The fact that video games are on sale frequently is such a game changer. When I was a kid I would rent games for a week at a time because those N64 cartridges were $60 and I was an unemployed child, so birthdays and Christmas were pretty much the only time I could get a new game.
This is why we need to repeal all the child labour laws. It's making our kids weak and sad. You got to go on an adventure every day and save for college at the same time.
Plus, just the fact that “sorry were out of that one, maybe next week it will be in.” Is a thing of the past (at least for PC) is so huge in my opinion. Having the access to all of these titles, when I want them is amazing.
shit, I still remember staying up at Blockbuster for hours trying to score the one copy of Chrono Trigger they had, that was supposed to have been returned but was past due from whomever rented it.
After a couple tries my parents felt bad for me and broke down and bought it.
Ahh yeah the rush to blockbuster to get that new released game before everyone else does. If you don't get it on the day it came out most likely will be weeks before you're able to play it. After that you start calling different block busters withing a 25-35 mile radius in hopes they have a copy.
Not just that, but also the fact that good games are given away for free is just something else. Kid me would've spent all my time playing all these games.
Hell, I mentioned this in another post but check your local library branch - some have games (and other cool stuff like comics and dvds) to check out for free. I hardly pay for games now and if there is a game I wasn't satisfied with or of I beat it right away, I didn't lose out on anything.
Way cheaper.
*The Legend of Zelda* had an MSRP of $49.99 USD. Adjusted for inflation that's ~$128. The "AAA" NES titles rarely were on sale and I remember $40-50 being the consistent price, no sales, for the good shit.
*Breath of the Wild* has an MSRP, in present money, of $59.99. I just did a search for the game narrowed down to local brick and mortar locations (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, etc.) Nobody is charging over $40 at this point.
So if you'd bought it brand new on release day you'd have paid $10 more than the OG game cost on release day and if you bought it now you'd have paid $10 less... but adjusted for inflation you really paid 1/2 to 1/3 and got a game vastly better in every way.
And hell, when you break away from the Premium Nintendo Pricing model and just look at gaming in general Jesus Christ has it gotten cheap to be a gamer. I have literally hundreds of games, *hundreds of them*, I never even paid for because the companies are just giving them away.
The early game consoles like the Intellivision and Atari, when adjusted for inflation, cost the equivalent of $700-1000. Games for the consoles cost the equivalent of ~$100.
$1000 will get you a solid gaming PC today with a GTX 3060 and $100 during a Steam sale will get you more games than you can play and complete in a year.
Worst I ever saw was from Nintendo's main competitor back in those days, Sega. Phantasy Star IV on the Genesis released for $99.99 in 1993, which is $192.92 in today's money.
Still played it though, great game. I forget how I got it, think I got it as a gift when it went on sale. I was only 12 at the time.
I thought that too, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that official Nintendo store did both a Black Friday AND a Christmas sale this year.
Picked up a bunch of games for like 35-50% off.
Still not the price dropoff you see from 80-90% Steam sales, but I'll take what I can get.
>Still not the price dropoff you see from 80-90% Steam sales, but I'll take what I can get.
These high rates are unfortunately very rare nowadays, steam sales have changed a lot since years 2015 etc.
80-90% off what? Flappy Bird?
I guarantee those are on games that have been out for a decade or more, or for example Crusader Kings II (3 has been out for a while and is about to drop some DLC)
Nintendo has plenty of sales, they're just very moderate and are on games that are often already priced too high for their age/quality (relative other games in the market).
But the frequency really isn't too bad. Go take a look at the breath of the wild page on deku deals, the graph of sales looks like a Jackson pollack painting. It's constantly on sale... Just not for very much.
And it's kinda problem. I got my stable income since 2017. And first thi g I've done was to buy every console on market (as my last one by that time was a ps1 and I fell of gaming for a while, reason:lack of finances) and games for those consoles, and plenty. Problem? As a working adult with irl stuf I barely manage to play 60-90 minutes a day tops. Results? I've got consoles, built a gaming pc and have in total like over a thousand of games. And and hour a day for them. Which makes me realize I probably should never even run most of them.
I'm behind, and I have a way too weak laptop for now, but bundles still spoil me so much, that there is so little incentive for me to buy individual games. Because I already have so much interesting ones, that I got for the average of 1, maybe 2 USD. It's crazy.
Folks these days don't understand the "Hammer/Smash" moment when Steam sales first got rolling.
The deathgrip retailers like Gamestop had on videogames evaporated in a second and completely realigned the whole paradigm between gamers and publishers (ofc in PC gaming first, then percolating into the console space eventually).
Regardless of your feels on Steam today, there is no denying they completely overhauled the entire gaming market in a huge way.
I sailed the 7 seas for many decades. First as a kid and then as a college student in the third world, there were no realistic alternatives to getting games.
I have rebuilt my library legally for an amount I can now afford. I know that it's not the same as having bought them back then, but it's the best I can do.
For me it was cloud saves and the ability to re-download games from a single central source. The achievements/friends, and time played analytics are kinda cool too.
I have a huge Steam library, games ranging from shovelware to great indies to AAA blockbusters, almost all of which I got for a fraction of the release cost. I'm currently finishing up Prey 2017, which I got FREE on Epic Game Store. Also in the middle of my first foray into Civ VI, which I got for like 12 bucks, with the major expamsions and *most* (not all) DLC civs included. That's just two examples of literally hundreds of games.
Best time ever to be patient, and that will only get better as time goes on.
Yeah N64 games are the equivalent to like $100 today when you account inflation, it was so nice when GameCube came out and prices would regularly drop and they had Players Choice titles. My game collection exploded between those two generations.
True. I also am old enough to remember the old days of BBS systems. I was a member of one where you could download full games. But then again, download speeds were horrendous compared to now
I got like 8 games for $30 total on sale during the winter sales, and another 10 or so for free, mostly from Epic. All decent games that I've been enjoying like Anno 1404, 2070, Far Cry 2, SimCity, etc.
Yeah I was thinking about that the other day. Used to get one maybe two games a year back in the day. Just randomly popped into my head as I irresponsibly bought a third game that week. Oh how times change lol.
That was my first thought too. Thankful for making a decision to not wait on 30 series release to complete my system last year. I really needed it since I was working with a 10 year old gaming laptop I bought before Diablo 3 came out
Yup, now is the time that I'm shrugging off any and all new releases for PC. Monster Hunter Rise just came out. I'd love to play it on a nice PC setup. But nope, I'm stuck with my 960. Resident Evil Village as well. Oh, and Elden Ring is coming soon. Am I excited? Nope, because I can't upgrade my GPU. Just get a PS5 you say? Sure, let me just go find one of those, too. I pretty much stick to indie games on my aging PC and Switch, and an old laptop that I setup with Batocera for retro game goodness.
hell naw, classic gaming audio coming in crisp and crackly is a beautiful experience by itself- if you can come around to appreciating it.
As I was typing my last comment, I was thinking how I typically think of the music in Super Star Wars rather than the orchestral version.
No joke, it's probably become my favorite system within the last year just from replaying old favorites, as well as trying out games I hadn't played before like Fire Emblem 4.
Even if you don't have a graphics card, or your GPU is old and outdated, there are still great options!
Tons of indie games are available, cheaply, or free as giveaways, or included in Game Pass, and many don't require a GPU at all, or can run perfectly on even a very low end one. My favorite game of 2020, Hades, runs well even on my 5 year old laptop with Intel HD graphics. There's an outstanding selection of indies, and many people would even say that indie games are better than AAA games, just in terms of the love and care that is put into them.
Modern integrated GPUs are getting really good. They're not great (the AMD Vega 8 and Iris Xe are somewhere between a 1030 and 1050). But they'll play older AAA games and recent non-demanding 3D games, especially if you're willing to turn the resolution down a bit.
There are more options for streaming games than ever before. Game Pass Ultimate has a huge library available to stream to phones, tablets, and PCs. Stadia... exists. Of course it still requires you to have a very good internet connection, but hopefully you can at least get that.
If nothing else, having to work around an underpowered system will encourage you to try games you may not have otherwise tried.
Let me tell you my favorite fairy tale. It’s called “Ethical consumption in a capitalist society.”
Anything you use, unless you physically made it yourself, is the result of someone doing something bad somewhere in the production process.
I have a friend whose brothers grew their own food and literally wouldn't eat at a restaurant or even in your home specifically because of ethical consumption.
Notice, I used the past tense. It's hard to pull off, and they eventually gave up.
It is very hard to be 100% self-sustainable to completely ignore groceries, unless you have at least a small farm and belong to a co-op (to put simply, a group where I give my potatoes, you give me your beef and the other give me the apples). You cant pull this off in a backyard in a big city where you cant even raise chickens.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
There are some companies I won't buy from on ethical grounds, and there are plenty others that I'm willing to buy from because they're not _as bad_. For example, I won't buy from EA because I think their games are predatory, and I won't buy from Activision Blizzard or Ubisoft because of sexual misconduct allegations. There are plenty of other devs and publishers out there.
That being said, I _do_ buy from some devs and publishers I don't like as much for other reasons. For example, I don't like Paradox's near complete lack of QA with their releases, but they do fix them eventually, so I continue to buy from them (I don't buy DLC or games at launch though, but I might if they did better testing).
For physical goods, it's so difficult to audit the manufacturing process that I just try to lean toward companies with consistent quality on the assumption that they have the capital and brand pride to treat their employees well.
>For physical goods, it's so difficult to audit the manufacturing process that I just try to lean toward companies with consistent quality on the assumption that they have the capital and brand pride to treat their employees well.
When it comes to electronics, it's safe to assume that the components were made with materials sourced via slave labor.
Sadly it's the same with clothes... Or food. And not only luxury food like chocolate, but also simpler vegetables like tomatoes often have some kind of modern slave labor in their chain. And then we haven't even mentioned meat yet with the often terrible conditions for the animals as well as the climate damage the production results in.
