Deep Learning 

Achievement Unlocked: Talk about Deep Learning without linking it to AI even once.

I always thought (based on nothing) the uncanny valley was because the close-to-human face reminds us of a dead human

The homo-neanderthal joke, in the middle of the horrifying theory that humans might of had a scary natural predator thousands of years ago, was gold Tim, gold!

I laughed out so loud at the "you hear me girlfriend." So sassy mister Cain.

“Deep Hurting!” 😂

I've changed a lot of things about myself in just the last year because of this. From music to motorcycles, there were dozens of "thoughts" I had about things where I stopped to ask "where did this thought come from?" and realized how often it was as simple as "a family member told you this when you were 8."

another interpretation of the uncanney valley thing is related to recognizing that someone's dead. It's like the visual version of smelling a corpse.

phew, for a second there i thought you were going to start ranting about machine learning

I, too, cannot hear the phrase "Deep Learning" without thinking of the way the Mads from MST3K say "DEEEEEEEEP HURTIIIIIIIIING".

"Homo floresiensis" is the little guys. It's fascinating to think about us coexisting with other non-human hominids, but sadly our track record even when dealing with slight differences within out own species suggests why we don't coexist with them any more.

"You hearin me, girlfriend?" Oh my god. 🤣

Inyeresting topic. Btw, i think we were programed by decades of games to play a certain way. I was playing a game the other day (Ghost of Tsushima) and for ergonomical reasons mapped the jump button to Ctrl key and run to Space bar (since I would run more often than jump, it was easier to keep my tumb on the bar). It turned out that it was impossible for me to play it that way since I've been conditioned by decades of gaming that jumping is on the spacebar.

Good point we like patterns because it establishes order which establishes a feeling of control over our environment. But in the quest for that control we limit ourselves to the possibility of discovery.

I remember when I was reading game informer and Minecraft beta was announced I said “who would wanna play that, look at the graphics?” Fast forward a couple years and the game came out I was playing it non stop into my teen years. I realized I had learned w/o knowing that the newer the game the “better graphics” it should have. I do not live by this now and play games for their game mechanics.

Some deliberate unlearning is possible. A lot of visual arts learning is about seeing things you’d normally “read,” like faces and bodies, as color and shape instead.

hey tim, it's simon. I just wanted to say thank you for your videos, they are incredibly insightful and inspiring. I'm a game dev and it is super helpful to reality check my assumptions about design and production by comparing them to your experience. Keep up the great work that you are doing, you are really helping us!

Crazy how much my morning routine has been impacted thanks to these videos. Every morning, I check to see if a new one is posted. Thank you for the daily knowledge drops Tim!

When i first came across your channel i thought, is this the Sakurai we have at home? But I have come to realize you open up, you go so much deeper and provide such insight and I am genuinely captivated by your content. I went from barely knowing who you are to fan for the rest of my life. Thank you for passing your knowledge on to the rest of humanity.

When I came to the US at 4, I didn't know any English, and I have a 3 month blackout in my memory, and then I knew english

I get to work every weekday at 7 so having a video from Tim ready as soon as I get clocked in is always nice to listen to in the background

"You hear me Gurlfriend?" Broke me hahaha Yass kween! 🌈 btw Happy Pride, Tim!!!

Very well said, I think it’s valuable to realize our own tastes aren’t set in stone and to try push against our comfort zones, not just in games but all things.

Growing up I never liked turn based combat games, but slowly I’ve been opening my mind and discovering a whole new play style that I genuinely enjoy. Great food for thought Tim!

I hadn’t thought of phobia-incitement-amount as an accessibility feature, but that’s a good and generous idea.

One thing that helped me start liking certain (genres of) games was changing my approach and expectations when it came to playing them - for example, referring to your Bartle's player archetypes video, I've found it helpful to switch to certain playstyles/archetypes when playing some games since it might just be that the game was designed specifically for that kind of playerbase, so I definitely don't have to feel like a game is "not for me" if I can just adapt to it and play it in a different way.

