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Is there such a thing as ‘mainstream gamers’?

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Spending a lot of time hanging around on Discord or Twitch, I find myself frequently chatting with people about video games and video game industry. I often hear ‘people buy this’ ‘people like that’, ‘people are interseted in this type of game’, etc. But who are them ‘people’? Not me, not you, not anyone you chat with, ironically. They’re always this vague concept that seems to imply that 'people' know nothing about video games, 'people' are a little daft, and 'people' only play best-selling games to entertain themselves once in a while. Credits :  Iron Pineapple  &  GoogleyGareth As a disclaimer, I’m not a journalist, sociologist or well-versed in any kind of scientific research field. I’m just a video game translator and a gamer. But, as I grew a little tired of speaking about something I don’t really know about, I got out of my way to research the best-selling games in 2024, sorted by countries. And this inquiry raised a few interesting questions. B...
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"Human-AI translation" doesn't exist

 However, AI translation does, and human translation is still a thing. It’s kind of mind-blowing that one should reaffirm that, but I realized that nowadays, if you want to find a localization agency that doesn’t use AI, when typing “human translation”, you only get “human-AI translation”. The idea is that nobody would be so bold as to claim that AI translation can work by itself, without a “human touch” or other marketing bullshit. We would be in that perfect world where human beings work hand in hand with the machine, the machine “empowering” them and “enhancing” their work. More often than not, this is pure fantasy. AI in translation is used to speed up deliveries (and the deadlines were already short before that) and to cut down on the budget. Tempting, isn’t it? Yes, but there’s no magic in this: this just means lowering quality standards and reducing people to poverty because they can’t make a living anymore. Human-AI translation is AI translation with enslaved humans w...
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Sandboxes and open worlds, or why I love Skyrim so much

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Back to my childhood years, my sister and I used to play a lot with Playmobil toys. What we found so enticing was the opportunity for us to tell our own stories. At least, my sister was telling stories, I was merely following her lead. Thinking back, I think she was some kind of game master in our own role-playing game. Playmobil gave us the settings and the characters, and it was all we needed to enjoy ourselves all day long. I loved this feeling of freedom, being able to make up our own rules, building relationships and backstories for every character. Recently, I realized I was doing exactly the same when playing Skyrim, and that’s one of the main reasons (the other reason being the amazing modding community) I’m never getting tired of this game. Each time I start a new game, I come up with a backstory for my character, which is gradually changing with random events happening in the game. Skyrim is a game that lacks depth in its narration, so exactly like when I’m writing fanfiction...
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