What happened to gaming?

Comments

• PonyOfWar@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  To me it sounds more like the social media algorithms put you into the “gaming tech” corner so that’s all you see. Indie gaming is huge and not at all about graphics. Look at the currently popular games on Steam and a ton of them are technologically very basic.

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  • cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Also don’t forget retro games.

    Even new games can be run on midrange hardware if you don’t crank up the settings.

    People want big numbers and companies watch to sell the latest stuff. No one gives a platform for advocating low budgets, cheaper hardware and patient gaming.

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  • ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Exactly. My feeling is more the opposite of what OP is saying. Gameplay and innovation is king. Just not in AAA games.

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  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This is the answer. Lots of great stuff going in games right now.

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• t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I definitely think you’re in a bubble of AAA games. This is literally the middle of an indie game renaissance.

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• Hadriscus@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That’s just triple A games, I think. Indie games are varied and don’t necessarily focus on graphics

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• blackris@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Nothing happened. It is the same as always. There was no time, when graphics (and audio) weren’t the hottest shit to talk about. We did that in the 90s in ads, game magazines and in the schoolyard. And the people before us did the same. The buzzwords back then were different but that’s all.

  Maybe stop watching youtubers, if that annoys you? Idk.

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• kyub@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn’t what it used to mean. In fact I’d be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an “AAAA quality” game with Skulls & Bones or how it’s called and it’s a total flop.

  The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it’s kind of safe at this point to just assume that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don’t trust them to produce a good game).

  Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren’t found so easily. But they exist. There’s no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.

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  • rtc@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The rabbit hole of looking harder and being amazed by what exists will probably never end if persons keep looking (till they become proficient enough to be the ones making those things).

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• averyminya@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You may as well have typed this in 2009 or 2015.

  It used to be that people argued that it’s worth getting the new game console because “better graphics”. The console wars hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just expanded.

  In any case, in regards to just installing a game and playing it, no, not really. When I was playing games in college in 2012 it was still a time when you would open a game and go to the settings menu to adjust settings.

  Sometimes it was just turning off motion blur, but there was always settings to change to try to reach a stable 60FPS.

  Nothing changed, it just expanded. Now instead of 60FPS it’s a variable 60-240FPS. Instead of just 720p-1080p resolution, unless it’s portable, it’s 1080p minimum otherwise variable up to 4k. Instead of “maxing out” we now have raytracing which pushes software further than our hardware is capable.

  These aren’t bad things, they’re just now 1) slightly marketed, 2) more well known in the social sphere. There isn’t anything stopping you from opening up the game and going right away, and there’s nothing stopping other people from wondering about frame timings and other technical details.

  Sure, focusing on the little things like that can take away from the wider experience, but people pursue things for different reasons. When I got Cyberpunk 2077 I knew that there were issues under the hood, but my experience with the game at launch was also pretty much perfect because I was focused on different things. I personally don’t think a dip here and there is worth fretting over, but some people it ruins the game for them. Other people just like knowing that they’re taking full advantage of their hardware, hence figuring out the utilization of their components.

  There’s one last aspect not mentioned. Architectures. 10 years ago games would just boot up and run… But what about games from 10 years before then? Most players not on consoles were having to do weird CPU timing shenanigans to be able to boot up a game from (now 20) years ago. We’re in the same boat now with emulation, which while emulation is faring better, X360/PS3 generation games that had PC ports are starting to have issues on modern Windows. Even just 5 or 6 years ago games like Sleeping Dogs wouldn’t play nice on modern PC’s, so there’s a whole extra aspect of tinkering on PC that hasn’t even been touched on.

  All this to say, we are in the same boat we’ve always been in. The only difference is that social media now has more knowledge about these aspects of gaming so it’s being focused on more.

  The one thing I do agree with though is that this is all part of software development. Making users need better hardware, intentional or not, is pretty crazy. The fact that consoles themselves now have Quality vs Performance modes is also crazy. But, I will never say no to more options. I actually think it’s wrong that the console version of games often are missing settings adjustments, when the PC counterpart has full control. I understand when it’s to keep performance at an acceptable level, but it can be annoying.

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  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Always turn off motion blur and DoF if you can.

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• odium@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Balatro is nominated for game of the year. Some other games from the past year you could check out: animal well, nine sols.

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ve never had Balatro crash or do anything weird on me, either.

    Don’t you miss the days when you just installed the game and just played it?

    I don’t miss them because they’re still here!

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    • rtc@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t miss them because they’re still here!

      Exactly

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• delitomatoes@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Ignore all the that, it’s marketing. A lot of cool indies that have better story and mechanics than AAA games, you just have to look beyond your usual places

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• TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Everything you said is just telling us what You’ve been focusing on. If you don’t want to focus on resolution, frame rates, etc, then don’t.

