this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
517 points (99.4% liked)

Games

36517 readers
1556 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here and here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] PigStyle@lemmy.world 2 points 27 minutes ago (2 children)

Factorio considered older?

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 2 points 21 minutes ago

Probably? I have memories from over a decade back so

[–] DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago

DLC is new..

[–] WhatSay@slrpnk.net 1 points 13 minutes ago* (last edited 12 minutes ago)

& Indie games

[–] MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 14 points 1 hour ago

People are reading the headline and assuming they're talking about older single-purchase games, but the article is actually referring to mostly MTX-driven games that get continuous updates.

And the data further shows, in Newzoo's own words, that these 908 million "PC players are heavily skewed towards older, live service games."

Remember that even things like Rocket League are about a decade old at this point, and games like LoL, Dota 2 and CS:GO are even older

[–] suite403@lemmy.world 13 points 2 hours ago

Because we have a giant backlog of steam sales.

[–] ItsJannnneee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 2 hours ago

Most new AAA games suck, that's why. I miss when games were made with passion rather than for a quick soulless cashgrab.

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago

Helldivers 2 came out in 2024

By definition, that's last year, so it's an old game.

Bwuh?

[–] cod@lemmy.world 14 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

JOINED, any more ways to find sublemmings idk what are these called lol

[–] cod@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

!newcommunities@lemmy.world is a great place to discover new communities. As for big ones that already exist I’m sure there’s probably a list of big communities out there somewhere, otherwise browsing by All > Top 6 Hours or All > Hot will give you a good mix of everything. Then you can add communities you like from there

Edit: also lots of communities will shout out other communities in their sidebars. Check those too

[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 63 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] GuyFleegman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours 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.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 hours 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.

[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 13 points 4 hours 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.

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 15 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That reminds me— I gotta do another Fallout: New Vegas run.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Are you familiar with the A Tale of Two Worlds mod, which inserts Fallout 3 into Fallout: New Vegas to make them one giant game? If not, it's a way to add some new life to the thing.

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 4 points 4 hours ago

Yes, actually that was my intended next run! I just gotta remember how to set up everything.

[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

if you mean i do spend my time playing nes and snes via emulator, you are right

[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 hours ago

What about new games, like world of warcraft.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

I do not. I haven't played a gamer older than thirty years old in years

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 14 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I find it kind of funny how games are becoming more mainstream, but every once in a while I still meet people that are like "games are a waste of time". But then again I guess people said that about movies and tv and still do sometimes.

Also I've been playing guild wars 2 again. Base game is like 10 years old but it's still fun

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 7 points 5 hours ago

I think the people who often say this feel some personal guilt for how much time they feel they’ve wasted instead of doing whatever it is in life they have yet to achieve. It’s a matter of perspective.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 10 points 5 hours ago

I'm playing Fallout 4 right now. It's not the only game I play by any means. Too many new games are overly focused on graphics or monetization. I'm always trying new games and the better ones often don't have the best graphics. We want 2010 gameplay. Hell, I'll still play Unreal Tournament 1999 GOTY edition, but older games usually need resolution and texture upgrade mods. Fortunately a lot of great old games actually get them.

[–] M137@lemmy.world 18 points 6 hours ago

When people found out PhysX doesn't work on the new Nvidia cards I saw several people here on Lemmy say that it doesn't matter because almost no one plays older games. I seriously don't understand how anyone could think that, it's astoundingly stupid and ignorant.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 8 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

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@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

BG3 isn't an AAA title. Larian is an indie studio.

[–] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours 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.

[–] lapping6596@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Nino477@lemmy.world 26 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

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@lemmy.world 1 points 56 minutes 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)

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 7 hours ago (5 children)

!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works 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.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] tal@lemmy.today 102 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (12 children)

7.1% of the total hours spent were on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
6.4% were in League of Legends
6.2% were in Roblox
5.8% were in Dota 2
5.4% were in Fortnite

That is a lot of people playing free-to-play competitive multiplayer games.

[–] GoumLeChat@jlai.lu 80 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (17 children)

Free is an important reason why. Also, these games run very well on old machines. If you mostly play that and get a new rig, you don't have to spend a lot. Pc parts have gotten ridiculously expensive.

load more comments (17 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 11 points 7 hours ago

11.35% of the human population.

load more comments
view more: next ›