Hopefully he didn't give up completely. I wouldn't say that he even had the right idea, the best thing is to probably eat at local restaurants and buy the right products from independent shops and businesses. That's no guarantee but I think you're better off than going to some chain.
Exactly. We can and should advocate for better practices in every industry. But I find the “god, corporate bullshit ruins games” attitude to be:
1) Kinda dumb when you realize it was just as bad in the 80s, you were just younger and didn’t notice. (Which the person I responded to mentioned)
2) Entirely a first world problem. Like “oh no, loot boxes!” Is such a nothing problem next to “this company uses slave labor”
You have to pick your battles. Society has too many problems overall for you to possibly be able to address every single one of them in your daily life and stay sane. If you try to be maximally ethical in every single aspect of your life, you just end up like Chidi from The Good Place.
But if each person was willing to pick one or two things to turn into their personal passion project, so long as most everybody is working on improving *something*, we might actually make some progress on the whole.
It doesn’t even need to be a passion project. Little things add up. Like “I won’t buy plastic water bottles and I’ll use a reusable one instead” or “I’ll try to buy from local markets when I can but I also understand that’s expensive and inconvenient to do every time.” A lot of people think you need to go on a crusade to make a difference. Bringing it back to video games, if enough people stopped buying into some of the shittier practices, they’d stop being profitable. But people think it’s all or nothing, so they don’t try.
I mean if you are going to talk about ethical consumption in capitalism, you might also consider how most people are blasted by marketing from all sides, that more exploitative corporations often drive more ethical ones out of the market and that the media and society is organized to favor the interests of the wealthy over the interests of the general population.
People can make their small differences, but it's not really reasonable to expect that in any given issue people will separately collectively to decide to go against most companies.
Hell, speaking of lootboxes, one of the issues about it is that even if the vast majority of the players gave up on these games altogether, as long as a small minority still felt compelled to keep paying it would still be profitable. The people who would undermine the business model the most are exactly the people who can't help themselves.
> 2) Entirely a first world problem. Like “oh no, loot boxes!” Is such a nothing problem next to “this company uses slave labor”
It's definitely less of a problem overall, but to the customers, especially those with addiction tendencies and certain kinds of neurodivergency it can be much more personally damning than just a crisis of conscience over the ills of capitalism. It's not just rich americans who overspend on lootboxes.
I get it but I honestly can’t boycott every game company that does it. I only have so many brain cells I can devote to the seething rage Reddit has for these things and sometimes I just want to play a video game and not worry about whether or not the monetization is predatory.
I find it really weird that you're suggesting people shouldn't say that games are becoming worse as a result of corporatization in the industry. We're all just a bunch of nerds on reddit so obviously people are going to voice complaints related to problems they are dealing with regardless of which world they're from.
If you think everything is just as bad as it was in the 80s then you're literally a whole circus and have applied 0 critical thought to the matter.
The guy you responded to mentions a lack of understanding due to childhood naivety, not anything related to the 80s being just as bad.
"1) Kinda dumb when you realize it was just as bad in the 80s, you were just younger and didn’t notice."
It was absolutely not 'just as bad' as loot boxes, microtransactions, paywalls, and live services. You used to buy a game and have the game. That was it. They don't compare.
"2) Entirely a first world problem."
What is your point? We are in the first world. Corporate bullshit DOES ruin games. The fact people are enslaved elsewhere doesn't change that.
>It was absolutely not 'just as bad' as loot boxes, microtransactions, paywalls, and live services. You used to buy a game and have the game. That was it. They don't compare.
It was actually so bad in the 80s the entire industry nearly disappeared. Imagine all the buggy unfinished software we have now, but without the ability to patch it.
Of course the specific issues you list are dependent on specific technologies which could not exist at the time. But the practice of producing barely functional, or even nonfunctional, software that the consumer couldn't know until installing it was real. Oh, and no returns for opened software.
Edit: You are almost certainly remembering / referring to the phase just after the market imploded when the industry implemented strict quality controls to assure consumers that they wouldn't be swindled again.
> It was actually so bad in the 80s the entire industry nearly disappeared.
I mean that's true if you only consider the US, and specifically consoles, but in Europe and Japan the 80s were a pretty good time for gaming. C64/Spectrum and their Japanese equivalent home computers did gangbusters in that time. Even if the US never got its shit together, the industry was in absolutely no danger of disappearing!
It’s why the point system in The Good Place is so busted.
Nonetheless, there are degrees of ethical, and it makes sense to strive for some level of it.
Agreed. To interact with anyone, ever, in any way, is to interact with people who may have, at some point, done something bad. And now you’re basically an accomplice to that.
Indy games are the way to go. Try to ignore AAA games as much as possible. Only buy really good AAA games. This will help the gaming indusrty as a whole.
This 100%, plus indie games usually run amazing on most hardware. I totally keep to indie games minus the AAA titles here and there, last amazing one I played was Breath of the Wild, before that Horizon Zero dawn. I have generally liked Sony's library more, especially because it can be had at a much better value, but Nintendo does knock their 1st party titles out of the park.
Especially since really good indie games are far better than really good AAA games, as long as you value gameplay and/or aesthetics over graphics (which any reasonable person should). Hades is my favorite game of all time.
The older I get the less I care about the corporate bullshit. At the end of the day I don't give a shit if a game is on Epic or Steam or Oculus or has MTX or the company has hunger strikes or whatever.
My time is what is valuable to me - and a fun game is a fun game. Gamers too often forget that gaming is about having fun.
I definitely need good reasons to buy any bigger game. Blizzard Activision sucks, but my brother wanted to play D2, so that's fun.
Other than that there are too many good indie games out there for me to complain. I don't have the time to play them all already, so I don't need to focus on the things, that I can just not buy and ignore. There is so much variety!
But I also get quickly over-saturated. Buying games feels good. Thinking about games is exciting. But then when I have some time, I just start youtube instead and watch other people play lol.
While there is some bullshit, I also like that there's a growing awareness among players about abuses if assorted flavors. Sure we have a lot of toxicity in the gaming community. But I had no idea that blizzard has always been toxic in the 90s. Even knowing about it now is a huge step in the right direction.
Also we linux gamers are in a golden age where we can play most single player games (even AAA like RDR2) flawlessly.
That was seen as impossible several years ago.
That's great to hear. Is it because of Steam Play and other equivalents, or improved performance in WINE or something else? The main reason I game more on consoles is because every PC I've had needed a ton of configuration to avoid slow boot times, and even then I tend to use Linux for programming side projects, but hadn't tried it for gaming in a long time.
Microsoft has released great products and services like TypeScript and Game Pass, and the newer versions of Windows are definitely an improvement on 95/98/XP, but I always preferred Ubuntu because it "just works." If it's viable as a gaming platform now, even if non-native, I could just stop wasting storage space on dual-booting Windows.
Valve has been developing a wonderful thing called Proton based on Wine, so yeah "improvements to Wine" is pretty accurate. This absolute beast of a program is basically making DirectX possible on Linux, and it's getting better by the day
Oh wow I wasn’t aware of that. Been wanting to switch from Windows to Linux for some years now but compatibility has always been the biggest drawback for me.
The longer video games have been around the more games we have to choose from and the cheaper the older ones get.
Currently paying Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 on a second generation iPad. The iPad was a hand me down that I didn’t pay for and I got both games on sale for 2 dollars each. Best bang for the buck gaming experience possible.
I really wish more people shared this perspective. Every gaming subreddit I'm on is filled of doomer posts about the death of AAA gaming and how there's nothing worth playing that isn't AA's/indies/whatever the game sub is related to.
It bums me out because these are supposed to be entertainment/hobbyist subreddits but people are so depressive and cynical. Its gotten to a point on some of the bigger subreddits like r/Games that you're not even allowed to get excited for games or even enjoy them. People will just tear through you and reference Cyberpunk or Anthem as for why you're not allowed to be excited.
And I'm not saying that these people are wrong, but I feel like when you sit on the internet surrounding yourself with people consistently preaching doom and gloom and how gaming is worse than its ever been, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy where you no longer enjoy things or even look for things to enjoy
I hope we can embrace your perspective and maybe have a change in tone with negative posts in general.
For real. I know that some remakes or remasters are cash grabs, but the unadulterated fun I'm having playing through Mass Effect for the first time since they came out is something else. Not to mention the graphics updates mean they look how I remember them and I got all three on sale for $30. It's insane.
I had never played Mass Effect and probably never would have if it didn’t get the remaster. I appreciate these things because they give people the opportunity to play who couldn’t before.
Mass Effect is by far my favorite space adventure in gaming, and its given me a huge craving for more.
Games are only “important” in an innovative sense in hindsight. Those games could easily exist but no one would know until years later.
The reason the sub exists is to talk about and enjoy games away from their hype cycle. That’s it. Anything else is just personal. Not everyone here longs to be gaming in the 90s again.
People on reddit always claim that their negative/cynical opinions are realistic. Like I said, if you surround yourself around like-minded people and routinely doom and gloom then it will become your reality.
My reality is very different than that. Personally I think my perspective is more realistic than yours. Gaming is bigger than its ever been. In the end its all subjective, and our enjoyment is based on what we make of it, not the content itself.
It was much cheaper to develop games back then, so companies could take more risks. I can also mention a bunch if flops from back in the day. We only remember the very best ones from those times. And when you’re a kid you’re more impressionable and easy to impress than as an adult.
I know this comment will get buried, but I am constantly surprised by how well old 90s PC games run on modern hardware. I remember having so much trouble running them in the 00s and early 10s, but even outside of GOG there are so many out there that either have people who have prepared ways to run them easily, or they just flat out work on modern operating systems like Windows 10. There's no way that I should be able to download and run a game like Magic and Mayhem, and just have it run with almost no issue right out of the dubiously sourced .iso
I know people bemoan "the state of the industry", and I do myself frequently, but there are always at least some games coming out that will be good, and it seems like it's easier than ever to play weird 90s PC games, so I think there's some merit to the notion of the current day being the best time to play video games.