5:50 PBS taught me primates and snakes been natural enemies about as long as they’ve been in the same environments

These mini talks are so cool tbh

Tim was holding me on edge during the whole video, what with his "hidden jokes", neuroscientist roommate and bridging the human mind and a machine, thoughts about AI when he first got into Interplay, and, finally, bias and uncanny valley... And I never got the punchline I was unconsciously hoping for.

This is something that I try to combat as much as I can. Something that I like to do on occasion is go back to games/movies/tv shows/books that I've experienced before and re-evaluate them. Over the years I've learned to question my own preferences and opinions because who truly knows what the source is for those opinions, especially when it's something I haven't revisited in ages -- and I think it's important because of how much I feel that my taste and perspective has changed. More often than not, I find myself enjoying these older titles and being able to appreciate parts of them that I overlooked before. No work is perfect, but my god, do I feel like I'm truly seeing something for the first time.

Tim is always so hellbent on making us know what type of humor he likes lol. I get it now Tim you like more subtle humor.

i have to say Tim this is my favorite channel as of late, every video you do is a little treat, story snacks. thank you so much tim

So my Big brother brought back a Star Wars game for the OG Xbox and it was total sliced bread to me. He made his own Jedi, and was walking around this city with flying ships and aliens talking alien languages. "Hut ah pa ko - Bel ko - Gill Fah ". What is this fish man saying to me?? Anyway, Big bro didn't like the pacing or the turn based combat and it was really dialogue heavy, so he ended up throwing it away. I didn't get to try it, but that sort of became my opinion too. I played the sequel to that game many many years later, next gen consoles were out at this point. Easily became one of my top 5 of all time. Try new things and don't let someone else convince you not to. No matter who they are, You're not going to know it's the perfect turd until you dump that thing out.

I live in a semi-northern town in Canada and my 5 year old saw a snake for the first time just a few weeks ago. He was scared of it even if we assured him it was not gonna hurt him and it was just a baby garter snake. The funny thing is he likes watching "funny snake videos" on RU-vid but to see one in real life that natural fear/instinct kicks in. Wild stuff.

I don't think of it as "deep learning," but conditioning, which the wise say we must become consciously aware of in our lifetime. After all, "Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven," to quote one of the more famous exhortations on the subject. On the subject of children being afraid of snakes and spiders, etc., I distinctly recall playing outside as a child, blissfully getting along with bees and spiders and snakes; laying out under a weeping willow in my maternal grandmother's back yard and an old oak above my paternal grandmother's home with no thought whatsoever of creepy-crawlies on the ground or in the tree possibly wandering into my lap; etc. (Naturally, we were checked for ticks after every excursion, but that's about it.) I was perfectly fine and in total harmony with Mother Nature. It wasn't until my sister and cousin trapped me under an overturned wading pool with an equally distressed bumblebee and I was stung that I became a little leery of and respectful of the boundaries of bees. :) My grandmothers were especially helpful in this regard, they being accustomed to doing things like stripping green beans while sitting on a porch in the Appalachian mountains in summer, remaining still and allowing bees to crawl on their hands to their heart's content at times until they flew away and the like. Nature is unfortunately depicted as something dangerous to be conquered in our society whereas we instinctively know we're part and parcel of Nature, intextricably interconnected and mutually dependent with her and her destiny being ours as well. Fortunately, conditioning is just that. Children are largely thought of as tabula rasa upon whom must be impressed and imprinted conventional thought and feeling about everything. Very few thoughts and feelings are truly our own until and unless we become aware of and throw off such conditioning.

Funny thing about using color for gender and how arbitrary they are: Originally it was Red for boys and Blue for girls, but then around the '30s or '40s the colors were flipped in a catalog for baby clothing. Red/pink is actually for boys, not blue. But it doesn't matter because it's all arbitrary. Going further back people weren't so obsessed over a baby's gender. They referred to them as "children" and often dressed them in the same white outfit. It's only with the rise of being able to learn a baby's gender during pregnancy that it has become so gendered. People didn't do gender reveal party's back in the day. It's weird and frankly toxic to focus on gender as a baby's sole identity at such an early age.

