• RadimentriX
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    430 days ago

    @tonytins 6 years is old now? :< couldnt care less about the competitive/pvp stuff but im playing x4 foundations most of the time currently and some genres dont get that many new entries anyway, like open world action games like gta5. Thats from 2013 and most other titles like mafia 3 or just cause 4 arent much newer either

    • Tony BarkOP
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      30 days ago

      I hear ya’. Technology (including games) progressed so rapidly that I feel older than I honestly should.

      • TimmyDeanSausage
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        129 days ago

        I recently replayed a game from 2004 that I remember playing in 2004… (KOTOR 2)

  • mohab
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    230 days ago

    True in my case. All of my favorites either were released before 2020 or originally released before 2020 and I’m playing the re-release.

    Only new IP I got excited about after 2020 was Project G.G. and I strongly doubt it’ll ever see the light at this point.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    900 million population is more than enough.
    (And that much better if they are all gamers :))

  • @[email protected]
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    301 month ago

    There are just so many good games out there. No time to play them all. Also i think epic free games and this prime free game stuff contributed to it. I just started playing bioshock bc of it. Also on pc it feels so good to play an old game and just crank up every setting to max, 4k, install some mods, no ai upscaling but msaa 8x and not having to worry about performance even on mid range PCs. I genuinely prefer the graphics of older games since for me image clarity is much more important than how many polygons a gun has or how the puddle of water reflects light. Like even the new unreal engine 5 games cannot run maxxed out on a 5090 in 4k without upscaling. They only look good in trailers.

    • BigDaddySlim
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      430 days ago

      I genuinely prefer the graphics of older games…

      This is because a lot of older games were going for an artistic style, the graphical fidelity of today’s games was too far out of reach. BioShock is a perfect example because of its beautiful art direction.

      AAA games used to have character to them, now every person has to have 1200 individually rendered pores and a remaster every few years to make it look more realistic (cough cough The Last of Us)

      • @[email protected]
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        128 days ago

        This is because a lot of older games were going for an artistic style>

        BioShock is a perfect example because of its beautiful art direction. >

        I totally agree with you. Another good example is Alice: Madness Returns. Just booted it up for the first time yesterday and it looks so good, pleasing in a way.

    • @[email protected]
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      181 month ago

      [email protected] might be of interest, if you don’t follow it.

      But yeah…there are a lot of perks to playing older games:

      • Due to the ubiquity of Internet access today, a lot of games get post-release patches, and ship in a not-entirely-polished state. You wait a few years, you get a game that’s actually finished.

      • There have been wikis, guides, and sometimes mods created.

      • The games that people are still playing are the ones that have stood the test of time, so it’s kinda easy to pick out good ones.

      • If a 3D game supports a higher framerate — and many don’t, due to things like physics running at a fixed frequency — on modern, high-refresh-rate monitors, 3D games can be pleasantly smooth.

      There are some downsides, though:

      • With multiplayer-oriented games, the community can have moved on, rendering the game not very playable.

      • The game may not leverage your hardware very well. You may have an 86 bazillion core processor, and especially older games are likely to be using one of them. I have a couple of games I like, like Oxygen Not Included, that really don’t use multiple cores well…and I’d guess that a similar game released in 2025 likely would.

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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        101 month ago

        Due to the ubiquity of Internet access today, a lot of games get post-release patches, and ship in a not-entirely-polished state. You wait a few years, you get a game that’s actually finished.

        And also, 60 EUR for a single game is a price at least I am not willing to pay for the average game, so in addition to getting a better game, I also get a cheaper one.