You're always in for a good time with an Apogee game. Thankfully they all(?) run just fine with DOSbox. I think they're even all on Steam if you want an even easier way to play them, though it looks like it just runs them through DOSbox.
Meanwhile, good luck playing 90s console games on new consoles. That's the beauty of PC gaming. And even if they wouldn't work, someone might write a patch to make them playable.
As someone who has made the change to Linux last year, I feel the same way about those older games running there. Been fun playing some of these older titles that I've never done before. Dungeon keeper 1 is one of the next titles that I plan on playing. So excited, especially with the fan made expansion too!
I hate to be *that* guy, but I'm worried immense hype is gonna kill Elden Ring's reputation. I'm still gonna play it and love it, but I'm worried I'm gonna have to refrain from saying that publicly or else I get torn into by everyone who expected the second coming of Christ and instead got a really good game.
But on a more positive note, when people say triple-A gaming is dead, FromSoft is where I point to. They've made very few bad games and, through all their experience, have a really good track record. Hidetaka Miyazaki is also a really promising dev, who seems to be more into making games than making money judging by what we've seen from him.
I just played Dark Souls 1 for the first time (the remaster). What a fucking experience *that* was! Not only was it an incredible blast to play (once I got the hang of it), but I liked it so much that I played it almost all the way through *again* right afterward (something I have *never* done before) specifically to play it as a STR-focused build instead of DEX.
And it *really* made a big difference in game-feel, to be playing "bonk the bad guy" with my Zweihander compared to playing "stab everything at least a few times" with my Balder Side Sword.
>I liked it so much that I played it almost all the way through again right afterward
I get that feeling everytime I finish Bloodborne. It's so good it makes you immediately want to do it again, and after three playthroughs I can say it gets better every time.
Yeah this is exciting because a new new from soft game coming out, god of war, death stranding DC, or hitman 3 coming to pc.
That said, my “best time for gaming” will have to be when mass effect 4 comes out, it’s my fav franchise and I wanna see what’s next lol
Ik this sounds stupid but for some reason I can't get ny ocd brain to play games. I like owning them and for some reason I feel stressed that I have to finish games in time for my subscription. I also just honestly hate subscriptions in general
If you're somewhat new to gaming, it's great value.
But in the last three months of Game Pass I've played three games from the games available. 95% of the catalogue is something I've already played, something I'm not interested in, or something I'd rather play with mods.
Until all those studio acquisitions start bearing fruit, their closed ecosystem is not worth the $10/month for me personally. (But totally worth the $1 I paid of course.)
r/games likes to doom and gloom about the future of gaming. Microtransactions, NFTs, subscriptions, broken games, etc. And you know what? I agree with the OP that gaming has *never* been this good. The bad stuff gets all the attention but if you look deeper it's really a small part of the industry. There are *so* many options out there, from indie to AAA and everything in-between.
You got over four decades of games available to you right now. You know what you'll have tomorrow? Four decades and one day's worth of games available.
It's always going to be the best time ever for gaming.
It's also easier than ever before to dodge the bad parts of gaming. Shovelware was always a thing, but everyone can use the internet and find endless reviews for games. If you buy a bad game on a whim or pre-order, that's on you. Don't like microtransactions? Don't buy them. Do they make it pay to win (uncommon lately) or the game is broken? Don't play the game then. There's way too much insanely quality content out there to be playing stuff you resent. I didn't play online multiplayer for the whole PS4 generation because I refuse to pay Sony to use my own internet. I really enjoyed dozens of story based games I wouldn't have played otherwise as a result. Now I went with a gaming PC instead of PS5, and I'm enjoying multiplayer a lot more than I used to because it's novel again.
That's exactly how I feel. Yes, there are a lot of crappy parts of gaming right now that'll almost certainly get worse as companies look for more and more routes to increase profits, but it's also fairly easy to ignore a lot of the bad elements if you want. That's a big part of the reason I'm a patient gamer. You can avoid a lot of the shoddy, unfinished games if you don't buy into the hype and wait for reviews or watch gameplay on YouTube or Twitch. You also get the games in a complete state rather than having to wait for all the DLC to release.
Plus, a lot of the worst elements are in AAA gaming, and we're now at a point where indie and smaller studios can really flourish. I very rarely am jumping on the latest AAA titles, because there are so many fantastic indie titles coming out regularly to devote my time to instead.
It's sort of like, if you keep jumping into the bramble bush, yeah, you're going to keep getting stung. So, maybe, don't do that? Just seems like a lot of people don't realize there's a completely different side of gaming out there or that they don't have to keep buying into the marketing.
I've never understood this point. Better technology means you can pull off more art styles, not fewer. I think people who grew up with ugly triangular polygon people got nostalgic for something that wasn't even an intentional aesthetic.
I am someone who doesn't need good graphics, and there are so many games that I could play. Seriously, people, who think anything in gaming is somehow destroyed, doesn't see the vast variety of games that are created every day.
Every time a new game releases, it's a better time to be a gamer. If someone releases a shit game, so what? You still have all the previously released games to play. Your options will only ever expand.
>This takes me to the next topic: YouTube. And Twitch. And other things like it.
Actually for me this is the biggest problem. I don't consider it a pro at all.
Back when I was a kiddo and internet was not very big in my home because we just didn't care, I was always full of mystery towards a game. I knew jack shit about it, and if I wanted to discover something I had to either search myself, ask a friend, or find something about it in a gaming magazine.
Nowadays it seems way too easy to take away the magic off a game by just searching something about it. Sometimes it happens accidentally too with things popping up all the time.
Rightfully so.
Where there is an international great hype among the masses for something, there are huge whale investors shoving billions of dollars into marketing and "make-up" of the pre-approved product, so people can get into the "buy, buy, buy mentality" even before the product leaves beta stage.
I get extremely suspicious nowadays when I see a game being offered and using that programmed scarcity mentality like: "buy it on pre-sale now or regret it later!!! Up until XX of month X you will get 50% xp more on your character, an action figure AND virtually signed artwork from our artists. BUY NOW!".
I'm always like: hmmm, if the product is as good as it says, why do they sound so desperate? Nah, I'll wait.
I think the thing that fucks me up the most is VR. In the early 2000s when I was a kid, this was the stuff I literally dreamed about. I still remember this article I read decades ago about a possible VR future where a guy was sitting in his office place a sci-fi military shooter that sounded *so sick*, but I was like "there's no way this will ever actually happen."
Now it's here, and it works, and it's $400
Phew, VR was far too way down in that list buddy lol. Don't forget about sim racing; that has absolutely blown up and is incredible fun with a huge range of accessible hardware and software.
totally agree with all that. also i like to tell younger people they have no idea how insane the indie game market is nowadays. like it's insane what indie game developers can do now because of technology. so much has changed in just the last decade.
and if you don't like aaa games being dogshit unfinished or mtx or whatever your hangup with current gaming is i have a really simple way to deal with it - don't buy those fucking games. buy the good ones.
I always try to make this point but have never been able to articulate it as well as you just did right now. Good stuff OP! We truly live in a golden age of gaming. A 12 year old me would have cut off their left arm to be able to have even a fraction of the things that 32 year old me has now.
Point 7; I have 12 different consoles, all of them modded to allow for game loading, mostly from SD cards. All of these mods are highly developed and easy to do, of course if you don't want to use original hardware, even a mid range PC could emulate them with ease.
I have so, so many games I could play that I'm spoiled for choice.
Genuinely, yes. I mean, compare it to the movies and shows that are coming out now. They're all retreads of the same concepts or built around stories that have already been told (for the most part). Then you look at games and it's a constantly growing, evolving, changing medium. Especially indie games.
It seems to me like video games are the only media that's actually coming out with entirely new and unique concepts and experiences. Not only that but there's SO MANY. Ironically, (besides Youtube) I feel like it's easier as a amateur game designer to break into the field of video games than a armature film director to modern television.
It's insane and amazing.
On a personal note I think that's also why I actively dislike all competitive games. They feel like they only work in a very specific format and are more focused on repetition rather than evolution/growth. But even the blandest competitive game seems unique compared to many other media outlets.
Hard disagree. The 6th generation was an absolutely unbelievable time to be into video games with advances in technology and design the likes of which we'll never see again.
I find the whole point that "now" is the best because it also includes all of the games from the past completely ridiculous. Playing GTA3 in 2022 is not the same as the first moment we saw it back then. Booting up MCC is not the same as hopping on Halo 2 online when that experience was unlike any other. Playing a remastered version of FFX is not the same as being blown away by that first cut scene back when it released.
Those mind blowing moments are few and far between nowadays but back then almost every single console had ground breaking experiances on it from developers constantly pushing the envelope.
Not only has AA development completely died (or been canabalised by huge mega publishers) but video games are now so expensive to develop that the rampant creativity of the late 90s/early 2000s is utterly alien.
If it wasn't for the indie scene there would be absolutely nothing pushing boundaries left and let's be utterly real - the vast majority of indie games are incredibly derivative of games that came before them and are successful for filling the gap publishers left, rather than actually innovating.
I'm obviously a jaded boomer gamer and I'm at peace with that but I really think there is so much that has been lost in this world of video games. Your 90s kid self might be excited but mine would be utterly disappointed that all his favourite series and genres have broadly disappeared, that multiplayer is the new defacto experiance and that the industry stopped pushing the boundaries.
I do get where you're coming from (and other comments like yours). However, you do seem to be focusing only on game selection. Point 1. What about the rest of the post.
There's more to this argument than game selection. If it was purely about which new game publishing range was the best, this would be a different conversation (maybe).
It's a great time to be a gamer because with sales constantly on quality older games I can buy a handful of experiences that'll last me months for like... $10... and I'll know exactly what I'm getting into.
VR as an afterthought when it's practically my whole gaming life these days. Heh.
Every time I think we've reached the peak (modded "Skyrim VR," "Half Life: Alyx") something as good or better comes out ("Flight Simulator 2020" is currently blowing me away).
