While Warframe is a perfect example of a well done FTP model, you can buy a lot of stuff with real money in Warframe, it isn’t just cosmetics. But it has limited PVP and the community is fairly friendly, so it isn’t so much Pay-To-Win as it is Pay-To-Not-Work-Hard.

My writing resolution was to simply put less pressure on myself to write “a thing” and to spend more time just writing. So far it is going well. Whether I want to write something that is only 3 paragraphs or 30 pages, I’m giving myself that freedom.

I wrote a cyber-punk short that ended up only being a few pages with a time-skip in the middle because I couldn’t figure out how write the middle part. Then I decided “it’s cyber-punk, everyone knows how the middle goes” and wrote the last bits instead. Not something that would be published but always trying to write something that would be publish-able is what stopped me from writing in the first place.

This is what I use when creating baselines for different price-points:

https://www.logicalincrements.com/

If you feel like you’ll need more RAM or a bigger SSD then that’s a simple thing to do but this will give you all of the components you need for a solid system at whatever your price point is.

That said, the “Great” range and up will play pretty much anything. You can even play pretty much any game on the “Good” range and up. So if you are looking to save money, I’d say the “Great” range will last you a good 5 years right now at least.

I cycle through feeling like I’m not doing anything and feeling like I’m too tired to do anything. Largely I’ve accepted that, in my situation, I can help best by ensuring I’m creating safe spaces for people and sharing my differing opinion when asked.

I’ve learned what people it is safe to share these opinions around and who it isn’t. I don’t interact with certain members of my family because of their conservative viewpoints. But I’ve made it clear to others in the family that I am more socialist and accepting and willing to give them a space to explore and ask questions.

I get anxious a lot. I struggle with mental health issues and wish there was a way I could have a bigger impact. But it is also important to recognize how much energy you have to give. It might not feel like a lot but if it is what you can handle without burning yourself out, that’s very important. The fear of backlash from the wider community in your situation is a very real fear and you are not failing anyone by acknowledging this and keeping yourself safe. But making the groups of people who are seeking someone to talk to when they don’t agree with the local consensus is a huge step in changing the way an area thinks. Or, at the very least, could help some people realize they don’t fit/aren’t welcome somewhere and go somewhere they are.

Even the PS3 game can be played via an emulator. The tech is still evolving so you still need a fairly powerful computer but it is playable. For reference, I was able to test archiving various PS3 games on my now 11 year old gaming PC which was a medium-tier system at the time of the build.

While what you say is absolutely correct, keep in mind that the profits a game makes go to the company. The workers are already paid. If a game doesn’t make money it would likely mean those people at the bottom would lose their jobs but the people at the top will absolutely get their share. But stealing a game like this doesn’t mean people aren’t getting paid. If Bethesda feels like the game doesn’t need all of the staff it took to make it, they’ll still get rid of them, regardless of how popular the game may be doing at any given time.

Indie game studios stand a better chance at doing right by their employees but a capitalist society means the profits go to the top and the losses go to the bottom and rarely are indie studios exempt from this rule of economics.

This person is being punished because they found a weakness in Bethesda’s setup and exploited it. It MIGHT be that if they had gone to Bethesda and let them know of this vulnerability rather than trying to sell what they had found that they would be been rewarded. But, more often than not, the companies who are shown a vulnerability still seek to punish those who point it out to them.

Fire Emblem Three Houses again - So much changes between the 3 different stories in that game, it is so much bigger than I initially realized. When my partner was talking about what happened in their playthrough and it didn’t at all resemble my Golden Deer playthrough I realized I’d have to get back to it one day.