this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024

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Patient Gamers

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Anti-doom-and-gloom post (feddit.uk)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was writing this out on my local [email protected] and realised I was basically making a patient gamers post, so here's a copy and paste:

Despite everything you might read from gaming journos about corporate greed destroying the gaming industry I still think it's an amazing time to be into video games. I'm absolutely spoiled for choice with games to play and I think it's just down to not caring about online multiplayer or getting caught up in marketing hype.

You don't have to pay through the nose to buy a fancy machine to play half-finished blockbusters, there are decades of classics that you can still play. Borrow a friend's old console and play some old games-of-the-year, find some random classics on Humble Bundle or GOG, see what random freebies I've posted in [email protected], stick an emulator on your phone or find one that runs in a web browser.

Example: I played Metroid Prime after seeing a Lemmy post talking about. I could either:

Dig out a GameCube or buy a Wii on eBay for £5 and find a copy of the game at CEX if I fancy the retro experience
Buy the remastered Switch version if I fancied splashing out
Just pirate a ROM if I feel rebellious
Dump my own ROM and play it on PrimeHack if I feel like tinkering

This is just one example of a great game that passed me by, there are thousands of others out there. We have a crazy amount of choice not only of what to play but how we choose to play it. The bittersweet part is that this could all change so enjoy it while you can!

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The equivalent community seeded on the site that starts with R and ends with eddit recently (a month ago) made it a rule that people can't make "therapy" posts which means people posting topics can't make them primarily about their grievances with personal time or with the industry. And the baseline quality of topics in that place went way higher.

I think there's a lesson to take from that: Try and not give a shit. Just find games you like, and play and talk about them. Make that the top priority, and make these concerns secondary - and you'll have a higher quality time with the hobby.

I personally have 0 idea why the news circles gave two weeks of attention to something like Suicide Squad. Game looked bad, reviewed bad, openly had manipulative features built in AND attached to update promises, and then releases and, whoa, turns out, surprise surprise, it IS bad. And yet, two weeks. Two weeks of random place just bringing up the bad game that is bad with a lukewarm stance. Fucking even Skill Up, which I avidly consume content of, gave it a whole hour of attention split across two weekly roundups. That is unhealthy. Games do NOT deserve attention just because they're marketed. And, in no way I can convinced of otherwise: It's objectively stupid to give it that. I just skipped any discussions related to it, will probably skip any discussion related to turtle rock, the studio, henceforth that doesn't start with "they made a return to form! XYZ is the best game they've made!" and my life feels unsurprisingly unaffected and I feel personally, unsurprisingly, less stupid.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Try and not give a shit

Good life advice all round!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

15 out of the 150 unplayed games in my library were released in the last two years. Two are AAA (Persona 5, Elden Ring) and two are what I‘d call AA (PAYDAY 3 (worst offender in pulling crap), Trine 5), the rest are indie games. Basically all of those games were bought on a discount during sales.

The only full price AAA game I‘m even considering buying in the next two years is Monster Hunter Wilds.

My biggest trigger regarding games at the moment is Paradox wanting 45 bucks for this year’s DLCs for Crusader Kings III; I fucking love that game and don‘t know what to do since I know that‘s an absolutely insane price tag.

But generally if you‘re patient, don‘t get baited by the newest shiny toy, and aren’t some sort of giga lawful consumer that won’t ever utilize emulation, you can have a blast with games now more than ever.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Absolutely. There's a new game or expansion out that I know I'd love? Great, I'll pick it up in a sale in a few years, plenty of stuff to play in the mean time!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I honestly don't understand that sentiment. People keep complaining about all of these manipulative games, yet I have so many games I own and on my wishlist (100 on each) that I just don't have the time for, so I'm good for the next couple years at least.

So yeah, maybe gaming will suck in a few years, maybe it won't. There are still great games coming out that totally respect my time, and I don't see any reason for that to stop. So if your friends are complaining about no good games, point them toward some of your favorites. Together we can show the big studios that traditional gaming is still very much in demand.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

My thoughts exactly! I think it's just our brains not wanting to accept change: it used to be that all the big games were great and just what we wanted, now the ones that get talked about are the soulless cash-grabs but the good stuff is still there. A film buff doesn't complain that cinemas are full of generic action films, they just ignore the marketing and choose from the decades of classics available.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I was just wanting to re-play one of my old games (Resistance: FoM), but that only brought up PS3 gloom because I can't easily run them.

I mean free games are nice, pretty much all I play now aside from things I bought on sale many years ago.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I loved that game because it was co-op MP.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I don't think I played the story co-op, but I played versus maybe 3 times. Splitscreen isn't good for that because screen-peeking.

Resistance 2 had some interesting co-op/online stuff (XP system with unlocks, different stuff than story mode) that I mostly played solo IIRC (janky, still need 2 controllers). No broadband available until mid-2016, but I was able to play online via a distant neighor's wifi (they knew) at midnight for a few games and was probably the worst player thanks to high ping (rubberbanding).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Are PS3s expensive to pick up nowadays?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've got 2 already:
my orginal 60GB version (YLoD, heatgun fixed a few+ times until it shut-off due to overheating for the first time so I gave up)
one with a broken disc-drive I traded for, put my old drive (with ~~its~~ the console keeping its original disc-drive daughterboard) in and eventually it stopped reading discs (not sure if it burned out or firmware DRM timeout thing, cleaner disc didn't work)

I could probably fix either but I don't want to spend money on it, plus given the situation I'd probably need to fix both.