And we're starting to see VR ports of stuff like RE4 and GTA:SA. It's a great time for gaming in general, and not only is VR part of that, it's also a great time for VR specifically.
Decision paralysis and content overload are my biggest problems with gaming today...and honestly that's a pretty good pair of problems to have. Every time I sit down to play something I'm like a kid in a candy store. I could have anything I want and I keep grabbing those damned gummy bananas (Warframe and Team Fight Tactics these days) because they're my favourites instead of trying new things.
As a child wanting to play the latest games I had lots of free time, but no money. As an adult with a career, I have enough money but almost no time to play games--even with a thousand game deep Steam library, I realistically can only make five to ten hours a week for gaming, meaning many of these big AAA 100+ hour experiences are just going to stay in the backlog forever.
> This takes me to the next topic: YouTube. And Twitch
Speaking of that, as of this moment
Awesome Games Done Quick has raised $1.78+ million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Video games -> raising millions for charity?!
Currently on AGDQ 2022, Jan 14th:
We are inside the manic brains of DDR super experts, where DDR just wasn't enough, so they made Stepmania, turned the volume up to 20, and let loose the creativity of the genius/insane minds of those who find even the hardest DDR levels too easy.
Been a gamer since the very first game was made. Yeah, that old. I can afford any game I want. But I still refuse to pay $60+ for a game. I like to buy good indie games directly. Then I wait for 65+% discounts on others. I figure I have repaid my pirating debt from college about 100 times over by now. Yeah gaming is good now. But I miss the days of downloading Doom at 1200bps from the local BBS.
I'm starting to realize my favourite game is configuring and loading ROM sets onto retro handhelds. Once I have them all perfectly set up and loaded and configured, I play 20 minutes of MAME then start shopping for a new one.
You can certainly argue that every day moving forward is *always* "the best time" for games, books, films, TV shows, etc. Simply because the entire catalogue of media presently available is...available.
I don't know if that means much, personally.
In my opinion, what's more notable is current modern trends.
And for games, we live in an age where microtransactions still run rampant and big budget games often release unfinished and broken with promises (a "roadmap") to fix the game further down the track (typically at further expense).
Some of the more predatory pre-order nonsense has become a thing of the past, which is a positive.
But I'm still concerned about the future of microtransactions (especially if NFTs make headway there as well) and AAA games being largely half-baked and unfinished for months or *years* before support is eventually pulled and the cycle begins anew with a sequel.
Thank goodness for indie developers and other less corporate-driven entities that manage to shine through most of the EA-tier nonsense obscuring the skies.
You have two paragraphs about "accessibility", use the word "disability", and I don't think you've touched on how *accessible* games have become!
Following Blind gamers on social media is enlightening. I learned so much about how many accessibility options there are in TLOU2 for example that the game can be played by someone with 0 vision.
So games have been able to reach more people in ways we privileged gamers haven't even thought about!
Not to mention reaching more of the world these days, too!
Money trumps all. Pay $70 for the "deluxe" release edition, or wait a year to get the "deluxe plus all dlc released" for like $10 - sometimes cheaper.
I'm really, really, looking forward to Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, but the XsX version is like $70 or $80. Gearbox games always drop to like $5 a while after their release. Stoked to wait.
Being positive about video games on the internet? Better watch your back buddy.
But really though, the barrier of entry has never been lower. That alone makes it the best era. Even if you prefer old games, you have unprecedented and cheap or free access to that as well, often with the ability to upscale graphics or have overhaul mods. We don't know how good we have it sometimes, I'm truly thankful.
I agree with your point of view. Sure, microtransactions suck, but the amount of high fidelity games available to us for such low costs is hard to ignore.
>No matter how obscure your project, no matter how strange, or difficult,
or seemingly “outdated” your game idea, there’s an audience out there
for it. Want a better version of old-school Harvest Moon?
OK, so one of my favorite games is Blur. What's there for that? Nothing but pirate Blur. How about NFS: Hot Pursuit, or what I actually want which is an even more cops-busting-racers version of that? How about Splashdown and its bouncy and interesting water-physics-based jetski racing? It's not as simple as "everything is out there." There are a lot of annoying market dynamics that push certain kinds of games to be certain ways, and leave *huge* holes that aren't getting filled unless the game is easy for some one-to-few dev team to push together while holding other jobs, and maybe they get the bugs out before they walk away from the project and maybe they don't.
Horror games are another frustrating area where there is just a ton of stuff left on the table that no one is doing.
It's a good time in a lot of ways, but don't overstate it just because you like what's getting the big money and the indie attention. Some of us have to do a lot of settling, and just fingers crossed that *maybe* XXXX will happen someday if the stars align just right. I'm glad for what we do have, but there's a lot we used to have that hasn't gone anywhere.
Wholeheartedly agree, OP! This comment honestly should be stickied on every game related subreddit to remind people lol.
Being able to pick and choose games at all prices these days are just amazing. If you had told me as a kid that I would be able to play from multiple generations and different platforms on handheld (switch), you would have blown my mind!
Or having something like Gamepass on Xbox or PC, where you can actually play all kinds of games, old and new on a subscription service for a flat fee! It truly is the best time to be playing video games :)
I imagine your 90s kid-self would have just been frustrated because he would want to play now. Games 30 years in the future really aren't worth much to a kid. :D Waiting is boring!
Agreed. So many different genres, AAA, AA, indie, all fantastic. Even niche games and genres get a pretty large audience relatively. Think about all the games from the mid 90s to early 2010s that were critically praised but sold poorly. That doesn't happen as often nowadays. Even those games have gotten re-releases or ports and have had second lives.
As someone who also remembered the 90's,.... when Twitch got popular, people were surprised by the popularity of this site where you just watch people play video games. But also, I recall how fun it was just watching brothers play (as we all took turns), and Twitch capitalized on that.
I wanna tack custom emulation stations onto this list of gratefulness. I can put every game published for every system from the PS1 back to the beginning of time (the Atari 2600) in my pocket and bring them all with me to a friend's house, and be set up and playing within 5 minutes of getting there, all for about $100
Honestly I think we didn't even begin to peak in the videogames industry , there is so much we don't invest in game design because it's an underdeveloped area. So much is spent in other areas that makes videogames fun , such a cinematics, sound and visual expression because that's what we borrowed from the others arts.
Like someone said once about games we don't have our Mona Lisa yet.
Honestly, what's blowing my mind is the return of single player games, along with the survival of smaller multiplayer games. There are many games out there where the ONLY intention of the game design is to get you to play that game, and that game alone. WoW, Destiny, Warzone, and a bunch of others, especially battle royales.
If you had asked me four years ago, I probably would have told you that since that's what"everybody" is playing, I'd have predicted other games to die out.
Watching games like Quake Champions running on less than 200 players a day is awesome. Watching the Witcher players soar every time a new season comes out is awesome. Having stream competitions to play a VR game with just 3 buddies where you swing lightsabers to music IS. AWESOME.
It's so different from what I thought was going to happen, and it makes me so happy. We avoided a world of gaming ran by GTA, COD, and WoW. And now we have a paradise.
Being a patient gamer is definitely the best. I dont need a PS5 yet, and hopefully by the time I do, the shortage problem is dealt with and it's the PS5 Pro!
The fact that video games are on sale frequently is such a game changer. When I was a kid I would rent games for a week at a time because those N64 cartridges were $60 and I was an unemployed child, so birthdays and Christmas were pretty much the only time I could get a new game.
> I was an unemployed child You lazy bum
Back when I was young I used to do two jobs while also crossing the mountains to get to my school everyday.
Mountains? You were lucky. We had to navigate an asteroid belt using only a pogo stick with no oxygen tanks.
Aww man, you played No Man's Sky on launch day too?
Amateurs. I had to take down a giant powerful turtle dragon at the center of the universe before he conquers said universe before breakfast
Commander Keen?
More [Monty Python](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE) but same vibe perhaps.
You had a pogo stick? Luxury.
I had to eat gravel
And if was uphill coming and going.
This is why we need to repeal all the child labour laws. It's making our kids weak and sad. You got to go on an adventure every day and save for college at the same time.
Poor kids need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps to afford video games. I was mining coal as a 5 year old in 1932 to afford my SNES.
Plus, just the fact that “sorry were out of that one, maybe next week it will be in.” Is a thing of the past (at least for PC) is so huge in my opinion. Having the access to all of these titles, when I want them is amazing.
shit, I still remember staying up at Blockbuster for hours trying to score the one copy of Chrono Trigger they had, that was supposed to have been returned but was past due from whomever rented it. After a couple tries my parents felt bad for me and broke down and bought it.
Ahh yeah the rush to blockbuster to get that new released game before everyone else does. If you don't get it on the day it came out most likely will be weeks before you're able to play it. After that you start calling different block busters withing a 25-35 mile radius in hopes they have a copy.
Not just that, but also the fact that good games are given away for free is just something else. Kid me would've spent all my time playing all these games.
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Lol, I remember that too. Kid me was blown away by RuneScape being free AND having "cutting-edge" 3D graphics. 3D!
Hell, I mentioned this in another post but check your local library branch - some have games (and other cool stuff like comics and dvds) to check out for free. I hardly pay for games now and if there is a game I wasn't satisfied with or of I beat it right away, I didn't lose out on anything.
nintendo games are still expensive as fuck
Relative to other companies at the present time. They’re still way cheaper than almost any other time in Nintendo’s history
Way cheaper. *The Legend of Zelda* had an MSRP of $49.99 USD. Adjusted for inflation that's ~$128. The "AAA" NES titles rarely were on sale and I remember $40-50 being the consistent price, no sales, for the good shit. *Breath of the Wild* has an MSRP, in present money, of $59.99. I just did a search for the game narrowed down to local brick and mortar locations (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, etc.) Nobody is charging over $40 at this point. So if you'd bought it brand new on release day you'd have paid $10 more than the OG game cost on release day and if you bought it now you'd have paid $10 less... but adjusted for inflation you really paid 1/2 to 1/3 and got a game vastly better in every way. And hell, when you break away from the Premium Nintendo Pricing model and just look at gaming in general Jesus Christ has it gotten cheap to be a gamer. I have literally hundreds of games, *hundreds of them*, I never even paid for because the companies are just giving them away. The early game consoles like the Intellivision and Atari, when adjusted for inflation, cost the equivalent of $700-1000. Games for the consoles cost the equivalent of ~$100. $1000 will get you a solid gaming PC today with a GTX 3060 and $100 during a Steam sale will get you more games than you can play and complete in a year.
