If your only issue is that modern games suck, rather than A) Being too exhausted after work, B) Having social media-induced attention deficit, C) Being overwhelmed with other responsibilities or anxiety, or D) Simply just not having enough time, you just have to find games that are actually good. Not AAA grindfests that aim at keeping you glued to the screen getting collectibles for 80 hours, but games that are actually trying to provide you with a worthwhile experience.
Some suggestions: Subnautica, Outer Wilds (not The Outer Worlds), Disco Elysium, Pathologic 2 (mind you, this one is extremely stressful, it’s a masterpiece but most people will not enjoy it), The Forgotten City, Hades and Omori.
Thank you for this distinction! I’ve heard people rave about Outer Wilds and all this time thought they were talking about Outer Worlds, which surprised me because I thought Outer Worlds was boring. Taking a look at gameplay now!
Me, telling all my coworkers about my cramps. And now, telling anyone who clicks on the post. I have cramps. They are really fucking bad. I want to die but I ordered ramen for dinner so I’m gonna wait until after I have that.
Period cramps, so sadly not the right kind. The solution is to remove my demon spawn uterus, but taking time off for surgery in the US is just a whole fucking thing. I have been thinking about trying magnesium for the calf cramps I get sometimes, though.
I just got a Steam Deck, and I bought Baldur’s Gate 3. Pretty sure I’ll finish it on my deathbed. It feels like the hour here or there that I manage to play is not getting me anywhere fast.
You just gotta find the right game. I discovered Satisfactory last year and had to uninstall it after a few eeks because I was staying up till 2am playing. I am 40.
I feel the same way about Baldurs Gate 3, I’m only pushing 30 but after playing for less than 20 minutes I had a mini pre-intervention with myself like, “okay listen up you geek, remember staying up until 4am every night and surviving on popcorn chicken and coffee isn’t sustainable”
Isn’t it less fun and more preying on the addictive aspects of gaming?
It’s kinda like life Sims, ala Harvest Moon. Give just enough time to finish out your day. Extend the need to progress by fluffing out interactions. Make there be lots of little progression increments.
It’s less good game and more preying on dopamine routines. m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yb5CINrC5EI get games have similar feel good spikes. Like loot/number simulators which are mostly idle games with more effort for how easy they are. But min/Max Effiency games like many games that have day/night stamina cycles are just keying in on that dopamine rush on a filled day, which doesn’t feel different than loot box games in the end. My time at Sandrock was my last one that felt great for a bit then you realize so much is pointless fluff gated by time dumps for no reason than to increase their playtime metrics.
(disclaimer: I didn’t make this meme, but I do share the sentiment of rapidly losing focus/mental energy when gaming now.)
Favorite of all time? The SNES. It felt like the peak of 2d graphics before the slate got wiped clean for 3d, so we saw a ton of great games from devs that had been playing/creating 2d games for decades.
Favorite currently? PC. I have a switch, steam deck, and PS5 as well, but 99% of my playtime is on PC.
I was just saying this about the SNES to my SO last night, funny enough. GBA almost matches it, and for largely the same reason: experienced 2d devs, putting out their last hurrahs before the transition to ugly young 3d
Exactly! And don’t get me wrong, there are a ton of great indie 2d games out there now, but back in the SNES days, these were THE devs. You can tell the difference in polish from having been made by the biggest and best studios.
I had to go back and read up on the early history of video games. SNES came out in 1991, and yeah - looking at arcade games, Computer Space came out in 1971.
Oh yeah, it all started with the arcades. There was a whole culture attached to it, and they were very popular.
I think it’s fascinating to learn about how the developers figured out how to do things back then, the limitations, scaling/distribution, and then the rapid arms race between customers and devs to make games harder and harder to beat. There was an excellent documentary about this on Netflix a few years ago, but I can’t remember the name off the top of my head.
I still play games frequently, but in MUCH shorter sessions. I’m also gravitating more toward slower strategic/tactical games that can be paused at any time.