Can't rip my own disc (I have a blu-ray drive but not the right kind for PS3 ripping). Emu is a hassle esp. w/big files (and I have a 1050Ti). Bookmarks are dead (or need acct?) and I can't seem to find a demo image to see how well it'd run.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Aww man, I understand the gloom

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Hey, I got stuff working, updated my original comment.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, sorry. I could probably do something, it's just tedious especially now. Maybe eventually, though I remember stuff (like a cheap laser puzzle game from the PSN, also some old animations sold on the PSN though I did remember Stickman Exodus) that I probably won't ever find again.

On a very similar note I really like the idea of creating some sort of content, not sure if things will ever align there either. I'd like to create minimalist stuff (that could probably run on the PS1 even), so it's a shame that it'll never be as simple as clicking export from Godot (it could happen 3rd-party maybe, but might be too niche) and copying a file over.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Given the classic example of running Doom on everything I think eventually if an old platform is popular enough then its hacking/homebrew community will find a way of running anything on it. Maybe your Godot dream will be reality one day!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think it's going to get even better in the next few years, too. The tools for 3d modeling are poised to improve in a way that makes it dramatically easier to create very high quality graphics. Nanite is one component of this, reducing the need for multiple levels of detail in polygon-based rendering. But 3d reality capture is improving too, both thanks to hardware like depth sensors and software like Gaussian splatting and NeRFs.

Indie games are just going to keep getting better, basically. As will AA games. I think the days of the AAA blockbuster may be numbered.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think the only way that large studios continue to justify their existence is in motion capture acting and detailed open world design. Everything else is now within reach of indies I think.

Don’t just think of graphical improvements either. We can’t leave AI out of this discussion as it is a valuable tool for indie devs and I expect they’ll take advantage of it in the next few years. They aren’t going to replace main stories but I think AI will take the burden off of indie studios for simple dialogue options. Could even be trained to voice act for lesser roles or do some texture work.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I kind of disagree about AI, I guess.

I do think it's a valuable tool, but honestly there's not a ton that it does that you couldn't already do with an asset store. And there's a fair amount of risk associated with using AI in the near term. Folks already have a lot of qualms about the ethics of how those AIs were trained. And the first games that come out that rely heavily on AI are likely to be really janky--there are devs who will have tried to entirely replace a role on the team with AI, and the quality will suffer as a result. So I think in the near term there's going to be a pretty severe backlash against AI-generated stuff in games. Folks will say it all feels generic and low-effort; it'll be the new "asset flip."

Long-term, I think it will have a place in the workflow for sure, the same way that store-bought assets do; you'll just need to adapt them to fit in with the feeling you're going for in your game, and hand-revise some things. But near-term, I think there will be a lot of folks who lose interest in a game if they find out there's AI involved. And that goes triple for AI voice acting. A bad human voice actor can at least be interesting, but AI has that uncanny valley quality that really turns people off once they notice it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You’re not wrong about a lot of these points but I think it’s worth pointing out that each AI application will basically be a separate tool.

For texture work, these tools will be used immediately and probably only have beneficial effects. It will even give premade assets a nice feel AND you can use AI to turn one hand-made texture into a large amount of unique assets. Which helps indies by avoiding the copy/paste feel of their assets. Same is true of models but will take more time for that.

As for voices, what you said is true. A bad human voice is still mostly better than AI. However if you have a lot of dialog or just want to play test, the AI voices are great for that before you ask a human to do the lines.

And as for story and script dialog, AI is already pretty good at this but the application is important. Games that overuse AI to write their story or characters will stand out as really bad. But when used correctly, AI can change generic filler into interesting plot. Or make people say unique things every time you see them. Combine that with voice generation once it’s good and we’re in for some very cool applications.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I agree about the textures, but I think you're overestimating the existing LLMs. I think folks are already starting to recognize the style of the current LLMs and finding it off-putting. I think that's only going to increase as people try to apply them in even more places.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

The only problem of gaming is my time, i just don't have enough of it. There's like a tons of game i haven't play and the free game claimed from epic is untouched, but here i am, replaying Subnautica for the 4th time, slowly making progress.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I have the same problem. I only have an hour or two most days, if it happens at all. So I end up playing games that work well in short spurts and time gaps between sessions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

My gaming time has drastically reduced since our first kid was born. I still manage to get an hour or two in the evening (if we don't watch a movie/series or don't have plans). On the other hand, I noticed I started getting bored of lengthy games and wanted to switch to something else around the 20 hours mark.

What helped me, is finding and playing well-rated singleplayer games that can be completed in only a few seatings, typically <10 hours. I use https://howlongtobeat.com.

But I also come back to endless games (Escape From Tarkov or League Of Legends) when I have friends to play with. You gotta find the balance that fits your schedule and tastes, without turning gaming into a chore.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So you do have the time but decide to just not play different games.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I did have time but not enough of it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

It's like with watching TV Series. Why am I going through Firefly again instead of trying something new? Or reading The Expanse again?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Just like all other subjects in life, you'll be a lot happier if you stay away from news and tabloids

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

This sort of sentiment needs to be pinned at the top of every comment section on the web!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

It's also never been a greater time to be an indie game fan. There are loads of smaller games every year that are a really fun time. Pizza tower and lethal company were one of my favorite games last year.

I've yet to play Sea of Stars and Cocoon but they're high on my list of next games to play.