I mean, they can still play the old games. My kiddo loved Kirby on the NES Classic
The point of the meme is the experience of witnessing the unique rate of progress in game engines, not the variety. There’s definitely more variety now than ever before, if you go looking for it l, and I say that as a 40 year old curmudgeon.
Exactly. Several limits were loosened or removed entirely. The SNES was the first console with actual pixel transparency, the PSX, despite being weaker than the Saturn and the N64, was the king of the 90s. The jump in graphical and sound quality was always night and day from the Atari era all the way to the PS3/360 era (sound probably peaked in the PS2 era, with DVD quality)
Even on the PC, the jump from 3 years’ worth of advances was astonishing. Just compare the original Doom, 1993, with Quake, 1996
And here’s Quake 3, 1999
HL1 vs HL2 shows a similar rate of progress
didn’t feel like it to me at the time, but I was glad they finally developed the technology to prevent Gordon’s boots from being slippery as fuck. god hl1 platforming was abysmal.
Not the most active current popular games for them tho, if you’re around 18 rnow fortnite was prob the main/only mutiplayer title played, my friends and I played a ton of games, jumping every month to what was popular, its consistently been fortnite for kids for a while now, I have 18 year old nephews that have only ever played fortnite, which is honestly a non issue if that works for them, the goal is to get dopamine, move on when you stop getting dopmaine
the goal is to get dopamine, move on when you stop getting dopamine
Is that the goal? I want more from my games than just poking my brain. I sometimes play games that challenge my reactions, sometimes ones that challenge my thinking. Superhot and Braid provided interesting time-related puzzles. Portal had some good lateral thinking puzzles.
I’m not exactly playing educational games, but when I played Assassin’s Creed games, the historical bits I found interesting were things I could learn more about outside the game. When I played Hearts of Iron 4, it was global politics around the time of WWII. Uboat and other sub games taught me a bit about submarine tactics in WWII. Oxygen not included taught me things I didn’t know about thermodynamics and materials, even if it is extremely simplified. Age of Empires and Total War were gateways to learn about medieval styles of warfare.
Even Sea of Thieves, which involves incredibly simplified sailing was what prompted me to learn about how square-masted sailing ships actually worked.
And, of course, all the flight simulators I’ve played over the years has taught me a lot about how to actually fly planes.
To me, if all you’re getting from a game is a bit of dopamine hits, you’re really missing out. It’s like watching the same movie over and over, or reading the same book over and over.
Dopamine is simply a motivator idk why yall see it as a drug, the way your last sentence is phrases, any action you derive joy from is because you get dopamine from it, if the game bores you dont play it, is what im saying. Id get the sunk cost fallacy where id say I need to spend at least an hour a dollar for the game to be worth it, better off just not playing it if you dont like it, your time is always more valuable
Gen X version:
Year 1: Pong
Year 5: PacMan
Year 10: Super Mario Brothers
We got lied to so hard on cover art, it took decades to believe anything.
This site shows some top lies, and shows that Activision, didn’t lie so much.
Yeah holy shit, we really went through eras playing games, theyve pretty much only ever known fortnite, like modern 18 year olds
Either only Fortnite, or a mix of that + Minecraft + Roblox.
Nah, zoomers went through the whole indie horror game gauntlet, Minecraft, terraria, etc.
Edit Addendum: Also, don’t forget about games like Friday Night Funkin and the plethora of mods that it spawned. The Five Nights at Freddy’s fandom was basically a cult at some point and still memed. Cuphead was a big enough phenomenon to get it’s own animated series. Stardew Valley is another game that will doubtless have influence beyond it’s years. Motherfucking Undertale, sans memes, etc. VA-11 HALL-A was pretty popular for a while too. Don’t forget about Among Us. Lethal Company is still getting updates. SCP Secret Laboratory is another one people forget about, but is still a game with a dedicated player base. Kenshi…oh man great game released in 2018. Fucking Persona 5 and Metaphor ReFantaszio, great games. MiSide is a new game, a horror game that doubtless has a small yet dedicated following. No Man’s Sky is great, especially after they fixed it. Many Gen-Z doubtless remember Subnautica. Ultrakill is something that is quite special.
thats not zoomers tho, thats over 18, 20+ at least, idk my nephews have never bought a game its just fortnite and/or roblox
Sounding like a boomer already lol.
