[Doomsday Economics] Home of Kirbeh's FREE SLICE ($25 delivery fee)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Doomsday Economics] Home of Kirbeh's FREE SLICE ($25 delivery fee)

«‹›2845 »

(Thread IKs: skooma512)

Pepe Silvia Browne: Jan 1, 2007

Red Baron posted:

and people LOVED it, they defended that system tooth and nail! you PAID money to spend full-time hours to get someone else a digital item.

absolutely insane.

it's called teamwork

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2024 23:01

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Red Baron posted:

I knew the American worker was fully cowed when original WoW MC and Naxx raids were grinding dozens and dozens of hours a week for the benefit of just one or two players who would sometimes just get their super loot and leave for already-equipped guilds.

and people LOVED it, they defended that system tooth and nail! you PAID money to spend full-time hours to get someone else a digital item.

absolutely insane.

To be fair those raids were easier than the Everquest poo poo most of the raiders came from

Rathe was herding 72 gamers for four hours

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:32

Real hurthling!: Sep 11, 2001

Goa Tse-tung posted:

Shadow Gambit is about Pirates, who the gently caress likes Pirates?

yeah they did samurai originally and also revived the desperados old west ip for the same stealth gameplay.

ultimately its gonna be hard to succeed if your very cool, deep, and fun gameplay becomes most known for keeping a time since last quick save timer on screen at all times because it revolves around trial and error and fiddly instructions to multiple characters for them to carry out in unison. that kinda project is going to be niche.

its a bummer, i've loved all their work

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:34

Mad Wack: Mar 27, 2008; "The faster you use your cooldowns, the faster you can use them again"

GDP and DKP aren't that different if you really think about it

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:34

Engorged Pedipalps: Apr 21, 2023

Red Baron posted:

I knew the American worker was fully cowed when original WoW MC and Naxx raids were grinding dozens and dozens of hours a week for the benefit of just one or two players who would sometimes just get their super loot and leave for already-equipped guilds.

and people LOVED it, they defended that system tooth and nail! you PAID money to spend full-time hours to get someone else a digital item.

absolutely insane.

It was half the fun of raiding in old school wow and also simultaneously the worst loving part of it

Gearing somebody up to the hilt feels awesome even if it's not you reaping the rewards because it usually means next time is easier, smoother, faster, etc

But looting and scooting is the worst thing to do, it's like robbing all the people you were playing with of all the contributions they made to your success

It's kind of a metaphor for outsourcing when you think about it

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:34

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Engorged Pedipalps posted:

But looting and scooting is the worst thing to do, it's like robbing all the people you were playing with of all the contributions they made to your success

It's kind of a metaphor for outsourcing when you think about it

I was in the goon guild for Rifts and immediately quit after I got the best healer weapon in the game from the first raid and everyone got pissed off. it ruled

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:37

Buffer: May 6, 2007; I sometimes turn down sex and blowjobs from my girlfriend because I'm too busy posting in D&D. PS: She used my credit card to pay for this.

loquacius posted:

the non-games media industry is consolidated to hell and back and it loving killed pop culture. This opinion can gently caress straight off

media executives are just an earlier form of content via statistical modelling

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:37

Scarabrae: Oct 7, 2002

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

NPR just ran a segment on how "six in ten Americans admit to quiet quitting, or only working enough to pass muster", so I guess we're going to keep pushing the narrative that satisfactory performance is as bad as giving up entirely into 2024.

and the other 4 are lying to themselves

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:38

Red Baron: Mar 9, 2007; ty slumfrog

Engorged Pedipalps posted:

It's kind of a metaphor for outsourcing when you think about it

I was thinking of C-level golden parachutes when I wrote the post, outsourcing would have to be paying to have a character leveled to cap for you.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:42

Smythe: Oct 12, 2003

most dripped out ive ever been in a game was this hosed up morg (one m missing intentional ... not so massive) called xenimus where i got a 1-on-server armor from a server scale raid boss, here

and i looked like this:

and the game looked like THIS

and i said thank you for your service

pcis dont do it justice.. it looked sick in motion. lots of twinkling/sparkling. beautiful game...

