this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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[–] quack@lemmy.zip 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Turns out that people like playing games that respect their time and aren't a glorified second job. Who knew.

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

that respect their time

I know you’re not talking about old school RPGs. The older games tended to pad playtime by having insane difficulty levels or by requiring grinds. Hell, my favorite JRPG (edit: Legend of Legaia) is specifically more grindy in America, because the devs decided to slash the experience and gold drop rates by like 50% for the American release, and make all of the enemies hit much harder. (Interestingly, the original enemy stats are still present in the game code, and then the game runs some “x1.25” math when the battle starts, to bump all of their stats up to the values that actually get used in combat.) So you need to be a higher level to be able to survive, and you need to grind twice as long to reach those higher levels and to be able to buy better gear. I like it despite the grind, not because of it; In most of my play throughs, I end up using cheats to avoid the grind.

and aren't a glorified second job

I mean, games like Ultima Online, RuneScape, Diablo, and EverQuest have existed since the 90’s. Hell, RuneScape used to be extremely approachable for young players because it didn’t require a good computer or any installs; It just ran directly in your internet browser.

The bigger reason many adults feel this way is not because games have gotten longer or harder. Adults simply have less time to play. They don’t want to spend a bunch of time researching optimal builds or grinding rank in multiplayer matches. Instead, they want to fall back to the games that they already know how to play. They’re willing to ignore the fact that their favorite single player game requires 10-20 hours of grinding, because it doesn’t feel like work to them. Or if it does, they can just use cheats to get around it. They don’t need to research how to get a specific item, or how to approach a specific boss fight, because they have already done it a dozen times.

[–] PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why would you write this and then not say what your favorite jrpg that is specifically more grindy in America is? Do you write clickbait headlines for a living?

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[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

The games I play do respect my time but boy are they a second job. From Rimworld to Satisfactory, from Space Engineers to modded Minecraft... My job is a second job.

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Built a new killer rig last summer. Have spent 90% of my time with it playing HL1 mods.

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[–] stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I am on a 6 year old computer playing 10 year old games. I don't see a need to upgrade anytime soon.

[–] Retropunk64@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm on a 5 year old computer playing 20-30 year old games. I'm good over here. 😂

[–] stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I bet WoW runs like a dream on that machine 😂

[–] Retropunk64@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I haven't tried it! That would be like giving a reformed crack addict a hit off the pipe. 😂 No way can I ever even consider going back to that game.

[–] stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If it makes you feel better, it will never be the same as it was when you first played. Every time there is a xpac that looks interesting I have tried and failed to get that feeling back. It devolves very quickly into feeling like a job again.

[–] Retropunk64@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

I just feel bad for my gnome warlock, endlessly flying around in purgatory on his magic carpet...

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[–] PeteWheeler@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

New games just don't have a 'punch' to it anymore. They are not not game breaking anymore.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with old games either. They are the same as they were, which is why reboots and remakes are so popular.

[–] Luminocta@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I want to agree but some games are really well done. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is a good example.

However

I feel like many people are so focused on graphics and looks, like raytracing for example, that gameplay/story has become less important? Sucks but it is what it is I guess..

A good story isn't something groundbreaking that marketing teams can slap on the box in the same way they can with ray tracing dlss or whatever else I guess

[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 100 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Honestly, most new games just fucking suck. They're too expensive, often don't run properly at launch even on excellent hardware, and those that don't have micro-transactions built-in require you to purchase DLC to get the whole game.

On the other hand, the older titles almost always run well on my machine, have a ton of community DLC, and in general are just designed better because they were built to bring the player as much fun as possible, not to extract as much money as possible.

Plus, the quality content generated from 2005 - 2015 represents some of the best ever, and can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment before you even get into the 2010s. Why waste money on something that may not work, and that I likely won't enjoy as much as the games I bought 10 years ago?

It's why I usually wait at least a year after release to consider whether or not I'm going to buy a title.

[–] GuyFleegman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

New AAA games suck.

I either play indies or old AAA games. It all went to shit around the beginning of the PS4/X1 era, so yeah, my upper bound is about 2013.

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[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 16 points 2 days ago

I don't know if I agree about new games. This is a bit of a problem with some AAA games though. The indie game scene is still thriving as far as I can tell, in some genres more than others. (E.g now is a great time to be into FPS games.)

A good old game can occupy you for many hours though, and it's hard to make good games period. I'm not surprised that a few older games dominate the market.

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 155 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (21 children)

7.1% of the total hours spent were on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
6.4% were in League of Legends
6.2% were in Roblox
5.8% were in Dota 2
5.4% were in Fortnite

That is a lot of people playing free-to-play competitive multiplayer games.

[–] GoumLeChat@jlai.lu 110 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Free is an important reason why. Also, these games run very well on old machines. If you mostly play that and get a new rig, you don't have to spend a lot. Pc parts have gotten ridiculously expensive.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

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.

[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago (10 children)

Free means you can easily get any friends to dip in and play which is a big factor.

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[–] MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 47 points 2 days ago

People are reading the headline and assuming they're talking about older single-purchase games, but the article is actually referring to mostly MTX-driven games that get continuous updates.

And the data further shows, in Newzoo's own words, that these 908 million "PC players are heavily skewed towards older, live service games."

