Blaugust 3 - Low Stakes Hot Takes

Krikket wanted our low stakes hot takes. I am here to stand and deliver!

Take 1: Food, and how you prepare it

I've never understood why people are so hung up on how other people like their food prepared. I actually get being weirdly irritated by others refusal to try new foods because everyone I know that's super picky and only eats stuff on the "picky 5 year old approved list" will also say they're able to find something anywhere and to just choose where to eat based on what I or others want but then will complain I only take them to places where they can't eat anything. But I'm the asshole for trying to accommodate their picky ass... but I think from that description you can tell it's not exactly their pickiness I'm annoyed with. What was I saying here? Right, how you like your food! Way too many people have strong opinions about how you should order/pair/season your steak, or your burger, or your sushi, ramen, whiskey, wine, pizza, cookies... whatever. You're welcome to your opinion on how you want your food, but attempting to guilt/shame/make fun of people that like their steak well done, or water in their whiskey, or don't like weirdly undercooked woodfired pizzas that are all the rage is weird and stupid.

I guess that's more of a low steaks hot take. Ba-Dum-Tsh.

Take 2: Handheld FOMO is dumb

There is a community out there that is SUPER into buying little handhelds out of China that are used for retro games emulation. I own a few myself. But people really seem to buy these things... then never play games on them. Weirdly the buying of them, and the setting up of them becomes the hobby. This has spread to things like the SteamDeck and its competitors too. And it's insane to me... because I actually get it. The allure of it and the setup ends up being more fulfilling than playing MegaMan 3 for the 92nd time. I think that ends up being a failure of imagination more than anything - play something new! And actually play it, don't let the gamer ADHD take ahold of you. Handheld FOMO and constantly looking for the best new handheld to get is bullshit!

Take 3: MMOs are inherently predatory

I played EverQuest for 10 years, I helped run a raiding guild. It was a full time job. I say this with confidence: MMOs are bullshit. They're predatory, they waste your time, they turn the human connections you make in the game into a way to keep your hooked and playing. The free to play ones are the worst, especially with predatory monetization, but all of them are effectively casinos with banks of slot machines just waiting to tempt you. Some of them it's time you pay with, some of them it's time and money. I'm also a huge fucking hypocrite here because I still have fond memories of both EverQuest and City of Heroes. Two things can be true I guess. I'm going to guess this will be my most divisive take given how many of the Blaugust peeps play FF14 and OSRS.

Take 3A: Live service games are the same as MMOs, but worse

I thought of this after writing the short paragraph above, but I have even more problems with live service games. Not only are they predatory with how they try to trick you into wasting huge amounts of time on them they're also kind of creatively bankrupt. They're balanced for the meta which can cause large amounts of investment into a character, or gameplay style, to be wasted or lessened. They go belly up so frequently that I can't imagine really giving a lot of time to a new one. The communities are full of toxic shitheads. They're built upon thrones of crunch and hype and FOMO and all things that are just toxic to making a good, enduring product.

Take 4: A roadmap doesn't make up for your game sucking

So many games release in such a half baked state that they're unenjoyable, unplayable, unstomachable, etc but they have an amazing looking roadmap with either no timeline or an ill defined timeline about all the cool features they'd like to add. This roadmap is a lie. Even when it comes true, it was a lie when it was written. It was marketing and if there is one thing we should not trust: it is marketing. And video game genre descriptions. Those are also lies, but I wrote a blog post about that already.

There you go, some low stakes hot takes, email me at chaosgoat@omg.lol or drop me a webmention to let me know how badly you disagree with me!