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Digital Foundry: Are Gaming and Consoles becoming... Boring?

There is SO many games coming out weekly. So many more genres than ever. So many more indie genius ideas than ever. And to top it all off you can dive into retro catalogs for hundreds of games to play or revisit.

The people who post this shit or think gaming bad are the same as drug addicts who need unrealistic amounts of drugs to feel the same high from the same shit.

Your options are easy:
-Quit gaming and find a new hobby
-Add more to your real life than just gaming.(career, family, other hobbies)
-Try new genres, IPs, and different ways to play
-Stop playing so much and being a terminally online doom scrolling no grass touching dweeb.
 
Let's take an audience darling. Expedition 33 was a real snooze if you take out the inherent fun of parrying. It is the gamers who are wrong.

The only games that should be focused on in this discussion are the gems like Outer Wilds, Zelda BOTW, BG3. The games are fine, there is just a lot of chaff being propped up by hype cycles.
 
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If you've been playing games for 30 years, it's probably hard to get that same dopamine hit.

Instead of admitting you might just be getting older or need a break, it's easier to blame the industry for becoming boring.
 
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HRK69 said:
If you've been playing games for 30 years, it's probably hard to get that same dopamine hit.

Instead of admitting you might just be getting older or need a break, it's easier to blame the industry for becoming boring.
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Pretty much my stance.
 
Wtf?

Anyways if those guys are even thinking this up, they need to get a different job.

Like a chef in a restaurant asking if eating food is boring.
 
Arsic said:
The people who post this shit or think gaming bad are the same as drug addicts who need unrealistic amounts of drugs to feel the same high from the same shit
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I think it's more about some people not being able to see beyond the most mainstream stuff. If all I had is what's shown on directs, showcases or geoff shows I'd be quite depressed with the hobby as well.
 
HRK69 said:
If you've been playing games for 30 years, it's probably hard to get that same dopamine hit.

Instead of admitting you might just be getting older or need a break, it's easier to blame the industry for becoming boring.
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Exactly this... which is why they need to get new blood on the channel.
 
Artistic said:
I feel it's more of a age thing in my case than any hardware advancements or risk taking in games, but always interested in hearing your takes.



I'm still a gamer at heart, but I think I might have played mostly any unique experience you can curate in gaming.
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Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."


This is your weekly reminder how fucking piss-poor Digital Foundry have become over the years. I'm glad I unsubscribed. What a joke of a channel.
 
I enjoy gaming just the same as I always have, does it always hit the same? no because I'm no longer a kid, real life get's in the way, go back and play a game you loved as a kid, and it will be destroyed for you, Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, you're not missing the game, you're missing the feeling and the circumstance you were in when you played it.
 
People here just love to hate DF. Yes, consoles are boring now. The age of exotic hardware and running circles around current technology is over. They are just a good deal now.
 
I have not gotten bored with gaming in several years. PC gaming revitalized my love especially because I could go back to old games and make them run better and have better graphics. That's just something I'm into. But, even if not there are a ton of games recently that I would have enjoyed with just their baseline performance. Examples:

Lies of P
Death Stranding
Witcher 3
The First Berserker
Split fiction
Stalker 2
Arc Raiders
Sons of the forest
Kingdom Come deliverance 1&2
Nioh
Sekiro
Stellar Blade

I guess I'm just lucky to enjoy a wide variety of genres. There have also been a lot of indie games I've found on Steam that have been short and sweet. I am very happy with the current gaming sphere.

But, you know, there's always the doom and gloom people when it comes to gaming. Some people do just grow out of it.

I'm just glad to be a person that still enjoys it. And it helps me stay connected to my friends. You get out of it what you want.
 
Kinda? The 5th generation had by far the best variety in gaming ever, there were things getting made and published then that are simply incredible when you look back.
Anyway, it's gamers themselves who killed variety in gaming. Everyone's buying the same stuff, then game value gets equated with game time and variety disappears because everyone want the latest and greatest that must keep you engaged for dozens of hours. And then these people have the gall to say that the market is homogenized as hell and that there's no innovation.


kruis said:
Video games HAVE become boring. The next big thing (VR gaming) never really got off the ground so we're now playing the same kind of games we did 20 years ago but with much better visuals.

My hope is that AI can bring something new to the table. Just imagine games like The Witcher 4 where every single character has an actual story to tell instead of the same 2 or 3 lines of scripted dialog. Imagine full fledged story driven quests that are unique for every single player. An open world that's literally a playground where you can do ANYTHING.
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So what you want from gaming is more badly-written trite stories?
 
