Experience; knowledge; understanding. When where and how we acquired these heavily dictate our subjective experience with... well, everything, including media and the art within.

Based on my own observations, the average person follows a very basic pattern and have not bothered to grow as a person beyond this. They want to absorb entertaining content with minimal energy. We all do at our core, but some of us can move beyond it. For those of us that haven't yet, our media conglomerates are happy to cater with over-saturation such as with Marvel. We can observe the market, but the average person literally doesn't care. Are they unaware of critical analysis skills? Is there no energy to ponder these things after a 10+h work day? Sometimes both. Perhaps neither.

The Rock was in a lot of famous movies and he has a great public personality. Now he is in low-quality spit-out productions because his face generates money nostalgia in his viewers. I can flip this from movies to video games as well with Nintendo. How delusional people were with Violet / Scarlet and the outrage that Palworld caused. PKMN Violet / Scarlet was one of the worst games I've played on the Nintendo Switch (which objectively it isn't but rather is more like the antithesis of what we're talking about... I sadly digress). As a game, it's terrible. But some people are eating up the story and pokemon experience. There was a common denominator amongst this group though, and they didn't care about the garbage quality of the game because they weren't experiencing it - they were experiencing their pokemon. Likewise my family praises a lot of movies I... rent for them. I always watch them and they're typically rehashed ideas featuring famous actor(s). I can barely tolerate the experience - Red Notice? It wasn't even ironically good where it's so bad it's good again, but they love it! They'll eat it up every time and then enjoy the social experience of talking about it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have famous artists and critics because humans like to take the path of least resistance.

I'm still ultimately unsure what a good objective measurement would be for works of art, but I think it's something to do with how the piece may expose peoples thoughts and ideas. Perhaps not just as a socially engaging experience, but something that stirs your soul into a tasty broth, ya know? Something that causes an introspective change within. Outer Wilds, How to Read, The Good Place, these are all works of art to me under this premise.

So ya, I also have an intense interest in the subject and I'd love to hear your own thoughts on the matter :) Please, do ramble on~

Edit: It's a discussion, not a statement of fact ya downvotin' goobah and goobahs to be~

ooo I'm eating lettuce from my lil' hydroponics system right now! It uses a small pump to circulate nutrients and that gamer-powered light energy.

It's the only way I can keep plants alive... give them back to nature...

tch tch tch, that's why you do two layers.

I apologize as I seem to have made myself unclear. I'm not disagreeing or saying these security measures aren't useful, I was just stating the fact that people can and do get through these systems and players in this case can detect them even when security measures can't.

To your point, as that $$0.01 makes a difference, VAC bans also make a difference by preventing kiddies from jumping back in with their purchased cheat program. That's great. However, there are 'whales' that don't care for the cost, and even though they're a small number they have an influential contribution to the negative experience these people can bring.

I'm not a security researcher or a developer so I don't know what security measures are ever in place or what the hackers do to get through. I mostly play lots of games and once-upon-a-time would dig up free (likely infected) cheat programs that got through anti-cheat and contributed to the cycle that's ongoing today.

I think you're missing the point of why they're buying cheap game keys. In fact, it sounds like you think a 'ban' is something bad to these players or will stop them. If it did, I'd probably be enjoying Rust still.

Not even VAC bans are perfect, although it typically stops the poor unfortunate kids who truly don't know better at least.

Minecraft anticheat won't be perfect either. It is a necessary and functional safe guard as is usually the case with anticheat (minus rootkits, fuck those useless tools), but people will always slip through. Note what other people in this thread are saying.

clutches fist

This is what I've been gooning my WHOLE life for. Horror movie? This is a documentary.

SEND ME TO COCO CAY

Curious - why? I've played LOL and the Blizzard one, but I never tried Dota 2

By the point of 'superhuman' gameplay, it's less about physical reactions and more about mental foresight or gamesense. Ducking, sliding, bhopping and any tech involved to navigate... planning how your opponent will move around your positioning in relation to their own objectives... Individual players have quirks by this point that can be discovered and exploited, and you are both playing a game to discover & exploit; Deceive & switch-up.

When someone is exclusively reacting to you perfectly rather than incorporating the above, you know. It's wildly demotivating because now we're not playing this high-skill game, we're playing a game of endurance since they always know player locations and will almost always get the first shot... The only two winning moves is you leave or the hacker leaves. It's a waste of everyone's time just for some narcissist to feel good (I can say that, I used to do it so I get the power thrill).