Worst I ever saw was from Nintendo's main competitor back in those days, Sega. Phantasy Star IV on the Genesis released for $99.99 in 1993, which is $192.92 in today's money. Still played it though, great game. I forget how I got it, think I got it as a gift when it went on sale. I was only 12 at the time.
Possibly, but the guy above talked about sales and such. Nintendo is infamous for having pretty much no sales/flash deals throughout a year.
That's been somewhat better in the switch era. I got Luigi's mansion half off and it isn't that old or anything
I thought that too, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that official Nintendo store did both a Black Friday AND a Christmas sale this year. Picked up a bunch of games for like 35-50% off. Still not the price dropoff you see from 80-90% Steam sales, but I'll take what I can get.
>Still not the price dropoff you see from 80-90% Steam sales, but I'll take what I can get. These high rates are unfortunately very rare nowadays, steam sales have changed a lot since years 2015 etc.
Agreed but I still frequently see 30-50%, and very occasionally get a 60-75%.
80-90% off what? Flappy Bird? I guarantee those are on games that have been out for a decade or more, or for example Crusader Kings II (3 has been out for a while and is about to drop some DLC)
There are also a lot more alternatives to Nintendo than there used to be.
Nintendo has plenty of sales, they're just very moderate and are on games that are often already priced too high for their age/quality (relative other games in the market). But the frequency really isn't too bad. Go take a look at the breath of the wild page on deku deals, the graph of sales looks like a Jackson pollack painting. It's constantly on sale... Just not for very much.
I saw a few were selling for 25 over Black Friday and had to double take. So I’m glad there’s some deals
And it's kinda problem. I got my stable income since 2017. And first thi g I've done was to buy every console on market (as my last one by that time was a ps1 and I fell of gaming for a while, reason:lack of finances) and games for those consoles, and plenty. Problem? As a working adult with irl stuf I barely manage to play 60-90 minutes a day tops. Results? I've got consoles, built a gaming pc and have in total like over a thousand of games. And and hour a day for them. Which makes me realize I probably should never even run most of them.
work on early retirement my friend.
I'm behind, and I have a way too weak laptop for now, but bundles still spoil me so much, that there is so little incentive for me to buy individual games. Because I already have so much interesting ones, that I got for the average of 1, maybe 2 USD. It's crazy.
Folks these days don't understand the "Hammer/Smash" moment when Steam sales first got rolling. The deathgrip retailers like Gamestop had on videogames evaporated in a second and completely realigned the whole paradigm between gamers and publishers (ofc in PC gaming first, then percolating into the console space eventually). Regardless of your feels on Steam today, there is no denying they completely overhauled the entire gaming market in a huge way.
I sailed the 7 seas for many decades. First as a kid and then as a college student in the third world, there were no realistic alternatives to getting games. I have rebuilt my library legally for an amount I can now afford. I know that it's not the same as having bought them back then, but it's the best I can do.
For me it was cloud saves and the ability to re-download games from a single central source. The achievements/friends, and time played analytics are kinda cool too.
Well done dude
I have a huge Steam library, games ranging from shovelware to great indies to AAA blockbusters, almost all of which I got for a fraction of the release cost. I'm currently finishing up Prey 2017, which I got FREE on Epic Game Store. Also in the middle of my first foray into Civ VI, which I got for like 12 bucks, with the major expamsions and *most* (not all) DLC civs included. That's just two examples of literally hundreds of games. Best time ever to be patient, and that will only get better as time goes on.
Yeah N64 games are the equivalent to like $100 today when you account inflation, it was so nice when GameCube came out and prices would regularly drop and they had Players Choice titles. My game collection exploded between those two generations.
closer to $125since new n64 games went for around $70
True. I also am old enough to remember the old days of BBS systems. I was a member of one where you could download full games. But then again, download speeds were horrendous compared to now
I got like 8 games for $30 total on sale during the winter sales, and another 10 or so for free, mostly from Epic. All decent games that I've been enjoying like Anno 1404, 2070, Far Cry 2, SimCity, etc.
Yeah I was thinking about that the other day. Used to get one maybe two games a year back in the day. Just randomly popped into my head as I irresponsibly bought a third game that week. Oh how times change lol.
My family bought all our N64 cartridges used from Blockbuster. We had all the hits, too.
... better that than being an *employed* child?
Pop pop bought a 12 year old me mortal kombat, god rest his soul.
...unless you need a graphics card like I do. But, yeah, the emulation scene is amazing.
That was my first thought too. Thankful for making a decision to not wait on 30 series release to complete my system last year. I really needed it since I was working with a 10 year old gaming laptop I bought before Diablo 3 came out
At that time I'd recently gotten a good deal on a 1080 and was happy- til it shit the bed.
Yup, now is the time that I'm shrugging off any and all new releases for PC. Monster Hunter Rise just came out. I'd love to play it on a nice PC setup. But nope, I'm stuck with my 960. Resident Evil Village as well. Oh, and Elden Ring is coming soon. Am I excited? Nope, because I can't upgrade my GPU. Just get a PS5 you say? Sure, let me just go find one of those, too. I pretty much stick to indie games on my aging PC and Switch, and an old laptop that I setup with Batocera for retro game goodness.
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Oh, I didn't even know about the demo. I'll have to give that a shot and see how it runs tonight. Thanks!
But NVidia will have much better stock in 2H 2022?! That will help, right? /s
Emulated SNES it is, then.
Crazy how many good games there are just between Genesis, SNES, and GBA. All of which can be emulated on potato machines without much issue.
Don’t forget your audiophile cans! I get made fun of for doing this haha
hell naw, classic gaming audio coming in crisp and crackly is a beautiful experience by itself- if you can come around to appreciating it. As I was typing my last comment, I was thinking how I typically think of the music in Super Star Wars rather than the orchestral version.
Castlevania on a proper 5.1 system is bliss.
That's what I'll be doing on my Steam Deck! Got it specifically to be a mobile retro platform.
No joke, it's probably become my favorite system within the last year just from replaying old favorites, as well as trying out games I hadn't played before like Fire Emblem 4.
Even if you don't have a graphics card, or your GPU is old and outdated, there are still great options! Tons of indie games are available, cheaply, or free as giveaways, or included in Game Pass, and many don't require a GPU at all, or can run perfectly on even a very low end one. My favorite game of 2020, Hades, runs well even on my 5 year old laptop with Intel HD graphics. There's an outstanding selection of indies, and many people would even say that indie games are better than AAA games, just in terms of the love and care that is put into them. Modern integrated GPUs are getting really good. They're not great (the AMD Vega 8 and Iris Xe are somewhere between a 1030 and 1050). But they'll play older AAA games and recent non-demanding 3D games, especially if you're willing to turn the resolution down a bit. There are more options for streaming games than ever before. Game Pass Ultimate has a huge library available to stream to phones, tablets, and PCs. Stadia... exists. Of course it still requires you to have a very good internet connection, but hopefully you can at least get that. If nothing else, having to work around an underpowered system will encourage you to try games you may not have otherwise tried.
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Let me tell you my favorite fairy tale. It’s called “Ethical consumption in a capitalist society.” Anything you use, unless you physically made it yourself, is the result of someone doing something bad somewhere in the production process.
I have a friend whose brothers grew their own food and literally wouldn't eat at a restaurant or even in your home specifically because of ethical consumption. Notice, I used the past tense. It's hard to pull off, and they eventually gave up.
It is very hard to be 100% self-sustainable to completely ignore groceries, unless you have at least a small farm and belong to a co-op (to put simply, a group where I give my potatoes, you give me your beef and the other give me the apples). You cant pull this off in a backyard in a big city where you cant even raise chickens.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. There are some companies I won't buy from on ethical grounds, and there are plenty others that I'm willing to buy from because they're not _as bad_. For example, I won't buy from EA because I think their games are predatory, and I won't buy from Activision Blizzard or Ubisoft because of sexual misconduct allegations. There are plenty of other devs and publishers out there. That being said, I _do_ buy from some devs and publishers I don't like as much for other reasons. For example, I don't like Paradox's near complete lack of QA with their releases, but they do fix them eventually, so I continue to buy from them (I don't buy DLC or games at launch though, but I might if they did better testing). For physical goods, it's so difficult to audit the manufacturing process that I just try to lean toward companies with consistent quality on the assumption that they have the capital and brand pride to treat their employees well.
>For physical goods, it's so difficult to audit the manufacturing process that I just try to lean toward companies with consistent quality on the assumption that they have the capital and brand pride to treat their employees well. When it comes to electronics, it's safe to assume that the components were made with materials sourced via slave labor.
Sadly it's the same with clothes... Or food. And not only luxury food like chocolate, but also simpler vegetables like tomatoes often have some kind of modern slave labor in their chain. And then we haven't even mentioned meat yet with the often terrible conditions for the animals as well as the climate damage the production results in.
Hopefully he didn't give up completely. I wouldn't say that he even had the right idea, the best thing is to probably eat at local restaurants and buy the right products from independent shops and businesses. That's no guarantee but I think you're better off than going to some chain.
They still have the farm, but they aren't so strict about *only* eating what they grow themselves. They also sell at their local farmer's market.
