Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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2 years late to the party but I've started playing Elden Ring.
Long story short, I mostly agree with the majority sentiment, that it feels like how games used to feel like. It's not exactly controversial to assert that modern triple A games are terrible. Much has been said and written about why modern triple A games have regressed in quality and how Elden Ring was a breath of fresh air because it didn't make those same mistakes.
But here's my shower thought. And it might be dead obvious but I'll share nonetheless. It doesn't have to be that way!
Elden Ring feels more like the games from the 90s than games from the 90s. And that's obviously because we have better tooling and hardware in just about every aspect. It's infinitely easier to make good games now than it was in the 90s, we just don't make them.
It's also infinitely easier to write good software now. We have gpt, forums with decades of content, ides, YouTube, etc. Why do we keep on writing bloated shit? We don't have to.
Macdonald's fries would still be good if they used beef tallow.
Just about every way In which the quality of things regressed, it's easier now than ever to make an even higher quality version.
Something is wrong with us, that we don't. And I don't believe it's an eternal September the masses want slop situation, that's a copout. Elden Ring is one of the best selling games of 2022. It's a culture thing.
The people interested in making games, aren't interested in making games. The pay is shit, the hours are bad, and the chance for breakout success on your own to avoid those issues is vanishingly small. You can make more money doing just about anything else in the same field but outside the AAA game industry.
It isn't actually that easy to make a good game, the netcode alone is a nightmare for most multiplayer games (except for CS!). It seems like it should be easy, it ain't, and you'll make a more as a quant (even rhymes!) if you like that sort of thing.
It is a culture thing, but probably not in the way you imagined when typing up this "enshitification" post. More like we get Zuckerberg's instead of John von Neumann's because that is what we incentivise. I think you already know this, because you're a programmer? Maybe? I can't recall and your account is private.
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