kosoy

The "overlooking" problem comes inherently with most heuristics. There should just be an option to forgo this system of measurement and use another one.

Artists pay for their supplies. And this seems to be a fair deal - if you're not paying them, you should at least give them some publicity.

it's not so much about Unity or other beginner-friendly engines, it's much more about Kickstarter, Greenlight and Early Access (and probably Patreon a bit later down the line, don't see devs using it right now, although some modders do). All of those delegate the task of sifting through piles of crap to end users, whereas before publishers used to take those risks. Yeah, publishers - they actually did serve a function.

hex wargames are: 1) not so small of a niche 2) a great marketing decision - just like space sim, this genre has amazing potential revenue per customer. That's proven empirically, as for a reason - I would hypothesize that main market for that sort of thing are nostalgic middle-aged tech specialists, which is a market with amazing "size * disposable_income" potential. That doesn't only make the whole pie larger, but also drives AAC (allowable acquisition cost) up, which makes marketing so much easier.

It's an issue of not being able to compete with Unity any other way too. Small developers that gain experience with your engine sometimes become big developers, who are going to be used to your engine. Makes sense.

Yeah, the sample was quite clearly handpicked for increased impact (and faster habituation, probably). But the argument is (I believe) about the fact that you can easily handpick such samples from perfectly normal spoken phrases.

Novelty effect is strong, but there might be a u-shape there. Have you ever tried to get past the valley?

It's very interesting how throughout the discussion the opposite behavior (smiling as neutral line) is becoming localized to US/UK. Plus, Dale Carnegie seems to have left a cultural mark on Americans comparable to that Confucius left on Chinese ))

The funny thing - it's in the same way English (and by extension American) people got rid of 2nd person singular pronoun ("thou"), and I find some of underlying debate pretty much the same. "It's more convenient and you run no risk of alienating someone with only the polite form left" on one side and "yes, but with potentially impolite form gone you have no means to actually express politeness" on the other.

The question is - does universality of polite behavior (smiling, using plural) actually devalue it over time?

The answer, at least for me, is something similar to dieting + cheat day dynamic - feel free to form a habit out of the healthier thing (method act yourself by smiling) but maintain your baseline by exploring the opposite (admit you're feeling bad today, look miserable when you feel miserable), if it's around 10-to-1 healthy-to-opposite ratio.

American way gets the first part down, and directionally I think we Russians should learn from that (in other words, we sure should smile for no reason MORE), but the other extreme has its dangers as well. Stoic philosophy of life, anyone?

Hmm, I think you mixed it up a bit. "American smile" is just a smile done primarily with lip muscles that shows teeth prominently.

Yeah, we hate them too (and I'm Russian). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When we go on vacation, we try to choose a hotel with less Russians (fluent English helps, since not a lot of my countrymen are comfortable with it yet). Still, somehow EVERY time there's this irritating-lady-with-unbelievably-loud-whiny-child or that always-drunk-and-very-loud-about-it middle-aged man, they always turn out to be our countrymen. That's not EVERY Russian tourist, mind you, not even a majority of us, but the reverse is, sadly, true - most of those unbearable people are Russian.

Those tourists are kind of like piracy (naval piracy, not digital): due to a very particular mix of historical coincidences, a group of incredibly pronounced jerks have gained considerable power and now they're everywhere. Thing is - those tourists you see everywhere are people of VERY PARTICULAR social and financial standing. In short - they are most likely new to that kind of money (vast majority of Russians don't have enough to go on vacation abroad), they are VERY insecure about it (as in - need to prove, mostly to themselves, that it's not temporary), they're under a lot of pressure (because they're not actually sure why it's THEM getting decent money and not everyone around and because there's a lot of competitors) and they don't know how to handle themselves (once again - they're pretty new to this).

Let's just hope that, like pirates, they will soon become extinct. And for now, on behalf of Russian people at large - we're sorry.

You have to dig deeper. In general, impact of soviet period is way overstated by foreigners (I'm Russian myself). The trend you're describing might be true, but some researchers draw its origins as far as Mongolian reign over Russia (roughly XIII-XV century).

If anything, Russian population always shows preference for a strong leadership (which is often appropriate to rephrase as "borderline or outright dictatorship"). Ivan the Terrible was saved from a coup by public support, several times. There's a much joked-about statement "Сталина на вас нет!" ("Shame there's no Stalin to set you straight!"), attributed to crazy old people.

In general, every time there was a violently harsh leader, some people will remember him (or her, in two cases) as incredibly effective. This goes at least a thousand years back, and probably as far as Rurik (legendary Scandinavian ruler INVITED by Russians of the time because "our land is big and rich, but there's no order in it").

We're also always scoring sky-high on "Uncertainty Avoidance" in Hofstede's cultural scale (google it, it's cool), and believe me, it shows in countless ways in day-to-day lives. So, to summarize: yes, you might very well be right, but you have to shoot MUCH farther then Gulags and Soviets.