PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
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I do not. I haven't played a gamer older than thirty years old in years
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Yeah, Dwarf Fortress too, but at least Dwarf Fortress has an extensive, well-documented wiki. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead had a not-very-up-to-date wiki at one point, but then whoever maintained it had it go down at some point in the past year, and I'd say that the game has also been constantly updated and more-dramatically-rebalanced than Dwarf Fortress, so learning to how to play involves scouring Reddit, YouTube, and Discord to try to figure out what information is current. I think that the current recommended route on the subreddit to learn how to play is to watch recent YouTube videos of some streamers playing, which is...kinda nuts. It's not uncommon that a question on the subreddit as to an authoritative answer on game mechanics is "go check the code"...
There are also some military sims I've played that are probably reasonably approachable to players who are familiar with the military hardware involved from prior to the game, but for players who aren't, they're probably in for a lot of reading and understanding mechanics, and some milsims don't bother to document that, so you really need to do outside reading beyond whatever the game documentation has.
In case you weren't aware (it sounds like you're not) :
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Cataclysm
This isn't going to teach you how to play but it's an excellent reference wiki
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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.
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.
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What about new games, like world of warcraft.
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I think they're both better and worse.
In the latter half of the 2000s and early 2010s AAA games were becoming increasingly hollowed out husks, with dumbed down paint-by-numbers gameplay and tons of QTEs. And its not like their narratives or art direction were any good either (it being the blurry brown piss filter era). In the same time period we saw the rise of predatory practices like day one DLCs and preorder bonuses.
In more recent times I think we've actually seen a reversal of the gameplay hollowing out trend, and an improvement in art direction. However with the rise of lootboxes, trading, and gatcha, monetization schemes are more predatory than they've ever been (though these are mostly concentrated in multiplayer games). Its also really common now for games to release in an completely broken and unplayable state.
I feel like a huge number of franchises were started back in the day, but everything now is just sequels and remasters of old games.
How many of the current biggest AAA titles got their start in the 2005-2015 era vs the number of new franchises in 2015-2025?
Creativity seems to be mostly dead and games all have to be mega hits or they're considered a failure. There's also a distinct lack of AA games (the successful of which often later became AAA titles).
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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.
BG3 isn't an AAA title. Larian is an indie studio.
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In case you weren't aware (it sounds like you're not) :
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Cataclysm
This isn't going to teach you how to play but it's an excellent reference wiki
I'm aware.
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BG3 isn't an AAA title. Larian is an indie studio.
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.
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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.
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.
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This would be a great time to promote [email protected]
JOINED, any more ways to find sublemmings idk what are these called lol
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BG3 isn't an AAA title. Larian is an indie studio.
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.
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Because we have a giant backlog of steam sales.
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JOINED, any more ways to find sublemmings idk what are these called lol
[email protected] 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
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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
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League of legends is two decades old now, so if you're thinking it's new, yeah that's on you
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Helldivers 2 came out in 2024
By definition, that's last year, so it's an old game.
Bwuh?
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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.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)
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Probably? I have memories from over a decade back so
