Secretly an opossum.
Weighted Wildlife. They specify how much each one weighs on their site. I have an opossum from them and I love her. She’s one of my favorite plushies (don’t tell the others I said that though). They’ve also got some 5lbs dragons in the works.
Creep Cat Toy Company also makes some weighted plushies like the raccoon and opossum, and the weighted ones come with a zipper in the belly so you can, remove, or move the weighted bean bags around.
The ones I had were pretty shitty, lol. Like, I had some good ones like Zoombinis or Freddi Fish, but most of them were stuff like “Milly’s Math House”.
Windows 98
Windows XP
Dialup
The Old Internet aka when 90% of it was html and shockwave flash
Weird childhood obsessions; some were good, some were bad, some became things that defined me as an adult.
A lot of the edutainment games I played as a child. I actually went back and installed them to see what they were like through the eyes of an adult. There were a few that were still fun, but as you might be able to guess, most were pretty shitty.
That said, there have been a few things that ended up being 100% worth revisiting. CRT monitors, for an example, are unironically still kinda awesome. I just wouldn’t replace my main monitors with one.
Community is absolutely still a real thing. In my experience, however, you have to be willing to step outside of the mainstream and you have to be willing to touch grass every now and then. Socializing IRL is completely different than socializing online, which is different than socializing in VR, or in voice chat, or so on.
That said, there absolutely is a case to be made for idea that “community” being slowly ground into dust, possibly intentionally so. The death of open gathering places, the rise of online-only interaction and so forth, erodes at the kind of socialization you need in order to build a community. My tinfoil hat theory is that it’s easier to sow division in the unruly masses and keep them at each other’s throats when everyone is alone, so the rich and powerful have an incentive to kill the concept of community so that it’s harder to rise up against them.
At this point, I believe the places where you’re most likely to find a strong sense of community will be within marginalized groups; people who’ve traditionally been downtrodden tend to band together for protection, relationships and support.
This is my experience as well. Anecdotally, at least. Lately I’ve been slowly putting together a community of friends, and my anxiety and depression have been dropping like crazy. Between that and the self-esteem boost I’ve been getting from finally starting hrt, I’m actually starting to feel competent enough to tackle things like getting a job, moving out (I’m gonna go looking at rental properties with a friend tomorrow), going grocery shopping, things like that.
God, I’ve always wanted to be able to just do something so plain as going grocery shopping for myself.
I can also tell that the anxiety causes a lot of issues with my motivation from the fact that my wonderful mom always throws worst-case scenarios at me whenever I try to become more independent. She’s been throwing the entire warehouse at me lately because I’ve been talking about how I’m moving out with a friend. My excitement has been turning to dread despite my friend’s reassurance that they’ll catch me if I fall; and as a result my motivation and ability to get out of bed has been plummeting.
But… Yeah. Anecdotally, it’s not laziness, it’s being anxious, overwhelmed, overstimmed, depressed, feeling lonely (I mean, what’s the point in doing anything if no one cares?) and so forth.
The world around them is collapsing. Tate promises to have the solution. For whatever reason, his solution makes sense to them. So they follow him.
Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Oh my god yes. One of my favorite movies to torture people with.
Do it on the clock, during a work day. Make sure you plan for nothing to get done that day. Make it optional: go to the field trip (expenses paid), or take a free day of PTO. Either way they get paid and, because you planned for it in the development schedule, don’t have to worry about potentially having to play catch up because of the day off later. That way it gives them the choice to go do something fun on the company’s dime or stay at home and recharge. Another thing to note: don’t limit yourself to game-related stuff like video game museums.
Go to an aquarium.
Go to a zoo.
Go to a national park if there’s one nearby.
Go to a natural science museum.
The artistic side of game dev takes inspiration from a wide variety of sources, not just other forms of media. Tbh, the most boring field trip I can think of would be to go to a movie theater or video game museum. I want to see something new and take inspiration from that.