It sucks and anyone who's pushed their competitive gameplay to the edge will recognize a hacker when they see one. So yes, players can tell the difference (including chess players!!), it's the anti-cheat that can't. Kind-of like how that one MS guy discovered a backdoor due to a 500ms delay, but a virus protector sees everything hunky-dory.

Source: used to religiously/no-life play competitively

Also, no, matchmaker will not separate these people appropriately. The cheaters will smurf just to dunk on lower-skill players. You can buy game-keys on russian websites for dirt cheap, so it's very worth it if you have the $$$ to burn. Path of least resistance to feeling power.

Maybe my subjective take of sudden is different, but is it sudden? (aka I progressively succumb to madness over a title)

There've been many fantastic roguelike deckbuilders out since 2020, a little after Slay teh Spire's official release date. It feels more like people have became aware of how fun the subgenre is after the hype Baltaro generated on streaming platforms. If anything is sudden, it's the second-wind of attention we're getting thanks to the above-mentioned game.

I know I'm continuing to split hairs over nothing down here, but 861 games is a little misleading once you get to the end: "Surprisingly, deckbuilders are still an underserved market"

You never know when you’ve reached the peak of a trend, but deckbuilders seem like they’re not quite there yet. Games-Stats tracks 527 roguelike deckbuilders, and Dev_Hell’s Westendorp suggests their higher-than-average revenues, wider revenue spread, and demand make them “relatively underserved as a market.”

So, there's not 861 games, but 527 games?

If you investigate why there's a large gap in reported game listings, it's because Steam is including packs like [Slay the Spire x Backpack Hero] and DLC where Game-Stats is tracking the individual games (i.e, bloatless). This ties back to the title - ultimately we're not trying to answer the literal question, "Why are there 861 roguelike deckbuilders on Steam", because OP never answers that question. Instead, we are answering an alternative interpretation: "Why are there so many roguelike games appearing on Steam in a short amount of time?" The answer, may shock you:

While I've taken those answers from the article, I find it further interesting that they conclude a different question all-together: "Why are roguelike deckbuilders taking off?"

Buh, I've lost it. Ultimately I really liked the core article and their enthusiasm, but I've driven myself to madness here.

:(

This is horrible... I hope they make contact with the owners.

I think they're referring to the widespread cruel mistreatment of pigs in butchering facilities like was reported on here.

It goes beyond harvesting bacon, but I wouldn't be surprised if most people are unaware of how bad it is.

I think that's a fascinating idea, but we continue to seek colour in our screens and such so I'm not sure if we truly want relief. I mean, I don't. I get mad excited when I enter a room with actual colour in it.

My family are contractors that typically service wealthy clientele. The brains behind the painting and decor side of things told me that people prefer white/beige because it maintains it's value. From what we can observe with this post, teal took 10 years to financially bomb. White is still going strong and can be mixed into a very wide colour palette with furniture and decor, etc..

Nah, he fell off the swiss-cheese truck. And wouldn't you know it, the stack of swiss landed with a perfect line of holes. Zap!

lmfao you're right, much less weird. I thought that was a taxidermy dog at first.

Holy shit that dog one scared me ahahaha thank you for sharing these

Coming back it's still just as creepy and I started to feel like ai made this. The weird half hoop in Red's hair, the shadows seemingly being cast funny, shitty artifacting bluring backround furniture together... Her one foot is barely out of frame making it look like a potato limb 🥔

I had to look up resort beach beds on google, it was actual insanity. It's further insane that all other resort photos were real, yet ALL BUT ONE image of this beach was a stock photo.

Now I know what you're thinking: "Didn't ask"

It's a resort called CocoCay and it's part of some Caribbean cruiz.

EZ: everything runs on a VPN in Italy.

Wipes hands Case closed.

The repeating beds are filling me with an odd sense of dread

If you are exposed to lies and manipulations a lot, maybe you developed a defence mechanism against language.

I have, and for example my boss loves to fist-bump me and compliment my work. This means nothing to me because I know he's a POS scum human through his actions.

My aunt is one of the loveliest people in the world, yet she let slip once that she befriends people because they're useful to her. She's nothing but smiles and good gestures, yet it's only to use and discard you, as I've observed throughout her life. She meant it. Thanks, wine.

My father is in jail for basically being Andrew Tate.

Compliments can be real, and they definitely feel more real when they're still expressed behind your back, but from my experience humans are generally playing a shitty social game. That's why rude people are so great - you're actively putting yourself at a disadvantage in our relationship just to express yourself? Fuck yeah, preach your feelings buddy!

MFW I've been gooning for 5 hours straight (I know because I've been staring at a clock for 5 hours straight)