DonnieDarkmode

Not a right-wing source in and of itself, but Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind explores the history and philosophical underpinnings of conservative thought from Burke/Hobbes on through the 21st century, on a variety of different topics. It’s a serious engagement with the ideas, and attempt to understand them and their origins

The QVL! Appreciate the reminder

It’s DDR4 so not crazy expensive; I went ahead and got a new kit. Thanks for your help!

Swapped the new kit in and it works perfectly now. Thanks for the help!

Here’s hoping it’s RAM (memtest seems to suggest so); thankfully DDR4 is probably as cheap as it will ever be right now

Ultimate boot looks like an extremely useful tool, thanks for mentioning that. After testing each RAM stick in the primary slot for my MOBO, I’m running memtest and getting a lot of errors (now over 500 and still on pass 1)

Running memtest, I’m at over 400 errors before the first pass even completed. I take it that’s probably a RAM issue?

Are there vendor tools that run off of a flash drive like memtest? I can’t boot into windows at all

I haven’t reset the CMOS yet; I’ll give that a try. But I did try booting with a single stick inserted, swapping them out, and both attempts gave me a BSOD (the critical system error one). My CPU cooler has a tiny fan for the VRMs, and my case has excellent airflow, so I think that one is less likely

Oh absolutely! I’ve heard the term “power gamer” used to describe people who love building the perfect, 100% optimal character that is multiclassed just so with such and such items, who can do X amount of damage per round, and so on. I think some people use that as a derogatory term but I don’t see it that way. It’s just how some people like to play, just as some people like to play characters who are this race with this color hair and an elaborate backstory, stats be damned.

There are absolutely people out there like what you’re asking for. Lots of combat, exploration, puzzles, and roleplay is restricted to basic narration (“my character asks where the bad guy is” “ok, roll persuasion”). They have a presence online as well, for example r/3d6 on Reddit, but it’s a bit smaller/less vocal than the RP folks I think.

Here’s my source. It’s the latter case, they use digital sales figures from the companies that provide them.

You raise a good point: if Larian aren’t sharing sales figures then it’s not possible to definitively compare them. I don’t think the 22M figure is very credible (as the other commenter said it doesn’t match up with the data we do have regarding player count/copies sold, and came completions) but even 5-7M copies sold sounds like it would place BG3 on the list. There’s enough bleakness in the gaming scene as it is, so I’m glad to hear it might not be quite as bleak as I thought.

I genuinely wonder how much it matters though. From online discussions you’ll see that Baldur’s Gate 3 is beloved by fans and held up as a benchmark for community engagement and listening to player feedback. It won GotY, had a launch far beyond anything the devs expected, and got incredible rave reviews.

But if you look at the top 20 best-selling games of the year, Starfield is #10 despite a lukewarm reception, numerous issues, and being accessible via Xbox Gamepass, while BG3 isn’t even on the list.

I think it really brings into perspective just how small a minority the people who post online about these things are, regardless of platform. Maybe the Gamers don’t know jack about your job, or maybe all their criticisms are 100% right. If it sells millions of copies either way, who cares?

The occasional salty dev, I guess