “wokeness” is trendy.
Movies like I Saw The TV Glow, Parasite, Sinners, etc are fantastic “woke” stories coming from the former group.
The latter group comes up with stories like “Ghostbusters but all women” or “Oceans 11 but all women” which I think should rightly be criticized.
I mean…do we want to tear it down?
Pretty sure we do.
Some things are for you, other things are NOT for you. Letting both exist is an option.
So you agree it’s good Fortnite now exists on iOS? Apple users get more options?
Not OP but your very first sentence was
It’s very simple, valve is a gamer company.
It’s not “whataboutism” to directly respond to your point and try to argue they aren’t a gamer company.
I do agree with you overall though that Epic can suck it.
Yeah that’s exactly what’s happening.
Look at comments above like
may you get the future you are hoping for
A lot of people aren’t interested in learning about AI as it stands today they’re worried about the future.
They see massive corporations trying to replace artists.
If the output is “good” they might just succeed, if the output is “slop” then they can dream of a market solution where consumers band together to look at AI ads/art as lazy and artists get to keep their jobs.
If someone hates AI because of power politics, they’re not trying to speak objectively about it, because that objectivity is perceived to support the tech billionaires who are trying to push AI so hard.
I fully agree.
I think that the way in which we ask those questions is also very important.
They make a good case these tests are exploiting the political climate and illegally targeting minors to make themselves money.
I believe we do this conversation a disservice if we prejudge researchers and jump to conclusions too early when they point out this relationship might be inappropriate.
Nope, but that is an entirely different problem.
Is it? In your last comment you had said?
Also, a depression test? Some people certainly would benefit from knowing that a) no, showing these symptoms is neither normal nor healthy, and b) there can be something done against this.
If you acknowledge that the “depression tests” which show up in targetted ads are not reliable, then I think we both realize a) and b) are not the goals of these tests. Making money is.
So people actually wouldn’t benefit from seeing this, it might actually harm them by giving a bad impression and push them away from legitimate mental health professionals.
This is some weird ass fanfic you are writing about me for asking how the researchers came to their conclusions about LGBT ads, specifically, being judged to be inappropriate.
I’m also asking how the researchers came to their conclusions on what is and isn’t appropriate. Neither of us have the answer.
Beyond that you don’t seem to understand that an “are you gay?” test illegally targetted to children with the intent of stealing their data is much more likely to be hate speech than an “LGBT ad”.
You’re giving a lot of benefit of the doubt towards an online quiz breaking the law, psychologically manipulating and illegally targeting children, and barely any benefit of the doubt to scientific researchers and that bias seems really odd to me.
This thread seems scarily naive for people who are technically knowledgeable enough to be on lemmy.
depression test? Some people certainly would benefit from knowing that a) no, showing these symptoms is neither normal nor healthy, and b) there can be something done against this.
Yes, someone depressed absolutely could benefit from a psychologically administered depression test.
Do you know what they absolutely would not benefit from? A targetted ad directed at them because analytics flagged them as vulnerable which under the guise of the “depression test” gets them to enter a bunch of personal information which they sell to a bunch of spam companies so said depressed person is now getting woken up at 3 am to 30 spam calls.
And now better help is being spammed to you all over YouTube and ads and instead of going to a reputable therapist you get yourself scammed and don’t actually get the real therapist who can help.
Do you genuinely think reliable medical tests are being targeted at you through ads?
You’re classifying all of these as malicious by virtue of being ads, which the researchers obviously didn’t. Take that up with them.
I think you misunderstood the researchers. Quoting the article:
In terms of data protection, tracking is a gray area. “It actually involves psychological manipulation, because the online behavior of users is exploited to attract them with targeted advertising,” points out the Bochum-based researcher.
It appears as though the researchers in the article are the ones painting all targeted ads as inherently malicious, involving psychological manipulation.
Seventy-three percent of the ads that were analyzed used tracking. Generally, users only consent to this practice if they accept optional cookies. However, according to Article 8 of the General Data Protection Regulation, children cannot give valid consent; the parent should give consent instead.
Which is 73% of them. This is already supposed to be illegal.
“Technically, laws do exist that regulate which ads children may and may not be exposed to,” stresses Veelasha Moonsamy. “But they are not being complied with.” This is because, from a technical point of view, there’s no difference between websites designed for children and websites designed for adults.
As children are especially vulnerable to manipulation, there seems to be a correct moral stance and it’s not “advertisers should be free to psychologically manipulate children”.
