The state of gaming (really has me bummed out)

Recently jumped from an OCed 4770K @ 4.6 / 1080 Ti to the 7900X / 3060 Ti in my sig
While it was great from a "scratching the hardware itch" perspective, I was ultimately more interested in messing around with the MiSTer Multisystem
Had already been running 12c/24t for years (multiple HP Z600s around w/ dual X5675s), 3060 Ti is faster but not earth-shatteringly so.
 
I was somewhat nostalgic recently for old Counter-Strike and watched some old videos of maps long retired (747, docks, etc...). I think there was just something fun about it being a new experience and everyone was learning and trying things out. Maps were not balanced at all, but they were unique (for better or for worse). It was just fun to mess around and get some frags while you're at it. Hell, I liked the assassination mode as a nice change of pace in CS. I liked to be a bit competitive, but everyone wasn't playing like an esports super star and sweating their balls off. You typically had a nice spread of skill levels and if you had a dedicated server to frequent, a community on top of that.

Modern CS is hyper focused on esports and just isn't fun for someone like me. It's fine if that's what the "modern gamer" wants. The community is still huge so it's doing something right. I played Warzone, but once I got pegged into the higher K/D lobbies it felt like work and it wasn't fun at all. If you are just slightly above average you're going to have a bad time.
 
Same here. When I was young I was building a new PC every 6 months, it was out of control. I build my son a badass system recently to watch it play IO games. Super sad.
 
Bop said:
I was somewhat nostalgic recently for old Counter-Strike and watched some old videos of maps long retired (747, docks, etc...). I think there was just something fun about it being a new experience and everyone was learning and trying things out. Maps were not balanced at all, but they were unique (for better or for worse). It was just fun to mess around and get some frags while you're at it. Hell, I liked the assassination mode as a nice change of pace in CS. I liked to be a bit competitive, but everyone wasn't playing like an esports super star and sweating their balls off. You typically had a nice spread of skill levels and if you had a dedicated server to frequent, a community on top of that.

Modern CS is hyper focused on esports and just isn't fun for someone like me. It's fine if that's what the "modern gamer" wants. The community is still huge so it's doing something right. I played Warzone, but once I got pegged into the higher K/D lobbies it felt like work and it wasn't fun at all. If you are just slightly above average you're going to have a bad time.
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Also with age for us, we are not as good as we were 20+ years ago. When i played CS 1.6 / UT 99' , Delta Force 2 , i was always top 5 if not top 3 in most of my sessions, we lived and breathed those games right, just as the younger ones own the newer games with crap-tastic bullet travel where you can snipe someone across a map with a hand gun (COD anyone?)

So while our age has slowed us down, I do also think we were gaming back when things were so new and exciting, most every AAA game that came out had something new, even if it was better graphics, or being able to play at 1600 x 1200 :D

I got my nephew who is a Fornite freak, to play some Q3, he could not handle it, Sure Fornite can be fast paced, if you want to race to see who can build a house the fastest, but for pure speed and accuracy, he just got demolished over and over and over. Even playing Team Fortress 2 against him, he was picking what class I could be, and again, just demolished him every time. Mind you I knew the games well, but then had him play Apex legends, smoked his butt there too....and had was playing that for months before we started playing so he had a chance... :)

So I do wonder if games back then, because they were perhaps so simple with their guns, and accuracy and other things (except for a grenade in CS...it wont kill anyone even if they sat on the dam thing) did we have to try harder to actually aim and get our kills, we are better at movement prediction due to lag and crappy internet ?
 
Idk, I was basically professional level ~20 years ago and I still destroy when I play new games today. Not quite pro level like I was way back, but if I played as much as I did back then I probably would be.

I think it's more you aren't playing the new games as much as the kids are .
 
Idk what is wrong myself. I just don't find games enjoyable myself. I couldn't even finish GoWR. I pick a game up play half way through if that and then just quit. Gaming feels like a chore to me nowadays. I have all the console and a banging gaming PC and they all just sit there unused most the time.
 
vegeta535 said:
Idk what is wrong myself. I just don't find games enjoyable myself. I couldn't even finish GoWR. I pick a game up play half way through if that and then just quit. Gaming feels like a chore to me nowadays. I have all the console and a banging gaming PC and they all just sit there unused most the time.
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I was thinking going back to Path of Exile, but man. three monitors up, autoscanning the trade sites, all the 3rd party programs, Path of Building, the freaking crafting, etc. ugh, I can't keep up with it. kind of why I may just fall back into Warcraft. new character, familiar movie on one screen, poking around leveling and in dungeons. all until I get into the M+ cesspool.
 
t1337duder said:
Remember that one time a developer stopped making games because you stopped buying them? Me neither. It's a nice idea, though ;)
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Remember that one time I ended up with garbage games I didn't pay for? Me neither.
Whether a business or gaming franchise is successful or not doesn't mean I have to be complicit in their profit. Or perhaps you were missing the entire point of my comments to begin with.

