PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
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It's wild how good the cheap games are these days. I'm 30 hours into playing Noita, have hundreds of hours in Vampire Survivor.
And I got about 15 hours into Dragon Age: Veilguard before it occurred to me I could crack open the Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition and actually have an enjoyable experience.
I’m 30 hours into playing Noita
I kind of want more there. There isn't DLC, and there aren't clones.
I mean, yes, the game is large and very replayable, and I have a blast with it...but it's also kind of the only option for that gameplay.
I also play it modded with health regeneration, because the difficulty level on the vanilla game is very high, and encourages very cautious play.
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Where my Civ 6 people at?! Wooo!
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I’m 30 hours into playing Noita
I kind of want more there. There isn't DLC, and there aren't clones.
I mean, yes, the game is large and very replayable, and I have a blast with it...but it's also kind of the only option for that gameplay.
I also play it modded with health regeneration, because the difficulty level on the vanilla game is very high, and encourages very cautious play.
I would suggest trying Caveblazers, as it's similar, but it's more barebones and (I think) significantly harder.
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Old games were also typically steaming piles of shit. It's just that the ones people still remember are the worthwhile ones, because the bad ones have gone into the dustbin of history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not.
There were so many bad platformers for the Super Nintendo, but nobody is ever going to go back and play those or dredge them up.
Yeah that's a good point. As a kid I felt like when I bought a game it'd at least be complete, but there were plenty of terrible games back then too.
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Yep.. lol I spend an embarrassing amount of time playing EverQuest 1 emulation servers.
EQ emu's ftw!
Quarm? THJ?
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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. -
Any recs for person who enjoyed HL Alyx (+ community mapsets) and Ancient Dungeon VR?
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Where my Civ 6 people at?! Wooo!
Civ4 is the best Civ.
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I get free reducing the barrier-to-entry, but I kinda look at games in terms of "how much is the ratio of the cost to how many hours of fun gameplay that I get?"
I mean, I have some games that I briefly try, dislike, and never play again. Those are pretty expensive, almost regardless of the purchase price.
But the thing is, if it's a game that you play a lot, the purchase price becomes almost irrelevant in cost-per-hour of gameplay. I've played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead --- well, okay, you can download that for free, but I also bought it on Steam to throw the developers some money --- and Caves of Qud a ton. The price on them is basically a rounding error. And the same is probably true for the top few games in my game library.
You could charge me probably $2000 for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and it'd still be cheaper per hour of gameplay than nearly all games that I've played, because I've spent so many hours in the thing.
If people are playing these like crazy, you'd think that the same would hold for them. That the cost for a game that you play like crazy for many years just...doesn't matter all that much, because the difference in hours played between games is so huge that it overwhelms the difference in price.
Free means a hell of a lot when you are a child with approximately $0 in expendable income.
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I'm old enough to have bought TF2. Played a little less than a thousand hours. Even counting a few in-game purchases, the cost per hour is very low.
But free means no barrier, you can join anytime,m and stay if you like it. Your friends can try it out too.
3/5 games from that list also launched as paid games, but gained majority of its players after becoming f2p. Yeah people love free stuff ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
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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.[email protected] might be of interest, if you don't follow it.
But yeah...there are a lot of perks to playing older games:
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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.
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There have been wikis, guides, and sometimes mods created.
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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.
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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:
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With multiplayer-oriented games, the community can have moved on, rendering the game not very playable.
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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.
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11.35% of the human population.
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I would suggest trying Caveblazers, as it's similar, but it's more barebones and (I think) significantly harder.
Caveblazers
Thanks, purchased.
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I get free reducing the barrier-to-entry, but I kinda look at games in terms of "how much is the ratio of the cost to how many hours of fun gameplay that I get?"
I mean, I have some games that I briefly try, dislike, and never play again. Those are pretty expensive, almost regardless of the purchase price.
But the thing is, if it's a game that you play a lot, the purchase price becomes almost irrelevant in cost-per-hour of gameplay. I've played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead --- well, okay, you can download that for free, but I also bought it on Steam to throw the developers some money --- and Caves of Qud a ton. The price on them is basically a rounding error. And the same is probably true for the top few games in my game library.
You could charge me probably $2000 for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and it'd still be cheaper per hour of gameplay than nearly all games that I've played, because I've spent so many hours in the thing.
If people are playing these like crazy, you'd think that the same would hold for them. That the cost for a game that you play like crazy for many years just...doesn't matter all that much, because the difference in hours played between games is so huge that it overwhelms the difference in price.
Love seeing another person with lots of hours in Caves of Qud. It's rapidly climbing up my hours played list since 1.0 release. Bought it at 17.99, played for 220 hours so far. Math says that's 9 cents an hour, and I'm still not done playing. Live and drink, friend!
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The most expensive game I've bought recently is Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries, which came out 4 years ago.
With different mods each playthrough can be quite different too. That's why easily modable games are awesome for their price. Of course I just like being in a big shooty mech to blow stuff up so may be biased on that one in particular.
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Yeah that's a good point. As a kid I felt like when I bought a game it'd at least be complete, but there were plenty of terrible games back then too.
Yeah, I'll grant the completeness point. Internet access everywhere has kind of lessened what it means to "release".
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I get free reducing the barrier-to-entry, but I kinda look at games in terms of "how much is the ratio of the cost to how many hours of fun gameplay that I get?"
I mean, I have some games that I briefly try, dislike, and never play again. Those are pretty expensive, almost regardless of the purchase price.
But the thing is, if it's a game that you play a lot, the purchase price becomes almost irrelevant in cost-per-hour of gameplay. I've played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead --- well, okay, you can download that for free, but I also bought it on Steam to throw the developers some money --- and Caves of Qud a ton. The price on them is basically a rounding error. And the same is probably true for the top few games in my game library.
You could charge me probably $2000 for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and it'd still be cheaper per hour of gameplay than nearly all games that I've played, because I've spent so many hours in the thing.
If people are playing these like crazy, you'd think that the same would hold for them. That the cost for a game that you play like crazy for many years just...doesn't matter all that much, because the difference in hours played between games is so huge that it overwhelms the difference in price.
Soo.. What I'm getting is that you kinda like a game called Catapult: Streets Ahead?
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AAA games are legitimately worse now than before, but the gulf isn't as big as people are claiming.
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.
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[email protected] 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.
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.
And also, 60 EUR for a single game is a price at least I am not willing to pay for the average game, so in addition to getting a better game, I also get a cheaper one.
There is stuff worth paying that much out there, but it's not Call of Duty Black Ops Eleventeen
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Any recs for person who enjoyed HL Alyx (+ community mapsets) and Ancient Dungeon VR?
If you like roguelikes like ancient dungeon i would highly suggest until you fall and for a more story based game if you haven't played lone echo 1 and 2 you're in for a treat.
