oh yeah... I think this is definitely true. the idea of tastemakers is kind of warping with the loss of the concept of monoculture (which in itself is both good and bad)

the thing is it used to - you'd get a HUGE bump in sales or wishlists for winning the grand prize, even 6-ish years ago

The short version of my idea is this: I don't think prestige indie survives financially without a strong and influential games press. Games whose strength is their idea need people to go to bat for them, and sort of require the "gaming literati" we had in the 2010s to break even.

--so now people think that's the primary way you're supposed to overcome difficult games rather than like a literal shitpost adjacent way of playing the game

And it was like treated as a novelty rather than the main way to demonstrate your mastery of the game, but we've been so starved of difficult games for so long that the sl1 broken straight sword only etc etc players are the only ones who have been talking about difficulty

I feel like people have genuinely lost the plot with what it means to beat a game in a restrictive challenge context. Like beating it without the tools given to you to play and beat the game with used to be a way to challenge yourself after a hundred runs,

Or to put it another way "Learning to play the game the way it's intended might ultimately give you a better experience and is worth looking into, but never do anything because how you fear people will perceive you"

I think it's good to encourage people to try like "hey a lot of these games are way more fair than you think and if you savescum through it you're gonna lose some of the experience" but savescumming through a game is probably better than not playing it at all.

I tried role playing with Brian once and he immediately initiated gun boat diplomacy on an asteroid colony which is weird for what I was hoping would be a sex thing

i want to study them under a microscope i want to know how they think so bad!!! im fascinated

just do whatever because youre always gonna have someone go "this is purple-green" while pointing at a red apple

i genuinely hope they have a great day for making me laugh so much today. wishing them the best

i almost want to print this. this is art to me