Jeff GeerlingI'm glad I got to enjoy gaming in the era before you needed a $7,000 rig to redraw frames and generate slop frames to hit 62 fps in a AAA game.
doragasu
Thomas@doragasu @geerlingguy I left a long time ago with included root kits, micro transactions and thousands of launchers.
I stick to mostly indie games on GOG these days.
@tripplehelix @geerlingguy I play on Linux (so no rootkits, they just won't work here) and I don't buy games with Denuvo. Also I don't play games with aggressive monetization. On the bad side, I use Steam, so I get Steam DRM, but well, I think that is not very invasive, so it's something I can tolerate.
But even without all that, current AAA gaming status is terrible, with 0 optimization on so many games, the AI and GPU craze making hardware ultra expensive and now this...
@doragasu @geerlingguy Just wait till you lose connection to the internet for a few weeks. You'll start to hate steam. Probably the most annoying part of it is the need for an internet connection.
@tripplehelix @geerlingguy Been a Steam user for 15 years now, and **never** had that problem. Don't get me wrong, I am not defending Steam DRM by any means, no DRM is good. But for me it is a "reasonable enough" DRM I can tolerate.
@doragasu @geerlingguy My sunk cost fallacy is in full swing, and I still hate the platform. I don't own a single game on there. Valve can remove my account and I'd loose all my games just because a bot can flag my account.
I've had an account for 17 years and "own" over a thousand games.
Manchuck@geerlingguy Those were good times
Joe FergusonThe best of times.
Paul Dot X@geerlingguy retro gaming for the win! got a GTX 1050ti I can sell you cheap...only $200......
Lenny@geerlingguy Fortunately there are still so many games left I want to play, it will take me very long to reach the slop era.
Drikanis@geerlingguy nvidia's only means of growth for the past decade has been to invent less efficient technologies nobody needs, and make users and developers think it's required.
Michael Labowicz@geerlingguy the trick is to play AAA games that are a few years old, and up to date Indies
Nazo@mlabowicz @geerlingguy I'm seeing even indie devs throw in some of the crappy effects though. It doesn't help that some engines like Unreal Engine have a lot of crap like TAA built in (and very hard for the end user to disable btw) and make it super easy to import sets of effects that do really horrible things to the image that devs have decided people want.
I don't think there is any one easy go-to anymore.
The closest thing I've found to being able to assume any such thing is at least most devs using Unity are less inclined to use such effects dialed all the way up and almost none in Godot. (Note I say less about Unity. It's still a thing for those... Most at least have some bad stuff.) If I see Unreal Engine I know in advance I'm in for a barf-inducing experience.
@nazokiyoubinbou @geerlingguy I wasn't thinking about the game engines playing a factor, but you make a good point. I find myself coming back to a game like #valheim (based on Unity ) again and again vs. some of the new newer games based on Unreal
@mlabowicz @geerlingguy The engines aren't the only thing by any means, but they do play a part in this. Unity can do most of the same stuff Unreal can, but it takes a whole lot more work to get it there. Some effects can be just thrown in (from free packs even!) and turned on willy nilly and that does include a whole lot of bad stuff, but Unity is a little less good at the really really bad stuff (maybe because it's still internally a little closer to its roots or something? I'm really not sure.) Unreal Engine has a lot baked in and enabled by default though. TAA being the biggest offender for me. The latest versions of UE5 won't even let the user turn TAA off via undocumented INI tweaks anymore (4 and earlier versions of 5 at least respected an INI setting. Now they delete it.)
Jan@geerlingguy I got into Indie and Classic games due to the lack of finds for a new pc (still got a 4790k,32gb of ddr3 and an new 7600) which can still do several AAA games like Baldurs Gate 3 but really is strugling on the cpu side nowadays.
Sandwich@geerlingguy Thankfully there are transation and compatibility layers that allow us to play the older games and enojoy some nostalgia on most hardware
John Walsh@geerlingguy I still like the Switch… haha
Alexander Heimbuch@geerlingguy wait until they realize that graphics is just one (minor) aspect of a game 🥶
@aheimbuch @geerlingguy They haven't realized that in the past, like three decades, so I don't think they're going to realize now either.
@geerlingguy I seriously can not understand how people can accept this... They just keep throwing in more and more effects that make it impossible for even a 750 watt $2000 graphics card to keep up so it has to render at insanely low resolutions then throw in a bunch of tricks to try to make it look like it's in native resolution.
And it's just like... reduce the effects?
The modern gaming experience really is something else. Games as I knew and loved them were clear, sharp images. You could easily see what was going on. The modern game experience is the exact opposite. Everything is designed to blur and obscure as much as possible. TAA, bloom out the wazoo, chromatic aberration, lens flares, vignettes, random noise, motion blur, etc all obscure more and more...
WHY???
@geerlingguy I really do legitimately want to know why exactly it is that devs are trying to make games look like you're having a fever dream of yourself viewing them via an old VHS cassette tape that was lying too long in a damp basement being played on a VCR with worn out heads and the video was recorded with a really crappy home recorder with a lens out of alignment that they never bothered to get fixed.
What happened to games trying to make it feel like you're actually there?
I miss games being clear so bad. 
Alan Bucknam
mahadevank@geerlingguy and car racing games that worked fine with the keyboard
Oh and cheat codes, goddammit!
Ryek DarkenerYou can still do that. And there is no reason not to do.
rockpick@geerlingguy i heard they will measure graphics card performance in tera slops
Roland \ Willard@geerlingguy yep, unfortunately this is a very real trend in the latest gen games. They really did look better and run better 10 years ago. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ov9GhEV3eE
Dynamic Lighting Was Better Nine Years Ago | A Warning About 9TH Gen's Neglect.
Pixel Dunn@geerlingguy me still enjoying solitaire:
Eric LiknessAt this rate we'll be left playing lo-fi version of Blackbjack and Tic-tac-toe. 
Agax@geerlingguy But that's why they are now called AAAA games, the extra A stands for AI
@geerlingguy Nes, Snes, and N64 ftw!
not only was it relatively cheap, you could also drop them out of an airplane and still turn 'em on.
provided you blew on the cartridge first.
not only was it relatively cheap, you could also drop them out of an airplane and still turn 'em on.
provided you blew on the cartridge first.
LΞX/NØVΛ 🇪🇺@geerlingguy yeah i recently played a game from 7 years ago and it reach easily 200 FPS on my 200Hz screen as beautiful as 2025 one.
now new game run a 30 MAX without their crappy upscaling or scrap.
And i will NEVER pay more than 500 for a graphical card.
so their 3000+ one they can oil them and put them where i think...
Really Lazy Bear 
@geerlingguy I rocked a GT 630 on the first rig I built so when I'm really desperate, I just reduce the resolution down to 800x600 and hope for the best back then. DLSS and FSR? The fuck are those things, lol.
I miss my PSP though. That thing carried me throughout my internetless era of my childhood days...