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.

The best games these days are almost all indie games, stuff about AAA & ray tracing etc etc is more of a nerd hobby fueled by the industry rather than entertainment.

Also there are many retro games that used to be AA & they are just as good today as they were 20 years ago. If you want good gameplay there are so many amazing games to play a lifetime is not enough to even scratch the surface.

What is starting to annoy me is context button prompts. One button to rule them all i mean. What is this, an elaborate power point presentation? Feels like a relic of the mouse in action.

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.

Valheim was one of the best selling games and is still a huge success. Indies are getting better and more popular to the point that even big companies like Nexon are indiewashing their studio and pretending that Dave the Diver is an indie game with pixel art instead of a work of one of the biggest publishers there is. In my experience most of the gamers nowadays are people that grew up on minecraft, terraria or probably more likely today - roblox.

So basically no, I don't think so. Maybe big studios want you to believe that and it might be true for a casual FIFA or CoD gamer but for anyone else, there are more options than ever and the supply of good smaller simpler games is just overwhelming, the days are too short to even keep track of them anymore.