I worked on one of these games (and a PS3 launch title). I feel like this post makes it sound like I should be living in a retirement home instead of still trying to figure out how to become a first time home owner.

Starting w/ M4 MacBook Pros, the anti reflective screen option is shockingly good.

My partner got a pair for work when they first came out (her job involves creating social media content). I was impressed by the speakers and it’s the same style of sunglasses that I normally wear daily, so I got a pair for myself. It was so nice to be able to listen to stuff and take calls without carry around headphones or putting them in when the phone rang. I was already uncomfortable with the association with meta, but was able to isolate that aspect at first. As they continued to add features, I’ve started being less comfortable with them. I accidentally left them somewhere a couple months ago and decided not to replace them. It’s such a bummer that all the cool tech is now not just spying on you, but on everyone around you. Fuckin capitalism ruins everything.

https://gdcvault.com/play/1034535/Independent-Games-Summit-It-s

This is a joint talk with Dana Trebella and Derek Lieu about this exact subject from their professional perspectives (indie marketing and trailer editor, respectively). They both have multiple talks over the years where they explain different aspects of their day to day work. Taken as a whole, it’s a solid crash course on DIY marketing.

Another talk more focused on finding your messaging: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025673/More-Feelings-Fewer-Features-Showcasing

If written articles are more your jam: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/how-to-market-a-game-an-introduction-to-game-marketing

It’s against the EULA, but nobody is going to get caught. The main issue is that it’s a pain in the ass and doesn’t scale. You can do this for one person, but most people aren’t going to be cool sending a payment to an address and just waiting around, hoping that they get a key. This is why Steam exists. There are other services that do the same thing that are not US based. GOG is based in Poland, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com

Ah, that distinction was lost on me.

Doesn’t that depend on what you’re developing? I’ve long thought that I would love to be able to volunteer using my skillset instead of just doing something that is unspecialized like working in a soup kitchen or something. I could write an app that tracks and reserves open beds in a homeless shelter so people who need a place to sleep don’t waste their time commuting to somewhere with no vacancy. That could make smaller (vetted) locations more viable and essentially make AirBnB for the unhoused. Why isn’t there a place to go to propose and contribute to projects like this that are focused on making someone’s life better instead of making shareholders more profit? It seems like you could convince a non-capitalist government to fund such a thing and employ people to assist in maintaining the project, facilitating compliance with existing or new regulation, and coordinating communication with agencies/organizations that would essentially be the clients of the development team (to create feature requests and illuminate challenges).

It’s not just the obsoleteness of it, it’s the fact that any device that is on the other end of the TV’s HDMI cable would need to be actively routing internet traffic into the HDMI connection. What device would do that? Any device that’s using the TV as output for itself has no reason to also include network access.

They didn’t make “back” money, they’re just making money. His friends are the ones telling him to say insane shit that drives the market (or specific targeted stocks like Apple) down, then they buy while it’s low. After a few days/weeks, he changes his mind/can’t enforce his nonsense and the stock goes back up, his friends sell and have nothing but profit. The majority of the shit he does is market manipulation to benefit himself and anyone riding his coattails.