Ok, I’m not a gamer, and I have a real honest question: we had fun with gamesetsin the 90’s. We had LAN games in the 2000’s, and over Internet quickly after. People were spending hours, days playing. Each new GPU was so much better, sharper pictures, “so realistic”, etc.
Are you genuinely having more fun now than with good games from 10years ago? Even 15years ago??
Because it looks like this whole requirements thing is pure marketing, and studios needing to keep selling: “Look, shinier graphics that will make the previous generation of games you loved and found incredibly sharp and detailed when theé came out look mild and of bad quality now!”
Maybe that’s the silver lining. If AI companies are the main customers of GPUs, not us, then they won’t need to keep up-selling us every year with nonsense.
Back in the 90s, most people didn’t have PCs because they were PC gamers. They just played games on their normal PC, and game devs tried to make games that would run on anything. If the average person has old hardware, then game devs will be incentivized to build to that.
Graphics, I think the most fun I had was PS one, SNES and NES era with a little in PS2 era and the last of it was the Batman arkham games. Not much has sparked true joy since.
The developers are noticing and indie is going retro. Free and paid games are adopting the simpler 3D models and 2D sprites, imposing artificial limitations to have to deal with, intentionally creating developmental challenges that will manifest as stylistic choices later.
my favorite multiplayer experience was Conker’s Bad Fur Day on N64 with the Teddiz and the refugee Squirrelz. Blowing the heads off nazi teddy bears and watching foam shoot out their necks like blood was so fun.
Are you genuinely having more fun now than with good games from 10years ago? Even 15years ago??
I mean yes? Certainly I can put another 1000+ hours into a game from 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but people aren’t playing those games any longer, and those who do in a team setting are so far beyond anything a casual player can do it’s not even close to being remotely fun. LAN parties were amazing, but they existed because most of us didn’t have incredibly fast internet and we wanted to show off the PCs that we had cobbled together.
These days it’s easy to fire up Discord or whatever chat you want to use, play a new game with your friends that looks great, that plays well (enough), and then you can buy a new game. I’d rather play Doom Dark Ages over the original Doom. Or to go to the 10-15 years ago metric, I would much rather play Doom Dark Ages over Doom 3. But hey, when Doom 3 came out, this exact same conversation was happening, because Doom 3 wasn’t easy to run.
Ok, I’m not a gamer, and I have a real honest question: we had fun with gamesetsin the 90’s. We had LAN games in the 2000’s, and over Internet quickly after. People were spending hours, days playing. Each new GPU was so much better, sharper pictures, “so realistic”, etc.
Are you genuinely having more fun now than with good games from 10years ago? Even 15years ago??
Because it looks like this whole requirements thing is pure marketing, and studios needing to keep selling: “Look, shinier graphics that will make the previous generation of games you loved and found incredibly sharp and detailed when theé came out look mild and of bad quality now!”
Maybe that’s the silver lining. If AI companies are the main customers of GPUs, not us, then they won’t need to keep up-selling us every year with nonsense.
Back in the 90s, most people didn’t have PCs because they were PC gamers. They just played games on their normal PC, and game devs tried to make games that would run on anything. If the average person has old hardware, then game devs will be incentivized to build to that.
Graphics, I think the most fun I had was PS one, SNES and NES era with a little in PS2 era and the last of it was the Batman arkham games. Not much has sparked true joy since.
The developers are noticing and indie is going retro. Free and paid games are adopting the simpler 3D models and 2D sprites, imposing artificial limitations to have to deal with, intentionally creating developmental challenges that will manifest as stylistic choices later.
It is working.
Back in the thick of it, it was easy to get sucked into the hype when game graphics tech was progressing so quickly…
These days I mainly emulate older games. Fun games are fun.
my favorite multiplayer experience was Conker’s Bad Fur Day on N64 with the Teddiz and the refugee Squirrelz. Blowing the heads off nazi teddy bears and watching foam shoot out their necks like blood was so fun.
I mean yes? Certainly I can put another 1000+ hours into a game from 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but people aren’t playing those games any longer, and those who do in a team setting are so far beyond anything a casual player can do it’s not even close to being remotely fun. LAN parties were amazing, but they existed because most of us didn’t have incredibly fast internet and we wanted to show off the PCs that we had cobbled together.
These days it’s easy to fire up Discord or whatever chat you want to use, play a new game with your friends that looks great, that plays well (enough), and then you can buy a new game. I’d rather play Doom Dark Ages over the original Doom. Or to go to the 10-15 years ago metric, I would much rather play Doom Dark Ages over Doom 3. But hey, when Doom 3 came out, this exact same conversation was happening, because Doom 3 wasn’t easy to run.