Seems to me like there's more great games than ever, and the vibrant indie scene is something that really didn't exist at all before digital storefronts.

Honestly I've been hearing this shit about gaming stagnating and AAA lacking creativity etc since the fucking PS2 days. It's ridiculous. I probably buy or get given at least 20 games every year which I'll never have time to play. It's an amazing time to be a gamer.
 
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Arsic said:
There is SO many games coming out weekly. So many more genres than ever. So many more indie genius ideas than ever. And to top it all off you can dive into retro catalogs for hundreds of games to play or revisit.

The people who post this shit or think gaming bad are the same as drug addicts who need unrealistic amounts of drugs to feel the same high from the same shit.

Your options are easy:
-Quit gaming and find a new hobby
-Add more to your real life than just gaming.(career, family, other hobbies)
-Try new genres, IPs, and different ways to play
-Stop playing so much and being a terminally online doom scrolling no grass touching dweeb.
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Yeah, the amount of games available is crazy. And folks should also look at older games too, there are so many gems across a multitude of platforms easily available now.

If you have a PC then you have emulation and modding on top.

Unless you only play new AAA, there are a ton of games available in most genres.

My issue is finding time to play, and not a lack of games, lol.
 
StereoVsn said:
Yeah, the amount of games available is crazy. And folks should also look at older games too, there are so many gems across a multitude of platforms easily available now.

If you have a PC then you have emulation and modding on top.

Unless you only play new AAA, there are a ton of games available in most genres.

My issue is finding time to play, and not a lack of games, lol.
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Hell I think there's plenty in the AAA space I've been having a great time with.

RE9
Pragmata

Coming up:
Diablo 4 expansion
Saros
Wolverine
GTA6
Gears E Day

Like what are these bad AAA games people are playing? Just the yearly rehash multiplayer? That's so easy to ignore. Call of duty and sports titles lost their appeal long ago.
 
Yep. Todays developers suck at making games. Games used to be made by people with passion who wanted to create cool and fun shit. Now they are made by bean counters and twitter activists. It doesn't help that despite growing up with more access to knowledge, the new generation knows the absolute least.
 
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You have natural limits to growth in any genre. I mean, you can't avoid jumping in a 2D platformer or shooting in a shooter. In that regard, the more you play the more familiar mechanics you meet and it can become a bit boring.
 
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The games are becoming boring . All the companies copy each other and keep making the same games . Live service slop has also been terrible for the industry.
 
During the last 60 DAYS or so (i said DAYS, not weeks) and the next 15 days, we had and/or will have

- RE: Requiem
- Pragmata
- Crimson Desert
- Mouse PI
- Saros
- One of the biggest update in history for a speciifc videogame (PSSR2 for PS5 Pro, the first time games from the past saw improvements without any sort of migration/update).

Video game is boring their asses!
 
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I think there's a really good variety of games; it's hard to imagine someone not finding something to their liking.

Regarding the hardware, it's true that it's becoming less and less "innovative," and sometimes I really miss different concepts like the Nintendo Wii.
 
I love every final gen line up that pushes HW to the way you don't think was possible. We are not quite there yet with PS5 but PS4 has a few games with RT and we got GoWR and Horizon 2 that pushes the PS4 the way I thought was impossible if anyone show me those games at the beginning of the generation. They are only less impression because they have a PS5 cross gen version that overshadow their technical achievement on PS4.
 
NeoIkaruGAF said:
So what you want from gaming is more badly-written trite stories?
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What gaming needs is new fresh experiences, real innovation instead of just better graphics. No matter how good and fun modern games can be, they're in effect rehashes of existing games with a lick of paint. AI could bring that innovation. AI can be used for anything, not just storytelling, but also world building, game play, the possibilities are literally endless.
 
playbignbox said:
I think there's a really good variety of games; it's hard to imagine someone not finding something to their liking.

Regarding the hardware, it's true that it's becoming less and less "innovative," and sometimes I really miss different concepts like the Nintendo Wii.
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The era of constant innovation seems to be over. Look at the cool things we got in the past twenty years ...

- Wiimote waggle
- Kinect (controllerless waggle)
- PS Move
- PS Eye
- 3DS
- Plastic guitars/drums (Guitar Hero, Rockband)
- Light guns
- 3D HDTV
- VR

... and compare it to today. Sony released PSVR2 but that was a rehash of the PSVR1 and had even worse sales. There's the better haptic feedback in the Dual Sense controller at least... MS didn't even bother to do something interesting with Xbox Series S/X and Nintendo ran out of ideas with Switch 2.
 