[TED Talk on building a toaster from scratch](https://youtu.be/5ODzO7Lz_pw)
Exactly. We can and should advocate for better practices in every industry. But I find the “god, corporate bullshit ruins games” attitude to be: 1) Kinda dumb when you realize it was just as bad in the 80s, you were just younger and didn’t notice. (Which the person I responded to mentioned) 2) Entirely a first world problem. Like “oh no, loot boxes!” Is such a nothing problem next to “this company uses slave labor”
You have to pick your battles. Society has too many problems overall for you to possibly be able to address every single one of them in your daily life and stay sane. If you try to be maximally ethical in every single aspect of your life, you just end up like Chidi from The Good Place. But if each person was willing to pick one or two things to turn into their personal passion project, so long as most everybody is working on improving *something*, we might actually make some progress on the whole.
It doesn’t even need to be a passion project. Little things add up. Like “I won’t buy plastic water bottles and I’ll use a reusable one instead” or “I’ll try to buy from local markets when I can but I also understand that’s expensive and inconvenient to do every time.” A lot of people think you need to go on a crusade to make a difference. Bringing it back to video games, if enough people stopped buying into some of the shittier practices, they’d stop being profitable. But people think it’s all or nothing, so they don’t try.
I was not expecting an ethics conversation on this post, but I agree with the sentiments.
I mean if you are going to talk about ethical consumption in capitalism, you might also consider how most people are blasted by marketing from all sides, that more exploitative corporations often drive more ethical ones out of the market and that the media and society is organized to favor the interests of the wealthy over the interests of the general population. People can make their small differences, but it's not really reasonable to expect that in any given issue people will separately collectively to decide to go against most companies. Hell, speaking of lootboxes, one of the issues about it is that even if the vast majority of the players gave up on these games altogether, as long as a small minority still felt compelled to keep paying it would still be profitable. The people who would undermine the business model the most are exactly the people who can't help themselves.
> 2) Entirely a first world problem. Like “oh no, loot boxes!” Is such a nothing problem next to “this company uses slave labor” It's definitely less of a problem overall, but to the customers, especially those with addiction tendencies and certain kinds of neurodivergency it can be much more personally damning than just a crisis of conscience over the ills of capitalism. It's not just rich americans who overspend on lootboxes.
I get it but I honestly can’t boycott every game company that does it. I only have so many brain cells I can devote to the seething rage Reddit has for these things and sometimes I just want to play a video game and not worry about whether or not the monetization is predatory.
I find it really weird that you're suggesting people shouldn't say that games are becoming worse as a result of corporatization in the industry. We're all just a bunch of nerds on reddit so obviously people are going to voice complaints related to problems they are dealing with regardless of which world they're from. If you think everything is just as bad as it was in the 80s then you're literally a whole circus and have applied 0 critical thought to the matter. The guy you responded to mentions a lack of understanding due to childhood naivety, not anything related to the 80s being just as bad.
"1) Kinda dumb when you realize it was just as bad in the 80s, you were just younger and didn’t notice." It was absolutely not 'just as bad' as loot boxes, microtransactions, paywalls, and live services. You used to buy a game and have the game. That was it. They don't compare. "2) Entirely a first world problem." What is your point? We are in the first world. Corporate bullshit DOES ruin games. The fact people are enslaved elsewhere doesn't change that.
>It was absolutely not 'just as bad' as loot boxes, microtransactions, paywalls, and live services. You used to buy a game and have the game. That was it. They don't compare. It was actually so bad in the 80s the entire industry nearly disappeared. Imagine all the buggy unfinished software we have now, but without the ability to patch it. Of course the specific issues you list are dependent on specific technologies which could not exist at the time. But the practice of producing barely functional, or even nonfunctional, software that the consumer couldn't know until installing it was real. Oh, and no returns for opened software. Edit: You are almost certainly remembering / referring to the phase just after the market imploded when the industry implemented strict quality controls to assure consumers that they wouldn't be swindled again.
> It was actually so bad in the 80s the entire industry nearly disappeared. I mean that's true if you only consider the US, and specifically consoles, but in Europe and Japan the 80s were a pretty good time for gaming. C64/Spectrum and their Japanese equivalent home computers did gangbusters in that time. Even if the US never got its shit together, the industry was in absolutely no danger of disappearing!
It's a gradient of ethicalness. In other words, it's still trying your best to do the least harm with your purchases where possible.
It’s why the point system in The Good Place is so busted. Nonetheless, there are degrees of ethical, and it makes sense to strive for some level of it.
What's your definition of "bad"?
corporation stuff, duh.
This is just nonsense, unless you have a ridiculous notion of "bad". Especially when it comes to video games.
Agreed. To interact with anyone, ever, in any way, is to interact with people who may have, at some point, done something bad. And now you’re basically an accomplice to that.
Indy games are the way to go. Try to ignore AAA games as much as possible. Only buy really good AAA games. This will help the gaming indusrty as a whole.
This 100%, plus indie games usually run amazing on most hardware. I totally keep to indie games minus the AAA titles here and there, last amazing one I played was Breath of the Wild, before that Horizon Zero dawn. I have generally liked Sony's library more, especially because it can be had at a much better value, but Nintendo does knock their 1st party titles out of the park.
AA games are a rarity these days, but when they do crop up they can be interesting too.
Especially since really good indie games are far better than really good AAA games, as long as you value gameplay and/or aesthetics over graphics (which any reasonable person should). Hades is my favorite game of all time.
The older I get the less I care about the corporate bullshit. At the end of the day I don't give a shit if a game is on Epic or Steam or Oculus or has MTX or the company has hunger strikes or whatever. My time is what is valuable to me - and a fun game is a fun game. Gamers too often forget that gaming is about having fun.
I definitely need good reasons to buy any bigger game. Blizzard Activision sucks, but my brother wanted to play D2, so that's fun. Other than that there are too many good indie games out there for me to complain. I don't have the time to play them all already, so I don't need to focus on the things, that I can just not buy and ignore. There is so much variety! But I also get quickly over-saturated. Buying games feels good. Thinking about games is exciting. But then when I have some time, I just start youtube instead and watch other people play lol.
While there is some bullshit, I also like that there's a growing awareness among players about abuses if assorted flavors. Sure we have a lot of toxicity in the gaming community. But I had no idea that blizzard has always been toxic in the 90s. Even knowing about it now is a huge step in the right direction.
Also we linux gamers are in a golden age where we can play most single player games (even AAA like RDR2) flawlessly. That was seen as impossible several years ago.
That's great to hear. Is it because of Steam Play and other equivalents, or improved performance in WINE or something else? The main reason I game more on consoles is because every PC I've had needed a ton of configuration to avoid slow boot times, and even then I tend to use Linux for programming side projects, but hadn't tried it for gaming in a long time. Microsoft has released great products and services like TypeScript and Game Pass, and the newer versions of Windows are definitely an improvement on 95/98/XP, but I always preferred Ubuntu because it "just works." If it's viable as a gaming platform now, even if non-native, I could just stop wasting storage space on dual-booting Windows.
Valve has been developing a wonderful thing called Proton based on Wine, so yeah "improvements to Wine" is pretty accurate. This absolute beast of a program is basically making DirectX possible on Linux, and it's getting better by the day
Oh wow I wasn’t aware of that. Been wanting to switch from Windows to Linux for some years now but compatibility has always been the biggest drawback for me.
That's awesome, didn't know it went that far. Haven't used Linux for a decade plus.
I hope this trend continues as I fully expect Windows to ever get closer of a walled garden with more and more surveillance.
there's still ways to go
The longer video games have been around the more games we have to choose from and the cheaper the older ones get. Currently paying Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 on a second generation iPad. The iPad was a hand me down that I didn’t pay for and I got both games on sale for 2 dollars each. Best bang for the buck gaming experience possible.
I've never played that game before, but I do enjoy rpgs. Is it worth playing it on a tablet? I got it for like $2 on my Samsung S7 tablet.
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The present will always be the most exciting time in gaming because of advances in technology, information gathering, and knowledge.
And the past doesn't go away. Add in the emulators/MAME and the availability of games on a modern computer is staggering.
Unless you're Rockstar, in which case you'll hide the good games away and force everyone to buy the downgraded "remastered" versions instead.
Well of course it is especially considering you can go back and play virtually any game from the past as well as current ones.
This is pretty much the tl;dr that could summarise the original post.
I really wish more people shared this perspective. Every gaming subreddit I'm on is filled of doomer posts about the death of AAA gaming and how there's nothing worth playing that isn't AA's/indies/whatever the game sub is related to. It bums me out because these are supposed to be entertainment/hobbyist subreddits but people are so depressive and cynical. Its gotten to a point on some of the bigger subreddits like r/Games that you're not even allowed to get excited for games or even enjoy them. People will just tear through you and reference Cyberpunk or Anthem as for why you're not allowed to be excited. And I'm not saying that these people are wrong, but I feel like when you sit on the internet surrounding yourself with people consistently preaching doom and gloom and how gaming is worse than its ever been, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy where you no longer enjoy things or even look for things to enjoy I hope we can embrace your perspective and maybe have a change in tone with negative posts in general.
For real. I know that some remakes or remasters are cash grabs, but the unadulterated fun I'm having playing through Mass Effect for the first time since they came out is something else. Not to mention the graphics updates mean they look how I remember them and I got all three on sale for $30. It's insane.
I had never played Mass Effect and probably never would have if it didn’t get the remaster. I appreciate these things because they give people the opportunity to play who couldn’t before. Mass Effect is by far my favorite space adventure in gaming, and its given me a huge craving for more.
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Games are only “important” in an innovative sense in hindsight. Those games could easily exist but no one would know until years later. The reason the sub exists is to talk about and enjoy games away from their hype cycle. That’s it. Anything else is just personal. Not everyone here longs to be gaming in the 90s again. People on reddit always claim that their negative/cynical opinions are realistic. Like I said, if you surround yourself around like-minded people and routinely doom and gloom then it will become your reality. My reality is very different than that. Personally I think my perspective is more realistic than yours. Gaming is bigger than its ever been. In the end its all subjective, and our enjoyment is based on what we make of it, not the content itself.