What's funny about pink for girls, blue for boys, is it used to be the other way around.

"🤷🙅💁You hear me Girlfriend?!" 😂❤

That joke made me feel like i'm in a sandstorm

Love the videos Tim your cool and relaxed demeanor gives an ASMR vibe to all your content

An experience I always adore is when I try a game in a genre I don't like but the quality is so high that it makes me want to try more of the genre. This happened to me recently with Citizen Sleeper and those narrative adventure style games with no combat and mostly text based.

I do love my Tim Talks, I always walk away learning something new! Big love to you Tim

Wonderful video, thanks. One other theory about the uncanny valley is that it inclines us to steer away from the sick and deformed. At a time when diseases and "bad genes" could cripple an entire community, that sort of thing was important for our continued survival.

love learning deep about deep learning with you Tim.

I’ve watched a lot of your videos, this is my favorite so far…so interesting.

Thank you Tim! You always give a lot of food for thought!

Love the video as always, BUT the part about babies being innately afraid of spiders and snakes is a misconception and based in a misunderstanding about evolutionary psychology. It's not that babies are innately able to recognise snakes and spiders as dangerous (saying 'the babies that recognise the threat of a venomous snake would live longer' ignores that 'babies' are just the first stage of the human lifecycle - the 'successful' babies, which avoid spiders and snakes, don't breed to make more babies. Thank god). What babies *are* innately good at doing is reading facial and body cues from adults and inferring from that what's dangerous. Two examples of this. First, you see it in babies just learning to walk. When they first fall over (provided they haven't hurt themselves, which they usually don't, because they don't weigh much or have far to fall) you'll see them look not upset, but confused - they don't know what just happened or why, only that it wasn't what they expected. So they're surprised and confused, but they aren't hurt and they have no idea they have bones and brains inside them that they might have hurt. Their great journey across the floor had been interrupted, but that isn't painful or scary, so they (probably) won't cry. BUT if they see their parent jump up, shout something ("My baby!") and RUN to snatch them up off the floor, the baby now understands, "Oh my god, clearly I'm dying," and will quite burst into tears. But the baby WILL check with you: if it falls over, it will look to see from your reaction what it should feel about the situation. Which is why if you make an effort to smile, clap, laugh and act like it's not a big deal, the baby will copy you. 'I fell over! Ha! Being a baby is funny!' But an even better example is that there are children's entertainers who do birthday parties where they bring snakes and spiders (and other creepy crawlies that won't, you know, eat the children). And kids *below* a certain age love them: they've never seen a snake or a spider the size of their head before, so for them, it's fascinating. The *one thing* that the entertainer/handler has to do before/during the party is keep the *parents* calm or - if one kid's parent is, say, arachnophobic - keep them out of the room. Because again, these animals are a new experience for the toddlers - so they will constantly be looking up to check their parents' faces for fear, or disgust, or their body language to see if they're tense or being aversive. If the kids see the parents recoil from a spider or shriek when a snake comes out of the box, the kids will *absolutely* understand the message that this animal is a threat, and they'll start screaming/crying, too. But if the parents can keep their s--- together, the kids have a great time. You can google these kinds of entertainers and I'm sure there will be videos on RU-vid of kids watching spiders walk down their arms or having snakes hung off them. The sad thing is these parties only work for very young kids, because once they're old enough to understand language, books and TV, they learn that snakes and spiders are scary from cartoons and stories. This is even true in places like the UK, where our spiders and all but one of our species of snake are (almost) completely harmless. But still: kids learn to scream and run away if they see a snake in the woods or run through a cobweb. Which is a shame. But that's almost a third proof that this reaction is learned, not innate: a child in the UK is far more likely to be hurt by a dog than a spider, but above a certain age, they uniformly love puppies and fear spiders. Love the videos, Tim! I'm not a games designer, but I've worked my way through almost all of them, now! Keep it up :) EDIT: I shouldn't have said these parties "only work for young kids" - of course older kids can have these kinds of parties, too. What I meant was: only the very young kids won't have the preconceptions about snakes and spiders being 'scary' or 'icky' or dangerous. That was the point I was making. EDITED EDIT, WITH A COOL SOURCE PAPER: I wanted to be sure I wasn't misremembering the bit about the innate spider/snake fear as a popular misconception. Here's are two relevant quotes from the (freely accessible) paper, "Fear in Infancy: Lessons From Snakes, Spiders, Heights, and Strangers" by Vanessa LoBue and Karen E. Adolph: "...young children display evidence that they like snakes and spiders. During free play, 18- to 36-month-olds spent more time with live animals than with novel toys, and they spent as much time peering into the tanks of a snake and a tarantula-often with nose pressed against the glass-as they did for a hamster and a fish (LoBue, Bloom Pickard, Sherman, Axford, & DeLoache, 2013). Children showed no evidence of avoiding the live snake and spider. They demonstrated an avid interest in all of the live animals, including the snake and the spider, interacting with them longer than they did with a set of highly attractive toys." It's quite a long paper and deals with other things kids are often thought to have innate fears of (heights and strangers), but here is the supporting section for learning from parents: "Another [pathway to fear] is by the transmission of social information, such as by witnessing a caregiver’s fearful responses (i.e., vicarious learning). In preverbal infants who cannot process negative verbal information, social information might be particularly important for early fear learning. Whether infants can develop a long-lasting fear of snakes, spiders, heights, and strangers via social learning is still unknown, *but infants’ ability to acquire short-term avoidance responses to heights, snakes, and spiders has already been established using social referencing paradigms.* In fact, some of the earliest research on social referencing came from Sorce et al.’s (1985) demonstration that 12-month-olds avoid crossing an ambiguously high 12-in. visual cliff when mothers pose a fearful face, but cross when mothers pose a happy face. Similarly, two studies demonstrated that 15- to 20-month-olds show more fearful facial expressions and avoidance behaviors in response to toy snakes, spiders, flowers, and mushrooms after observing mothers’ negative facial expressions (Dubi, Rapee, Emerton, & Schniering, 2008; Gerull & Rapee, 2002), suggesting that fear-like behaviors can be elicited via social learning." Right! Back to what I was meant to be studying this afternoon...