Kinda

I remember clearly the hype with Dreamcast, then PS2, Game Cube... Characters have real faces, water looked wet, vast and beautiful worlds were showed. So much possibilities, and they all delivered the hell up!!!

When the Wii was launched, a mall here made a midnight event that was a incredible championship with lots of games, 360 delivered peak online gaming, and PS3 was a beast that even today people say that didn't reach 100% of it's hardware. Even more possibilities and experiments, and was amazing

Then Wii U was announced and not even Nintendo itself understand what the fuck was that. When XOne was announced, Microsoft fucked everything so we gotta turned down. PS4 on other hand promissed a simpler console life experience like we all wanted... But something felt off... Games needed to be installed, for everyone updates were mandatory, online playing became a obligatory subscription, less iconic games were made and some even launched incomplete. Games used to be fun first, but now became business first

Switch 1 was launched and Nintendo wanted a middle term. Wasn't that bad, and games could run straight from cartridge. Series and PS5 upgraded the hardware by a lot, but over promised and while Microsoft basically said that the new consoles are basically just better hardware than XOne, Sony straight out lied about "generations" and games basically didn't took advantage of the new hardware. A lot of people bought those consoles, but how much one loves it? Nobody loves them

Switch 2 was launched and Nintendo itself didn't care much. It was like "yeah, this is our new shit. Buy it". A lot of people bought, and ok. It has lots of third party games now... Yeah...
 
Consoles were cooler right up until online multiplayer was the only internet feature.
Now they're just PC that can't do speadsheets.
 
more like the culture behind it become boring and suck


too many negative stuff often circling around which is journalists itself play big role to it.

DEI and bad performance/optimization become major attention that ruined gaming. particularly those woke shit. it got expensive too.

also, we dont has big event like E3 anymore and even the company specific livestream also arent frequent much which is still far cry from hype of having a show on stage like E3. we lacked these kind of aura. Sony for example wasted atleast half of their decade with GaaS shit to the point nothing much interesting people could looking foward in their presentation. not to mention it poisoned by woke stuff. just look at the whatever game Naughty Dog currently developing with the bald women as protagonist. aint no way people would be excited for something like that. appearance also play big role in sparked attention across industry. simply to say slop like these drained any positive or fun energy in this gaming space.

that said, despite it was not hyped like previous generation, im still enjoying gaming. just ignore what you dislike lol. dont feed those mental people money. particularly those who ignored player's voice. watching they go burn also another form of entertaiment.
 
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Put it this way... fake consoles are so boring now the neo geo is back.
 
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I think the main issue here is far more due to the times. In the 80s, 90s, early 2000s there was a lot of excitment about the future and how technology would evolve. New stuff was exciting and everyone wanted to be on the forefront.

But now? With crisis after crisis, poor economical enviroment where majority lives paycheck to paycheck, and this very same tech being used in hostile ways to the public, it's only natural no one cares anymore. And since no one cares, no one wants to spend money with novelties like VR. Videogames aren't an exciting techno-cultural movement anymore, they're just another distraction no different from books or watching netflix series.

I think good examples are the outright hostile reaction many have towards things like AI in games, streaming or the use of the cloud. 20 to 30 years ago people would've been excited to see these pan out, but now after years of explotation and shitty practices we can only see how these would be used against us the detrimental forms they'd manifest (and we'd not be wrong to believe this).
 
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HRK69 said:
If you've been playing games for 30 years, it's probably hard to get that same dopamine hit.

Instead of admitting you might just be getting older or need a break, it's easier to blame the industry for becoming boring.
Click to expand...

I don't think it is so much a dopamine hit as it is unable to shake the "been there done that" feeling. I've been arguing for years now that the average quality of games is higher than ever but the highs aren't as high, lows aren't as low, and the gape between those valleys and peaks is further than ever. A lot of that has to do with gaming maturing from the perspective of genre conventions, control schemes, camera systems, etc. standardizing. That isn't a bad thing and the opposite is easy to argue in most cases with genre conventions be the most tenuous. And to take it back to the subject of this thread, gaming hardware had to become boring because the cost of making games makes single platform development unviable for most, so it was in the interest of platform holders to make hardware as similar as possible to ease development and not miss out on games because your platform architect had a wild Ken Kutaragi hair up their ass. But even releasing to all platforms isn't a wide enough net, so most studios release "safe" games that follow genre norms and stick to what is popular at the time. I also think with team sizes being so large, that it's really hard to have the fingerprint of a creator on any given project (props to the likes of Kojima for bucking this trend). If you want to quantify that, it feels like most releases these days are 7-8 experiences. Is that bad? No. But I'm not sure it is interesting either. The counter to that "problem" might be the indie or AA space, but those have their own issues too. Copycatting has always been part of the industry, but with the democratization of development tools and ease of publishing, that space trend chases like no other.