It comes across like you feel we can’t protect gay/minority children from being exploited by huge corporations online because it would be homophobic to protect gay kids from psychological manipulation.
I question the idea that the reason these were classified as inappropriate was because of sexual pop ups. If that was the case than many innocuous sites with crappy ad practices would have also made it onto the list.
The researchers didn’t classify anything as inappropriate based on pop up ads. That was me explaining to you how they work.
The ad pages have links on them to other ad pages so it’s all one big beast and in action clicking on a gay test could lead to an overtly sexual one or vice versa. Sometimes they both open at the same time in different tabs.
The article explains the researchers downloaded the ads offline and so didn’t interact with them through normal means.
In the next step, the researchers downloaded the ads from these websites, accumulating approximately 70,000 files in total. This was partly because many pages contained several banner ads and partly because the researchers visited each page several times.
So it’s a combo of pop ups and banner ads.
Knowing that queer people exist and that you could be queer isn’t “sexual advertisement,” by the way.
Yeah… obviously I agree that a PSA on gay rights and an “are you gay?” test are not the same thing.
Letting the wider public know queer people exist, and then using psychological manipulation to (illegally remember) target gay children and try to exploit their vulnerabilities are two hugely different things.
The PSA is protecting gay kids, the spam test is attacking them.
What is your point?
Which is why I wanted to know more about how the researchers came to the conclusion that these particular ads were inappropriate.
Fair question, I’d like to know also. But while raising the question you assumed ill intent and were questioning their biases.
The pool that the researchers analyzed contained 1,003 inappropriate ads. Their content ranged from ads for engagement rings and racy underwear to weight loss drugs, dating platforms and tests for homosexuality and depression, as well as sex toys and invitations to chat with women in suggestive clothing and poses.
All it says is that it’s considered inappropriate.
Ads for engagement rings being listed along the “are you gay?” tests shows me that both heterosexuality and homosexuality are being treated more or less equally here. Engagement rings aren’t particularly inappropriate except that they’re used for marriage.
Psychologically manipulating children using the most vulnerable groups as clickbait to try to get them to enter personal information is wrong and children haven’t developed their brains enough to protect them.
These aren’t tests made by queer people to promote innocuous queer products. These are tests made by soulless capitalists trying to exploit insecurity to make them money.
Why should these companies have a right to exploit the insecurities of young kids?
It’s not homophobic to prevent minorities from being manipulated.
Adding an “are you gay?” quiz to the list of inappropriate ads shown to children immediately makes me question the researcher biases and methodology.
Now I’m questioning your biases.
There’s nothing wrong or inappropriate with discussing sexuality/homosexuality with your kids but it absolutely is inappropriate for advertisers to try to target children’s insecurities with “are you gay?” tests.
And these are not actual “tests”. They’re malware. You click on the “test” and a million porn pop ups will open and it starts asking for your email and phone number.
Kids should not be exposed to these. Hell, adults shouldn’t even be.
I don’t think spam pop ups need you defending its right to scam children.
How many ads related to heterosexuality were classified as appropriate?
All of them I’d hope. Those gross underwear ads, porn ads, etc. Kids should not be exposed to sexual advertisements over the internet.
It seems like you’re trying to pull a narrative out of thin air to imply the researchers are homophobic?
This is entirely correct, and it’s deeply troubling seeing the general public use LLMs for confirmation bias because they don’t understand anything about them.
People aren’t interested in “learning about LLMs”, especially people like artists.
They’re interested in telling Elon Musk to “fuck off”, and when Grok says something bad about Elon it’s very cathartic for them.
They might know it’s feeding their own thoughts back to them, but they don’t care. To people who aren’t in the know, this box Elon is promoting as “objective truth box” is criticizing Elon. That’s a very powerful narrative in a world where he’s taking over the world.
It’s hard to disagree. Elon can go fuck himself. What’s more important to the average person, stopping Elon or understanding the nitty gritty of machine learning?
When artists say AI is stealing, they’re not interested in an explanation about how “its really not”. And if you tried to, they’d feel you’re missing the forest for the trees because their problem with AI isn’t metaphysical philosophy, it’s that it’s hurting their job opportunities.
the streaming leader announced that it has created interactive mid-roll ads and pause ads that incorporate generative AI.
Where do you get the real data, though? They just scrap data from websites
Great question… Do they “just” scrape data from websites?
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libgen-meta-openai/682093/
Keeping it clean would require hiring people to scrub contamination from the data sets.
That’s exactly right.
That’s why I only play AAAA games