Remember that even things like Rocket League are about a decade old at this point, and games like LoL, Dota 2 and CS:GO are even older

[–] buzz86us@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Because crypto miners ruined gaming top end GPUs used to be $300 Max, now were looking in the thousands to have the best GPU for like 6 months, and you can't buy a used one because it could be a clapped out card used in a crypto miner

[–] pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Bitcoin switched to industrial ASICs a long time ago, and Ethereum has completely moved away from proof-of-work mining in 2022, see: https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/merge/

The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022. This completed Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake consensus, officially deprecating proof-of-work and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%.

GPU mining is pretty much completely dead because after Ethereum switched the yields on everything else tanked, no one mines with GPUs anymore, at least not for any major blockchain. GPUs are mainly being used with AI now

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That doesn't mean that their effect on the GPU market will up and vanish overnight. Market correction doesn't usually go down as fast as it goes up.

Edit: add to that the tariff situation and the standoff with China and Taiwan (where all the processors for gpus are made), and you have a situation where things are just going to get more expensive no matter what.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 13 points 2 days ago

It's AI at this point. Nvidia considers the gamer division to be vestigial. They were a $700B market cap company that was primarily known for gaming GPUs. They are now quadruple that with AI, and that's even with some recent hits to their stock price.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022. This completed Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus, officially deprecating proof-of-work and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%.

I don't follow crypto trends so I hadn't heard about this either.

I had to look up proof-of-stake, and for Ethereum apparently is required to stake 32 coins to operate a node. Another google search shows me a single Ethereum coin is just north of $2k USD. So someone mining Etherium today needs to have more than $64k if Etherium to even run a node now?!

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[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't think it's even necessarily that the GPU pricing has ballooned. I think the main reason is that that every new game has to compete with pretty much every other game ever made. For example I enjoyed Death Stranding and I am interested in Death Stranding 2, but I'm probably not getting in on launch because there's a big chance I'll probably start playing Stardew Valley for the n'th time, because I feel like that's what I want to play. I'll probably play DS2 when I get the Kojima itch.

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[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

Why should I dump 60usd plus into a multiplayer focused game I'll maybe get to play 4 hours a week during prime times that is going to shrivel up and die in 2 years time when the next big thing comes out?

Or I can play all these games enjoy, have passionate modding communities adding to the game for free on top of me picking the entire thing up for maybe 20usd on sale if not less.

[–] Razzazzika@lemm.ee 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Well. The nature of my backlog is like I wait for games to come down in price and by the time I get to them they're 10 years old haha.

I also have a habit of playing through the entire series before playing the newest one. I'm currently playing Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion which is the 4th game from Japan in that series but the 2nd to be released in US, SO I'm playing through it even though I don't like it and will beat the next two games to finally play Trails in the Sky which is the one I really probably should have started with.

I do that with all my games, like Doom Eternal looks cool and so does the upcoming Dark Ages, but I went back and played Doom 1 & 2. 64, then the updated remaster of Doom 1 & 2 when that came out, and now I'm working on Doom 3. I got one more whole Doom game before I even get to Eternal.

[–] ItsJannnneee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Most new AAA games suck, that's why. I miss when games were made with passion rather than for a quick soulless cashgrab.

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[–] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There are good new games, but i cannot afford to pay for them. Especially when I blow through them in a couple of weeks/days.

Which is why I pirate them as a lot of new games lack quality content, are often buggy, and riddled with dlc/micro transactions. Why risk my money on a buggy undeveloped game when I can 'test' them for free, at times I have gone back and paid for a game I really enjoyed… but that is super rare.

Plus GPUs are overpriced, especially with AI taking over as it is, the price is just going to go up.

Why bother with all of that when I can just boot up Factorio again. Additionally mods really make old games feel fresh again... And they are free.

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[–] suaroof@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

I was playing a bunch of Skyrim with mods last year! Awesome game.

[–] SculptusPoe@lemmy.world 47 points 2 days ago (9 children)

I have hundreds of games on steam.

I mostly play minecraft.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

My games library is so huge, and I suffer from choice paralysis all the time.

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[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I bet a small portion of them don’t buy GPU every gen or ever other. 1080 Ti strong.

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[–] cod@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago (4 children)
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[–] Nino477@lemmy.world 30 points 2 days ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] M137@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago

When people found out PhysX doesn't work on the new Nvidia cards I saw several people here on Lemmy say that it doesn't matter because almost no one plays older games. I seriously don't understand how anyone could think that, it's astoundingly stupid and ignorant.

[–] suite403@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago

Because we have a giant backlog of steam sales.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I can wait till a game is $5. I've got so many to enjoy already.

Darktide, you're worth $5. Admit it. Release a dlc pack with new maps gamemodes characters classes whatever if you want more money. But the base game is worth $5.

I wanna shoot the heavy bolter at shit. The sounds for the gun sound so satisfyingly chunky. Slap that hunk of metal in the emperor's name. Hell yeah

See you in 2-3 years

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[–] DarkMetatron@feddit.org 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Me, reading the topic while playing Morrowind: "Yeah, that seems correct!"

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That reminds me— I gotta do another Fallout: New Vegas run.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I find it kind of funny how games are becoming more mainstream, but every once in a while I still meet people that are like "games are a waste of time". But then again I guess people said that about movies and tv and still do sometimes.

Also I've been playing guild wars 2 again. Base game is like 10 years old but it's still fun

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