Welcome to the first October edition of Mayday, Miss Marcy! This week, we’ve got a collection of three questions to answer, but before we get to those, we have a few other things to take care of.
I’m a big fan of October and “Spooky Season”, so I am putting out a call to action to all of you readers and questioners: I want your Spooky Questions! That’s right, I’d love to feature a question at least once every week during October dealing with horror, spookiness, scary stories, and more!
So, if you want to submit your questions to the column, please follow the instructions below:
Are you interested in having your questions answered in this column? Well, have I got news for you: You can indeed do that, by following the directions below:
Marcy@goonhammer.com
With the subject “Miss Marcy: ”
You are also able to leave comments on the article, as well as use the Discord bot command if you happen to be a member, meaning you now have THREE ways to give me your questions to answer!
Last week, we tackled when it is time to say goodbye to things, and this week, we have a grab bag of questions dealing with everything from AI to money to those darned horse girls!
Artificial Intelligence Is Dogwater
Miss Marcy,
I’ve been gooning and hammering about in my local tabletop wargame community for some time now and having a blast. We have regular nights and everyone enjoys themselves. However, the stores and clubs we have been playing at are recently ramping up their use of generative AI. Events are advertised with generated pictures. The webstore item descriptions and articles are clearly written with AI. They sell their own Magic: the Gathering tokens with AI art. And I’m pretty sure they’re also selling store merch with AI generated pictures. Personally, I am against the use of this, particularly when our hobby is a creative endeavour. Although I’m not sure if the other players are likeminded, and the store administration is clearly for it. How should I bring this up? Our group has a good relationship with the stores we game at and I don’t want to come off as a negative Luddite.
Thanks,
Anxious About AI
Dear Anxious,
Ugh, AI. I don’t have any polite way to talk about it, so quite frankly, AI is garbage and used by lazy people. There are certainly ways you could argue that many people are ignorant or unaware of the issues of AI, but that doesn’t make the previous statement incorrect. People who use AI to generate anything creative are depriving themselves of the ability to challenge themselves or find someone who would happily be willing to do it. It is lazy, wasteful stealing that generates absolute garbage, which is probably the worst part!
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about your issue, which is that you are pretty sure your LGS is using AI but you aren’t sure how, or if, you should confront them about it. I suppose it depends on what your relationship is with this particular LGS. Are you a longtime customer, are you personal friends with the people running and making decisions about the store, or are you someone who shows up fairly regularly, pays your entry fee (if there is one) and then you play your games and leave? I think that your connection to the store is going to really determine if there’s any actual point of contention to raise here that doesn’t get you on the bad side of whoever is running the place. While it would be great if the question “Do you realize that using AI is wasteful and comes across as lazy” didn’t likely generate a harsh response, but we have to realize that this person will probably interpret it as an attack on their business, or a personal insult.
You don’t need to be a luddite to hate AI, and frankly I think the way to approach it is to maybe see if other people in your group have similar feelings to you about it, and perhaps consider raising it as a group. You could try and phrase it in a way that you make it seem less accusatory or insulting, perhaps “hey, these AI ads make the place seem a little tacky and untrustworthy,” or “Hey, we notice you seem to be using AI for things, but have you considered X”. The issue for me is that you are saying this store is selling AI generated things such as tokens, so this goes beyond ‘I needed a flyer and Adobe used AI to make one for me’, this is “I am using AI to sell things instead of paying someone for quality”. At that point, you may need to consider if this LGS is a “friendly” local shop you want to associate with (or your group wants to associate with), or if you perhaps are there because of convenience.
Something I’ve noticed about the use of AI by businesses (in many stripes) is that when they start using it, it sometimes makes me more aware of other things they are doing that I had either overlooked or hadn’t noticed. Perhaps AI breaks the “Bubble” that lets you excuse certain aspects you may normally tolerate, like myself, and that may be time to ask your group the question of whether or not you want to associate with this LGS any longer. At the very least, you all should avoid spending money on anything AI they make, and perhaps they will get the hint that this is a waste of everyone’s time, or at least, you can rest more calmly knowing that you are putting less money into their pocket than you have to in order to avoid supporting the use of AI.
