I was at Full Sail in 2003-2004. Say what you want, but the point here is that people there LOVED games. We’d set up 2 TVs in the living room, and 2 in the bedroom, and go crazy for hours. A single game of single flag assault on Blood Gulch could last hours. Then we’d play FFA to pick leaders, then go again. After 2-3 games the hype would dwindle, some would leave, and we’d go to Munchkin. Then occasionally poker. Then Denny’s for breakfast because it was early in the morning and class was in a couple of hours on Monday.

Talk about a feeling of belonging. Definitely chasing that feeling still, and not ashamed of it.

This was going to be my recommendation, so I’m happy to see it.

Around the same time I also watched The Besieged Fortress. It’s about an ant colony attacking a termite mound. It’s staged, but handled as it might happen in real life, and narrated as if it’s some massive siege in medieval times. It’s fantastic.

Good luck getting to some place you’re happy being.

Funny, with a harsh ring of truth. I actually would be interested if they could dual boot with the game on a partition. That would make the transition to Linux easy too. But ultimately as it is, it’s “use Windows, or say to hell with playing games with your family”. I’m lucky that I still enjoy playing games with them, and them with me, so I gotta stick with that.

I love the idea of using Linux. But then I end up playing Warzone every weekend with my family. Can’t give that up. The best part is that they want kernel access, and still have cheating problems, apparently. (Must be higher than my level!) But it still inherently affects me, as they won’t port to Linux.

If someone posts a copyright violation on YouTube, YouTube can go free under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. (In the US.) YouTube just points a finger at the user and says “it’s their fault”, because the user owns (or claims to own) the content. YouTube is just hosting it.

I don’t know of any reason to think it’s not the same for written works. User posts them, Reddit hosts them, user still owns them. Like YouTube, the user gives the host a lot of license for that content, so that they can technically copy and transmit it. But ultimately the user owns it. I assume by the time Reddit made the AI deal they probably put in wording to include “selling a copy of the data” to active they want in the TOS.

Now, determining if the TOS holds up in court is of course trickier. And did they even make us click our permission away again after they added it, it just change something we already clicked? I don’t recall.

Step one is more posting. Keep it on people’s feeds. Do that enough and then you reach out to others who were looking for this and know it. Disenchanted Reddit users, like how some Twitter users went to Mastodon. (Mastodon.gamedev.place and PeopleMaking.Games being two off the top of my head.) And Discord servers.

Try to get enough of a community to keep it visible and alive. That’s the goal at this point.

Then you try to get the people who are looking for this and don’t know it. Now, this isn’t some giant Silicon Valley investment you expect to blow up. You build in the long-term, based on reputation and access. When people want something new, you have to be there. And when people get annoyed with the status quo, you have to be there.

As for the day to day, if we get to the point of what we can call a community, I’d like a few themed posts a week. Indies, game-tangential series (YouTube channels or podcasts,) maybe Q&As. At that point it’s really about the attention we can garner as a community, both the numbers and the specific people.

But let’s be reasonable. That’s several months down the line at best, given my assumption that many of the thousands of subscribers no longer use Lemmy at all. It’ll be an uphill battle. And worst case, if I did nothing, I’m no different than the current moderator. (Not a slam. Just saying.)