The intended audience doesn’t change that these games are predatory. You make it sound like criticism regarding the exploitation of whales is somehow platform dependent.

you are missing the point so I will just clarify:

The Turing test DOES NOT TEST FOR INTELLIGENCE! Literally the only thing it tests is whether or not the judges can differentiate what is on the other side of the screen is a human or an artificial construct. it’s a philosophical test meant to pose the question of if an AI is indistinguishable from a human to the point…

The Turing Test checks for “artificial intelligence” but it’s a big leap to say that not automatically treating something that passes the test as conscious or self-aware is bigotry or illogical. The Turing Test doesn’t require a program/machine be self-aware or conscious and it’s just the first test on the road to…

before the comments section goes completely stupid I need to point out that we have no way to measure the difference between “Real Consciousness” and “Artificial Consciousness”.

Sorry, John, but I did read your entire article. And yes, many of our opinions do run counter to your own because the argument isn’t simply “Diablo is exploitative” which you clearly understand, it’s that the exploitation it contains, the skinner box that ActiBlizzard uses to hack the brains of neuro atypicals who can…

Nope. Listen, I’ve loved Diablo from day 1, played Hellfire, used to wake up before school to grind for runes in D2, and enjoyed D3 post auction house, but there is no way in hell I’m downloading Immortal. Yeah, I could play for free, but number of downloads is still a metric Blizzard uses; number of “potential…

Oh, look! Another article about how a public personality is offended by polarized opinions that run counter to their own! When WILL this anti-cancel culture end, I tell you!? These shrieking influencers are simply unbearable! It’s literally the worst thing to have ever happened to people without a public platform!

Because the game dies without F2P players. Without the lower spending playerbase the whales have no one to show off to, no one to destroy in pvp, no one to play with, no one to talk to, no clan wars, no anything. These games need people to play it to make it more alive and show others how fun it is so they can flip…

As I said, by keeping the game alive. Even the whales won’t continue to pay if the game is dead. By playing, and encouraging others to play, you’re keeping the community around the game alive, and keeping the servers active for people to play with/against.

This is a terrible take.

You forgot about the Jewish space lasers. You ALMOST had bingo!

I can smell that crowd through my screen. That body armor isn’t machine washable.

So remember how Ari and Zack were calling this game’s microtransactions “not that bad” just a day or two ago?

Yeah, the fact is, it IS an exploitative game. The entire model is designed to exploit people. Just because someone doesn’t have to does not change that fact.

I mean yeah generally gun sellers tend to keep a low profile, and these folk be dealing weapons.

How about instead Amazon puts some of their astronomical corporate profits into keeping the cost of prime down and you stop defending a massive corporation with already insane profits that is only trying to increase them more. There is never cause to defend Amazon. Never.

Every company in America: “Hey guys, what are these NFTs everybody’s talking about?”

CaN tHe MeDiA tAke A bReAk FrOm RePoRtInG oN sCiEnCe?

Meta Meets Invisible Hand, Gets Fisted.

That’s what’s so disappointing about how this episode handled it all.