Yeah, modded Minecraft is still a big deal. You can join us over at !moddedminecraft@sopuli.xyz if you want. The mod Create is a big deal right now, and rightfully so. It may well be the greatest of all time, as far as Minecraft mods go.
Edit: didn’t mean to make this a comment reply instead of post reply, but it still counts
Intrinsically, definitely. Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, Victoria 2, and etc.
Warsim deserves love. It’s a real passion project: a text-based kingdom management sim with lots of things to do and nooks and crannies to explore.
I loved John Deere American Farmer back in the day. Unfortunately it doesn’t work on modern machines. The menus don’t display right. If it wasn’t for that, it would be half-playable. The deluxe version might not have that problem, but I never got around to trying it.
One funny quirk was that family members would gain happiness from certain items (housing, bbq, pools, etc) and lose it from working. If happiness dropped too far for two long, you’d get an event about them leaving to join the French Foreign Legion or some other nonsense (there were a handful of variants.) The thing is, though, the happiness gained from these material possessions would degrade over time, meaning that it quickly evolved into a materialism simulator as you built pools to replace the pools that no longer where providing happiness.
You could also just hire people. That was usually the way to go if you wanted to get any serious work done. As long as you could pay wages, the hired help would stick around.
I usually take a moment to pause for reflection, digesting the material. It’s a simple step, but gives me some time to take in what I’ve read.
Maybe the obvious answer, but East of Eden. It’s a genuine masterpiece.
The short story is an underappreciated art form, though many, many short stories are published each year in small presses. I’d recommend Pushcart Prize as a good yearly anthology.
In fact, I’d say the short story is my favorite medium as far as literature is concerned Building on that, Donald Barthelme is my favorite short story author, and I’d recommend Sixty Stories as a good starting place, followed by Forty Stories. Either that, or find a couple of his works online and jump to the Library of America anthology if you like them.
I’ve been reading Manufacturing Consent lately after hearing so much about it. It’s very interesting through the new introduction and the first part, where the propaganda model is explained, but it drags some as the authors try to apply it to certain historical events, like the 1984 Nicaraguan Election.
Still, it’s interesting, and while the model still applies to mainstream media today, the advent of the internet, smartphones, and social media’s resulting displacement of mass media has lessened its effectiveness.
Cautiously excited. I won’t preorder, of course, but I’ll keep an eye on it once it’s out.
PopTop. Railroad Tycoon 2&3 and Tropico 1&2. They got bought by 2K, which eventually killed the studio. The Railroad Tycoon series is dead. Tropico is still around, but I’m not excited about the latest interation. Some of the guys tried to kickstart a new Railroad Tycoon but it didn’t fund. Phil Steinmeyer was an underrated developer, though I believe he’s retired today.
It’s too bad it worked out that way. I think they could have been on the level with Paradox as far as strategy games are concerned, but focusing more on economic games, city builders, and the like. On Steinmeyer’s blog he said he didn’t think there was demand for heavier games anymore about mid 00s. That might have been true then, but so many games out now prove that wrong.