Nobody can hate that game. Damn that was gold. I believe it’s well beloved, tho not widely remembered

Watch_Dogs was my first platinum on PS3. Everyone was shitting all over the game due to the PC port controversy, but I really enjoyed it. Huge city, different environment, actually good on-foot movement unlike in GTA games, and toooooooons of side stuff to do.

And oh dear, all the hacking stuff was such fun. Yes it was all just one button, but everything was well implemented. The amount of personal details you could pull from phones was amazing. I kept doing it all the time and it wasn’t until near the end of the game that they started repeating.

And the trademark unique Ubisoft multiplayer. Shame it didn’t have full-blown online mode, I can see myself getting lost in it.

Yea great game. Didn’t deserve all the hate unrelated to its actual accomplishments.

The DLC… Bad Blood I think? Was even better.

I can’t emphasize enough how cool some of those VR side-missions were. Some would qualify as fun standalone indie games on their own.

Maybe my memory doesn’t go quite as far. But still, I believe adblockers didn’t take off in such a huge ways until we’ve seen all those popups, malware and other shit on a massive scale.

You can’t have a default server unless someone is ready to pay for it. (Idk how Mastodon does it.)

What I’d do is:

1. have every instance list its most prevalent topics/communities/interests (technology, games, communism, memes…)

2. when the user is signing up, have them select their interests

3. try to find the ideal match. Let the user override if they want to, perhaps let them know if the community is tiny, requires approval etc, but other than that just show a “suggested instance: example.org, change link”

The first big problem was malware in ads (and web in general). This has caused people to install adblocks on their parents’ and friends’ devices.

Then there were the annoying ads: autoplaying videos, popups and other shit. This has caused a lot of normies to install adblockers themselves.

Then the privacy concerns, where even basic users notice that they look at a product on one store and now the recommendations follow them everywhere.

But the marketing companies keep pushing, and the OS providers like Google, MS and Apple keep restricting what you can install on your machine, this is a full-on war between users and the big tech.

Nobody was complaining about small banner ads. But they just have to keep pushing and break things. It’s like with banks, or mythological creatures - insatiable.

“Let us demonstrate”

I prefer formuladank personally but idk if I’d be welcome here