I mean, they’ve decided to stick with fortnite, roblox, minecraft, whatever. But, there have been thousands of great games released that they just chose not to play.
You think they didn’t do different things? Play different games?
Don’t be an old crusty fucker
This is an critique on the gaming industry, not the players.
I remember moving from the first sims to the second which was a spectacular difference, and then the sims 3 expanding on the tech with an open world. You could smell the future on the book that came in the box with the disc that you read on the way home.
Compare the early and modern versions of wolfenstein. The first game was revolutionary, can you tell apart generic stills from the last 3 games?
Some millennial have been playing WoW for over twenty years at this point.
This is just perceived technological advances in the same time frame, not what games different generations prefer.
While Moore’s Law isn’t dead the slow down is apparent. From game graphics to phones and other areas of life, the perception is stagnation.
For example I’d notice little difference in a flagship android phone from 10 years ago or AAA video game compared to something that came out this year. Hell I might gain some features like a headphone jack or IR blaster.
You couldn’t say the same if you went back 10 years from 2012 to 2002 tech. You’d go from a smartphone to a cellphone that probably didn’t even have a color screen nevermind a camera, web browser, touchscreen etc.
I work with zoomers and tbf a lot of them play many different varied games but some of them genuinely still play roblox and fortnite into their late 20s/early 30s. But tbf to them there’s the millennials that have been playing shit like wow, eve, and osrs for 20 years
I would hope it is more of the magic of dreaming of the future of video game graphics. It was so exciting to see the next generation of graphics come out.
I am hoping to see the same with VR. But unless there is some kind of technological break through that they are willing to sell to consumers, I don’t see it jumping forward very fast over the next few decades.
Personally and as a gamer since the 80s (and nowadays making games myself), I think the last great breakthrough improvement was procedurally generated game spaces, and that stuff dates back to Minecraft in 2009.
The improvements in visuals are well into the diminishing returns part of the curve, the richness and size of custom crafted game spaces has hit a cost ceiling (hence budgets in the $100 million mark for AA games, even with partial authomatisation of things like model generation and painting via stuff like Houdini and Substance), and the only direction of growth I can see is gameplay where the improvements from the natural the emergent gameplay of multi-player are more or less stuck on the same point for a decade.
For a while I had some hope that AI (specifically LLMs) would yield a massive jump in the richness of the game world in story terms (imagine an RPG were all NPCs have genuine complex stories with realistic interactions, all generated on the fly and even influenced by you) but plain LLMs have large hardware requirements merelly to interact with one person (powerful GPUs, at least 12GB of VRAM) on top of the requirements to run the game itself, so that seems unlikely before the end of the decade.
I haven’t seen much improvement to game mechanics or graphics in the last decade, personally. Just little nudges forward, sidegrades, or screaming drops back to the worst, most capitalist parts of the 80s
My take from this meme is that Zoomers and later are more “captured” by a few big platforms than previous ones.
And perhaps earlier ones, too.
Like, my aunts and relatives are trapped on Facebook sharing Trumpy memes. Kids younger than me seems to be really into ultra-short videos or mobile games. The only people I know that know how to use a desktop PC, beyond the bare minimum for work are… about my age?
This is a huge generalization and small sample, but still.
My take from this meme is that Zoomers and later are more “captured” by a few big platforms than previous ones.
Steam games have been around for a lot longer than 10 years. So has Nintendo. There’s no reason a Zoomer wouldn’t have played Stardew Valley or Undertale or World of Warcraft or Wii Tennis.
Like, my aunts and relatives are trapped on Facebook sharing Trumpy memes. Kids younger than me seems to be really into ultra-short videos or mobile-ish games. The only people I know that know how to use a desktop PC, beyond the bare minimum for work are… about my age?
I keep seeing this complaint. I’ll never understand it. I definitely know family that have mired themselves in Facebook memes. But its silly to pretend my Blessed Lemmy-4chan-channel is materially better than their Barbaric Facebook-4chan-channel. Honestly, just amazed they finally came around on computers at all. So many of my parent’s generation couldn’t even check email twenty years ago.
