StaceyPowers

If you could go back in time and give your child self one video game available today, what would it be and why?
I would gift my childhood self BioShock Infinite, because I think it would have done the most to help expand my mind. My second choice would be Skyrim, because all child me wanted to do in games was explore.

I pick languages. That way the kid can get different life perspectives and form their own ethical values based on inputs from diverse individuals and cultures.

I just found out that Netflix will be doing a live-action BioShock movie, though I don't think there are any details made public yet. Thoughts?

You can't name a list on this without having Zelda Medley by Lindsay Stirling. 
 

I personally can't see Abby and Ellie uniting for a common goal, at least no right away, there's too much anger and bitterness between . Something major would have to happen in the game to bring those two together. I can sort of of picture a scenario similar to what @m76 has described, but honestly I'm reluctant to even speculate because the franchise is not built of what people want, it's meant to have an impact, be unforgiving and harsh, much like the games setting. If the horrid behaviour of people with regard to The last of Us Part II proved anything, it's that fans are not ones to listen too.

I don't think voluntarily joining forces would  be realistic given their history.
The way it could work is if someone does come up with a cure that could be created without killing Ellie, but a rival faction kidnaps her and wants to keep the cure. And through circumstance Abby has to go to another continent to get her back. Most post apocalyptic games like Fallout are set in the US, so it would be nice if a post apocalyptic game was set in an entirely other location for once.
It would be a few years after the second, and Abby and Lev would be on separate paths, Abby after loosing everything would be working as a mercenary for hire, thus she'd get the assignment to get Ellie back. Only finding out that it is actually her after accepting the contract. But when she gets to the enemy compound it turns out Ellie already escaped, so Abby has to track her, but Ellie thinks they are tracking her to re-capture her, not to bring her home. Of course the player would again alternate between both characters.
At least that's my fan fiction. 

I got lucky and found mine on Craigslist. The price was great considering that it came with 3 games as well. There's a lot of them being sold on CL, but you're going to have to weed through a lot of bullshit posts to find the one legit one. I contacted someone about a PS5 before I got the one that I have now, and they straight up told me that they were a scalper. I told them to piss off and blocked them. I'll do without before I buy ANYTHING from a damn scalper.

What is the most dramatic thing you have done to protect your console? This question applies mostly to people with kids and pets. I dove between my cat and my PS5 and let her vomit on me to spare my console.
 
 

That's a tough question. On the one hand I like the Animal Crossing route of choosing every single little thing to line my house with, and on the other hand I like the preset installments of The Elder Scrolls V: Hearthfire, or any of the house additions that you get in Fallout. Sometimes it's not worth the hassle to do it all yourself, and sometimes it's a nice downtime activity to put your materials to use.

What items do you bother picking up in the games you play?
I always pick up ammo of any type along with money. I generally pick up health-related consumables. Aside from that, I only pick up things I plan to use myself and/or items I feel sort of sorry for—i.e. the teddy bears in Fallout. But I don’t collect much else. It rarely seems necessary to pick up other items to sell after one is done being a newbie.

I like decorating my houses in video games. I was surprised to find that in some ways though, I’ve had even more fun watching The Outer Worlds decorate my ship for me. There’s no creativity involved on my end obviously, but I am often delighted by the unexpected details and surprises. I always look forward to coming back to the ship to see what has been added or changed.
Which do you think is more fun—decorating your in-game home or the game doing it for you?
 

Nothing. Having access to a modern game would spoil me and I couldn't enjoy anything else until technology catches up.

I think @Darth and @Crazycrab have more or less covered it. There's larger environments to render and more processes happening in the background such as NPC and enemy activity and more objects to interact with. These games also tend to use hardware differently and tend to be heavy on CPU dependant processes like AI, pathfinding, NPC activity and rendering objects off-screen. These are things one would usually associate more with open worlds and they will test hardware in ways liner games don't. Because of all these processes and the way they utilise hardware it makes them more complex to program, so inevitably they get more bugs and glitches. Bugs are also harder to find with larger area's and more objects to interact with. It's unfortunate, but inevitable that game developers can't spend the time and money to find every bug, especially with how big these games get these days.

I'd say it's because they are have much bigger areas to load and tend to have a lot more systems running in the background.

Is gaming the best part of your day? It is for me. It is the time of day that I get all to myself with no distractions or issues, and I finally get to decompress and relax.

Is gaming the best part of your day? It is for me. It is the time of day that I get all to myself with no distractions or issues, and I finally get to decompress and relax.

I've read there has been a kind of mass crisis regarding psych studies not being replicable: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248
My guess is that the reason for this is that there are likely so many individual factors that vary that it is simply hard to conduct psych studies. What works for one person with OCD with neurotype X and cultural belief Y may not fit another person with OCD and neurotype Z and belief Q.
I don't think that necessarily means the study data isn't sometimes potentially valid and useful--just that it may apply to a narrower slice of the population than assumed in some cases.

If there were going to be a The Last of Us 3 game, what would you want from it? 
I would want it to be about Ellie, Abby and Lev joining forces to find or create a cure.

I think their kinda sexy.

Did you play The Forsworn Conspiracy quest yet? That convinced me to take their side, which was reinforced when I read The Bear of Markarth (which also shed a lot of light on Ulfric). Plus, there is the fact that the spriggans are hostile to all but them. Seems to me that nature’s vote is cast for them as well.
Their permanent aggro thing drives me nuts. I see it as an artifact of the fact that the devs must’ve thought, “Let’s put something other than regular bandits here. We’ll just have angry natives instead!”
Total agreement on their fashion sense. I’ve read that technically, it is (or was, in some era) usually accepted military custom that if you wear the uniform of a particular army and act in its name, you are considered a member by foreign powers. So I dress like a Forsworn and do all in their name =D  @LadyDay

Did you play The Forsworn Conspiracy quest yet? That convinced me to take their side, which was reinforced when I read The Bear of Markarth (which also shed a lot of light on Ulfric). Plus, there is the fact that the spriggans are hostile to all but them. Seems to me that nature’s vote is cast for them as well.
Their permanent aggro thing drives me nuts. I see it as an artifact of the fact that the devs must’ve thought, “Let’s put something other than regular bandits here. We’ll just have angry natives instead!”
Total agreement on their fashion sense. I’ve read that technically, it is (or was, in some era) usually accepted military custom that if you wear the uniform of a particular army and act in its name, you are considered a member by foreign powers. So I dress like a Forsworn and do all in their name =D  @LadyDay

What are some games that seem to have a light tone on the surface, but underneath are quite dark? The Outer Worlds, for instance, is humorous and fun, but it is also incredibly bleak. And the longer you explore the world, the more horrifying you realize the situation is. 

What characters in video games did you want to learn more about? Not necessarily having them more involved in the game they appeared in—but wanting access to more backstory on them, or even seeing them featured in a spin-off.

One of my friends the other day mentioned taking a break from ESO subscription and thus not playing at all for now. I asked her about this, as I thought ESO is free after the initial payment. She explained that it is, but due to paid crafting (I think?) features, so many things break without the optional sub she’s paid for that her existing character would be borderline unplayable.
I wondered how common situations like these are with freemium games. Have you ever ended up relying so much on optional paid features in a game that you didn’t feel you could play without them?