There is still cool stuff out there, but discovery is my biggest issue these days in any space. Watching reviews or reading impressions of most games these days just has Kurt Cobain echoing in my head, "I wish I were like you, easily amused."
 
No.

DF can continue the gaming war with Xbox vs Steam now.

Morgan Freeman Good Luck GIF
 
Artistic said:
I don't think so.

In my case, unless I'm gaming with close friends, I just don't find the same kind of enjoyment like I once did when I was an adolescent or teenager.

The industry in a lot of ways has also matured and "grown up" since those early PS2/OG Xbox to where we are now.
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That's called growing up. It's not the hobby/activity - it's you.
 
Age.... price of games is a big factor... no new big IPs....

There are some new IPs from smaller teams. but nothing on a big scale...

too long of a wait between games. 5 years to get another GOW ? or Forza ? why ??? its the same engine and mostly same graphics. if you need 5 years to create a new level or story based on an engine you already have and sometimes share between studios, it means you are doing it wrong.

Where is that game from the devs behind Ico ? didnt they reveal a gameplay trailer like 5 years ago ? where is Twisted Metal ? where is Tomb Raider ? Killzone ? new Halo ?

like.. if you dont want to create new IP because u r worried it will fail ( because you suck ), then fine, dont do it. but stop shoving Spider-Man and Horizon bitch. this is lame.

I really hope both of these 2 games at least fail so bad that we will never see them ever again.

Fuck it is really boring to game these days

Thank god we get some exciting stuff every now and then like Expedition 33. because if these games didn't exist. I would have been a goner long time ago.
 
As long as they keep making Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Uncharted and The Last of Us, I will be happy.

I don't love every new game that comes out but I really like Single Player, story driven, linear adventures a lot. As long as companies keep making those, I will be fine.
 
Hardware is boring I guess, but the games have been great. If i had to analyze every game for it's graphic techniques rather than just enjoy the game (and only the games I want to play), or compare hardware that is so similar to each other. I'd be bored too. Don't project your loss of interest in the hobby on to the rest of us.
 
KanKamAndNob said:
No. Gaming as a whole is still amazing. It's only shitty Western AAA games that are overly safe, boring, and ideologically garbage. Eastern AAA games and AA/indies are great.
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Where are all those great eastern AAA games? The last one I played was underwhelming (Resident Evil 9)
 
bender said:
There is still cool stuff out there, but discovery is my biggest issue these days in any space. Watching reviews or reading impressions of most games these days just has Kurt Cobain echoing in my head, "I wish I were like you, easily amused."
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Best way is to approach it like you'd do books. Have a good grasp of what you like and use the available existing resources to explore.

Like for example, you can go to steamdb, say you want a single-player/3D/platformer/open world, order by rating and you'll get some names to look further into

Or i dunno, a single player immersive sim with hacking?

There's also specific resources for people who like certain genres like VNDB for visual novels or channels that follow FPS or immersive sim games.


Of course, this approach requires you to really know what you actually want
 
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kruis said:
Video games HAVE become boring. The next big thing (VR gaming) never really got off the ground so we're now playing the same kind of games we did 20 years ago but with much better visuals.

My hope is that AI can bring something new to the table. Just imagine games like The Witcher 4 where every single character has an actual story to tell instead of the same 2 or 3 lines of scripted dialog. Imagine full fledged story driven quests that are unique for every single player. An open world that's literally a playground where you can do ANYTHING.
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Best post.

Videogame reached a plateau and most consumers aren't interest in going forward.
 
I play almost every day for around 1-3 hours and I find it impossible to keep up with all the stuff that I want to play.

I have 33 games on my wishlist on PSN and it feels like by the time I scratch one game from the list I've already added 2 more.

I think gaming right now is as fun and varied as ever
 
Guilty_AI said:
Best way is to approach it like you'd do books. Have a good grasp of what you like and use the available existing resources to explore.

Like for example, you can go to steamdb, say you want a single-player/3D/platformer/open world, order by rating and you'll get some names to look further into

Or i dunno, a single player immersive sim with hacking?

There's also specific resources for people who like certain genres like VNDB for visual novels or channels that follow FPS or immersive sim games.