  There are hundreds and hundreds of great games easily available. Play them. Ive been living the days of just installing a game and playing it for decades. And I’ll continue to do so with no problem.

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• MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The bubble of AAA gaming and reviews/benchmarks definitely has that kind of thing going on. But you can really just ignore that subset entirely and have so many good games to play from smaller studios and devs.

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• lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  this makes me nostalgic… people were saying this about fallout 3.

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    To be faaaaaaaaaaaiiiiir, a lot of that was tied up in the switch from overhead isometric view to first-person view.

    Fallout 1/2 didn’t focus on graphics, they were in many ways point-and-click adventures. A lot of things you had to hover over for “flavor text” and every once in a while something only four pixels wide exists that you need to notice.

    So the gameplay actually actively eschewed graphics in favor of things like flavor text.

    Further, the switch to first person broke the SPECIAL system, because how to you even manage a gun skill in a first person shooter without it feeling absurd? It made sense in isometric, even if it was often frustrating to miss an enemy when you had a 79% chance to shoot them in the balls. Putting that in a first person when you mag dump into someone standing right in front of you and half your shots feels a lot less realistic, and can quickly become frustrating in a more fast-paced first-person-shooter environment.

    I’d say a lot of those complaints were driven more by the perspective switch than anything else.

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    • lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      it was just an example :P

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    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Calm down.

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  • algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    People were saying this about the first goddamn Playstation

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• sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s hype for marketing. Our society is based on consumption and over spending. The GPU and CPU manufactures want us to keep spending money to have the latest and greatest.

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• Commiunism@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What you’re describing is not exactly gaming, but a different hobby entirely which is sometimes referred to as benchmarking. I’ve dabbled in it myself for some games, and the goal isn’t to experience and talk about the game as it is, but to figure out how to benchmark, best settings for performance and all that jazz.

  Discussions about specific games for their merits are still very much alive on the internet though, you usually have to go to reddit and look for a dedicated subreddit for the game you’re interested in or their itch/discord if it’s a small indie game.

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• tyler@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Nope, because I don’t give one shit about those kinds of games. Nintendo and indie games have never cared about graphics and performance. I haven’t owned a PlayStation since the PS2, and I’ve never owned an Xbox. Crazy how if your only console is a Nintendo then you never really care about that stuff. I do have a gaming pc but still play mostly indie games.

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Nintendo is a proper shout out.

    A Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom aren’t the prettiest games but they have two very big deals about them.

    1. Stylization. Games with a specific art style tend to age better than ones with ultra realistic art styles. Team Fortress 2 aged better than a lot of things because it leaned into the Pixar-cartoony style. ABotW and TotK both have their own unique style that will age incredibly well.

    2. Instead of the focus being graphics, the gameplay is the core loop. Tears of the Kingdom especially deserves accolades for how well the entire system of combining weapons and items just works. Who cares about the graphics, the crazy shit you do in the game isn’t causing the game to crash or fall to pieces. The game expected this, it was built to handle this, and this is proof that it was way more important to the developers than the graphics.

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• babyincubi@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Tbh… no, i don’t feel like we did. Those things have always been discussed on the mainstream ever since gaming became a thing. It mostly sounds like you have an algorithm/internet bubble problem, maybe it’s time to curate your feeds more to cater to your tastes? If you’re interested in a nice gaming podcast that doesn’t focus on graphics i can very much recommend “Gaming in the Wild”, it’s very chill and covers a variety of games, i like the way he describes things.

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• TGhost@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Try stardew valley, Celeste, and others indie games.
  Very lovely in term of visual too.

  TW :LGBTQIA+, anti patriarch, propaganda 😂😅

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  • odium@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    What does TW stand for?

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    • TGhost@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Thats an alert, meaning “trigger warning”,
      Usually you do use it to alert, before a click. Alert this content is gore, hard, etc

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• saigot@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  there’s plenty of “ugly” games here’s some I’ve played recently that came out this year:

  • UFO 50: A collection of new games in the style (mechanically and visually) of the 8bit games. 8 bit graphics
  • Balatro: A GOTY nominee, it’s a roguelike that is extremely loosely based on poker. modern pixel art style static images
  • Children of the sun: a puzzle game where you are a sniper that bends and deflects bullets to kill whole rooms of people with 1 bullet. Graphics are pretty imo but not advanced.
  • Echo Point Nova: a movement focused shooter. games plays on a potato. There is technically a a ray tracing option, but I think it’s more of a future proofing thing/a personal interest of the dev.

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• eezeebee@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Graphics have never been a priority for me, they’re more like an inevitable side effect of technology advancing. Luckily there is no shortage of good old games, and a lot of smaller studios are making amazing titles with older art styles / less demanding specs.

