Notices by JP (jplebreton@mastodon.social)

also a lot of these projects don't even disclose they're using LLMs (probably because they know gamers hate it!) so they're sowing distrust and cynicism in what were previously communities that people participated in because they were passionate about it. some communities (eg the Doomworld forums) have understandably already banned posts of such projects.

and speaking as someone who's made several "wacky" mods - it took me all of a day to add fishing to ZDoom (in any liquid surface, catching fish with randomized names and appearances). the claim to have done anything special by slopping something out is depending on newcomers' ignorance of what's long been possible with good tools in the existing vast domain of fan creativity; it's appropriating the prior coolness of those in a very real and disingenuous way.

the entire point of doing an open source port / reverse engineer of a game is to make a previously locked off proprietary thing more of a public good, that can be studied and modified and preserved into the indefinite future. a codebase that's just an inscrutable alien artifact that no one understands or wants to touch does not advance any of those goals. it's a novelty for grabbing momentary attention and a waste of everyone's time. pathetic.

survey of the recent rash of vibecoded mods / ports / decomps:
- undisclosed repackage of an existing, mature emulator (Ridge Racer 5 "PC port" actually just PCSX2)
- easter egg for a 20+ year old game passed off as something new (MGS2 skateboarding)
- extremely silly not-at-all-a-game demo ("Spider-Man web swinging in Gotham" just a render overlay, player can't even go behind buildings)
- unmaintainable pile of shit abandoned in 2 months (most of the rest)

Until they reverse some of their current positions and apologize for a few other past positions and actions, I can't count the Catholic Church as an ally just for being directionally correct on other issues. On a more tactical level I think mystification, of humanity and our practices, is a losing strategy. Capital (operationalized in the current moment as "AI") seeks to devalue & destroy anything it can't measure + extract profit from. "Innate value" is not an inherently spiritual concept.

Put another way, if your argument for why something must be preserved is that it has some special magic, then empiricism will eventually prove that magic to not exist. Physical and mental health are not magic. Flourishing communities are not magic. A long term sustainable society that empowers us to safely navigate millennia of future climate and social-technological shifts - is not magic. Capitalism is ultimately antagonistic to those, and we must replace it with more workable systems.

i'm a huge fan of when brontosauruses are depicted with vegetation hangin' outta their jaws in old illustrations. this is me enjoying any tasty vegetable dish

older playgrounds didn't clear player state correctly so everyone born before ~1995 who's ever played tag is likely walking around with dozens of still-active "it" status flags

the politics of Comfort

it's wildly, historically unacceptable to see centrist democrats offer up the human rights of trans people as a bargaining chip to conservatives they mistakenly believe will flip for that particular concession.
if that was your move then you are not welcome in the coalition we are trying to steer through the 21st century until you totally reevaluate your entire understanding of power so that you never make such an inhumane, tactically disastrous miscalculation ever again. fix your hearts or die.

Oh hey folks, AGI is here. I found it between my couch cushions. Yeah, I'm enjoying it right now. Pretty great. No you can't see it. But it changes everything. It's here and there's no going back. But also please don't yell at me or ask me to do anything. AGI is here.

golf isn't a conspiracy; it's just an outdoor sport like any other, right? sure. it's accessible to the non-rich, more or less. golf courses aren't secret bases for some much more nefarious activity.
but also there's a deeper, more nebulous, psychological terraforming effect where it's a way for capital to visibly and legally occupy large amounts of land, consume large amounts of water, etc. and, say, keep it from becoming public parkland.

the current data center struggles overlap with this in real ways. there are immense practical incentives for capital at work here and very real political battles to be fought, but we also can't underestimate the mass-psychological effects of having so much land, water, and energy set aside for a technological product that is trying to be everywhere, surveil and influence everything, and provide cover for a war on labor. beneath the social-political the psycho-ideological is ever present.

anyone else's ¥7000 direct deposit just come in?

unsure how to declare this for tax purposes so i'm just gonna put "spreading the water libel"

https://www.theverge.com/report/982414/meta-glasses-work-surveillance-labor-security
cryptocurrency and the Facebook Sex Offender Glasses are alike in that they have both an advertised purpose, to justify their existence to the public, but also a truer operational-ideological purpose that flows naturally from their design and the imperatives of the capitalist entities that control them. they want us to fret and argue over the advertised purpose, never speak of the actual purpose nor hold them accountable for its harms.

the horrible bros harassing women with the glasses are a problem for facebook only insofar as they associate their product with that kind of behavior, but the bros are doing FB's ideological work: steadily grinding down everyone's resistance to living in a total surveillance society, every action recorded and financialized, never safe from being recorded for random "viral" content, wearily compliant subjects of adtech hell. that's what the glasses are most fundamentally *for*.

Flock managed a shocking 29% accuracy rate reading license plates, a product that puts people in jail, or worse: https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-camera-misread-license-plate-reader-california-roseville-police-2026-7
Tech companies will sell completely broken non-functional products when they think they can get away with it. "It doesn't work" should never be our only critique of tech, but it's vital to point out when something does not in fact work; we should never automatically concede their default claims that their products work perfectly or even reasonably well.

Yesterday I accepted voluntary severance and am no longer with Double Fine, after a combined 11 years.
I'm not looking for work just yet, but will be eventually. Taking some time to heal first.

If you work in games, please hire the 23 people Double Fine laid off today. They're good people.