Re: Old Games For The Win

On Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:58:09 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:43:28 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

On Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:58:14 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, Mike
S. wrote:
>

On Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:17:23 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>

So you might be playing more old games simply because _there are more
old games to play_. ;-)

>
I play more old games because modern big budget games do not appeal to
me. Period. It really is that simple. I lost interest in modern games
around the year 2000 or so. I don't think it is their fault. It is
just a personal preference thing.
>

>
As soon as our "hobby" went to the frat boys and normies - it began
sometime around the point when you didn't have to configure your sound
card addresses, manage your resident programs, and properly configure
IRQs - I knew it was the beginning of the end. But I did make some coin
configuring such people's systems to play, say, Blackthorne. Windows 98
finally ended that source of revenue.
>
It took a while for the inertia of needing to satisfy that audience to
die down. It is now complete. Around when you say, 2015, give or take.
Those days are gone.
>
Very few developers are willing to risk making games that appeal to that
sort of intelligence. The ones that do are all indies. Games are also
more socially oriented, where single player was the established norm for
the tech-oriented audience. We tended to be loners.
>
We aren't the market any more. The PC Master Race is, in fact, dead.

>
Speak for yourself. I'm pining for the fjords.
>

Do I need to bang you on the table to prove otherwise? ;^)

The only "PC Master Race" that remains is competitive fps players who use
KBM and a ton of expensive, low-latency hardware to pwn people who are
less serious than them about winning. For reasons. I don't identify with
it.

The rest of us simply like to play games on our computers. We've all
accepted our own seasoned senescence. We've adjusted and accept the
gaming market as it is.

Except you. You still rant about EA. Nothing wrong with a little "get off
my lawn" excursion. :^P

More seriously, while I think to some degree what you say is true, I
think it also ignores a lot of the changes made in the past ten years
too. (that mention of 'geeks vs normies also feels like gatekeeping).
>

It wasn't intended to be gatekeeping. The normies get to game too. The
gate is unlocked. The hounds have been shot. Everyone has unfettered
access to what we considered to be "our" property, as it should be.

The time of gatekeeping is long past.

It is intended as a simple statement that we are no longer the market.
The days of Infocom text adventures are over, for multiple reasons. But
particularly because the general gaming audience has grown, and the
audience for that sort of taste is now a microscopic sliver of a niche.

I am also saying that I am not statistically normal. I'm several
deviations away. I am now a minority, niche customer to an industry that
has sensibly targeted the fatter middle of the curve.

I don't begrudge anyone a good time, nor think less of them for buying an
annual copy of "The Show 20xx." Hell, I have a copy of The Show 2022.

[snip]

True, the triple-A studios continue to push pabulum, but that's less
to cater  specifically to 'normies' (and not the 'intelligent
tech-oriented player') but instead that they have to cater to the
widest possible audience.
>

Please note that I didn't say consumers of "pabulum" games were
unintelligent, and that we are somehow "intelligent and savvy" customers
in contrast. My argument is not intended to be elitist, though my glib
language may have come off that way.

I said it doesn't cater to that *particular kind of intelligence*.
Specifically, the kind that makes one a computer geek. To be perfectly
blunt, probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum or close to it. There
are all sorts of intelligences, but that kind of hyper-rational,
detail-oriented, fine analytic mind that can "actually play the original
Bard's Tale and complete the game with only graph paper, moxy, and a high
tolerance for tedium" is no longer the audience. Hell, some of those grid
based RPGs were so obnoxiously tedious and frustrating that *we* still
complain about them to this day.

And that geekly audience is tiny, and it is no longer served by anything
other than tiny developers who don't tend to make a lot of money at it.

The problem isn't so much who
specifically they are appealing but rather that their projects are so
expensive to develop that they can't afford to make a game that only a
small niche would enjoy.   Smaller developers have that luxury (and so
would the triple-A's if they dared consider the benefits of more
numerous, smaller titles).
>

^This. 100%

And, honestly, while there were a host of early-2000s games that were
absolutely terrible and catered to the "frat-bro" mentality (yeah, I'm
looking right at you, "Gears of War"!), there were an equal number of
terrible geek-oriented games in the 1990s that are just as
cringeworthy. Frankly, the game industry desperately needed to break
out of that niche, and I think nowadays is much better for it (Geeks
can be just as offensively stupid outside of their particular niches
as 'normies'). There's a much wider spectrum of viewpoints being
offered these days than ever before, and I'm grateful for it... even
if some of them aren't of any interest to me.
>

Note, I said the shift began around Blackthorne (1994).

https://www.mobygames.com/game/1445/blackthorne/

I set that game up for a kid and his father (an MBA), neither of which
knew how to properly configure their very expensive computer system. All
I did for them was correct the soundcard's base address and IRQ. They
expected a Nintendo.

That kind of paradigmatic shift takes *time*. By 2000, as you mention,
Windows 98 had come, plug-and-play was reliable, and they no longer
needed me to set it up. This turnkey accessibility accelerated the growth
of audiences, but didn't yet dwarf ours as one, so we still got the games
we expected and wanted.

[There is no small amount of irony in my tone when I say "normies,"
anyway. So here is your winkie ---> ;^)]

But what can I say, I'm an ultra-geek myself and own an IDIC medallion
;-P
>

I don't go that far, but I have a Fallout Charisma bobblehead.
Personally, I've always straddled the lines between technical
intelligence and emotional/social intelligence, making me even weirder
than all y'alls.

--
Zag

This is csipg.rpg - reality is off topic. ...G. Quinn ('08)