Similarly, the Office Space Millennials seem to have completely forgotten that their non-technical peers exist. Like they’ve never met an auto mechanic or a plumber or a doctor their age who has struggled with using a computer. I used to do IT for a physicians clinic and it was the Medical Assistants doing all the office work. The RNs and MDs couldn’t do shit. Which was ironic, because so much of the IT upgrade was about reducing staff size… but the MAs were the ones who grasped the tech the fastest while the actual medical staff avoided tech like the plague.
And sure, kids half your age don’t know DOS commands because they don’t use DOS. But there’s no shortage of Zoomer/GenA computer geeks. I ran into a gaggle of robotics club Alphas in downtown, near the local convention center, just last week. Every year my office fills up with interns who built their own PCs and threw up their own home PLEX servers for their parents who are my age.
Some of you are just so damned cloistered, insisting the three 14 year olds you know aren’t doing Angelina Jolie shit from Hackers in their basements before they’re even old enough to drive. But pull down your reading glasses, squint a bit, and you’ll see plenty of tech savvy folks younger than you.
In their defense, games starting from 2016 kinda stopped having any actually meaningful graphical upgrades.
I’m not sure it’s about graphics. Fortnight was never king of graphics mountain. Its probably favored games in the consciousness. But i think millennials still apart of the Minecraft era
I think that’s the point they’re making.
I’m playing Split Fiction with my wife right now and it’s one of the best coop player games I have played in awhile. Back in my childhood, the best we had was Toe Jam and Earl.
I feel like we had decent co-op games back then.
World of Illusion (the one with Mickey and Donald). The Chaos Engine.
Hell, a lot of arcade games had co-op modes, like Gauntlet.
Not many, I’ll admit, but at least it was more than one company making them.
My nephews (10 and 13) stayed with me a couple of weeks ago, and I got a chance to see them game. And yeah they are playing mostly Fortnite these days, but they love it. Further, it actually looks pretty intense. Like the editing and jockeying for a clean shot is more nuanced than what I was getting up to.
Like was my obsession with Quake 2 DM that much more elevated? True we had a lot more variety with mods and maps, but if I’m being honest most of my time was just spent running around Q2DM1/The Edge and a handful of other vanilla maps. I did love that Homer skin though, lol.
Anyway, I see them hooting and laughing and the whole time they’re chatting with their little friends from school. I can see the joy in it. I wish it wasn’t on this centralised, monetised, company platform. But I can see what they like in it.
E found it
Fortnite gets a lot of hate but they’ve built something unique.
I mean… sure, but when i was a kid if I wanted a free game I had to pirate it but all you need nowadays is to have an epic game store account and you get a free legal game every week. I would have loved that as a kid.
Real boomer energy. While graphics improvement flattened out, other things (that are more important) have continued improving.
Off the top of my head… Zoomers got: Disco Elysium, The Outer Wilds, Undertale, and a million other indies.
I mean, millennials also got those
Minecraft for me lol, from age 9 to 20 (zoomer)
Most of these titles don’t have mainstream appeal though. The example is true for the majority of players.
I do love me some indie games (probably 95% of what I play atm are Noita and Balatro) but I’ll admit it was really cool as a child / teenager / young adult to see the improvements over time.
You missed the entire point of the post
What’s the point? I thought I got it, and that I agreed, but now I’m not sure anymore.
Top post plays multiple types of games. Bottom posts entire gaming life is spent in one game.
Thanks. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I also like variety.
Its not accurate at all. Sure some people now do only play fornite but people back in the day only played cs or tf2 or wow or runescape or any RTS. The difference is the games now get content updates whereas back in the day these people were playing the exact game over and over for 10 years.
Shit like this made me think we would hit singularity around now,
Oh boy, was I naive
VR actually went through this from 2014-2024 or so. the original Oculus DK had such chonky pixels, very rudimentary tracking, game integration sucked, no hand controls. it rapidly got better to the point where playing Riven is like straight up being teleported into the world…
…except for like, being able to run around or touch things. so it’s stayed niche.
What’s the status of VR right now? Any major advancement? I know oculus got bought by Facebook, so no way in hell I’d ever get that.
