this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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I mean, they can still play the old games. My kiddo loved Kirby on the NES Classic
The point of the meme is the experience of witnessing the unique rate of progress in game engines, not the variety. There's definitely more variety now than ever before, if you go looking for it l, and I say that as a 40 year old curmudgeon.
Exactly. Several limits were loosened or removed entirely. The SNES was the first console with actual pixel transparency, the PSX, despite being weaker than the Saturn and the N64, was the king of the 90s. The jump in graphical and sound quality was always night and day from the Atari era all the way to the PS3/360 era (sound probably peaked in the PS2 era, with DVD quality)
Even on the PC, the jump from 3 years' worth of advances was astonishing. Just compare the original Doom, 1993, with Quake, 1996
And here's Quake 3, 1999
HL1 vs HL2 shows a similar rate of progress
Graphically, I think the two Half Life are more akin to UT99 and UT2003, similar year of release, too. UT2004 didn't change graphics, but I remember that, if you set everything on the graphics to maximum, the announcer will exclaim "HOLY SHIT!"
didn't feel like it to me at the time, but I was glad they finally developed the technology to prevent Gordon's boots from being slippery as fuck. god hl1 platforming was abysmal.
With the graphics specifically though, IMO half life 2 (2004) is more similar in terms of fidelity to Portal 2 (2011) than to Half Life 1 (1998). Which does make sense as Half Life 2 and Portal 2 were made in the same engine ofc.
Not the most active current popular games for them tho, if you're around 18 rnow fortnite was prob the main/only mutiplayer title played, my friends and I played a ton of games, jumping every month to what was popular, its consistently been fortnite for kids for a while now, I have 18 year old nephews that have only ever played fortnite, which is honestly a non issue if that works for them, the goal is to get dopamine, move on when you stop getting dopamine
They can play the same game for years and I cant even open one of hundreds I have avilable to me most days, I think they and sports game player win, they seem happier.
Is that the goal? I want more from my games than just poking my brain. I sometimes play games that challenge my reactions, sometimes ones that challenge my thinking. Superhot and Braid provided interesting time-related puzzles. Portal had some good lateral thinking puzzles.
I'm not exactly playing educational games, but when I played Assassin's Creed games, the historical bits I found interesting were things I could learn more about outside the game. When I played Hearts of Iron 4, it was global politics around the time of WWII. Uboat and other sub games taught me a bit about submarine tactics in WWII. Oxygen not included taught me things I didn't know about thermodynamics and materials, even if it is extremely simplified. Age of Empires and Total War were gateways to learn about medieval styles of warfare.
Even Sea of Thieves, which involves incredibly simplified sailing was what prompted me to learn about how square-masted sailing ships actually worked.
And, of course, all the flight simulators I've played over the years has taught me a lot about how to actually fly planes.
To me, if all you're getting from a game is a bit of dopamine hits, you're really missing out. It's like watching the same movie over and over, or reading the same book over and over.
Dopamine is simply a motivator idk why yall see it as a drug, the way your last sentence is phrases, any action you derive joy from is because you get dopamine from it, if the game bores you dont play it, is what im saying. Id get the sunk cost fallacy where id say I need to spend at least an hour a dollar for the game to be worth it, better off just not playing it if you dont like it, your time is always more valuable
Poking my brain gives me dopamine, I enjoy start and puzzle games that stress me out because of the dopamine, its the main driver, elden ring was pain and stress (my first dark souls) but the most dopamine ive ever gotten from a video game