Agreed, it’s easier to jump back into those games, too. One thing I hate is picking a game back up after a week and spending the first 20mins figuring out what I was doing last time.
I did install a Sega Genesis emulator on a old laptop during the Xmas break to play some NHL94 and 95 with modern rosters.
That was a lot of fun. I also installed Pirates! Gold after a day and it was fun to revisit these games from my youth.
I loved the ability to save stats.
However after a couple of days I’ve not really played them again since. It only cost $14 for the Sega controller so it was worth the price. I don’t think I could buy 2 beers at a bar locally for that.
I don’t make new playlists to split by genre, I do it so the shuffle will actually fucking work. I don’t know what dogshit algorithms Youtube/Spotify employ, but for any playlist over 100 songs the “shuffler” will typically just go through the same ~20 songs and expect you to not notice. I just want a different order!
Anyway now I have like 40 playlists with 20 songs each.
Apparently back in the covered wagon days when shuffle features were truly random, the listener would occasionally be burdened by hearing two songs by the same artist in a row. Literally no one complained about this, so of course upper management decided that this must be “fixed” immediately, so that’s what led to shuffle features becoming noticeably worse than when they were simply random, which is all anyone ever wanted them to be.
Actually, and I don’t mean to be that guy, but people did complain about it.
True random means that you could end up with songs by the same artist being played four or five times in a row, which makes people think it’s not random at all. Humans are really bad at understanding randomness, so a little help to make it feel more random improves satisfaction.
But at this point, it’s gone too far and I’m almost certain that shuffling involves always playing the most popular songs by an artist first, then random covers and remixes, then the back-catalog of works.
On a side note, I wish I could exclude remixes and covers when shuffling through an artist’s stuff.
Not all of us. I can’t imagine not understanding that if something’s random, there’s a possibility that something like playing the same artist five times in a row might happen. It’s cute when that happens, it’s a thing that should be possible and one of the things that was so much fun about shuffle.
I don’t want to be that guy either, but do you have a source showing that people really did complain about this? I’ve heard it said so many times that they did, but I don’t believe it. I think it’s just an excuse for big corporations like Spotify and Apple to manipulate algorithms to deliberately promote certain artists. I don’t believe it was ever well intentioned, and I resent that there’s no feature for people who want “shuffle” to work like it should work – in a completely random fashion. Or at least give us the option. The fact that there’s not even a randomization option at all should make clear that this was not development that was done in good faith or for the benefit of the listener. They actually removed a feature in order to promote their corporate crap.
It’s so obvious that Spotify is promoting certain artists. As soon as I launch the app, it’s always the same shit on the front page. At this point, I could pretty well predict what major-label crap is in all those “recommended” playlists they create for me. It’s so bad. Honestly, if it weren’t so damn inconvenient to do so, I’d just rip songs from the CDs I buy from independent labels and put them on my phone. I’m pretty sure there are some apps that have a genuinely random shuffle. Just got to find one.
Spotify themselves got that feedback that their truly random shuffle didn’t feel random, so they changed it to an algorithm. And this is from 2014 when they made the switch, so they were only just diving into algorithmic promotion.
I don’t disagree that Spotify now promotes certain artists and has really messed with their shuffle algorithms, but they left the true random behind because people complained about it.
All I want is shuffle not to repeat until I’ve heard (or skipped) every song.
I mean really what they should do is provide some degree of control over the shuffle parameters… But hey ho, back to listen to whatever Spotify thinks is my favourite song.
I understand the joke, I think. But what do the devil and Jesus have to do with it? If either one of them is evil it’s what Jesus is saying, so that can’t be it. What am I missing here?
It’s just a common shitpost format out there that’s playing off of those unironic religious posts that you might see on FB or something. I see good/bad get flipped back and forth as part of the joke.
Dude, I’m from Wyoming. We have the second highest per capita gun ownership in the nation. I’m just unwilling to blind myself to very real, very tangible, very quantifiable situations in the United States.
Also, last I checked, this is shitposting. But Red Hatters gon’ Red Hat.
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