Parallax Abstraction

Parallax Abstraction

@pxa.ca

Middle-aged Canadian nerd, gamer and retro enthusiast, blogger, pet parent, IT ninja, @bigboxdb.com account runner and much more. Blog: https://geekbravado.com Discord: https://discord.pxa.ca Other Stuff: https://pxa.ca Check my lists!

265 followers340 following2K posts

I really wish YouTube would let you disable subscription feed posts for collaboration videos from channels you choose. Having my feed inundated with channels I otherwise like having collaborations show up for every crappy podcast they guest on is driving me nuts.

But I also recently read the incredibly depressing stat that something like 97% of YouTube users don't use the subscription feed and just let the home page feed them slop. I'm honestly surprised YouTube just hasn't deprecated the subscription feed yet so I'm not holding out home for any updates.

Since this AI slop remake of a fan project is free on Steam, I look forward to adding it to my account, playing it just long enough to leave a review and calling it out for what it is. Just sayin', it's free so if you're an OMF fan, you could too. If you wanted.

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Spent another chunk of time browsing #SteamNextFest now that personalized recommendations have been turned on. There's still too much AI slop but it has been suggesting me a lot more stuff I'm both interested in and that at least doesn't state AI was used. Better than Monday, to a point.

*taps mic* This on? Yeah? Cool. *cough* Ahem... PRIVATE EQUITY RUINS EVERYTHING!

Respec@respec.net

EA is shutting down BioWare. and the next Mass Effect has been canceled as a part of 400 job cuts: https://www.respec.net/news/266-ea-shutting-down-bioware-next-mass-effect-has-been-canceled

I had a strong feeling this was coming with how quiet things have been about Mass Effect since the Saudi acquisition and buyouts like this always results in huge cuts. All that debt EA got saddled with to make Andrew Wilson & Co. rich(er) has to get paid somehow. BioWare's had issue but this sucks.

Saddens me to say that this has been my experience so far as well. I normally download dozens of demos during Next Fest but even after an hour browsing, I've only found about 15 that interested me at all and several of those I've skipped because of heavy AI use. Probably going to write about this.

The more I scroll #SteamNextFest for new demos and the more games I see with generative AI disclosures or which are just straight up AI slop games, the more I'm glad I never gave up my retro gaming hobby and interest. I'm not convinced this future is inevitable but if it is, I won't be part of it.

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This stuff is so massively subsidized that when the bubble pops (and it's already starting, yes it is) and people have to pay what these tools actually cost, I think they'll become too expensive for most to use them anyway. At least for now, you need frontier models to do this stuff at scale.

If I'm wrong and GenAI becomes the norm (I don't think I am but it's possible), then thankfully I still have an entire past world of creative works at my disposal. They may look primitive but I stopped caring about new shiny in most games long ago. I won't be part of an AI slop art future. I won't.

The more I scroll #SteamNextFest for new demos and the more games I see with generative AI disclosures or which are just straight up AI slop games, the more I'm glad I never gave up my retro gaming hobby and interest. I'm not convinced this future is inevitable but if it is, I won't be part of it.

Using generative AI is wanting the glory of creation without actually having to learn and do the work. Prompting a robot trained on stolen human works isn't creation any more than ordering a meal at McDonald's is cooking. If you expect me to appreciate and pay for your work, then put in the work!

New Geek Bravado review! I give an extensive discussion about Ace Combat 8, the latest in a series I've loved for a long time and which for some reason, took this long for me to finally understand the reasons behind when it hooks me so much. geekbravado.com/review-ace-c...

geekbravado.comReview: Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve - I finally get the hookI've played every Ace Combat game and could never figure out why I was so into them. Ace Combat 8 finally made me realize it.

Tried a new format with this review and I'm curious what people think. Leave a comment on the blog post with your thoughts if you want!

Got smacked by a Steam moderator for calling a toxic poster "an idiot" in a thread in the Ace Combat 8 forum titled "Is this game woke?", which is full of exactly the kind of smooth brained garbage you'd expect. All of that is still there but calling an idiot an idiot, that's a step too far! 🙄

Though I have to admit, I do find it funny that I got smacked because a bunch of triggered snowflake chuds reported my post. You know they'd be the first ones screaming "Muh free speech!" if the same thing happened to them. 🤣

I've got a substantial collection with more than a few rares in it. If I sold it all for PriceCharting's inflated estimates, it'd be less than 1/3 of my salary. And I make at best a middle-class living today. Collect because you love it, not for the money. The latter will never end well.

Time Extension@timeextension.com

Remember: Retro games are your retirement fund

Remember when Asha Sharma publicly posted "no soulless AI slop" after taking over Xbox? I membah'.