you could also drop gear on death, and die in .2 seconds. hardcore rear end game

you paid the dev $5 per month to play. you could mail this guy cash. one time in high school i mailed him mixed ones and quarters in an envelope

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:44

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

inflation Inflation INFLATION

https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1742225462716219788

# ? Jan 2, 2024 20:51

Engorged Pedipalps: Apr 21, 2023

Smythe posted:

most dripped out ive ever been in a game was this hosed up morg (one m missing intentional ... not so massive) called xenimus where i got a 1-on-server armor from a server scale raid boss, here

and i looked like this:

and the game looked like THIS

and i said thank you for your service

pcis dont do it justice.. it looked sick in motion. lots of twinkling/sparkling. beautiful game...

you could also drop gear on death, and die in .2 seconds. hardcore rear end game

you paid the dev $5 per month to play. you could mail this guy cash. one time in high school i mailed him mixed ones and quarters in an envelope

The era of extremely early MMOs where you could send money in an envelope for your service fee

Good times, I remember them fondly

Now you can't even start an account in an MMO without linking a credit card

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:09

OhFunny: Jun 26, 2013; EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC

SKULL.GIF posted:

inflation Inflation INFLATION

https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1742225462716219788

Two major shipping firms will continue to avoid Red Sea amid Houthi attacks

quote:

Germany�s Hapag-Lloyd will continue to divert its vessels around the Suez Canal for security reasons, a spokesperson for the company has said.

�We monitor the situation closely day-by-day, but will continue to reroute our vessels until January 9,� the spokesperson for the world�s fifth biggest container liner told the Reuters news agency.

Denmark�s Maersk also said it would continue to pause all cargo shipments through the Red Sea following a weekend attack on one of its ships.

The Houthis, who present themselves as Yemen�s legitimate armed forces, have targeted vessels going through the key Bab al-Mandeb Strait into the Red Sea, saying that they would not allow Israel-linked ships to pass until the Israeli government allows adequate humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Armed men stand on the beach as the Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by Yemen's Houthis last month, is anchored off the coast of al-Salif, Yemen, December 5, 2023.

Hapag-Lloyd is also continuing to sail ships around Africa instead of through the Red Sea.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:10

Smythe: Oct 12, 2003

Engorged Pedipalps posted:

The era of extremely early MMOs where you could send money in an envelope for your service fee

Good times, I remember them fondly

Now you can't even start an account in an MMO without linking a credit card

simpler times.............

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:13

Glumwheels: Jan 25, 2003; https://twitter.com/BidenHQ

Xaris posted:

most successful influencer/streamer poo poo already came from vast wealth so probably not

I don�t know the breakdown so I�m spitballing here that I�d wager 80% were already from vast money versus like less than 10% who found their rags to riches fortunes

Some did but not most of them and not the most successful ones afaik. Maybe they came from middle class families but they weren�t already millionaires.

In other news why Costco sucks. I�ve been eyeing a new oled tv and waiting for the superbowl sales. Today, Costco raised the prices on their TVs by $300-200 depending on size. It�s not a new model, it�s the same stock they had on Sunday but the prices went up today for �reasons�.

I know they are going to all go on sale end of this month, beginning of next month and I�m willing to bet the sale price will be back to the pre-2024 price.

These are tvs that will be phased out in a month or two so older models.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:15

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

Glumwheels posted:

Some did but not most of them and not the most successful ones afaik. Maybe they came from middle class families but they weren�t already millionaires.

what are the barriers to entry to be a streamer:

dedicated room
good lighting
gaming rig
a/v equipment
ability to spend hours a day streaming (aka someone else feeding you and keeping the lights on)

that last one is killer

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:28

Engorged Pedipalps: Apr 21, 2023

webcams for christ posted:

what are the barriers to entry to be a streamer:

dedicated room
good lighting
gaming rig
a/v equipment
ability to spend hours a day streaming (aka someone else feeding you and keeping the lights on)

that last one is killer

It really does seem nightmarishly hard for anyone but rich useless gentry

Even if you do meet all the barriers you still have to compete with people who just buy their initial audience