Making Due is All You Can Do
Dear Miss Marcy:
As much as I love my hobbies and friends, it always comes up in the background of my mind that I’m usually the poorest person in the room. I don’t want to seem ungrateful to others for helping me when they can but I just wish the feelings of inequality would not be a worry anymore. How does one get through these feelings?
Sincerely,
Someone making due with barely anything
Dear Making Due,
Simply, by giving yourself the grace to realize that it is okay to receive help or ask for help, and that monetary barriers exist specifically to make those who have less feel inferior. Capitalism sucks.
There are times in this column where getting too personal or parasocial feels like a thin line, so let me just say that I’ve had numerous instances of being “the poorest person in the room”, and each of those various situations has always come with the weighing guilt that you are somehow a problem, an inconvenience, or worse, a leech, and that people are pitying you rather than helping or otherwise assisting you. There is, actually, a very easy answer to this: If people didn’t want to help you out, they wouldn’t, and it would be obvious. Instead, people are offering you support because they would like you to hang out and be around them. When the situations have reversed and I find myself the most “monied” person in a group, I always remember those situations and do my best to find ways to pay it forward; sometimes that can be buying someone a game so everyone can play a multiplayer game together, finding ways to spend time together that require a low bar, or simply picking up the check when possible.
Temporary (or even permanent) situations of having less will happen and it isn’t a mark against you if you have to make concessions or sacrifices in your hobbying, or if you have to just say “I can’t do that right now”. Something that many of the hobbies we cover here on Goonhammer take for granted is a steady stream of disposable income, which frankly not everyone is going to have at the same level or situation. Thankfully, your question is mostly about how you are feeling, rather than people treating you poorly due to your financial situation, so we don’t need to worry about telling those people what’s for.
You are around these people to spend time with them, they like having you around, and they’re willing to help you. Enjoy that and accept the community and closeness you have. If your financial situation changes and you find yourself able to lend a hand to those who helped you out, be sure to do so, or even try to repay that kindness in whatever ways you can. There’s no shame being the “poorest person” in the room, because you and your friends should be spending time together because you want to be together, not to measure how much disposable income you have to throw at your hobbies.
Toughing it On the Track
Dear Miss Marcy,
I’m one of the people that got sucked into Umamusume, thanks a lot to your articles and the game itself. however, lately I’ve been having a tough time keeping myself interested in the game and feeling like I’ve either wasted my time or i am wasting my time by playing it, and that by not playing i am missing out on things.
i realize this is likely just burnout, but as someone who doesn’t play a lot of gacha games, i am worried that i should just quit entirely.
thanks,
Harried Horse
Dear Harried,
You are indeed explaining and experiencing the period of “Gacha Burnout” that occurs after playing a game for quite a while and reaching the “end” of what is currently available in the game. Since the current cycle of Umamusume is preparing for one PVP after another, the weight of doing so correctly or incorrectly (or getting bad performances or bad runs over and over again) can make the game exceptionally not fun to play, quite frankly.
I will be very transparent: Even I feel this way, and I often feel this way in cycles about the gacha games that I play, putting some on ‘auto’ while I play the others more seriously, and keeping in mind that I play these games to have fun, not for work (UM maybe is a little different). The biggest “problem” is that right now, we are lacking a lot of the quality of life features that JPN UM has, which solve many of these problems, such as automated career runs that make it so that you can accomplish your dailies or participate in event grinding in ways that don’t require you to sit on the game for hours at a time. I will say that it will get better as the game “ages” for Global players, and the accelerated schedule will certainly help even if right now it feels a little bad.
My general suggestion is just try to do your dailies and call it at that; do your team trials, do some resources, check in on your circle, and then do a career. Or don’t! Yes, you miss out on a few carats by not doing a career, but you also don’t have to devote 30~50 minutes on a career. Once you feel better, you’ll enjoy it more. As for timed events that happen, don’t sweat that you are “missing” things you can’t ever get; most of the time the rewards are mostly cosmetic, and the events return and will be back. You will never truly miss something from an event in the game, and it is better to simply enjoy your time with it.
If you want an actionable plan, just play the horses you like the most. Set a score for yourself, or let your career ending rank be that score. Who do you like? Train the very best version of them you can. Play around with something goofy like doing an all Guts/Wit build and see if you can clear Career (you’d be surprised). Remember that you are playing the game for fun, not work, and no one can tell you that you are playing YOUR game incorrectly.
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