You haven't been watching the video game space very long if you're not aware of the massive amounts of game devs that have gone bankrupt, acquired, and/or dissolved. It's more crazy in the gaming space than it was in the film industry in the golden age of Hollywood.
 
t1337duder said:
Yes, because we all know voting works and there aren't greater forces at play.
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if all the tools would stop "pre-ordering" games months before they even come out, ya, it may actually force game companies to release a better game vs knowing they already got a boat load of cash from people so screw them....
As said above you clearly have not been in the gaming space for very long...sadly now it is a couple big studios who bought everyone out that mattered, and people these days just want to brag to their friends they got beta access from their pre-order and some special stupid skin all so they could play early on a alpha level quality crap-tastic excuse for a game..
 
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MrGuvernment said:
if all the tools would stop "pre-ordering" games months before they even come out, ya, it may actually force game companies to release a better game vs knowing they already got a boat load of cash from people so screw them....
As said above you clearly have not been in the gaming space for very long...sadly now it is a couple big studios who bought everyone out that mattered, and people these days just want to brag to their friends they got beta access from their pre-order and some special stupid skin all so they could play early on a alpha level quality crap-tastic excuse for a game..
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Yeah a lot of the good game studios do get bought by megacorps and end up making Call Of Fifa 2023, but there are still a million billion small/indy game studios making unique and awesome games.
It's easy to make games nowadays with tools like Unity and Unreal Engine even a group of passionate people with nearly no game development experience can make amazing games.

Here's a few games I'm looking forward to by
Stomrgate, Satisfactory, Second Extinction, Predecessor

What games am I looking forward to from studios bought out by megacorps?
Starfield.
 
t1337duder said:
Yes, because we all know voting works and there aren't greater forces at play.
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Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

I do understand that boycotting isn't always as successful today as it has been in the past when it comes to certain force-fed politicized stuff. For example, I believe that a force-fed political agenda is why Hollywood awards events, NFL, Disney movies and certain news outlets are all seeing record low viewership in the past few years and yet there isn't really much of a departure by these companies from the agenda-at-play to try to win these viewers back. It is indeed a novel behavior that defies the free market when you see certain news outlets with record low viewership doing basically nothing to moderate their messaging to win viewers back. I am sure that there is some of this in gaming, although I haven't seen it to the same degree as in other media.

That being said, outside of political issues, I think the boycott is still pretty effective. I have seen many examples of where an angry, disatisfied or even just a un-engaged fan base has brought about really significant changes. I mean, just look at Nintendo and the Wii U. There's a great example of a company that made a dramatic course correction because of fundamentally unpopular gaming platform that just failed to sell. Do you remember Metroid Prime Federation Force on the 3DS and the infuriated hords of Nintendo fans who were insulted that Nintendo gave them another supbar Metroid game instead of a much-demanded AAA core entry? That outrage eventually got fans Metroid Prime Dread last year which was regarded as one of the best games of 2021. I guarantee that this game never would have happened if it weren't for fan's absolute insistence on the next Metroid entry being top-quality. Many other game franchises like Doom, Halo, Fire Emblem and Zelda have all seen major return-to-its-roots entries that were meant to reinvigorate a stagnant fanbase. The only examples that I can think of where slumping sales doesn't incentivize better quality games is when we're talking about struggling companies like Sega that just no longer have the capability to improve the quality of their output. Yeah, there is a lot of annualized and or microtransaction-ridden low quality content out there that I personally would not want to play but people obviously like it enough to still support it...
 
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gvx64 said:
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

I do understand that boycotting isn't always as successful today as it has been in the past when it comes to certain force-fed politicized stuff. For example, I believe that a force-fed political agenda is why Hollywood awards events, NFL, Disney movies and certain news outlets are all seeing record low viewership in the past few years and yet there isn't really much of a departure by these companies from the agenda-at-play to try to win these viewers back. It is indeed a novel behavior that defies the free market when you see certain news outlets with record low viewership doing basically nothing to moderate their messaging to win viewers back. I am sure that there is some of this in gaming, although I haven't seen it to the same degree as in other media.