Big grin at the end with the wise words was too wholesome Tim. Gonna need to do a more negative vid to balance it out or it might rip a hole in the spacetime continuum. Love your vids!

This is one of your best videos yet

Man, we don't even go into the eldritch horror part of the argument. What if sometime in the past we were preyed upon by some soulless human lookalikes that we had to identify - like changelings, skinchangers etc. Now that's something to keep us up at night and maybe spawn some nice horror writing :)

hi tim :) its us, everyone :)

So a quick bit of pushback - the idea of babies having an innate fear of spiders and snakes isn't established fact. There have been studies that say that this behavior has been observed, but there are also studies showing no significant difference in how babies react to snakes compared to something like rabbits. It may actually be more of a learned behavior based on the culture. It's good to be careful of claims like this because they tend to assume we biologically and psychologically reached some type of evolutionary apex in the early Holocene and haven't deviated from that at all. Sorry for the nitpick, but it was causing me some deep hurting.

The you hear me gf bit cracked me up :D

I take the joke to be an allusion to "deep hurting", a run-on gag in an old MST3k with a Hercules movie with too much sand.

Old nintendo games I very much remember showing you something happen right before you do it or unlock it just to hint to you or nudge you in the right direction of using it that way.

This was a fun video, i always love thinking about learned traits & instinctual traits & everything in between!

