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-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? Other than a senior dev.
This is a huge generalization and small sample, but still. I’m not worried about other generations doing things I don’t like (that’s always true, and a good thing), I’m worried about them being more trapped.
I started with Atari 2600 on a black and white TV. PS2 is the newest console I have. I’m still buying and playing PS2 games. Haven’t seen a need to go any further (other than a couple games I’d like to play.)
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.
You missed the entire point of the post
I mean, millennials also got those
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.
Minecraft for me lol, from age 9 to 20 (zoomer)
I Love resident evil 4. Great game.
Awesome game.
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.
Not as widespread as the systems shown above though. Older VR games and even VR in general is pretty 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.
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
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.
Don’t you dare knock Adventure!
Yeah holy shit, we really went through eras playing games, theyve pretty much only ever known fortnite, like modern 18 year olds
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.
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.
Either only Fortnite, or a mix of that + Minecraft + Roblox.
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
Still using dead ringer after they nerfed it several times over lol
Maybe graphical advancements have slowed down (especially since it takes half a decade to make a game now) but this feels a little disingenuous. Bottom is supposed to be Fortnite? I can see someone playing WoW or Quake or UT for 10 years since its release too.
Theres more variety in gaming today then there ever was, many more single dev games succeeding because they dont need to impress the likes of EA to publish their game thanks to the internet and free distribution. More platforms to choose from and multiplatform releases are more common.
The successes of one game are not reflective whole medium or the current state of gaming.
You can still find Unreal Tournament servers now. I checked it out recently because I used to play loads of UT back in the day, but everyone on there is so skilled I assume they must have been playing non stop for the past 25 years.
It’s also really ignoring how much Fortnite has changed over the years. It’s like saying 10 years of LoL and using the same three pictures from season 1.
Everyone who doesn’t play LoL will think you’re an idiot if you play ranked, that hasn’t changed in 15 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)
My first game was pacman, on Atari 2600, that would have worked instead of the arcade version.
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.
Home console in 1980:
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.
None of those games are an improvement over Chrono trigger
Strictly in 3d graphic capacity, just about.
Though Ocarina (1998) was only three years after Chrono Trigger (1995).
Star Fox came out in 1993 and was kind of the defining ‘3D’ game and would’ve been perfect for this meme.
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
Graphically, I think the two Half Life are more akin to UT99 and UT2003, similar year of release, too. UT2004 didn’t change graphics, but I remember that, if you set everything on the graphics to maximum, the announcer will exclaim “HOLY SHIT!”
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.
With the graphics specifically though, IMO half life 2 (2004) is more similar in terms of fidelity to Portal 2 (2011) than to Half Life 1 (1998). Which does make sense as Half Life 2 and Portal 2 were made in the same engine ofc.
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 dopamine
They can play the same game for years and I cant even open one of hundreds I have avilable to me most days, I think they and sports game player win, they seem happier.
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.
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.
Outside of shoot em up or hack and slash. Something with a good story that involved real coop to win. Not many.
Let’s be honest, if we wanted a game story in those days it was in the manual.
That’s actually pretty fair.
