Gaming

I see all the graphics technologies as an extra bonus to the gaming experience. It might make the game experience slightly better; but it alone doesn't make the best experience.

I've tried various team based shooters over time like Dirty Bomb, Overwatch, Paladins, and even now I try newer stuff, like Marvel Rivals. However everytime I feel get bored of them, I hop onto TF2 and no other team based shooter gives the the same satisfying gameplay loop compared to it.

Regardless of graphics; a well made skill based game can keep players for a long time inside it; i mean just look at aoe2, it's the chess of strategy games and a ton of people still play it to this day.

I don't know what you're talking about, old games were just as fucking janky on release, and most of them took years of modders fixing all those issues for them to get better.

Fallout 1 & 2 - janky on release

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 - janky on release

Morrowind - janky on release

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Chernobyl - janky on release

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 - janky on release

All of these were capable of being installed and "just playing" them on release. There were countless bugs and janky behavior and that's normal and we're now spoiled by day 1 patches. STALKER 2 has been out a month and has had three major patches for bug fixes. STALKER Call of Chernobyl probably could have used the same but in 2007 the infrastructure to push quick updates just wasn't there yet. Steam had only released by Valve in late 2003, roughly three and a half years earlier.

2023 was a phenomenal year for gaming. One great game after another. AAA and indy. Of course there will always also be bad games. But I think we do have enough good stuff. And looking at Ubisoft it seems like customer's dissatisfaction with bad spectacles seems to reach the big companies. And with development tools becoming ever more accessible I think we're looking at a bright future.

Yeah, I'm sick of it as well. Having to guess whether my rig will play something at a framerate that won't make me sick because a dev studio chose pretty graphics (that aren't really much better than AAA 10 years ago) over good optimization.

Most of the games I play are relatively undemanding for this reason. That and because indie games don't have as much monetization.

There are many games where you just install and play them. I've found many after excluding both AAAs and popular indies.

As far as AAA goes, the very emphasis is on graphics, sound, etc (big ehhh to the gameplay). Popular indies are also not my thing because it has become more of a social activity and the makers themselves play on that a bit. Aside from those two categories itself, I've got maybe a hundred good games which can be played maybe hundred to a few hundreds of hours each, maybe more. Most of them unplayed.

Old games are also something which are not going away if you check compatibility in advance (or use GOG preservation mark games, which apparently try to fix those problems).

I'm currently playing Battlefront 2004 and Monster Slayers (deckbuilder) but have a shitload of games from many genres installed. Most of them unheard of, being good quality in game design and enjoyable for many hours.