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:34

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

Engorged Pedipalps posted:

It really does seem nightmarishly hard for anyone but rich useless gentry

Even if you do meet all the barriers you still have to compete with people who just buy their initial audience

yeah having Social Capital is going to help a lot too. same story it's always been for musicians / actors / etc who can afford to relax at home between gigs, and take any audition at a moment's notice

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:38

Chad Sexington: May 26, 2005; I think he made a beautiful post and did a great job and he is good.

mycomancy posted:

My household is currently obsessed with Suika Game on the Switch. It's a port of a Chinese browser game. It cost us three dollars, and we've probably put 100 hours over the holiday season into it.

this is an excellent time waster, good looking out

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:40

poemdexter: Feb 18, 2005; Hooray Indie Games!; College Slice

webcams for christ posted:

what are the barriers to entry to be a streamer:

dedicated room
good lighting
gaming rig
a/v equipment
ability to spend hours a day streaming (aka someone else feeding you and keeping the lights on)

that last one is killer

Honestly I've seen popular streamers with all sorts of setups. I think the real barrier to entry is being able to set a schedule and stick to it from day 1 as well as being on almost every day.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:40

Edgar Allan Pwned: Apr 4, 2011; Quoth the Raven "I love the power glove. It's so bad..."

i watched a streamer start going on everyday after realizing superchats. i think the content is less good once you go daily shows. but if its your job...

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:42

Tempora Mutantur: Feb 22, 2005

Edgar Allan Pwned posted:

i watched a streamer start going on everyday after realizing superchats.

...what?

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:44

Justin Tyme: Feb 22, 2011

If you are legitimately good at a reasonably trendy game you can be popular off talent alone but usually that goes back to the final point of having the time to *get* good in the first place

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:46

netizen: Jun 25, 2023

Justin Tyme posted:

If you are legitimately good at a reasonably trendy game you can be popular off talent alone but usually that goes back to the final point of having the time to *get* good in the first place

Or you can just be hot and buy a hot tub.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:48

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Taylor Swift is a very talented entertainer but I have no doubt that having rich parents who directed all of their resources into getting her noticed helped a lot.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 21:48

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

"~~Entrepreneurship~~ succeeding in the performing arts is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:02

Teabag Dome Scandal: Mar 19, 2002

Beached Whale posted:

This is the future of gaming, games a service will turn into NFT and crypto fueled money gushers

https://twitter.com/crulge/status/1741917542577303872

How is this cheaper or more profitable than having someone program a static pathing route once

Red Baron posted:

I knew the American worker was fully cowed when original WoW MC and Naxx raids were grinding dozens and dozens of hours a week for the benefit of just one or two players who would sometimes just get their super loot and leave for already-equipped guilds.

and people LOVED it, they defended that system tooth and nail! you PAID money to spend full-time hours to get someone else a digital item.

absolutely insane.

Eventually people soured on that and some guilds would have these elaborate systems of seniority based on points you would accrue for participating. Not Eve level of spreadsheeting but getting there

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:13

Glumwheels: Jan 25, 2003; https://twitter.com/BidenHQ

A lot of the big names lived with their parents then hit it big when streaming blew up 10yrs ago and started making money off twitch. They didn�t need a lot of money to do it at first and didn�t have the setups they have now. They just steamed from their bedrooms at their parents� home.

I�d agree that now you would need a lot of money to break into it much like the music industry, Hollywood and competitive sports.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:14

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

Glumwheels posted:

A lot of the big names lived with their parents then hit it big when streaming blew up 10yrs ago and started making money off twitch. They didn�t need a lot of money to do it at first and didn�t have the setups they have now. They just steamed from their bedrooms at their parents� home.

