That was in my OP though, that most games can be thought of as puzzle games with extra steps.

I just don’t get where you’re getting “most games” from. If you would have phrased it like “many games can be viewed as puzzle games if you really think about it” you would have maybe had more people agree with you.

I understand your reductive approach - it’s just that there are so many games it doesn’t apply to that I can never agree with “most games”.

If you have 2 minutes to solve a puzzle, is it no longer a puzzle game?

Yes, clearly. It still behaves the way a puzzle - or puzzle game - would: knowledge of the solution trivialises the content. It’s just a puzzle game with a timer.

If moving certain colored pieces requires a button combo or sequence, instead of a simple action, is this no longer a puzzle game?

Depends on how the combo works. Is there an element of skill involved? If it’s like a rhythm game I would just call it a puzzle/rhythm game. Otherwise it’s just a puzzle game with extra steps.

For me, if the main challenge of the game is figuring out the puzzle, then it’s mainly a puzzle game. If a measure of skill is required in the actual execution of beating the game it is no longer a pure puzzle game - but it can still contain puzzle elements of course.

EDIT: I would agree that Tetris is not a puzzle game.

Knowing the optimal thing to do can be seen as but a higher order puzzle.

But knowing the right strategy and item build in DotA or LoL means fuck all if you can’t mechanically execute your hero properly, which - in my opinion - disqualifies them as “puzzle games”.

I think your definition of puzzle games is pretty flawed, to be honest. A puzzle does not provide additional difficulty once you’ve identified how the pieces go together, consequently a game should behave similarly to qualify as a puzzle game. The dichotomy is between conceptualisation versus execution.

Puzzle games can be solved or “won” by identifying the solution. Not-puzzle games require execution.

Guitar Hero and OSU! are not puzzle games. Games like RTSes and MOBAs can be argued to have puzzle elements in terms of strategy and meta, but knowing the optimal thing to do will still not give you victory which imo disqualifies them as outright puzzle games.

An instance managed by a non-profit organisation sounds like a perfect home for Internet Is Beautiful to be honest.

The even worse feeling is when there is a reply below with “<message deleted>” and a reply below that with “thank you so much, that fixed it!”

Are you familiar with Bethesda games? The best way to describe it is that it’s a Bethesda game that sacrifices what makes Bethesda games great (the handcrafted open world) in exchange for an illusion of scale and scope by way of procedural generation.

What you’re left with is mediocre writing, boring characters and uninteresting exploration of copy-pasted points of interest.

Yes, definitely! Using the [email protected] works well for communities, but linking to posts is a bit of a headache honestly.

Sync is phenomenal, imo. It gets less traction here because it’s not FOSS and the price to remove ads is pretty high, but in terms of features and visuals it’s by far my favourite. Great customisation too.

I’ve tried probably a dozen apps, but can’t get anything else to look and feel as nice as Sync.

Sounds like programming.dev might be a good fit, or perhaps dbzer0?

Seeing Disco Elysium near the top of Active User Growth warms my heart.

I haven’t played this since I was a kid but I used to have such a good time with it. I had almost forgotten about it so this was a great blast of nostalgia. I guess people are still playing it? Warms my heart.

It was definitely the go-to abbreviation during the early days of the internet, at least in my circles. Nowadays we’ve become so anglicised that everyone just uses English norms instead.

I remember using asg as a kid/young teen, and I remember people at the time were looking down on those using “lol” or “rofl” instead, calling them silly posers.

I love this. The evolution of the slang is so interesting. I read somewhere else that Japan started to use the symbol for “grass” to mean great laughter because the initial abbreviation “www” looks like blades of grass.

I think this is a pretty good summary overall. I’d like to supplement some things:

Category 1 viewers also contain people who want to vicariously live through someone else and experience their favourite game again for the first time. They tend to stick around only for a specific game, and will move on after the playthrough is over.

Category 2 also contains viewers who watch the streams as a pure entertainment product, more akin to watching a comedian. They’re mostly interested in the banter the streamer provides. Many viewers of Northernlion and Jerma fit this description.

A new spammer today made me think of another feature request: automatically refresh the currently viewed comment section after blocking a user to instantly remove the blocked comments.

You can add the instance to your filter list, but that seems to only block posts, not comments. Agree it would be a nice feature.

It’s-a me, James Bond.

Sync is actually just the best.

Oh god, I can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like. I’m glad you recovered, but that sounds horrible to have to go through.

If you want some inspiration or hope, look up Pat Martino. After a brain haemorrhage he had to have part of his brain removed, which apparently included crucial parts relating to musicianship. He was a virtuoso before, but completely forgot how to play guitar. This was at 36 years old, but he managed to re-learn guitar enough to be considered a virtuoso once again post-haemorrhage. I think I read brain scientists were stunned, science it should have been impossible. But the brain is a fascinating organ and apparently he managed to form new neural pathways using intact tissue.

It’s more like AI art in reverse, when you think about it. Instead of an AI spitting out images to our taste, it’s the YouTubers pumping out images to the algorithms taste.