I have to think it’ll stay an arcade and power user thing indefinitely. The full experience needs large, clear section of your house, and housing is getting more expensive. Break down your costs per sq ft and see that you’re paying an awful lot for it.
Games like Beat Saber don’t have to move around too much, but the experience will always be limited if games have to keep the player in one spot and can’t use room scale. That said, Beat Saber can be pretty decent cardio workout if you put effort into swinging your arms (as opposed to lazily flicking your wrists around). Sweat buildup on the headset can be an issue, though. Keep some alcohol wipes around.
Racing/airplane sim stuff is one of the best uses. People who are into that are willing to drop a lot of money.
Strong rumors of Valve’s new VR launching this year. Quite excited for that. Otherwise, the status (in my opinion) is stagnant. I still have fun occasionally getting into VR though.
regrettably, Meta is the state of the art for VR. the Meta Quest 3 is stunningly crisp for the price point. it’s almost retina-scale with the pixels, the head/spatial tracking is extremely accurate and doesn’t require any base station or wired attachment, and you can fluidly stream VR games from your PC wirelessly at 1080p and like 120fps with nearly no latency or reality sickness.
I played Myst and Riven while I was sick with COVID last year, and it was one of the top five visual experiences of my lifetime (along with seeing the Grand Canyon and taking psychedelics.)
Meta has also recently finally cracked the holy grail of non-chonky AR glasses with full FoV, though the gallium nitride waveguide process is quite expensive and yields are too poor for them to sell it. but they look like slightly nerdy glasses that let you see holograms superimposed on your vision, even outdoors in the light.
unfortunately, VR is still anti-social and there’s not much content there, and the company leading the way is awful. but even just for Riven alone it was worth it to me.
Ah hopefully other companies will advance becuase there is no way I’m giving my money to that shit company
I did 10 yrs of TF2. Better graphics might have come in that time, but I only noticed the phlogastinator.
Pyro pre nerf had one of the most op build of degreaser (any) flare gun and axtinguisher
It was also very fun, along the lines of scout cleaver sandman pre nerf
this is just a millenial version of a boomer meme. you guys are really shaping up to become what you hated. complaining about kids these days not enjoying the same shit you did when you were a kid. what next, you gonna complain about how gen alpha are destroying the economy because they’re not buying avocados or something?
stop the inter-generational fighting, honestly, it’s cringe and a huge distraction from the fact that the rich fucks in charge are looting us for all we’re worth. let’s fight them, instead of eachother
complaining about kids these days not enjoying the same shit you did when you were a kid
I have 0 idea how you could have read that from the image. It’s about the seemingly exponential improvement in graphics or just how fast things were changing in gaming.
lol chill
you guys are really shaping up to become what you hated.
stop the inter-generational fighting, honestly, it’s cringe
Yeah I agree on the cringe part
How are you so triggered by this? Holy fuck chill
Zoomers will do this in 40 years too. Same as it ever was.
How did you take this personally? I saw it as a criticism of the industry
Hey dingus, it’s not complaining about you, it’s about being sad for you that you’ll never experience that level of innovation since companies are all “minecraft fortnite skyrim again” and nothing else.
stop the inter-generational fighting, honestly, it’s cringe and a huge distraction from the fact that the rich fucks in charge are looting us for all we’re worth
Bro, take a deep breath, that is just a meme. People can be nostalgic sometimes, there is nothing wrong with that.
except its not just nostalgia, is it? over 50% of this meme is dedicated to dumb culture war shit.
No it’s comparing the acceleration in graphics between the two time periods. If anything the bottom quote is more showing pity to the younger generation for missing out on the rapid advancement, not somehow calling them stupid for missing it.
it’s not, at all. if it was comparing graphics between two periods why are all three of the bottom screenshots fortnite?
Problem with your generation is that you get offended by anything. You just proved that point. This meme was just to understand the massive graphical improvement that has been going on through the years.
Gen X version:
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(Had to cheat and put an arcade game for 1980, because I’m not aware of any notable console games from that year. In reality the console games from then looked much, much worse than Pac-Man)
Even as a millennial this is one of the first games I played (and I still love it). I dumped the ROM so I can play it forever.
