A lot of games for early consoles and PCs also had to optimise and squeeze the last few kilobytes out of the space that was available to them in distribution - which forced some devs to compromise on quality and others became extremely crafty and made completely novel approaches for data compression at the time. This may be just my personal opinion but i feel like games that pushed the envelope, furthered mechanics and technology beyond what everybody else was doing and therefore needed smart devs with good ideas to actually pull it off.. just were more fun to play. Today studios can throw assets like you described uncompressed on a server and call it a day, less consideration, faster development turnover, better for the publishers but probably not as polished of a game. Not saying that only uber-brainiacs who can code in 10 different assembly dialects should make games but rather that more bigger, more polys, more resolution, more everything is not always better.

Pamphlets are indeed better imo if they convey the same information as a 500 page book that describes everything in excruciating detail 🙃

you're comparing games that used low bitrate audio

It is a weird take. It's a rant meant to amuse.

I'm not actually mad that any game in 2024 takes up 100GB.

I am kinda mad, if it's true, that the development kit takes up 100GB. That's insane to use up 100GB before adding a single piece of the actual game.

I also am a little cranky that a game about cartoon pirates is asking for 100GB.

I've heard it's an amazing game about cartoon pirates. But still...100GB for cartoon pirates. I've never thought to myself "this cartoon game about pirates isn't realistic enough", or "gee, I hope this cartoon game about pirates has full video voice acted cut-scenes."

I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong about this, but I won't find out until I pick up a bigger SD card and don't mind the storage cost so much. (Which I'm not, at this moment, planning to bother doing for this cartoon game about pirates.)

Forget it, he’s rolling… https://youtu.be/q7vtWB4owdE?si=TKx3npX0WRNg6yWs

Not every player of PC games is playing on a PC, anymore. A gamer on the original Steam deck base model starts with 64GB storage, and has to buy SD cards to get more.

https://www.makeuseof.com/steam-deck-model-comparison/

100GB for one game, in 2024, generally means some other game is getting removed to make space.

In my case, Sea of Thieves is asking for $40.00 and for me to remove the entire Halo Anniversary Collection. I don't mind the $40.00, but the surprise need for 100GB is why I didn't pull the trigger on the purchase.

At some point, I'll buy yet another larger SD card, and maybe take a another look.

But 100GB is a big ask by a game about cartoon pirates.

That's pretty cool. Flight simulator's are trying to simulate the whole planet. Even I can't get mad at that game for being big.