I was thinking about something similar to this; some people never played video games, because they think only kids play games, it's childish, but by doing so they are missing on so many great stories, and they don't even realize it. I hope that maybe by watching some of the good adaptations they will relize that video games are not just games for kids, they have great stories as well, so they give video games a try.

I already knew Tim was color blind, but never actually tough of sombody seen the sky as mostly gray... that's quite a depressing image

The pink being feminine thing is relatively new. It used to be the other way around. It's not even that long ago, roughly 100 years back, pink ed would've been the masculine colour.

Man, the idea that we have evolved to recognize - and be afraid of - things that are _almost_ us is horrifying. That would be a good sci-fi prompt.

Wow I’m early. Hi Tim! Thanks so much for your videos. They’re super informative and me and my game dev partner find them extremely valuable.

Thank you Tim, this is amazing

Tim oh my god this is literally an intersection with my own project! IM going to leave a million time stamped comments probably.

Men being adverse to "little" is part of "toxic masculinity", it goes along with men being seen as "tough protectors who hunt and kill and cannot show any emotion ever" and it's absolutely taught by culture (much like how lines equate to letters and then words)

I played Brain-Age back then and it ended up being the only time in my life I ended up unofficially 'testing' myself for colour-blindness, despite being able to see every colour properly I still got a horrendous overall score lol This video touches upon a very good point about ingrained habits and inclinations that can stop us seeking out games we'd otherwise enjoy with an open mind; some of the most fun I've had with games is when I try something totally different and it ends up captivating me in a way I could never have expected.

Good point, and I completely agree that is important to not limit yourself because of preconceived notions. I originally didn't give League a chance until a couple of years back because it was a MOBA. I was also planning on skipping Baldur's Gate 3 because it's turn based. I played both and they're probably two of my favorite games and I would've really missed out.

It’s still not entirely known why the uncanny valley phenomenon exists, but the leading understanding currently is that it doesn’t really exist in the way it’s generally understood. It’s not a single effect, but rather two: First, things which attempt to mimic the human form will logically be more appealing as they get more accurate- this is where we see the sharp incline after the valley. Second, there’s little to no correlation between accuracy and appeal when something isn’t attempting to mimic the human form. A cutesy smiley face and a ghostly marking on a rock are about as accurate to the human form as one another, but one is a lot more uncanny than the other. When we graph these two phenomena together on a single graph, we first see a random smattering, then a sudden drop when the things which poorly emulate the human form appear, and then an incline as those things get more accurate. And as someone majoring in anthropology, it’s worth noting that other hominids were shockingly humanlike, at least according to current understandings of them :)

"Deeep Learning..." , the way you said it, I got Homer Simpson vibes! I'm I off with that reference? 🤣

Coffee, everything bagel with cream cheese, new Tim Cain video. Recipe for a great start to the day

Beautifully said, I always try to come out of my comfort zone as much as possible, even though I don't like turn based games I still tried persona, bg3 and the new yakuza games. I ended up really enjoying persona's combat in the end

I hope everyone laughed like Beavis and Butthead when Tim said one word in particular. 😂

It's interesting about the humans being uncomfortable around things that are not-quite human because there are a lot of examples of creatures that try and look similar to a successful species for one reason or another, sometimes to share in benefits (like viceroy butterflies being non-toxic but looking like the toxic monarch butterflies). There are others that use it as a method to lure similar creatures in for predation known as aggressive mimicry. It seems like a useful thing to be afraid of as basically any species.

The Polar Express movie is the quintessential example of the "uncanny valley." 😅

This was a great little lecture about Homo Species. Youre great dude!