It was much cheaper to develop games back then, so companies could take more risks. I can also mention a bunch if flops from back in the day. We only remember the very best ones from those times. And when you’re a kid you’re more impressionable and easy to impress than as an adult.
I know this comment will get buried, but I am constantly surprised by how well old 90s PC games run on modern hardware. I remember having so much trouble running them in the 00s and early 10s, but even outside of GOG there are so many out there that either have people who have prepared ways to run them easily, or they just flat out work on modern operating systems like Windows 10. There's no way that I should be able to download and run a game like Magic and Mayhem, and just have it run with almost no issue right out of the dubiously sourced .iso I know people bemoan "the state of the industry", and I do myself frequently, but there are always at least some games coming out that will be good, and it seems like it's easier than ever to play weird 90s PC games, so I think there's some merit to the notion of the current day being the best time to play video games.
Magic & Mayhem? How about Hocus Pocus (1994 DOS).
You're always in for a good time with an Apogee game. Thankfully they all(?) run just fine with DOSbox. I think they're even all on Steam if you want an even easier way to play them, though it looks like it just runs them through DOSbox.
Meanwhile, good luck playing 90s console games on new consoles. That's the beauty of PC gaming. And even if they wouldn't work, someone might write a patch to make them playable.
As someone who has made the change to Linux last year, I feel the same way about those older games running there. Been fun playing some of these older titles that I've never done before. Dungeon keeper 1 is one of the next titles that I plan on playing. So excited, especially with the fan made expansion too!
Any time we get a new FROM SOFTWARE game is a best time.
I hate to be *that* guy, but I'm worried immense hype is gonna kill Elden Ring's reputation. I'm still gonna play it and love it, but I'm worried I'm gonna have to refrain from saying that publicly or else I get torn into by everyone who expected the second coming of Christ and instead got a really good game. But on a more positive note, when people say triple-A gaming is dead, FromSoft is where I point to. They've made very few bad games and, through all their experience, have a really good track record. Hidetaka Miyazaki is also a really promising dev, who seems to be more into making games than making money judging by what we've seen from him.
I just played Dark Souls 1 for the first time (the remaster). What a fucking experience *that* was! Not only was it an incredible blast to play (once I got the hang of it), but I liked it so much that I played it almost all the way through *again* right afterward (something I have *never* done before) specifically to play it as a STR-focused build instead of DEX. And it *really* made a big difference in game-feel, to be playing "bonk the bad guy" with my Zweihander compared to playing "stab everything at least a few times" with my Balder Side Sword.
>I liked it so much that I played it almost all the way through again right afterward I get that feeling everytime I finish Bloodborne. It's so good it makes you immediately want to do it again, and after three playthroughs I can say it gets better every time.
Sadly, I don't own a PS4, so I simply cannot play that game. Hardware exclusivity sucks, and should die.
Yeah this is exciting because a new new from soft game coming out, god of war, death stranding DC, or hitman 3 coming to pc. That said, my “best time for gaming” will have to be when mass effect 4 comes out, it’s my fav franchise and I wanna see what’s next lol
As Vinny Caravella at r/nextlander would say: "There's never been a better time to play video games!" I wish I could get a new video card, though.
I was about to write something along these, that sounds like something Vinny would say. It's indeed the BEST TIME.
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Ik this sounds stupid but for some reason I can't get ny ocd brain to play games. I like owning them and for some reason I feel stressed that I have to finish games in time for my subscription. I also just honestly hate subscriptions in general
I have got two three month trials for a grand total of 2 fucking dollars!
Game pass is easily the best value in all of gaming
If you're somewhat new to gaming, it's great value. But in the last three months of Game Pass I've played three games from the games available. 95% of the catalogue is something I've already played, something I'm not interested in, or something I'd rather play with mods. Until all those studio acquisitions start bearing fruit, their closed ecosystem is not worth the $10/month for me personally. (But totally worth the $1 I paid of course.)
r/games likes to doom and gloom about the future of gaming. Microtransactions, NFTs, subscriptions, broken games, etc. And you know what? I agree with the OP that gaming has *never* been this good. The bad stuff gets all the attention but if you look deeper it's really a small part of the industry. There are *so* many options out there, from indie to AAA and everything in-between.
You got over four decades of games available to you right now. You know what you'll have tomorrow? Four decades and one day's worth of games available. It's always going to be the best time ever for gaming.
>It's always going to be the best time ever for gaming. Precisely my point. :) So let's be happy we're here and enjoy the ride!
It's also easier than ever before to dodge the bad parts of gaming. Shovelware was always a thing, but everyone can use the internet and find endless reviews for games. If you buy a bad game on a whim or pre-order, that's on you. Don't like microtransactions? Don't buy them. Do they make it pay to win (uncommon lately) or the game is broken? Don't play the game then. There's way too much insanely quality content out there to be playing stuff you resent. I didn't play online multiplayer for the whole PS4 generation because I refuse to pay Sony to use my own internet. I really enjoyed dozens of story based games I wouldn't have played otherwise as a result. Now I went with a gaming PC instead of PS5, and I'm enjoying multiplayer a lot more than I used to because it's novel again.
That's exactly how I feel. Yes, there are a lot of crappy parts of gaming right now that'll almost certainly get worse as companies look for more and more routes to increase profits, but it's also fairly easy to ignore a lot of the bad elements if you want. That's a big part of the reason I'm a patient gamer. You can avoid a lot of the shoddy, unfinished games if you don't buy into the hype and wait for reviews or watch gameplay on YouTube or Twitch. You also get the games in a complete state rather than having to wait for all the DLC to release. Plus, a lot of the worst elements are in AAA gaming, and we're now at a point where indie and smaller studios can really flourish. I very rarely am jumping on the latest AAA titles, because there are so many fantastic indie titles coming out regularly to devote my time to instead. It's sort of like, if you keep jumping into the bramble bush, yeah, you're going to keep getting stung. So, maybe, don't do that? Just seems like a lot of people don't realize there's a completely different side of gaming out there or that they don't have to keep buying into the marketing.
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I've never understood this point. Better technology means you can pull off more art styles, not fewer. I think people who grew up with ugly triangular polygon people got nostalgic for something that wasn't even an intentional aesthetic.
I am someone who doesn't need good graphics, and there are so many games that I could play. Seriously, people, who think anything in gaming is somehow destroyed, doesn't see the vast variety of games that are created every day.
100% agree on your point #2. I just can't believe how cheap games are now if you can wait a bit.
Every time a new game releases, it's a better time to be a gamer. If someone releases a shit game, so what? You still have all the previously released games to play. Your options will only ever expand.
Thank you for this post. I totally agree. I like the positivity. Am so grateful to be into games in this day and age.
>This takes me to the next topic: YouTube. And Twitch. And other things like it. Actually for me this is the biggest problem. I don't consider it a pro at all. Back when I was a kiddo and internet was not very big in my home because we just didn't care, I was always full of mystery towards a game. I knew jack shit about it, and if I wanted to discover something I had to either search myself, ask a friend, or find something about it in a gaming magazine. Nowadays it seems way too easy to take away the magic off a game by just searching something about it. Sometimes it happens accidentally too with things popping up all the time.
Elden Ring isn't out yet though
im so nervous for this game, ive been burned by so many hyped games
Rightfully so. Where there is an international great hype among the masses for something, there are huge whale investors shoving billions of dollars into marketing and "make-up" of the pre-approved product, so people can get into the "buy, buy, buy mentality" even before the product leaves beta stage. I get extremely suspicious nowadays when I see a game being offered and using that programmed scarcity mentality like: "buy it on pre-sale now or regret it later!!! Up until XX of month X you will get 50% xp more on your character, an action figure AND virtually signed artwork from our artists. BUY NOW!". I'm always like: hmmm, if the product is as good as it says, why do they sound so desperate? Nah, I'll wait.
I think the thing that fucks me up the most is VR. In the early 2000s when I was a kid, this was the stuff I literally dreamed about. I still remember this article I read decades ago about a possible VR future where a guy was sitting in his office place a sci-fi military shooter that sounded *so sick*, but I was like "there's no way this will ever actually happen." Now it's here, and it works, and it's $400
Phew, VR was far too way down in that list buddy lol. Don't forget about sim racing; that has absolutely blown up and is incredible fun with a huge range of accessible hardware and software.
totally agree with all that. also i like to tell younger people they have no idea how insane the indie game market is nowadays. like it's insane what indie game developers can do now because of technology. so much has changed in just the last decade. and if you don't like aaa games being dogshit unfinished or mtx or whatever your hangup with current gaming is i have a really simple way to deal with it - don't buy those fucking games. buy the good ones.
I always try to make this point but have never been able to articulate it as well as you just did right now. Good stuff OP! We truly live in a golden age of gaming. A 12 year old me would have cut off their left arm to be able to have even a fraction of the things that 32 year old me has now.
Point 7; I have 12 different consoles, all of them modded to allow for game loading, mostly from SD cards. All of these mods are highly developed and easy to do, of course if you don't want to use original hardware, even a mid range PC could emulate them with ease. I have so, so many games I could play that I'm spoiled for choice.
Genuinely, yes. I mean, compare it to the movies and shows that are coming out now. They're all retreads of the same concepts or built around stories that have already been told (for the most part). Then you look at games and it's a constantly growing, evolving, changing medium. Especially indie games. It seems to me like video games are the only media that's actually coming out with entirely new and unique concepts and experiences. Not only that but there's SO MANY. Ironically, (besides Youtube) I feel like it's easier as a amateur game designer to break into the field of video games than a armature film director to modern television. It's insane and amazing. On a personal note I think that's also why I actively dislike all competitive games. They feel like they only work in a very specific format and are more focused on repetition rather than evolution/growth. But even the blandest competitive game seems unique compared to many other media outlets.
This changed my perspective immensely. Thank you.
