Linus complaining about game skins is ironic considering he used to be a house painter

[LogicalDrm]

13 minutes ago, Bad5ector said:

If you have a wife living at home and she works and pays bills and is legit, but you are out selling drugs for a living and it comes back that you spent money on your house from those proceeds of crime... there is no "covering it"... you are out on your ass. Not a temp ban. Think Skylar in Breaking Bad.

Your arguments are to cover your poor joke are taking this thread to way off the course.

[Bad5ector]

But seriously, with all this talk of painting, who here is any good at it? Need an accent wall done... I'll pay in NFT's  

[Vishera]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Drywall is basically two sheets of cardboard with plaster inside sandwich. The cardboard easily molds when wet.

I know that,we don't have those in Europe.

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

You wouldn't paint brick or concrete

We cover the bricks and concrete with Plaster,then we paint over it.

 

A man plastering a brick wall:

 

[Blademaster91]

30 minutes ago, poochyena said:

What I mean is its a wealth sink. Spend $20 on paint for a wall to simply paint the wall a different color, well, your wall is worth the same, you have no useable paint anymore, and no longer have $20. Its only a positive wealth increase if the wall was damaged and needed paint, in which it can increase your net wealth overall.

I spent $20 on paint that improved the look of the wall, and can potentially improve the home value. Spending $20 on an in game item is a wealth sink and is only worth what you value spending on it, $20 might be worth it to you, but a waste of money to someone else that just wants to buy a game and not have to spend any more on it.

[tikker]

32 minutes ago, poochyena said:

What I mean is its a wealth sink. Spend $20 on paint for a wall to simply paint the wall a different color, well, your wall is worth the same, you have no useable paint anymore, and no longer have $20. Its only a positive wealth increase if the wall was damaged and needed paint, in which it can increase your net wealth overall.

You could do an awful paint job and devaluate it. Generally I'd agree there may not be a substantial wealth increase of your house if both blue and green yield a nice looking paint job, but that does not mean the blue or green paint is worth nothing and if done specifically for a sale, then you do paint it so you can sell it (well offer it) for more, whether to cover up belmishes or the freshen it up, and thus there has been a wealth increase, be it slight.

 

Many things work that "no wealth increase" way. Gold-plating yields no substantial increase in wealth as the plating contains so little gold, yet gold-plated stuff will be marked up higher; you lost more money for no wealth increase compared to the non-plated item. Spend $MSRP on a GPU, nobody will buy it for that price second hand, you have lost $MSRP and your PC is worth less-than-MSRP more; no positive wealth increase there either. Does that make all those items worth $0?

 

Paint is simply a depreciating "asset". It won't get better over time. They may be similar to skins to the extent that you won't increase your personal net worth by it, but that is the case for so many things that aren't used for investments. What if Elden Ring asked real money for every single weapon and item in the game. After all, it's just like you doing groceries no? No net wealth increase, just some additional trinkets you want or need. The point with games is about the fun in it. Like I mentioned earlier, unlockable characters or skins used to be there as a small "hey nice job" reward for doing something cool, tedious, obscure, impressive or whatever in the game. Nowadays "1000 hours played" is nothing more than a ticked achievement box and I need to pay $15 just because I want my cape to be blue instead of red.

[LogicalDrm]

The "paint" argument here is bit too easy to counter. You should have used creator merch instead. Thats closer, in many ways. Be it by price or value overall (resale value being 0 for most but collectibles). Linus' own tagline for Merch Messages is "you get something nice with message". Same way that you get something nice with in-game purchases. Something to show off to your friends and opponents. Like one would show off merch IRL.

 

There are other, better arguments to be made, but I think using merch would hit closer to what Linus preaches.

[Heliian]

Today, they make "paint" for pretty much any surface so it doesn't matter if you live in magical "Europe" where there is allegedly no paintable surfaces it still is way more useful than a skin. 

 

There is a physical benefit to painting beyond just looks.  