That being said, outside of political issues, I think the boycott is still pretty effective. I have seen many examples of where an angry, disatisfied or even just a un-engaged fan base has brought about really significant changes. I mean, just look at Nintendo and the Wii U. There's a great example of a company that made a dramatic course correction because of fundamentally unpopular gaming platform that just failed to sell. Do you remember Metroid Prime Federation Force on the 3DS and the infuriated hords of Nintendo fans who were insulted that Nintendo gave them another supbar Metroid game instead of a much-demanded AAA core entry? That outrage eventually got fans Metroid Prime Dread last year which was regarded as one of the best games of 2021. I guarantee that this game never would have happened if it weren't for fan's absolute insistence on the next Metroid entry being top-quality. Many other game franchises like Doom, Halo, Fire Emblem and Zelda have all seen major return-to-its-roots entries that were meant to reinvigorate a stagnant fanbase. The only examples that I can think of where slumping sales doesn't incentivize better quality games is when we're talking about struggling companies like Sega that just no longer have the capability to improve the quality of their output. Yeah, there is a lot of annualized and or microtransaction-ridden low quality content out there that I personally would not want to play but people obviously like it enough to still support it...
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ESG investing. It promotes investing money in companies that are "socially" and "environmentally" responsible rather than turning a profit by selling products and services through to consumers. It's turning market valuations upside-down.
 
Funny thing is I'm 39 and I can see where he's coming from. Not running a low end system, (9900k + 3080) but most of the time It's just habit to immediately turn off anything like bloom, chromatic aberration, post processing, etc. anything that makes it look less "clean"
Though I've never had the desire to go as far as making games look like they belong on the N64, lol.
 
Banya said:
Funny thing is I'm 39 and I can see where he's coming from. Not running a low end system, (9900k + 3080) but most of the time It's just habit to immediately turn off anything like bloom, chromatic aberration, post processing, etc. anything that makes it look less "clean"
Though I've never had the desire to go as far as making games look like they belong on the N64, lol.
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Chromatic aberration is the dumbest effect ever added to games. Why developers want to put a lens defect purposefully into games when photographers and videographers want to get rid of it is beyond me.
 
I didn’t bother to read the whole thread so sorry if this is a repeat. I think another potential generational difference may be driven by the fact that every game we grew up on looked like ass when compared to modern games / graphics. If there was any change you could make to improve the graphics you wanted to try it because your starting point was so low.

For kids born since 2000 or so, the starting point for just about every game graphically is leagues above the ‘ass’ we grew up with. Given how drastic the visual difference is in our first gaming experiences, I think it’s only natural that younger generations would have less desire to focus on improving on the graphics specifically.
 
Also I think the rise of streaming/esports and competitive gaming becoming more mainstream has a lot to do with it
 
Artificiary said:
I didn’t bother to read the whole thread so sorry if this is a repeat. I think another potential generational difference may be driven by the fact that every game we grew up on looked like ass when compared to modern games / graphics. If there was any change you could make to improve the graphics you wanted to try it because your starting point was so low.

For kids born since 2000 or so, the starting point for just about every game graphically is leagues above the ‘ass’ we grew up with. Given how drastic the visual difference is in our first gaming experiences, I think it’s only natural that younger generations would have less desire to focus on improving on the graphics specifically.
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And we seldom see games that just blow away a 1-2 year old game. Back in the early 2000s that was still going on. You'd see an upcoming game that made something from 1999 or 2000 look like utter trash.
 
Armenius said:
Chromatic aberration is the dumbest effect ever added to games. Why developers want to put a lens defect purposefully into games when photographers and videographers want to get rid of it is beyond me.
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I will never forget a quote from PokeCapn during a Let's Play of Sonic 06 (possibly the worst game ever made): "There's lense flare because this is a cinematic gaming experience."

Flogger23m said:
And we seldom see games that just blow away a 1-2 year old game. Back in the early 2000s that was still going on. You'd see an upcoming game that made something from 1999 or 2000 look like utter trash.
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Exactly, the graphical improvements that we see now are generally fairly minor and incremental, mainly because a game today can already look as good as a hollywood movie production without too much difficulty. I mean, where does the industry go after that? As a contrasting example, back in the 80's, kids playing NES Zelda yearned for the days when they would have a 3D world like Ocarina of time and then kids in the 90's yearned for the day when they could go from Ocarina of Time to a truly open world experience like BotW. The problem is that once we got BotW what really is there left out there to keep us hyped about the next technical leap that will enhance gameplay experience? 3D glasses, VR, 8k? These things just don't seem to have gamer's excited the way that past innovations did. It was the anticipation fed the demand and excitement for better graphics, without anticipation gamers just become apathetic about having better graphics and maybe even start to not care about it.
 
