Oh, hey — I’ve gone through this since his first term.

Yeah I asked my Trump loving office trog what he thinks about all the stuff Trump, Hegseth and the other sycophants say. His response boiled down to ‘I don’t pay attention to everything they say or do.’

The average Trump voter will not be described as discerning in the history books. It’s a shame they’ve been allowed to be the loudest Americans.

Again, that’s largely my point. You can’t market a game and just sell 5 million units. Marathon sold 1.2 million units because a) it’s a Bungie game so people would be paying attention to it and b) it had heavy marketing behind it. It would’ve sold even less without those two things, but that’s besides the point. The idea that you can just sell 5 million units through marketing is simply not true and Marathon proves it.

Let’s put this into perspective here.

Pearl Abyss is a relatively unknown dev, Black Desert is not an unknown IP. Pearl Abyss has been pushing BDO for years, roping in larger streamers to play their game over time. BDO is a game that does not respect your time however, and player retention is pretty low as a result. Actually, the BDO community itself is known for helping newbies through some awful grinds — mainly because they recognize that most newbies simply won’t withstand it. This has created a pretty committed community towards the game, and Pearl Abyss hasn’t been actively shitting on them. I can’t think of a better word of mouth machine, especially one already entrenched in social media platforms like Twitch.

Meanwhile, Bungie has spent the better part of the last 5 years making it clear to anyone with a brain that Destiny 2 is simply a cash cow for developing other IPs. Bungies content creator network has seemed like paid actors for years, I know because I played Destiny 2. If Pearl Abyss has been generating their community, Bungie has been actively destroying theirs.

Bottom line, Pearl Abyss has set themselves up for people to give them a chance and the recent success of Crimson Desert is the culmination of years planting seeds. Meanwhile Bungie has been resting on their laurels, actively destroying their community, creating people like me who will simply never purchase a Bungie IP again — and the game still sold over 1.2 million copies.

If anything, Marathon’s success is a testament to the power of marketing pushes.

I want you to tell me a singular storypoint that requires Kliff to be Kliff.

And my point is that if you asked your normie gamer, which really didn’t exist in the same form, in 2005 who Bungie is — you’d mostly get question marks.

The comparison to Marathon was explicitly to debunk the idea that you can sell 5 million units simply by doing marketing.

This would be relevant except that Marathon only sold as well as it did because of the heavy marketing push. If you’ve been following what Bungie has done with Destiny 2 then you should know it’s fucking amazing anyone bought into that soulless trash. They have burned so many bridges with their community. Had they released Marathon before Bungie was sold to Sony it would undoubtedly have sold better. They literally needed the marketing push.

Yet if you’d said Elite Dangerous it would be much more recognizeable, just like BDO is with Pearl Abyss.

Plus, Pearl Abyss has been working to get people to play their mmo for quite some time — Shroud played it for a bit and I know some other popular mmo streamers played it. All of this to say, Crimson Desert’s success is not wild — and using Marathon as a metric is just the worst thing you could do because Pearl Abyss hasn’t been shitting themselves reputation-wise.

Well, Marathon is a supremely bad example as Bungie has been doing everything they can to make the people who have supported them throughout Destiny hate them. Pearl Abyss might have scummy mtx but they’re honest about it and ultimately make a pretty good game. For Korean devs. Who develop games for Koreans. Who are born with a third invisible spirit arm that they use for extra inputs.

This game has no business being as good as it is, like some aspects are real bad (game controls are very poorly thought out/implemented, story doesn’t exist, etc), some aspects are real good (the movement, the combat, the options, the exploration).

Idk, if you like Assassin’s Creed you should play this game. This feels like what every AC starting from Odyssey should have felt like.

Edit: oh, and you can suplex people. You can go full WWE in your Korean single player RPG. What more need I say?

I wouldn’t call Pearl Abyss an unknown developer, at least not in the mmo scene.

They need to stop threatening and just do it

So brave

I also did a double take on that sentence, what an odd thing to say.

The massive amount of product lost and the perfectly good building destroyed?

Like, the difference is the damage — it’s a very big spectacle and proof that all it takes is 1 person in the right place and you can cause massive damage. The Dems aren’t going to save you if you don’t scare them into saving you.

Some clouds will dissipate, some will not. A storm will not dissipate because of an eclipse, let’s put it that way. It’d be sick as fuck, and probably freak everyone the fuck out, but I don’t think it can happen. Maybe if the storm was already dying.

Future trolley

I chuckled and realized that’s more than Seinfeld ever actually earned from me. How’s it hold up with a rewatch in the year 2026?

I work for the CA state govt and I’ve been saying for years we need to create our own standard operating system through Linux for state agencies.

Thank God, maybe we’ll see it happen here in the states in 10 years. Yes, I know, hopelessly optimistic that things will stop developing negatively and begin to develop positively.

They downvoted him for he spoke the truth.

Salvia made me feel like I was my car door, and my tongue, and I was spinning like a coin.

I did not like that experience. I felt like I ran a mile afterwards.

Instant gratification. Why have thing later? Want thing now. Give thing now. Why wait for later?

Spoken like someone with exactly 0 talent.