Opposite of abridged but I found this to be the best take on all the drama. It kind of goes both ways, exploring both the company’s and the creator’s flaws.

https://youtu.be/JGIGA8taN-M

I’ve learned a long time ago that if you just wait a few years these games will go on sale for $20 and will have enough informed reviews to help make a solid purchasing decision. Gamers need to get off this new release hype train and be patient. I personally won’t play KCD 2, I disliked the first one. I will probably try Avowed in a few years after I get through my existing backlog of ~100 unplayed games in Steam. We are spoiled for choice and the market is filled with good indie games.

I haven’t played any of them but Balatro is my vote for game of the year. I’m tired of the awards featuring recycled game design and never ending franchises. I think I’d also be ok with Astro Bot wining.

Ticketmaster also came to mind as a company that has been doing this for years.

Borderlands 3 and Wonderlands demonstrated clearly that the customers show up for the games, not the store front.

This doesn’t seem to match my own experience but I would be curious to see the steam vs epic sales numbers for gearbox. I use steam because it has good features. If epic supported user reviews, a flexible refund policy, a workshop for user mods, voice chat, cloud saves between devices, achievements, profile customization, the ability to stream games to a different device, etc. I might be more inclined to try it. I waited for borderlands 3 and wonderlands to come to steam and be on sale before I purchased there was zero incentive for me to create an epic games store account unless I really wanted the game right away. Epic exclusives were a good business idea (it worked for Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo for years) but they needed to develop a good store front along with them because it just isn’t sustainable.

Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Fiat Chrysler have factories in Canada. I don’t know of any that truly Canadian companies though.

As a condo owner with an EV, getting a charger installed was only marginally more difficult than if I was freehold. There are already laws in place that require condo boards to respond to charger installation requests and enter an agreement with the owner. I think getting more street parking chargers like they have all over Europe would be a good idea and installing charging bays in all new condo towers should be a requirement for the developer.

A big barrier to EV adoption is also education. I have been asked so many questions about my EV from my neighbours, friends, and families. The dealership wasn’t able to answer like 80% of my questions. I had to do a ton of learning online to understand the features of my car, how it works, how to charge it, when it operates well or poorly etc.

Here are some more to add to the list:

Running a proprietary anti-cheat at the kernel level that causes system instability and only works on Windows. Valorant and many others.

Releasing a sequel to a live service game that doesn’t port over the money / skins users have purchased in the original game over many years. Smite 2.

Paying publishers to make games exclusive to your crappy store on PC instead of making the store front better. Epic Games.

Making a single player only game with always on DRM and network requirements. A lot of games by EA, Ubisoft, and Bethesda.

That time Ubisoft tried to make NFTs in video games a thing.

EDIT: Removed Overwatch 2. It does allow skin transfers for ones the developer chose to keep in the sequel.

We have an Ioniq 5, paid $62,000 after tax, with federal rebate, and upgrades (winter tiers, extended range (520 km), floor mats, etc.). I would not consider EVs in Canada to be cheap by any standard. The base models tend to have poor range for anything more than light city driving.

I use a setting on iOS that blocks all calls from numbers that aren’t in my contact book. The only side effect is I have to save business numbers I interact with in my contacts. For the most part this works well for me and since I don’t answer spam calls they usually don’t try more than a few times before giving up. It is interesting to see their call patterns though. Some try daily for a week, others more randomly over a month.

Occasionally I disable the setting for a few hours when I am expecting a call from a number I don’t know.

What about buying directly from the brewery or distillery? I haven’t been to the LCBO since they made deliver from online sales legal. It’s cheaper, more convenient, fresher product, and directly supports a local business.

Borgarnes, Iceland

I don’t think this would work since most governments don’t understand technology well (just look at the Flipper Zero ban in Canada as an example). Technology has also been disruptive to existing industries (Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, etc.). I think traditional industries would just end up lobbying governments when they are challenged by new technology companies and we’d see less technology overall. That being said I can see the need for more tech regulation in a lot of areas (looking at you Apple), I just can’t see a blanket solution being the right approach.

My partner and I finished it last year. We enjoyed it despite not being a big fan of the original system. I think the theme really helped and some of the new mechanics added in each session were creative. That being said it did take us a full year to finish it. We found it hard to table compared to other campaign games we were playing last year. We both preferred Clank! Legacy.

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/awaken-realms/nemesis-retaliation

I’ve played gloomhaven, spirit island, and mage knight. Mage knight is the only one I found overwhelming and sold it after a few plays. I don’t have any interest in trying Oath or Twilight Imperium but the rest I’d like to play one day. I feel like this list is “popular complex games”, I’m sure there are larger rule sets out there.