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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The common thread I’ve seen online is this:

    • Google’s search algorithm sucks. I always append reddit.com to get good forum results
    • Reddit’s search algorithm sucks.

    These two tools are quickly becoming coupled for Google-Fu expert users. The historical forum history that goes back 3-5 years on Reddit is their goldmine. You can’t just make a new subreddit overnight when a sub gets paywalled. All of that historical data will be lost and paywalled.

    I think a paywall could be an effective money maker for Reddit because they’ve basically become their own Google - in that each subreddit acts like a unique website with real, human, responses. The only problem is that reddit has a god awful search algorithm that they refuse to improve. So people use Google to essentially search reddit. The “whales” so-to-speak are the only people they need to capture. People like myself (frugal people) aren’t in their peripherals. But the people that think “I’ll pay each month for NYT” or “it’s just a few dollars for the WSJ” are going to use the same logic for Reddit: “it’s a small amount of money to have access to high quality forums on X, Y, and Z”.

    In addition, this might bolster Reddit’s content even further. Since paywalled subs will automatically reduce the amount of AI content spammed on them, they will inherently increase the legitimacy of each forum.

    Lastly, this will give them a path towards monetization for moderators which doesn’t require them skimming off of their own pay checks to achieve it.

    Do I like this? No. Is this fair? Also no. People contributed to Reddit under the impression that their data would be available and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. That implicit guarantee is being violated. It’s an afront to the hard working individuals that have developed these communities brick by brick.

    But does this “solution” make a lot of business sense? Possibly. As long as they survive the changeover in the short term, I think they’ll thrive from this choice for the reasons I stated above.

    Again, it’s going to give them a pathway for:

    • Monetization
    • Reduce AI spam (a big fear of all forums)
    • They could make even more money off the back of this

    I’m pretty much over Reddit anyways. Lemmy has been my backup social media for a while now. The Internet is still free - for now. I just hope we can all find better search engines and forums in the future. Google has been degrading. Reddit has been locking things down. We obviously need to pivot to other platforms. Or maybe just go back to the old days where you find niche forums hosted by some dude in his basement. Nothing wrong with that.













  • 500+ people for a videogame is insane. That’s kind of cool - despite the problems they faced. I feel like these games don’t reflect the number of people being hired for them. I’m not sure it should linearly scale (probably not), but they seem like they scale down rather than up with an increase in staff.

    I feel like modern producers are missing the forest for the trees. Games are not successful for being infinitely large. Skyrim is small by today’s standards. So is Oblivion. So are hundreds of other contemporary indie games that have captured the hearts of thousands.

    It’s not about more content. It’s about content that feels deeper. Depth over breadth. Baldurs Gate 3 proves that out. I don’t think you can expect these large groups of 500 people to all work towards a deeper game without major changes in roles. I’m no expert by any means, but I am a software engineer with some side-hobby game development experience. I think games are flat because mechanics aren’t growing with the power. We’re getting graphics, dialogue, and places. But the places aren’t any more “deep” than 5 years ago. The dialogue isn’t more interesting. The graphics are nice - but hardly why people buy games. I want to capture the “anything is possible” feeling when I hop into a game. BG3 recaptured that illusion for me for a long time.

    /Rant

    TL;Dr developers can’t throw more bodies at this problem. It’s an artistic and structural problem. They need to reframe how they create the art. It can’t be mass produced without ending up flat.






  • Captain Janeway@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlGemini
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    9 months ago

    Feasible? Sure. Pick 2 people randomly during that time? Unlikely. I have nothing against diversity. And I have nothing against an AI being encouraged to produce diverse outputs. I do think it’s a clear indicator of the internal prompts that guide the AIs choices.