I�d agree that now you would need a lot of money to break into it much like the music industry, Hollywood and competitive sports.

you can still blow up on twitch with a minimal setup, it's just that the living at home with affluent parents part is mostly necessary. I haven't seen what I'd call an industry plant on twitch unless they were already famous like t-pain

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:17

ram dass in hell: Dec 29, 2019

webcams for christ posted:

"~~Entrepreneurship~~ succeeding in the performing arts is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

it's really not. There are all kinds of entrepreneurs and most are not making weird iphone apps, but more conventional businesses that do somewhat work or fail. Rich kids don't necessarily do many throws, as they have the money to push even an unsuccessful idea for a long time. VCs may be the ones throwing darts. And poor kids do go to the carnival, you don't often see rich people going there.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:20

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

ram dass in hell posted:

it's really not. There are all kinds of entrepreneurs and most are not making weird iphone apps, but more conventional businesses that do somewhat work or fail. Rich kids don't necessarily do many throws, as they have the money to push even an unsuccessful idea for a long time. VCs may be the ones throwing darts. And poor kids do go to the carnival, you don't often see rich people going there.

I've never worked at a place of employment that had "entrepreneurs" or interacted with entrepreneurs so I can't really speak to that.

what I have seen over and over is musicians from wealthy families buying world-class training, not having a day job ever, living in a city of their choice for as long as it suits them, flying to as many auditions as they want in any city they want. that's the "unlimited ring toss throws" analogy that seems to reasonably fit

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:27

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

OhFunny posted:

Hapag-Lloyd is also continuing to sail ships around Africa instead of through the Red Sea.

Hapag gets a lot of the hazardous and OOG. They�re gunna be more conservative than the other lines.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:30

Nothus: Feb 22, 2001; Buglord

webcams for christ posted:

what I have seen over and over is musicians from wealthy families buying world-class training, not having a day job ever, living in a city of their choice for as long as it suits them, flying to as many auditions as they want in any city they want. that's the "unlimited ring toss throws" analogy that seems to reasonably fit

lol that's how T. Swift did it

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:33

ram dass in hell: Dec 29, 2019

webcams for christ posted:

I've never worked at a place of employment that had "entrepreneurs" or interacted with entrepreneurs so I can't really speak to that.

what I have seen over and over is musicians from wealthy families buying world-class training, not having a day job ever, living in a city of their choice for as long as it suits them, flying to as many auditions as they want in any city they want. that's the "unlimited ring toss throws" analogy that seems to reasonably fit

oh i just thought your post was cool and thought it might be a copypaste based on the wording, so i googled it, and that bunch of nonsense was posted in response to it lol

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:42

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

ram dass in hell posted:

oh i just thought your post was cool and thought it might be a copypaste based on the wording, so i googled it, and that bunch of nonsense was posted in response to it lol

yeah it's from the orange site should've caught that lmao

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:44

Vox Nihili: May 28, 2008

Mr Hootington posted:

I know cod used to lock new overpowered, new meta guns in the battlepass.

Still does. Although you don't strictly need to pay for the pass to get them, it's just the easiest way.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 22:54

actionjackson: Jan 12, 2003

farrrrrrttttttt (from economist, of course)

quote:

A gradual reverse migration is underway, from Zoom to the conference room. Wall Street firms have been among the most forceful in summoning workers to their offices, but in recent months even many tech titans � Apple, Google, Meta and more � have demanded staff show up to the office at least three days a week.

For work-from-home believers, it looks like the revenge of corporate curmudgeons. Didn't a spate of studies during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate that remote work was often more productive than toiling in the office?

Unfortunately for the believers, new research mostly runs counter to this, showing that offices, for all their flaws, remain essential.

A good starting point is a working paper that received much attention when it was published in 2020 by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, then both doctoral students at Harvard University. They found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer that had shifted from offices to homes. Far less noticed was a revised version of their paper, published in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The boost to efficiency had instead become a 4% decline.

The researchers had not made a mistake. Rather, they received more precise data, including detailed work schedules. Not only did employees answer fewer calls when remote, the quality of their interactions suffered. They put customers on hold for longer. More also phoned back, an indication of unresolved problems.

The revision comes hot on the tails of other studies that have reached similar conclusions. David Atkin and Antoinette Schoar, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sumit Shinde of the University of California, Los Angeles, randomly assigned data-entry workers in India to labor either from home or the office. Those working at home were 18% less productive than their peers in the office.