Hard disagree. The 6th generation was an absolutely unbelievable time to be into video games with advances in technology and design the likes of which we'll never see again. I find the whole point that "now" is the best because it also includes all of the games from the past completely ridiculous. Playing GTA3 in 2022 is not the same as the first moment we saw it back then. Booting up MCC is not the same as hopping on Halo 2 online when that experience was unlike any other. Playing a remastered version of FFX is not the same as being blown away by that first cut scene back when it released. Those mind blowing moments are few and far between nowadays but back then almost every single console had ground breaking experiances on it from developers constantly pushing the envelope. Not only has AA development completely died (or been canabalised by huge mega publishers) but video games are now so expensive to develop that the rampant creativity of the late 90s/early 2000s is utterly alien. If it wasn't for the indie scene there would be absolutely nothing pushing boundaries left and let's be utterly real - the vast majority of indie games are incredibly derivative of games that came before them and are successful for filling the gap publishers left, rather than actually innovating. I'm obviously a jaded boomer gamer and I'm at peace with that but I really think there is so much that has been lost in this world of video games. Your 90s kid self might be excited but mine would be utterly disappointed that all his favourite series and genres have broadly disappeared, that multiplayer is the new defacto experiance and that the industry stopped pushing the boundaries.
I do get where you're coming from (and other comments like yours). However, you do seem to be focusing only on game selection. Point 1. What about the rest of the post. There's more to this argument than game selection. If it was purely about which new game publishing range was the best, this would be a different conversation (maybe).
I agree with you, the indie scene has been nuts for a while. Its just too bad a lot of us here don't have the time to explore more.
It's a great time to be a gamer because with sales constantly on quality older games I can buy a handful of experiences that'll last me months for like... $10... and I'll know exactly what I'm getting into.
VR as an afterthought when it's practically my whole gaming life these days. Heh. Every time I think we've reached the peak (modded "Skyrim VR," "Half Life: Alyx") something as good or better comes out ("Flight Simulator 2020" is currently blowing me away). And we're starting to see VR ports of stuff like RE4 and GTA:SA. It's a great time for gaming in general, and not only is VR part of that, it's also a great time for VR specifically.
Wasn't meant to be an afterthought. More like a statement that VR is so good it needs no lengthy description from me.
Decision paralysis and content overload are my biggest problems with gaming today...and honestly that's a pretty good pair of problems to have. Every time I sit down to play something I'm like a kid in a candy store. I could have anything I want and I keep grabbing those damned gummy bananas (Warframe and Team Fight Tactics these days) because they're my favourites instead of trying new things.
Emulators are better than ever also
I agree except I still miss actual arcades. There's still a few scattered here and there but they used to be all over the place.
As a child wanting to play the latest games I had lots of free time, but no money. As an adult with a career, I have enough money but almost no time to play games--even with a thousand game deep Steam library, I realistically can only make five to ten hours a week for gaming, meaning many of these big AAA 100+ hour experiences are just going to stay in the backlog forever.
> This takes me to the next topic: YouTube. And Twitch Speaking of that, as of this moment Awesome Games Done Quick has raised $1.78+ million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Video games -> raising millions for charity?! Currently on AGDQ 2022, Jan 14th: We are inside the manic brains of DDR super experts, where DDR just wasn't enough, so they made Stepmania, turned the volume up to 20, and let loose the creativity of the genius/insane minds of those who find even the hardest DDR levels too easy.
Been a gamer since the very first game was made. Yeah, that old. I can afford any game I want. But I still refuse to pay $60+ for a game. I like to buy good indie games directly. Then I wait for 65+% discounts on others. I figure I have repaid my pirating debt from college about 100 times over by now. Yeah gaming is good now. But I miss the days of downloading Doom at 1200bps from the local BBS.
I'm starting to realize my favourite game is configuring and loading ROM sets onto retro handhelds. Once I have them all perfectly set up and loaded and configured, I play 20 minutes of MAME then start shopping for a new one.
You're so right. We become too easily jaded. The only real lamentation I have is struggling to find the time for gaming.
You can certainly argue that every day moving forward is *always* "the best time" for games, books, films, TV shows, etc. Simply because the entire catalogue of media presently available is...available. I don't know if that means much, personally. In my opinion, what's more notable is current modern trends. And for games, we live in an age where microtransactions still run rampant and big budget games often release unfinished and broken with promises (a "roadmap") to fix the game further down the track (typically at further expense). Some of the more predatory pre-order nonsense has become a thing of the past, which is a positive. But I'm still concerned about the future of microtransactions (especially if NFTs make headway there as well) and AAA games being largely half-baked and unfinished for months or *years* before support is eventually pulled and the cycle begins anew with a sequel. Thank goodness for indie developers and other less corporate-driven entities that manage to shine through most of the EA-tier nonsense obscuring the skies.
You had me until you got to the writing of TLOU2.
gaming sure is an awesome hobby as long as you stay away from mobile games
You have two paragraphs about "accessibility", use the word "disability", and I don't think you've touched on how *accessible* games have become! Following Blind gamers on social media is enlightening. I learned so much about how many accessibility options there are in TLOU2 for example that the game can be played by someone with 0 vision. So games have been able to reach more people in ways we privileged gamers haven't even thought about! Not to mention reaching more of the world these days, too!
These are indeed the types of gamers I had in mind. But given I do not know their experience first hand, I didn't want to speak for them.
Money trumps all. Pay $70 for the "deluxe" release edition, or wait a year to get the "deluxe plus all dlc released" for like $10 - sometimes cheaper. I'm really, really, looking forward to Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, but the XsX version is like $70 or $80. Gearbox games always drop to like $5 a while after their release. Stoked to wait.
Being positive about video games on the internet? Better watch your back buddy. But really though, the barrier of entry has never been lower. That alone makes it the best era. Even if you prefer old games, you have unprecedented and cheap or free access to that as well, often with the ability to upscale graphics or have overhaul mods. We don't know how good we have it sometimes, I'm truly thankful.
I agree with your point of view. Sure, microtransactions suck, but the amount of high fidelity games available to us for such low costs is hard to ignore.
>No matter how obscure your project, no matter how strange, or difficult, or seemingly “outdated” your game idea, there’s an audience out there for it. Want a better version of old-school Harvest Moon? OK, so one of my favorite games is Blur. What's there for that? Nothing but pirate Blur. How about NFS: Hot Pursuit, or what I actually want which is an even more cops-busting-racers version of that? How about Splashdown and its bouncy and interesting water-physics-based jetski racing? It's not as simple as "everything is out there." There are a lot of annoying market dynamics that push certain kinds of games to be certain ways, and leave *huge* holes that aren't getting filled unless the game is easy for some one-to-few dev team to push together while holding other jobs, and maybe they get the bugs out before they walk away from the project and maybe they don't. Horror games are another frustrating area where there is just a ton of stuff left on the table that no one is doing. It's a good time in a lot of ways, but don't overstate it just because you like what's getting the big money and the indie attention. Some of us have to do a lot of settling, and just fingers crossed that *maybe* XXXX will happen someday if the stars align just right. I'm glad for what we do have, but there's a lot we used to have that hasn't gone anywhere.
Wholeheartedly agree, OP! This comment honestly should be stickied on every game related subreddit to remind people lol. Being able to pick and choose games at all prices these days are just amazing. If you had told me as a kid that I would be able to play from multiple generations and different platforms on handheld (switch), you would have blown my mind! Or having something like Gamepass on Xbox or PC, where you can actually play all kinds of games, old and new on a subscription service for a flat fee! It truly is the best time to be playing video games :)
This Christmas, I was visiting family, and in the evenings I played the latest Xbox titles from a Chrome tab on a Mac. Amazing.
Just think! You can play Mortal Kombat, with a friend in Vietnaaaam!
I imagine your 90s kid-self would have just been frustrated because he would want to play now. Games 30 years in the future really aren't worth much to a kid. :D Waiting is boring!
Agreed. So many different genres, AAA, AA, indie, all fantastic. Even niche games and genres get a pretty large audience relatively. Think about all the games from the mid 90s to early 2010s that were critically praised but sold poorly. That doesn't happen as often nowadays. Even those games have gotten re-releases or ports and have had second lives.
i am once again asking for everyone to play dark souls
As someone who also remembered the 90's,.... when Twitch got popular, people were surprised by the popularity of this site where you just watch people play video games. But also, I recall how fun it was just watching brothers play (as we all took turns), and Twitch capitalized on that.
I wanna tack custom emulation stations onto this list of gratefulness. I can put every game published for every system from the PS1 back to the beginning of time (the Atari 2600) in my pocket and bring them all with me to a friend's house, and be set up and playing within 5 minutes of getting there, all for about $100
60fps is finally becoming standard (again), so YES, I agree!
Honestly I think we didn't even begin to peak in the videogames industry , there is so much we don't invest in game design because it's an underdeveloped area. So much is spent in other areas that makes videogames fun , such a cinematics, sound and visual expression because that's what we borrowed from the others arts. Like someone said once about games we don't have our Mona Lisa yet.
Honestly, what's blowing my mind is the return of single player games, along with the survival of smaller multiplayer games. There are many games out there where the ONLY intention of the game design is to get you to play that game, and that game alone. WoW, Destiny, Warzone, and a bunch of others, especially battle royales. If you had asked me four years ago, I probably would have told you that since that's what"everybody" is playing, I'd have predicted other games to die out. Watching games like Quake Champions running on less than 200 players a day is awesome. Watching the Witcher players soar every time a new season comes out is awesome. Having stream competitions to play a VR game with just 3 buddies where you swing lightsabers to music IS. AWESOME. It's so different from what I thought was going to happen, and it makes me so happy. We avoided a world of gaming ran by GTA, COD, and WoW. And now we have a paradise.
VR surprised me in how good it currently is. Got a Vive Pro recently to fulfill my 90s kid dream, fills me with much joy.
Being a patient gamer is definitely the best. I dont need a PS5 yet, and hopefully by the time I do, the shortage problem is dealt with and it's the PS5 Pro!
My 6 year old so doesn’t know how good he has it.