I’ve heard that the uncanny valley is more rooted to the sight of corpses than other human species

The uncanny valley is interesting when it comes to games in general. Especially as thing like voice acting, graphics, and other parts of game presentation evolve, I've always wondered if the standard for a game's "uncanny valley" shift over time. Personally, I find a lot of current AAA games to hit an uncanny valley for me, probably because I'm more used to the realism from 1-2 generations ago. But for plenty of people, that's clearly not the case, and a lot of the games I think still look good are considered "uncanny" by people older than me. I think something like Spec Ops: The Line looks very nice and fairly realistic, but others may see it in the same level of uncanny as some shitty movie they're being forced to watch. When it comes to mechanical preferences, I think you're right that our tastes are heavily shaped by what we happen to experience first. I'm one of the rare people who seems to genuinely prefer Dark Souls II to any other Dark Souls game. Usually, when I talk to people who aren't outright hostile about it, the conclusion we come to is that Dark Souls II is just "different" compared to the other games in the series. But since that's what I played first, those mechanics are how I see a "proper" Dark Souls game. So when I play any of the other games in the series, they end up feeling "uncanny" to me, because they're just similar enough that they feel like they should be the same thing, but the differences that exist make it feel wrong.

I'm not the only child who found it funny when Tim talked about the human genus, right? That was intentional? Love you Tim!

Love this!

My partner can never remember the words “uncanny valley” and calls it reality chasm. The other Hominids we lived with were: Neanderthal, Denisovans, maybe some Homo Erectus and possibly one other.

That thumbnail is a work of art.

Totally agree, and this is something I observed on myself. I always thought I enjoy FPS games (before I knew Steam existed), but now I find myself leaning more and more toward simulation/management/strategy. Yet, I cant find the motivation to try out these games because seeing the mostly (graphically) peaceful gameplay turns me off... despite the fact I have nearly 2k hours in Rimworld and most of the times I'm only watching my pawns on automation and I really enjoy seeing my plans executed perfectly a totally peaceful environment (because violence will disrupt my plans). ...yeah I hate violence, yet I cant find interest if there isn't violence. Maybe its learned, or maybe it's me.

We owe it to ourselves to try or learn about new things in many aspects of life, not just trying different game genres

The brain age game you describe with the colored words plays on something known in psychology as the Stroop effect. Congruent and incongruent stimuli massively impact reaction time (i think the original study found it was roughly doubled), so the game is taking advantage of that.

Evolutionary features usually don't get cut off, they just remain and whatever comes next is build upon what was there before. Evolution seems to work only in one direction, at least most of the time.

Evolutionary psychology it's a problematic field, sometimes used to justify sexist and/or homophobic stereotypes. Very interesting topic anyway.

Cologne is meant to mix with your natural body scent. It's a compliment to the way you smell, not a tool to completely mask it (or as in the industry we say "doing it wrong").

I've come to realize the people back then developing and researching new technologies had years of work where if you would look at some of their mathematical and algorithmic spreadsheet, you'd be flabbergasted how they could write those in a minute. When in reality, that's what they had to work with throughout their life so it becomes natural to them like muscle memory. Just how when we first got computers and learn how to type on a keyboard "professors" in my uni expects us to be well versed in C++, Java and HTML while learning fundamental graphic and computer theory in short 4 years. Then chastise on us couldn't write coding on the fly

Have I reached Gamer enlightenment? I’ve never been turned off from a game for any surface level reason, I find reasons to like any game in any genre and always push through to the end to give it a fair chance. XD there’s only one game in the entire history my gaming experience that I had to stop playing because it pissed me off and I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I definitely Think I’m in the super minority of being able to enjoy every or any type of game though. Love you and your videos, Tim ! :D*

Love the commentary on cologne. As someone obsessed with cologne I identify with the fact that musky scents aren't my thing. Somewhat related, the deoderant I use is Ban Roll-On, which is usually sold in the women's section for some reason. Or at least strategically placed right on the dividing line between men's and women's deoderants.