 

Video game skins do nothing but alter the appearance and once its created it can be cut and pasted billions of times effortlessly.  

[Kazooduck]

I buy cosmetics to support devs and that’s all really, i never buy cosmetics from AAA titles only indie devs and modders. 

[LAwLz]

A lot of people seem to defend painting your house with "it increases the value". 

Does that mean that you should not paint your house unless you plan on selling it? I don't really get why it's somehow bad to spend a bit of money to make something look nicer. My mom has painted some rooms in her house at least twice since moving in, and she is not really planning on selling it. Does that mean she "wasted" money painting it the first time, just like buying a skin in a game is a "waste of money"?

 

Speaking of wasting money, isn't video games in general a quite big waste of money? If you're going to argue that it's not a waste of money because it makes you happy and it's fun, can't the same argument be made for skins?

 

 

Signed, someone who paid Linus X dollars to have two worthless stickers under my profile picture.

[poochyena]

27 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Speaking of wasting money, isn't video games in general a quite big waste of money? If you're going to argue that it's not a waste of money because it makes you happy and it's fun, can't the same argument be made for skins?

really, my usual go to comparison is movies. Everyone responding "but the game might shut down in a few years!" Yea, enjoying it for a few years is waaay longer than the 1 to 3 hours of enjoyment from going to a movie theater.

[Rex Hite]

Isn't making a game 'nice looking' kind of a major element in what video games are about and drives the marketplace for expensive rendering technology packaged into video cards?

[Vishera]

43 minutes ago, poochyena said:

really, my usual go to comparison is movies. Everyone responding "but the game might shut down in a few years!" Yea, enjoying it for a few years is waaay longer than the 1 to 3 hours of enjoyment from going to a movie theater.

A movie you can buy on a blu-ray disk from a store and watch it again whenever you like.

When you buy a game and it's online only - The moment the the servers go offline you can't play it anymore.

I like playing games from the early 2000s to the newest games,if those games were to have an online only DRM then i wouldn't be able to enjoy them again.

 

I don't see where you are going with your argument.

[Jaesop]

5 hours ago, poochyena said:

The used paint is worth exactly as much money as a cosmetic skin, $0. Change my mind.

One is a real thing that involves labor per application.

[Needfuldoer]

Paint serves a functional purpose: preservation. Painted wood doesn't decay as fast as unpainted wood, and painted metal doesn't oxidize.

[poochyena]

2 hours ago, Vishera said:

A movie you can buy on a blu-ray disk from a store and watch it again whenever you like.

When you buy a game and it's online only - The moment the the servers go offline you can't play it anymore.

I like playing games from the early 2000s to the newest games,if those games were to have an online only DRM then i wouldn't be able to enjoy them again.

 

I don't see where you are going with your argument.

I said movie theater, not blu-ray disc

44 minutes ago, Jaesop said:

One is a real thing that involves labor per application.

yes, just like video games skins. The labor is worth something, the finished product is not. You think I can scrape off the paint on my wall and sell it?

[Jaesop]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

yes, just like video games skins. The labor is worth something, the finished product is not. You think I can scrape off the paint on my wall and sell it?

You sort of missed the point about there being labor per application. Paint is a real thing that costs money. Having someone paint your house costs money because they need to contribute labor to do it.

 

A more realistic comparison would be if I could paint a house and sell copies of that one job to endless amounts of people for too much money.

[Arika]

6 hours ago, poochyena said:

Change my mind.

You don't want your mind to be changed, based on your replies in this thread.

 

Change MY mind.

[poochyena]

31 minutes ago, Jaesop said:

You sort of missed the point about there being labor per application. Paint is a real thing that costs money. Having someone paint your house costs money because they need to contribute labor to do it.

yes. Creating skins in a game costs real money too.

32 minutes ago, Arika S said:

You don't want your mind to be changed, based on your replies in this thread.

 

Change MY mind.

Not my fault most people provide weak arguments. I already accepted LogicalDrm making a good point that houses can be insured, so if the paint job gets ruined, insurance will pay to repaint the wall (I can personally relate to this), which isn't true for game skins.

