Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.
There will be at least one LLM that's good for web searching and doesn't give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we'll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.
I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it's purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it's upsides.
People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn't function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).
Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.
AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we've had since the industrial revolution.
Back in 2013, I bought an old PS3 + GTA5 for £150 or so just to play the game, then once I had it, picked up two more exclusives, before never touching it again pretty quickly.
Getting a console for GTA6, plus the game, this time may set me back more than my expendable income after rent and bills. It will absolutely sell consoles but I'd wager people are actually able to buy a console much less than in 2013.
I had it from release and honestly, even day 1 it smoked the competition in the city sim genre, releasing with features and scale than Sim City ever had.
The DLC often introduced more systems, but they did feel 'extra', the game was perfectly functional before parks or tourism or natural disasters etc.
The reason CS:2 felt so necessary is because the first was bloated and had underlying issues in it's simulation logic, like unrealistically inefficient driving, or a large expansion to residential areas causing all the new residents to die of old age at the same time, crippling the city. Every part of the GUI and logic just felt clunky compared to modern, polished games.
I wouldn't be surprised if basically every person with over 1k hours in a game isn't seeking some sort of escapism, not counting the anomalies like people leaving servers running etc.
I suppose every minute in a game is escapism of some sort, but escapism from dysphoria or something else significant, I think would be common.
Or anyone can tell anon is alone in one glance.
I do think a huge world with an engaging and dense design can still be made worse with size. In some games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild or GTA 5, you could probably drop me anywhere and I'd know where I was, half due to good and differing region design and half because the map isn't that big.
Back in 2015 I'd dream of a GTA 5 expansion that adds San Francisco and Las Vegas to the map, turning the north and east of the map in to a 500 yard straight of water, but in reality, two more large cities and their surroundings suburbs and wilderness would have never kept it's memorability like the first region.
Honestly I think these games need more points of interest that are not marked on the map whatsoever, and don't matter towards 100% completion.
I eventually went through the Witcher 3 post game and got every single marker but it was basically background work while I listened to audiobooks, I didn't come across anything interesting for hours. However I do acknowledge that those markers aren't necessary meant to be sought out, but stumbled upon.
It it to wait 30 mins then do it every 10, and pop it in startup, those were the days.
The other was Free_Cupholder.EXE. I miss disk drives for this reason more than for actual use.
The execs probably get away fine from it as well, even if the company sinks, they'll end up high up somewhere else.
Online service games are just peak venture capitalism, grinding a small studio to dust and causing massive misery followed by unemployment for a 1/50 shot at making a money printer.
I built an overkill PC in February 2016, it was rocking a GTX 980ti a little before the 1080 came out, and it was probably the best GPU out there, factory overclocked and water cooled by EVGA. My CPU was an i5-4690k, which was solidly mid range then, but I overclocked it myself from 3.5GHz to 5.3Ghz with no issue, and only stopped there because I was so suspicious of how well it was handling that massive increase. I had 2TB of SSD spaceand like 8TB of regular hard drives and 16GB of ram.
Because I have never needed to think about space, and so many of my parts were really overpowered for their generation, I have always been hesitant to upgrade. I don't play the newest games either, I still get max settings on Doom Eternal and Read Dead 2 which I forget are half a decade old. The only game where it's struggled in low settings is Baldurs Gate 3 unfortunately, which is made me realise it's ready to upgrade.
Maybe it's luck but I've shamelessly torrented in the UK my whole life, I wouldn't be surprised if in the past fifteen years, I've downloaded a petabyte on pirated content.
I've never used a VPN and the one time I got a letter from my ISP, I suspect it was a scam anyway. I have used at least 4 ISPs in this period and two mobile networks, I've even used public and work WiFis with not issue.
I'm not sure if this a UK thing or if I'm just wildly lucky.