        There is stuff worth paying that much out there, but it’s not Call of Duty Black Ops Eleventeen

        • @[email protected]
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          29 days ago

          Funny enough, black ops 2, a game from 2012, is still listed at full price at $60—or $100 if you want the DLC—online. On the other hand, the current black ops 6 only costs $70 and new content is free. Admittedly, 2 was a far better game in just about every regard from what I know. But the fact that a modern game is $30 cheaper than a 12 year old game is fucking insane. Activision is so bad with this shit.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 month ago

          Black ops 6 is so bad IMHO. It takes forever to boot up the game and then hits you with the “update available, quit & restart”. Then waiting another 5 mins to download the update, then another couple mins to reach the main menu again. Oh and what was the actual update? To hit me with an advertisement video of season whatever…with new purchases for dumb costumes etc. Like c’mon just let me play the damn game already! When Im finally in a match the gameplay feels rigged…like I’m playing slots in Vegas than an actual video game. The respawns appearing out of nowhere. I honestly believe what I’m seeing on my screen is not what the other player is seeing. Its like these game designers purposely made this game based on an algorithm rather than setting game rules and allowing the players to compete based on skill. Maybe I’m way off on this (and am just a terrible cod player lol) but would like to hear other people’s opinion on this.

          all the advertisements, constantly wanting me to spend more money when the game was already expensive to begin with. The game play as described as above. Also the perks/tiers suck. Makes for a very unenjoyable experience. The game is just not fun.

          • @[email protected]
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            330 days ago

            I will say, the zombies mode is the best version in many years. For the low price of $0 through gamepass (which I get for free through an MS Rewards farming script), I can’t complain too much about it. But I wish they would just release a standalone zombies game at some point, it’s literally the only thing I like about cod and would gladly actually buy it (assuming it isn’t ass, which is like 50/50 with cod lol).

          • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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            230 days ago

            We’re at Black Ops 6 already? They made 6 of them? Are there other Call of Duty games as well since? I think the last I played was Infinite Warfare, I think I have WWII in my library unplayed.

            I kinda lost track of the AAA treadmill.

          • @[email protected]
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            230 days ago

            I actually really have enjoyed the game itself but you aren’t fucking kidding about the rest of it. It’s truly insane how much friction there is between deciding to play and getting into a lobby.

  • @[email protected]
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    171 month ago

    Does “older games” only mean the initial public release? So world of Warcraft, Dota 2, Minecraft… all those games that are constantly updated etc. too?

    Because that would be a really useless statistic. Many games are not a one time release and done thing anymore. They evolve over time. The games I listed have large player bases.

    • @[email protected]
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      230 days ago

      Exactly what I was thinking. While it’s a great headline the article is nonsense. What about early access? Did those players play any new games? How much time was spent afk? Were those old games new purchases? This is a cherry picked statistic and almost certainly doesn’t paint a clear picture or tell any story except “live service games work”

  • I don’t even know what the newest game I even own is… Helldivers 2? Except for Elden Ring and it’s DLC, I haven’t bought anything close to release for years. HD2 came out last year and I bought it last week.

    • TheLowestStone
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      830 days ago

      Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring are the last 2 AAA games I bought close to launch for full price. Other than that, I picked up Hades 2 in early access. The rest of my library is all stuff that I bought on sale.

      I do have Monster Hunter and Avowed on my wishlist but I think I’m going to be patient. If I do pull the trigger, it would probably be for Avowed because I want more Obsidian games. On a related note Grounded is $20 on Steam right now so I stopped that up even though I beat it back when I had Game Pass.

        • @[email protected]
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          230 days ago

          Huh, I thought of them as AA. I get indie means independent which they are, but they’re a studio with multiple successful releases even before bg3.

        • TheLowestStone
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          430 days ago

          Based on the size of the company and the budget for the game I’d at least call it a AA game. My real point is I paid full price for it and have absolutely no regrets.

    • Tony BarkOP
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      430 days ago

      Yeah, I’ve lost track myself. I just follow feeds that alert of me free deals.

  • GreatAlbatross
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    129 days ago

    I can agree with this: All the hype around KCD:2 led me to buying/playing KCD:1

  • @[email protected]
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    141 month ago

    I have a large backlog of five(?)+ plus year old games that are really good and I have yet to play. I’d much rather burn through those enjoying them on high settings instead of playing current games on low settings while trying to dodge crap monetization.

  • @[email protected]
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    961 month ago

    Honestly, most new games just fucking suck. They’re too expensive, often don’t run properly at launch even on excellent hardware, and those that don’t have micro-transactions built-in require you to purchase DLC to get the whole game.

