So...I've been thinking about that last article I wrote about the accessibility of gaming, and I've come to realize gaming is rather dualistic in nature. On the one hand, gaming sucks. Modern gaming is expensive, it's predatory AF, and hardware prices are going up and up and up. On the other hand, gaming is more accessible than ever. Your basic computer for $300 has as much graphical power as the gaming PC I got when i graduated college in 2010, and can play virtually any older game up through 2015, and many low requirement games that are newer. A $400 steam deck can run most single player games up through 2022, although may have issues with multiplayer due to linux compatibility. A $200 tablet, smartphone, or android gaming handheld can run entire generations of past games on the thing. Everyone has more access to games than I had for most of my life. They just can't run the latest and greatest. And given the state of AAA gaming....are they really missing much if they miss the modern stuff? Arguably not really.
So we have this dualistic nature of modern gaming. We have widespread accessibility to hardware capable of playing most of the classics and even many more modern lower end games, and we have have a crisis with AAA gaming, affordability, and the rising cost of PC parts. The high end of the market for the latest and greatest is turning hellish, but the past is more accessible than ever before, and people have access to decades of older games on modern hardware.
And this is kinda why, as I contemplate my choices going forward for gaming, I might just opt out of the latest and greatest. if PC gaming and console gaming is becoming so unaffordable, I might just opt out of it. However, that doesnt mean i'll stop gaming, it just means I'll shift to sticking with older and lower requirement games. A lot of my reasoning for wanting access to the latest and greatest is not wanting to be left behind. I know what it's like to have a crappy PC that can't run anything. But in the modern era, your typical low end PC is at least half as powerful as a PS4, and closing in on base xbox one in power. Steam deck and the like has literal PS4 era power. Even smartphones are arguably at least as powerful as like a ps3 or xbox 360 these days. We are, in a way, living in a golden age. it's just gilded because of all of the crap.
If anything it's a reverse gilded age. it's a golden age but all the crap is on the outside, where we look at modern gaming and see nothing but high system requirements, mediocre experiences, and things being in decline. But at the same time, the classics are more accessible than ever. The greats go on sale all the time for just a few dollars on steam. And they can be run on any computer just about. You wanna play PS3/360 era titles? Just buy a $300 craptop and pay anywhere from $2.50-10 per game and you got some of the best games ever made. Play the wealth of f2p games that would wow past me. Play doom eternal and cyberpunk 2077 on a fricking handheld. The possibilities are endless.
Sometimes I focus so much on how bad current thing is I forget to talk about the other side of that. Past experiences are more accessible than ever and can be run on just about anything. In a way its a reverse gilded age. Crappy on the outside, golden on the inside.
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