The idea that the uncanny valley feeling could come from our competitors in the homo-sphere is really really interesting My mum still thinks we bred with each other and they all gradually disappeared, but the carbon dating for all their bones goes up to the same rough time which implies they all died at roughly the same time We homo-sapiens are really good at making entire things die all at once, it's in our genes

What timing on this video! I am just giving Ocarina of Time another chance. When I was younger, I was super butt hurt when Zelda transitioned from 2D to 3D. I felt a certain way about the janky 3D on N64 games.compared to the 3D games I had been playing on PC like Quake and the like. I felt the graphics had taken a step backwards. Anyhoo, 25+ years later,. I'm finally giving Ocarina another chance. We'll see how much I dig it this time around!

I had to unlearn my love for a lot of what folks call AAA games and come to terms with the fact that I like base builders and survival-craft. I've been engrossed with this free-to-play offering called Palia. They let me build on a grid! I wish Fallout 4 let me build on a grid!

teachers and such would refer to engaging with something you may not want to "do" as "going outside your comfort zone". i found some of my favourite games by picking a box of the shelf and just playing it, like nier: automata. i dont have much interest in japanese games from not liking a lot of earlier ones but turns out nier was right up my alley. if i just saw it was a japanese "anime" game i could have just walked past and not thought about it, but you never really know whats in there, or even if youre going to like it or not. give stuff a go.

2:34 HA, add on you have 2,500 years of crack pot theories and literally everyone has a take

Also, check out Salt Raiders. Just recently in a WoW video, they found out one of their members play PC games with their thumbs on the keyboard. He grips the sides like a controller. It's how he had wired himself to play

When it comes to games, I often have trouble with games that I want to enjoy and am told are good because when I play them I encounter mechanics or story elements that simply aren't fun for me, either because they don't really make sense (to a player, I know some of them make perfect sense when you don't have an infinite development budget) or because I can't grasp them. Some story focused games might have a plot point or two that is meant to be highly emotional and it bounces right off my caveman brain and I sit there saying "I don't even know this character. How am I supposed to care about them?" and other more action and strategy focused games have a lot of fast-paced gameplay requiring skilled use of different commands and abilities that I can't quite grasp fast enough to enjoy the later levels or online play. I think it's because these games look like ones that my deep learning tells me I enjoy, but there are some key differences that cause me to bounce off.

Hi Tim, One thing I havent heard you mention in any of your videos is super mutant invasions of every town in Fallout. From the fact that you didnt mention it in your video on cut content, I assume it was something cut earlier on. I'm really curious on the story behind this and why it was cut, as personally (when restored through mods of course) its one of my favorite aspects of the game. Furthermore, I'd love to hear your perspective as a designer on cut content mods and how they become viewed as the "true" way to play a game, especially given their tendency to restore content that was intentionally nixed, rather than cut due to time constraints (as seems to be the case here).

I have the opposite problem, I give many things (including certain gaming genres) too many chances, wasting time I could have spent on things I know I love. Because I keep thinking things like ”maybe I was just in a bad mood” or whatever, and I try again. Maybe it's a FOMO of sorts. For example, I should have decided earlier to never try another ”hidden object” game, and probably not another ”point and click” game either, though some have interesting elements. I find I often have the exact opposite problem to the one people warn against, and if I don't realize that and follow the advice, I make things worse by doubling down on my particular failure mode.

I know I decided to like RPGs like Final Fantasy, because as a kid I didn't like the complicated aspect of strategy, I was cheating an emulation with 9999 lives, almost immortal characters and loved playing that way. It was later after years when I decided to play the games normally and learn to do it the hard way. Not because I liked it but because I felt like I need to stop cheating in games. Now I love them all as they are but I know at one point I loved making myself immortal and godly in all the games possible as a kid.

The thing about the color pink is prior to WW2 it was actually considered a masculine color and was worn by boys. At this same time, blue was seen as a feminine color and was worn by girls. The switch happened specifically because retailers in the 40s decided to push pink for little girls and blue for little boys, though aside from the obvious monetary root motive, I couldn't find why they did that in my few minutes of googling.

Brit here. You guys don't wear pink? Been wearing pink for 30 years.