    On the other hand, the older titles almost always run well on my machine, have a ton of community DLC, and in general are just designed better because they were built to bring the player as much fun as possible, not to extract as much money as possible.

    Plus, the quality content generated from 2005 - 2015 represents some of the best ever, and can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment before you even get into the 2010s. Why waste money on something that may not work, and that I likely won’t enjoy as much as the games I bought 10 years ago?

    It’s why I usually wait at least a year after release to consider whether or not I’m going to buy a title.

    • @[email protected]
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      730 days ago

      For sure, and my backlog is huge. I have tons to still play. I’m just now getting around to gta5 on my steam deck. I also just finished re-playing the original ff7 with some mods that made it look way nicer than back when I played it on my ps1 in the 90’s. I could go another 5 years without catching up to 2020 if I wanted to.

    • Guy Fleegman
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      3030 days ago

      New AAA games suck.

      I either play indies or old AAA games. It all went to shit around the beginning of the PS4/X1 era, so yeah, my upper bound is about 2013.

      • @[email protected]
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        430 days ago

        I tend to agree with you, I think the downfall started in the ps3 era since that’s when online was in every console. I understand your idea that it was bad in ps4 era since devs had the time to figure out how to makes things worse due to the ability to use the internet to sell things/deliver patches.

    • @[email protected]
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      129 days ago

      Totally. Even with good new games, best to wait until they are cheap and completely stable. The impatience to play something the day it releases hasn’t been a thing for me since like 2010… which I agree with you were just generally better, more exciting times for the medium.

    • mohab
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      130 days ago

      Amen. I also have a ton of issues with contemporary game design—padding playtime with procedural generation, prioritizing graphics, world size, or narrative over gameplay… etc.

      Nowadays, I feel as if every game tries to compete for “most game” while lacking cohesion and polished ideas.

      And to top it off: non-optimized game size. I’m sorry—I don’t care if your game is $2.99, I’m not downloading 80GBs just to try a game I may refund an hour later.

    • @[email protected]
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      1630 days ago

      I don’t know if I agree about new games. This is a bit of a problem with some AAA games though. The indie game scene is still thriving as far as I can tell, in some genres more than others. (E.g now is a great time to be into FPS games.)

      A good old game can occupy you for many hours though, and it’s hard to make good games period. I’m not surprised that a few older games dominate the market.

  • @[email protected]
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    201 month ago

    Currently 100% of my time is spent on games that are “six or more years old”, and a lot of that is spent on games that are more than 30 years old. But! I’m playing newly-made community content for 30 y/o games. This kind of retrogaming is something that evades Steam statistics entirely because it usually means playing custom sourceports of old games which rarely are on Steam. One old game I play on Steam to contribute to this statistics is Skyrim.

    • yeehaw
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      51 month ago

      For me, definitely older and indie (old and new). I don’t get a lot of time these days to sit at my PC. Using my steam deck primarily these days is part of the reason I’m playing older games, but seriously I have a problem with steam/gog/name a storefront/ backlogs. I have so many games already, great time to review what I bought because of hype but never played.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 month ago

        Yeah that whole conundrum, if you have the money to buy new games you don’t have the time to play them, if you had the time, you wouldn’t have the money to buy them.

  • Komodo Rodeo
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    41 month ago

    launches Baldur’s Gate.exe ♪♫ “Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick led the way. Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick ran away.” ♪♫

    • @[email protected]
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      181 month ago

      Old games were also typically steaming piles of shit. It’s just that the ones people still remember are the worthwhile ones, because the bad ones have gone into the dustbin of history.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

      Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not.

      There were so many bad platformers for the Super Nintendo, but nobody is ever going to go back and play those or dredge them up.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 month ago

        Yeah that’s a good point. As a kid I felt like when I bought a game it’d at least be complete, but there were plenty of terrible games back then too.

        • @[email protected]
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          31 month ago

          Yeah, I’ll grant the completeness point. Internet access everywhere has kind of lessened what it means to “release”.

  • @[email protected]
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    229 days ago

    Older games = more than 2 years old? Then the same goes for readers, movie and TV watchers, etc media consumption most isn’t from the current or previous years