VGC@videogameschronicle.com

Microsoft has formed ‘Xbox Labs’ in response to the recent explosion of AI-powered mods and ports. “These experiments challenge long-held assumptions about our industry: the tether between software and hardware, the boundary between creation and play". vgc.news/news/asha-sh...

This...this is...so beautiful... spelunkr.tv

GUYS! Someone made a 100% free fake TV network out of Archive.org content with a TV Guide channel-like viewing experience. Ya’ll need to bookmark this right now: Spelunkr.TV Credit: /u/thetalkinghawk on Reddit

A legend from the old school of FPS design. Damn shame to hear. :(

Joe Siegler@joesiegler.blog

Richard B. Gray - LEVELORD 11/15/1957 - 10/12/2026 Just heard the news that an old friend of mine has passed on. Richard Gray - aka Levelord has departed the planet. I know he's dealt with cancer on and off for awhile now, a word that I cannot stand. Word comes from his wife Olga.

Hopefully you won't need the deluxe edition to get a complete game. PC or not, I won't be buying it until that changes.

Wario64@wario64.bsky.social

"GamesBeat has confirmed that Rockstar plans to release the PC version of GTA VI in the first quarter of 2027, according to four industry sources familiar with the studio’s plans, all of whom requested anonymity to avoid damaging business relationships." gamesbeat.com/grand-theft-...

OMG, it finally happened! After over 18 months of ripping my hair out trying to solve it, Google has *finally* indexed my latest self-hosted iteration of Geek Bravado! Insane story behind this saga but I'm so happy it's fixed! I have some big posts I've held off writing until this was resolved.

A YouTuber I followed and respected for years (The 8-Bit Guy) made an AI slop movie from a hobby script he wrote years ago and actually thinks himself a filmmaker now. This is so incredibly disappointing. AI psychosis is taking over people who should damn well know better. That was a hard unsub. 😢

Went and did our weekly look at the new house this morning. They've started doing the brick work. This was on the stoop in front of the main door. 🤔 No stale bricks here. Only fresh ones like Mom used to make. 🤣

Have today off and my buddy and I who have co-opped every single Gears of War game since the first one on the 360 are doing an old school all day marathon of #E-Day today. Don't get to do these much as we've gotten older and I've been excited about it for weeks! Time to murder some Locust!

@thegamebusiness.com Question on Undead Labs: Does it seem odd that they've announced they have a publisher but neither they nor said publisher will say who that is? I can't recall another time I've seen a I was saying announcement handled in such a way.

Kurzgesagt has posted a clearly rushed out #AI doomer video and The Daily Show is giving oxygen to that obvious grifter Jacob Coxon. The degree to which even alt media is utterly failing their audiences and responsibilities during this "rogue AI" narrative is infuriating. You. Are. Being. Played.

geekbravado.comThe AI grift has reached a new (maybe peak?) level of stupidThe AI industry has become almost a dark parody at this point and is more clearly a grift than ever. I get angry about it. Come at me boosters.

I've thought about this more. It's true that Asha said Xbox isn't for sale. You know what she didn't say? That Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda aren't either. And where has Xbox just recently moved all but 3 of their studios under? Yeah. Her statement didn't really disprove my thesis at all.

What the actual... www.videogameschronicle.com/news/xbox-ce... I had no idea this was coming when I wrote the post yesterday. Asha, do you read my hobby blog that Google still refuses to index? 🤣 I will still say that things are only not happening until they are. We'll see though.

What the actual... www.videogameschronicle.com/news/xbox-ce... I had no idea this was coming when I wrote the post yesterday. Asha, do you read my hobby blog that Google still refuses to index? 🤣 I will still say that things are only not happening until they are. We'll see though.

videogameschronicle.comXbox CEO Asha Sharma insists Microsoft’s gaming business is ‘not for sale’ | VGCAsha Sharma denies reports Xbox could be sold…

New blog post! Xbox continues to undergo its "reset" but with the recent reshuffling of their org chart, I think this is building to something very different and potentially a lot worse. geekbravado.com/the-xbox-res... I hope I'm wrong.

Just finished writing another blog post on this whole Xbox fuckery that keeps going on. Thought about it a lot and have a largely undiscussed theory on why they're doing what they're doing. It's not a happy theory but I think one worth putting out there. Publishing tomorrow morning.

My next post is going to be much more positive. I'm going to take the #My9Games trend that's going on right now and write about my 9 choices and why they mean so much to me. The choices might change a bit too cause I spent the day thinking more after posting them last night. 🤣

There's at least a few more titles that are *right there* too but didn't make the list. If it could have been my12 or even my10, there would be some other bangers on it. 😊

I'm a huge Remedy fan and have played everything they've ever made and will play Control: Resonant. But it also feels like a lot of the review discourse around it is that it'd be getting dragged way harder for all its faults if any other open world developer's name was on it.