revlolz
Joined 8 years ago
Joined 8 years ago
LANs empowered gamers with full ownership and a better ability to self organize player communities and tournaments. The always online model was heavily hamfisted by Activision Blizzard who wanted to launch their esports ambitions with SC2, seeing the KR broodwar scene as missed revenue. Look at the failed Overwatch League (OWL), Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone and even reforges of classic RTS.
DOTA/League spawned from lan/bnet use map settings games and arguably Dota rise to success started in Lan cafes before hitting mainstream success on bnet.
I acknowledge that many likely don't ship Lan because it's being seen now of days as extra, but I think that's pointing to the consequence as the root cause what the major entities wanting control and ownership on their platforms. It didn't used to be an extra feature 0.1% used, we were pivoted into this to profit larger corps and it's not a tinfoil hat conspiracy, it's just following where the real money was and investors want to be middlemen on platforms.
The game industry, especially AAA, is actually having major identity crisis right now as technology evolves and jobs adapt around the new tool of AI/LLMs. The game awards (not indie) should demonstrate this dolphin committee you fear already exists because the limiting factor in all industries are major resources: time, capital, experience. AI/LLMs will enable far more high skill work to be accomplished with less experience, time, and possibly capital (sidestepping ethics/practicality of data centers).
The crux of genocide is intent. Hamas openly declares its intent to erase Israel. Israel declares its intent to eliminate Hamas. If Israel’s goal was exterminating Palestinians, explain why it has repeatedly supported two-state proposals that Palestinian leadership rejected. Explain why over 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arab, voting in elections, serving in parliament, even sitting on the Supreme Court. That reality is incompatible with a state bent on extermination.
Your “near-indiscriminate” phrasing is just a rhetorical trick. If you admit it is not indiscriminate, then you acknowledge Israel is targeting Hamas, not carrying out genocide. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not the same thing as a systematic plan to wipe out a people.
Israel drops leaflets, issues warnings, and opens corridors. Hamas embeds in schools, hospitals, and residential blocks. That doesn’t absolve Israel of responsibility when civilians die, but it does show intent matters.
“The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.”
Calling this “indiscriminate extermination” ignores Hamas using civilians as shields and demands an impossible standard of zero casualties. It also drains the word genocide of meaning. The Holocaust was genocide, the systematic extermination of Jews for existing. That is not what Israel is doing to Palestinians.