Of course, this approach requires you to really know what you actually want
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Order by rating would be the problem or at least that's my experience with trying to pick out games from Fanatical bundles. Most everything there tends to end up in the mostly positive to very positive range and the overwhelming positive stuff often makes me scratch my head. The most "interesting" stuff I see tends to be the mixed or negative ratings as those tend to be the outliers and makes me want to see why it earned those ratings. Be they professional or user, I don't put a lot of faith in reviews these days and it has less to do with them being correct and more about aligning with my snobbish tastes. Personal recommendations are probably the best form of discovery these days. Someone on GAF turned me onto Moonring (forgot who you were, but if you are reading thank you) because I mentioned I was playing Caves of Qud. I do wonder how many Moonrings I'm missing because of the deluge of games that get released daily and those types of games (the ones I usually find most interesting) aren't going to garner a ton of attention.

Other than that, I've really started dedicating myself to clearing off my bucket list(so far this year, I've completed Final Fantasy Tactics, Mario Galaxy 2, and Devil May Cry 3, and I'm working through Chrono Trigger). I've actually thought about creating a sister thread to the 52 games a year challenge with the premise of picking 5-10 bucket list games and working on those rather than new purchases or the hundreds of other games in our backlogs. There are so many great games that I haven't finished, I think time and to a lesser extent money are better served elsewhere. I don't really like the often purposed solution to being largely dissatisfied with the current state of the industry is that it is time to step away, but I do think altering your habits to preserve your love of the hobby is beneficial and healthy.
 
ToneyJ said:
The 4Bs (bethesda, bioware, blizzard and bungie) are fucking garbage compared to their prime years.
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Uhhh, Bungie released a critically-acclaimed finale to the 10-year Destiny saga with The Final Shap, and Marathon, which just came out, is excellent. If anything, the most questionable thing about them as a studio was the poor management at the helm over the past decade, that fucked up their pivot into a Riot-esque multi-team game studio and entertainment company.

You'd have to be insane to put them on the same level as Bethesda and Bioware.
 
bender said:
Order by rating would be the problem or at least that's my experience with trying to pick out games from Fanatical bundles. Most everything there tends to end up in the mostly positive to very positive range and the overwhelming positive stuff often makes me scratch my head. The most "interesting" stuff I see tends to be the mixed or negative ratings as those tend to be the outliers and makes me want to see why it earned those ratings. Be they professional or user, I don't put a lot of faith in reviews these days and it has less to do with them being correct and more about aligning with my snobbish tastes. Personal recommendations are probably the best form of discovery these days. Someone on GAF turned me onto Moonring (forgot who you were, but if you are reading thank you) because I mentioned I was playing Caves of Qud. I do wonder how many Moonrings I'm missing because of the deluge of games that get released daily and those types of games (the ones I usually find most interesting) aren't going to garner a ton of attention.

Other than that, I've really started dedicating myself to clearing off my bucket list(so far this year, I've completed Final Fantasy Tactics, Mario Galaxy 2, and Devil May Cry 3, and I'm working through Chrono Trigger). I've actually thought about creating a sister thread to the 52 games a year challenge with the premise of picking 5-10 bucket list games and working on those rather than new purchases or the hundreds of other games in our backlogs. There are so many great games that I haven't finished, I think time and to a lesser extent money are better served elsewhere. I don't really like the often purposed solution to being largely dissatisfied with the current state of the industry is that it is time to step away, but I do think altering your habits to preserve your love of the hobby is beneficial and healthy.
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Yeah, recommendations are still the best. I've seen someone in a dedicated immersive sim channel recommending Ctrl Alt Ego, a game i had absolutely never heard of at the time, and it turned out to be one of my favorites. Same with Ashes 2063 which i found being talked about in one of the threads here.
 
I imagine it would be boring if, like DF, it were my job to put out content about this industry every day. Not to mention all the fine-grained tech analysis, staring at screens, counting pixels and framerates, etc. That would get tedious after a while.

If gaming gets boring for me, I can just go do something else. But they don't have that freedom. They have to keep their noses in it, whether they like it or not. It's their job. That's going to degrade enjoyment.
 
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Pretty boring yeah. The last time i was really hyped for new releases was around 2013. The late PS3 era. After that things went downhill pretty quick.
 
AGRacing said:
It was certainly much more interesting when we had a GameCube, Xbox and PS2, they all weren't trying to 1:1 copy each other and even the same games could have a different vibe between consoles.

Feels like Handheld & TV are really the only two massive differentiators now.
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Yeah nobody is going to watch the video but their point in the vid was that console hardware being so diff back then led to some very interesting games and experimentation. Some worked, some didn't but you know every console would satiate a different area in your tastebuds.
 
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