A lot of you are more knowledgeable about video games than I am, so I'll ask this here.
I've always wanted to play a game based around the concept of evolution where your goal is to evolve species, but rather than make any decisions about the creatures/species directly, you control the environment and that causes species to evolve differently.
Does anyone know if a game like that exists and, if so, if it's any good? With my summer break coming up, I will finally have time to sink into a new game, potentially.
I definitely remember watching Markiplier playing something very similar to what you're describing.* I think it was more of a sim than an actual game with goals, and you
influence evolution more directly via a special contained area where you could select for certain features (and you could release your creation into the wild to hopefully breed and continue its lineage), but the main factors were you controlling the environment and just watching the little critters adapt or die.
I'm about to go to bed right now and it might take me a while to dig it up, so give me a little bit.
*Disclaimer for my own sake: I don't regularly watch Markiplier, but occassionally have bouts where I want to just "turn my brain off" and he's kind of a funny guy with a genuine good heart, even if he does put on the "LOL I'M SO WHACKY!" personality for his "show".
Also, in personal news, I have been... incensed for the last few days. I don't think I'm, like, actively angry, but I have definitely been upset and actively joining other friends for things like Monster Hunter so I can de-stress at the end of the day.
So, I believe that I mentioned a while back that I
had been using this AI-driven writing tool thingy called AI Dungeon. I wasn't one of their heavy users, but I "played' it during a lot of my personal time. Well, in the last few days the developers behind that implemented a "filter" (read: censor) that didn't work, silently onto their playerbase, then when they released a statement about that after most of their playerbase had worked itself into a massive and understandable uproar due to the dev team's silence, they revealed that, in so much corporate words, they were manually reviewing
fully private stories that users were writing if they tripped the filter.
ON TOP OF THAT, a grey hat hacker revealed just after that, that there was a massive fault in their security, by showcasing how he managed to gain access to basically all public and private anything that the users wrote (be it stories, community posts, et cetera). Initially he even included some anonymized aggregate data based only on two weeks' worth of adventures (stories), but I can't find that now and I think he edited it out. The MAJOR PROBLEM is that, while this person was acting mostly in good faith, he went public because it was the SECOND time he found the particular exploit, after informing the dev team about it some time back. The dev team of AI Dungeon has STILL not made any mention of it to their userbase and, possibly, not even reported it, though it's kind of up in the air whether that would be required by law because things like email and payment info were NOT accesible via this security exploit.
Oh, and to not brush aside the obvious issue in case anyone actually goes looking into the **** currently going on around it: yes, they were trying to filter out "material relating to sexual situations with underage characters" (though there is some evidence suggesting the filters were ALSO aiming at animals to target situations like bestiality, as well) (and it's worth noting that at least one of the co-founders is a Mormon, but without a public statement by the dev team, it's speculation just how that aspect is playing a role in this), and as a result much of the conversation has devolved into bad faith arguments, especially with brigading from reactionary blue-politics groups such as r/gamingcirclejerk, that anyone who is condemning the dev team for censorship, breaching of privacy & trust, and lack of communication (after recently pledging to "be more transparent") is a pedophile.
Meanwhile, when I'
A lot of you are more knowledgeable about video games than I am, so I'll ask this here.
I've always wanted to play a game based around the concept of evolution where your goal is to evolve species, but rather than make any decisions about the creatures/species directly, you control the environment and that causes species to evolve differently.
Does anyone know if a game like that exists and, if so, if it's any good? With my summer break coming up, I will finally have time to sink into a new game, potentially.
I definitely remember watching Markiplier playing something very similar to what you're describing.* I think it was more of a sim than an actual game with goals, and you
could influence evolution more directly via a special contained area where you could select for certain features (and you could release your creation into the wild to hopefully breed and continue its lineage), but the main factors were you controlling the environment and just watching the little critters adapt or die.
I'm about to go to bed right now and it might take me a while to dig it up, so give me a little bit.
*Disclaimer for my own sake: I don't regularly watch Markiplier, but occassionally have bouts where I want to just "turn my brain off" and he's kind of a funny guy with a genuine good heart, even if he does put on the "LOL I'M SO WHACKY!" personality for his "show".
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Also, in personal news, I have been... incensed for the last few days. I don't think I'm, like, actively angry, but I have definitely been upset and actively joining other friends for things like Monster Hunter so I can de-stress at the end of the day.
So, I believe that I mentioned a while back that I
had been using this AI-driven writing tool thingy called AI Dungeon. I wasn't one of their heavy users, but I "played' it during a lot of my personal time. Well, in the last few days the developers behind that implemented a "filter" (read: censor) that didn't work, silently onto their playerbase, then when they released a statement about that after most of their playerbase had worked itself into a massive and understandable uproar due to the dev team's silence, they revealed that, in so much corporate words, they were manually reviewing
fully private stories that users were writing if they tripped the filter.
ON TOP OF THAT, a grey hat hacker revealed just after that, that there was a massive fault in their security, by showcasing how he managed to gain access to basically all public and private anything that the users wrote (be it stories, community posts, et cetera). Initially he even included some anonymized aggregate data based only on two weeks' worth of adventures (stories), but I can't find that now and I think he edited it out. The MAJOR PROBLEM is that, while this person was acting mostly in good faith, he went public because it was the SECOND time he found the particular exploit, after informing the dev team about it some time back. The dev team of AI Dungeon has STILL not made any mention of it to their userbase and, possibly, not even reported it, though it's kind of up in the air whether that would be required by law because things like email and payment info was NOT accesible via this security exploit.