Then vs Now
Then vs Now
Oh, man, imagine thinking that minimum requirements weren't a thing before.
I once deleted the operating system just to fit a single game into my hard drive, booted from floppy while I was playing it and reversed the process when I was finished. Sometimes games were aiming at a specific speed of computer and if you had a computer that didn't run at that specific number of megahertz the game just ran like a slideshow or in fast forward. I didn't realize some of my favourite games were running under the speed cap for years sometimes. We just didn't have a concept of things running at the same refresh rate as your screen in the early 3D era until APIs fully standardized. Sometimes you upgraded your GPU and the hardware accelerated version of your old software rendered game actually ran slower.
Also, game developers "then" made arcade games that literally charged you money for dying, then charged you more money for effectively cheating at the game and actively asked you to literally pay to win. We used to think that was normal.
Also, also, we used to OBSESS about games being bigger. The size the game took up was heavily advertised and promoted, especially on consoles. Bigger was better. We were only kinda glad that CDs could do 500 Mb, so we could keep getting bigger on a single disk, but by the time FMV games got popular triple A games were back to coming into books with disks instead of pages. This was still seen as a selling point.
Also, also, also, the assembly code of a whole bunch of old games is sheer spaghetti. Half of the mechanics in NES games are just bugs. There are a couple of great Youtube channels that just break these down and tweak them. In fairness, they didn't have development tools as much as a notepad and a pencil, but still.
161Very rose tinted glasses. I remember horrifying cache corruption bugs that locked you out of certain game areas permanently on that save, random illegal operation exceptions crashing games (no autosave btw), the whole system regularly freezing and needing to be completely restarted, games just inexplicably not working to begin with on a regular basis because of some hardware incompatibility and the internet sucked for finding fixes then and patches weren't a thing so you were just screwed.
I would say that games not all being written in C and assembly trying to squeeze out every possible performance efficiency with nothing but dev machismo as safeguards is in fact a good thing.
38For those that are unaware, the second chad is most likely referring to .kkrieger. Not a full game, but a demo (from a demoscene) whose purpose was to make a fully playable game with a max size of 96kb. Even going very slow, you won't need more than 5 minutes to finish it.
The startup is very CPU heavy and takes a while, even on modern systems, because it generates all the geometry, textures, lighting and whatnot from stored procedures.
37I see stuff like this and I don't blame developers/coders for all the shit that's happening. If you objectively look at gameplay and such, most games are actually pretty decent on their own. The graphics are usually really nice and the story is adequate, if not quite good, the controls are sensible and responsive...
A lot of the major complaints about modern games isn't necessarily what the devs are making, it's more about what the garbage company demands is done as part of the whole thing. Online only single player is entirely about control, keeping you from pirating the game (or at least trying to) plus supplying on you and serving you ads and such... Bad releases are because stuff gets pushed out the door before it's ready because the company needs more numbers for their profit reports, so things that haven't been given enough time and need more work get pushed onto paying customers. Day one patches are normal because between the time they seed the game to distributors like valve and Microsoft and stuff, and the time the game unlocks for launch day, stuff is still being actively worked on and fixed.
The large game studios have turned the whole thing into a meat grinder to just pump money out of their customers as much as possible and as often as possible, and they've basically ruined a lot of the simple expectations for game releases, like having a game that works and that performs adequately and doesn't crash or need huge extras (like updates) to work on day 1....
Developers themselves aren't the problem. Studios are the problem and they keep consolidating into a horrible mass of consumer hostile policies.
25DAE games bad now??
18This is so true. Also let's not forget where game is almost unplayable and constantly crashing on release.
15I hate this conflation of "Developer" with every other role in modern game development.
If you think the new Porsche looks shit, do you blame the Mecanical engineer who designed the brake mechanism?
If your new manga body pillow gives you a rash, do you blame the graphic designer of the manga?
There is not a single thing listed in the meme above that is actually the fault of the actual developers working on the game. Don't even need to talk about the first picture.
game size is studio management related. They want to stuff as much (repetitive, boring) content into the game as possible. Plus a multiplayer mode no one asked for.
Optimizations don't happen because the CEO decides to take the sales money of the game this quarter, and not next, and ships an unfinished product.
Always online is ALWAYS a management decision.
It's a shit joke, it's wrong because it blames the wrong people, and its also just dumb.
14those always online "single-player" games aren't what you think.
your ads and tracking friends are always interested in playing with you.
14games made with agile teams and with passions are probably good, regardless of when they were made. i'm young but growing up i only had access to really old computers and saw that most of the stuff that was made back in the day was just garbage shovelware. it was hard not to get buried in them.
most triple A developers today are far more skilled in both writing and optimizing the code however when the management is forcing you to work long hours you're gonna make more mistakes and with tight deadlines, if you're doing testing and bug fixing after developing the entire game then it's going to be the first thing that's getting cut.
that being said i wish they really did something about the massive size games take on disk. my screen is 1080p, my hardware can barely handle your game on low in 1080p so everything is gonna get downscaled regardless and despite how hard you wanna ignore it data caps are still here, why am i forced to get all assets and textures in 4k 8k? make it optional goddamit.
10Ok, that got me. I still remember the days of ZX and that funny noise... But I do have a question for one part of the meme: can someone explain to me why on Earth the updates now weigh these tens of gigs? I can accept that hires textures and other assets can take that space, but these are most likely not the bits that are being updated most of the time. Why don't devs just take the code they actually update and send that our way?
9Nothing says fun like trying to relax and play a game . Oh no you need an update to the game...Oh did I say game I mean the custom launcher...here is our ads for our other games to click through...oh you must want to go to a webpage...whoops can't connect to online even if you don't want to play online...Ok you finally connected oh but the settings have been reset because of the update...Oh wait the cloud sync didn't work...
8That last one really got me though hahaha
7Laughs in indie games
7I think in the past the actual devs were more accessible, and their skills visible and admirable. Kind of like how video games themselves were more of a techy nerdy thing.
Today you have humongous teams with the work spread over hundreds of people. We hear from their community managers and marketing teams rather than reading the coders’ opinions. And just like the big games are more of a safe corporate product, they are more mainstream.
6Wild Hearts ran like ass using low preset on my same PC that ran both monster hunter world and rise just fine at 60fps high.
A CPU upgrade is my next target, but I didn't think it would get this bad in less than 5 years.
6Man, I miss the good old days.
3I mostly play old games that were made before the industry went to shit. There are a few new gems every year though.
2Okay who was stealing breast milk cuz I don't believe that one
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