Michael Gibbs of the University of Chicago and Friederike Mengel and Christoph Siemroth, both of the University of Essex, found a productivity shortfall, relative to prior in-office performance, of as much as 19% for the remote employees of a large Asian IT firm.

Another study determined that even chess professionals play less well in online matches than face-to-face tilts. Yet another used a laboratory experiment to show that video conferences inhibit creative thinking.

The reasons for the findings will probably not surprise anyone who has spent much of the past few years working from a dining-room table. It is harder for people to collaborate from home. Workers in the Fed study spoke of missing their "neighbors to turn to for assistance." Other researchers who looked at the communication records of nearly 62,000 employees at Microsoft observed that professional networks within the company become more static and isolated.

Teleconferencing is a pale imitation of in-the-flesh meetings: Researchers at Harvard Business School, for example, concluded that "virtual water coolers" � rolled out by many companies during the pandemic � often encroached on crowded schedules with limited benefits.

To use the terminology of Ronald Coase, an economist who focused on the structure of companies, all these problems represent an increase in coordination costs, making collective enterprise more unwieldy.

Some of the coordination costs of remote work might reasonably be expected to fall as people get used to it. Since 2020, many will have become adept at using Zoom, Webex, Teams or Slack. But another cost may rise over time: the underdevelopment of human capital.

In a study of software engineers published in April, Emanuel and Harrington, along with Amanda Pallais, also of Harvard, found that feedback exchanged between colleagues dropped sharply after the move to remote work. Atkin, Schoar and Shinde documented a relative decline in learning for workers at home. Those in offices picked up skills more quickly.

The origins of the view that, contrary to the above, remote working boosts productivity can be traced to an experiment nearly a decade before the pandemic, which was reported by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and others in 2013. Call-center workers for a Chinese online travel agency now known as Trip.com increased their performance by 13% when remote � a figure that continues to appear in media coverage today.

But two big wrinkles are often neglected: first, more than two-thirds of the improved performance came from employees working longer hours, not more efficiently; second, the Chinese firm eventually halted remote work because off-site employees struggled to get promoted. In 2022 Bloom visited Trip.com again, this time to investigate the effects of a hybrid-working trial. The outcomes of this experiment were less striking: It had a negligible impact on productivity, though workers put in longer days and wrote more code when in the office.

The price of happiness

There is more to work (and life) than productivity. Perhaps the greatest virtue of remote work is that it leads to happier employees. People spend less time commuting, which from their vantage-point might feel like an increase in productivity, even if conventional measures fail to detect it. They can more easily fit in school pickups and doctor appointments, not to mention the occasional lie-in or midmorning jog. And some tasks � notably, those requiring unbroken concentration for long periods � can often be done more smoothly from home than in open-plan offices. All this explains why so many workers have become so office-shy.

Indeed, several surveys have found employees are willing to accept pay cuts for the option of working from home. Having satisfied employees on slightly lower pay, in turn, might be a good deal for corporate managers.

For many people, then, the future of work will remain hybrid. Nevertheless, the balance of the workweek is likely to tilt back to the office and away from home � not because bosses are sadomasochists with a kink for rush-hour traffic, but because better productivity lies in that direction.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 23:09

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

actionjackson posted:

farrrrrrttttttt (from economist, of course)

They have been running this exact article for three years now

# ? Jan 2, 2024 23:22

SirPablo: May 1, 2004; Pillbug

Digital serfdom is here. What a time to be alive.

# ? Jan 2, 2024 23:43

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2024 23:01

actionjackson: Jan 12, 2003

webcams for christ posted:

what are the barriers to entry to be a streamer:

dedicated room
good lighting
gaming rig
a/v equipment
ability to spend hours a day streaming (aka someone else feeding you and keeping the lights on)

that last one is killer

streaming sounds terrible, basically you have to entertain people, on camera (typically) for hours and hours

# ? Jan 2, 2024 23:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Doomsday Economics] Home of Kirbeh's FREE SLICE ($25 delivery fee)

«‹›2845 »