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Flogger23m said:
And we seldom see games that just blow away a 1-2 year old game. Back in the early 2000s that was still going on. You'd see an upcoming game that made something from 1999 or 2000 look like utter trash.
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Tbh, I don't think the vast majority of games today look considerably better than games from 2013
 
Armenius said:
Chromatic aberration is the dumbest effect ever added to games. Why developers want to put a lens defect purposefully into games when photographers and videographers want to get rid of it is beyond me.
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Depends. You should check out VLFV sometime (Vintage Lenses for Video). They have a website and a Facebook group. There is a pretty large group of people that intentionally buy older glass specifically because modern digital sensors are so clean and they want character in their images. And it's becoming pretty big in Hollywood as well. There are at least half a dozen major companies that do rehousing of vintage lenses into cinema housings and several more that do "cinevising" (just doing things like mount conversion and adding focus gears). And there are a number of high profile films shot on vintage glass.

For more on this you can see the rise of the Zeiss Jena set and its copy: Helios, most specifically the 44-2 58mm. Outside of that people are investing heavily into Canon FD's, Olympus Zuikos, Nikon Pre-Ai/Ai/Ai-s, Minolta Rokkors, Leica R's, and Contax Zeiss sets. And this is to speak nothing of actual vintage cinema sets like Kowa Anamorphics or Zeiss Super Speeds.

Armenius said:
Chromatic aberration is the dumbest effect ever added to games. Why developers want to put a lens defect purposefully into games when photographers and videographers want to get rid of it is beyond me.
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The options are there to turn it all off obviously. I get it, there's an interest in immersion. My big issue with it generally is that it's done in a way that isn't tasteful. I played Outer Worlds with all the effects on, and while I think it looks better with all that stuff on in terms of screen shots, in motion it's just too much. There's no sliders to control how much LOCA there is, or DoF, etc. Mostly because the only people that likely would tweak are nerds.
CP2077 also had a lot of these effects and they did a much better job with it. That game I ended up turning stuff off more because of the performance penalty. In Ultra with all effects on (RT) the game is gorgeous, but there's maybe 1% of gamers that can afford the requisite hardware to play CP2077 at that level with any appreciable framerate.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Depends. You should check out VLFV sometime (Vintage Lenses for Video). They have a website and a Facebook group. There is a pretty large group of people that intentionally buy older glass specifically because modern digital sensors are so clean and they want character in their images. And it's becoming pretty big in Hollywood as well. There are at least half a dozen major companies that do rehousing of vintage lenses into cinema housings and several more that do "cinevising" (just doing things like mount conversion and adding focus gears). And there are a number of high profile films shot on vintage glass.

For more on this you can see the rise of the Zeiss Jena set and its copy: Helios, most specifically the 44-2 58mm. Outside of that people are investing heavily into Canon FD's, Olympus Zuikos, Nikon Pre-Ai/Ai/Ai-s, Minolta Rokkors, Leica R's, and Contax Zeiss sets. And this is to speak nothing of actual vintage cinema sets like Kowa Anamorphics or Zeiss Super Speeds.


The options are there to turn it all off obviously. I get it, there's an interest in immersion. My big issue with it generally is that it's done in a way that isn't tasteful. I played Outer Worlds with all the effects on, and while I think it looks better with all that stuff on in terms of screen shots, in motion it's just too much. There's no sliders to control how much LOCA there is, or DoF, etc. Mostly because the only people that likely would tweak are nerds.
CP2077 also had a lot of these effects and they did a much better job with it. That game I ended up turning stuff off more because of the performance penalty. In Ultra with all effects on (RT) the game is gorgeous, but there's maybe 1% of gamers that can afford the requisite hardware to play CP2077 at that level with any appreciable framerate.
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Not all games give you the option, though. It was really bad in Dying Light and they only added the option to turn it off after people spoke up about it.

Regardless, these are video games. Especially from the first person perspective, we should be trying to emulate eyes, not camera lenses.
 
Armenius said:
Not all games give you the option, though. It was really bad in Dying Light and they only added the option to turn it off after people spoke up about it.
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Fair.
Armenius said:
Regardless, these are video games. Especially from the first person perspective, we should be trying to emulate eyes, not camera lenses.
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I don't really see a difference. Every game we just talked about is fantasy. It's not as if realism is a driving force in games any more than it is in film, and most certainly the camera is "our perspective" inside of a film. We may disagree about the utility of the language of film in games, but using film language in a game is also not a unique phenomenon. In engine cut scenes, as one example, have existed for a long time and there is generally a desire for consistent imagery.

But certainly, no one is capable of changing the FoV of their eyes or rotating a camera around themselves or doing any of the myriad of things even just related to vision we do in games. So, it's not really about realism: that's my point, it's an arbitrary line in the sand that things should be this level of unrealistic (or realistic) and no further. That's why options are nice because people feel differently about it. And hopefully in the meantime more devs can figure out how to use these tools and this language tastefully. For everyone else they can ignore it and turn it off.
 
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