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• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I definitely don’t see a fixation of performance lol

  The reliance on AI upscaling and frame generation, while the entire game takes up half or your entire SSD shows that optimization is an after thought.

  The focus is entirely on making something visually good looking that will sell millions in pre-orders alone.

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• AstralPath@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I don’t really relate as I typically linger two or more years behind the cutting edge games and tech so by the time I get it my hardware can easily run it and I can actually just install the game and play.

  That and all tge good games float to the top of the pile in that time so I rarely end up spending money on something I don’t enjoy.

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  • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I just buy them in the steam sale and never play them

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• RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Well, game journalists need to sell gaming hardware and AAA games. Those guys have the ad money.

  Just play what you like.

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• GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Gaming is alive and well. It’s just the media you are consuming.

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• perishthethought@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  all I come across on social media regarding gaming is about resolution, ray tracing, DLSS/FSR, frame rates, frame time, CPU and GPU untilization, and all of that stuff,

  That’s because those are measurable factors in a game, things that can be objectively measured. “Fun” and “playability” though are subjective, so a journalist has a harder time telling you if a game will work for you.

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• FindME@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Well, my thoughts on this are pretty ‘basic.’ I buy games that I enjoy. I think that <5% of my games purchased in the last two years are games that have been released within a year of when I buy them.

  There are more than enough games that are amazing from the past 30 years to keep me occupied for the next 10, and not a single one of them stresses my 12 year old computer. Plus, while I can understand the complaints about Steam being the massive titan that it is, I am quite happy with them and their Linux gaming enabling work. I really do just install games and play them.

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• lustyargonian@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I feel it’s a bit like any hobby. You’d see casual film enjoyers and then those who refuse to watch unless it’s a bluray on their 4k Dolby Vision TV with 1000 nits OLED brightness. There are some who just enjoy listening to music on their airpod knockoffs by streaming on YouTube music and then there are those who buy $500 headphones with high quality gold plated aux wire and a custom DAC and use some obscure format to really enjoy music. There are some who enjoy team sports and then there are those who know personal routine of each player and the wetness of the grass or the year of the ball’s manufacturing and its impact on throw.

  It’s a spectrum.

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  • lustyargonian@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Stalker 2 had bugs on launch yet it easily sold 1 million copies. Black Myth Wukong uses frame gen to achieve 60 fps on PS5 and otherwise it locks to 45 fps, yet it has broken all records. Elden Ring is still a stuttery mess on PC and barely hits 60 fps on consoles, even the $700 one, yet it’s beloved.

    These people aren’t the ones talking about resolutions and frame rates on X, but just playing the damn game in millions.

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    • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Elden Ring is still a stuttery mess on PC and barely hits 60 fps on consoles, even the $700 one, yet it’s beloved.

      I have an old ass PC and a PS5 with the game on both and they run smooth as shit unless you’re using raytracing, which literally doesn’t even change the visuals in the game.

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• CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I see all the graphics technologies as an extra bonus to the gaming experience. It might make the game experience slightly better; but it alone doesn’t make the best experience.

  I’ve tried various team based shooters over time like Dirty Bomb, Overwatch, Paladins, and even now I try newer stuff, like Marvel Rivals. However everytime I feel get bored of them, I hop onto TF2 and no other team based shooter gives the the same satisfying gameplay loop compared to it.

  Regardless of graphics; a well made skill based game can keep players for a long time inside it; i mean just look at aoe2, it’s the chess of strategy games and a ton of people still play it to this day.

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• Sina@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The best games these days are almost all indie games, stuff about AAA & ray tracing etc etc is more of a nerd hobby fueled by the industry rather than entertainment.

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• Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Any of you feel like we’ve become so fixated on graphics and perfomance to the point where the actual game part of a video game is often overlooked, or at least underemphasized?

  I feel like everyone else has.

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• Mechaguana@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What is starting to annoy me is context button prompts. One button to rule them all i mean. What is this, an elaborate power point presentation? Feels like a relic of the mouse in action.

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  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s been around forever lol

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• bbbhltz@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  In the battle of KPI vs Mixed Methods, objective vs subjective, some prefer objective…

  I’m not a PC gamer, perhaps the people who play PC games invested a lot in their rig and expect a studio experience. So they review it and other people realize they are not getting the best experience.

  Nintendo Switch users with NSO might not realize that the software emulation used to run those games suffers from latency, and they will enjoy themselves until someone they trust brings it up and sends them down the rabbit hole.

  I’m currently grinding a game that looks like it was made in 2015 and had a few bugs. I don’t care because it is what I want to play.

  I get what you mean, though.

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