[Jtalk4456]

I completely agree with @Arika S, from the argument itself and the replies, you had no intention of having your mind changed. In a more general sense, I've only once or twice seen someone use that phrase and actually mean it. 
In the interest of providing info I haven't seen in the replies, I will give a good answer here, if only for others open to different views.

5 hours ago, poochyena said:

1. You "can", but many times people are painting purely for aesthetics, no?

2. I said "used" paint. A paint store doesn't want your paint you applied to a wall.

1. Nope, not at all. Paint on the exterior of a house, and also other finishes such as brick and stone, offer weatherproofing, protection against bugs, and dust, and rotting/molding in the case of certain materials. The finishing also provides a layer of insulation, improving energy efficiency and lowering living costs. Those are the main reasons to paint or finish a house. The color is merely a choice of what aesthetic you want your weatherproofing to provide.

2. Scraping paint destroys it functionally, so that's a bad way to compare, but before being scraped, it is part of the cost of the house when selling, so "used" paint does get sold with a value all the time. Lets take it further to other finishes like stone and brick which actually can be salvaged and reused and have an actual used value if that's the hill you want to die on.

 

Finally to echo other people's points:

 

A. Paint is real. You can touch it, feel it, see it when the power is out. does that mean virtual things are worthless? No, but real things SHOULD have more value than fake things. If a massive coronal ejection shoots from the sun and destroys our entire digital infrastructure, that paint will still exist and still be useful. 

B. Paint requires installation. Yes, making a skin requires labor, digital or not. But once the file is made, no more labor is needed to apply that skin to 10 in game items, 100 items, 10,000 items, 1,000,000,000 items. It all requires the same amount of upfront labor. Paint has to be applied every time because it is a physical real object that can't be distributed and applied electronically. It requires not only time and material and labor to apply, but skill. There is no skill required to download a skin.

Is there an inherent evil to skins and paying for virtual things? No. But there's a limit to how much value we should assign to things that are not real, do not exist if the power is out. A game skin should never cost the same as your mortgage payment in my opinion. Everything in life needs to fit a proportion and luxuries/entertainment shouldn't be on the same level as necessities. You should never decide on a skin over groceries or clothes or deodorant. Enjoy the virtual world, but prioritize the real world. 

[Forbidden Wafer]

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

Nope.

 

To remove mold you must remove the drywall (internal walls) or take a saw to the wood and cut it off. If you paint over mold, you're just spreading it, and you'll be re-painting it every year as the mold bubbles it up and rots things underneath.

You're right, but maybe he meant that it can prevent mold by acting as a vapor barrier. Which is true for cold climates, where the vapor could condense in external walls and rot everything away, but the walls need to be properly sealed for that to happen.

 

Sidetracking, but there is a super cool thing to solve that: AeroBarrier.

Spoiler

 

[Jaesop]

21 minutes ago, poochyena said:

yes. Creating skins in a game costs real money too.

Not sure why you are pretending you don't understand. Paint is a physical thing that costs money, and takes labor to apply. This is the case with each and every time someone paints.

 

Skins are made once, and sold repeatedly with no additional labor required per unit sold.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

In this case we need to revolt against corrupt auto makers with the audacity to charge us for special paint options. /s

[Needfuldoer]

4 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

In this case we need to revolt against corrupt auto makers with the audacity to charge us for special paint options. /s

What, you don't like paying an extra $500 so you can pick something other than Satin Silver Metallic, Desert Mica, Midnight Black, and White?

 

/s

[GreatnessRD]

People on the internet never cease to amaze me. This whole thread is next level goofiness. 

 

But please... continue 

[Mojo-Jojo]

If you don't maintain a healthy layer of paint/lacquer on wood, it will rot from rain/moisture exposure. Even if your entire house is concrete, your window and door frames are still ikely wood and need to be painted as part of a regular maintenance schedule. It's that simple.