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Why is gaming becoming so expensive? The answer is found in AI (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 74 points 7 months ago (12 children)

main stream medias are finally catching on i see

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  • [+] -11 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    Is the Guardian mainstream? I thought it was often derided as being fringe or a tabloid in the UK (this also may of been an effort to misinform, as I typically find myself agreeing with their articles, or at the least the ones I am presented with)

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  • [–] 62 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Yes, it's a mainstream center-left newspaper in the UK, definitely not fringe or a tabloid

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah the guardian is a quality news source imo. One of the few good ones left in the world

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago*

    Well shit, my bad, i somehow got the Guardian and the daily mail mixed up.

    I still don't think it's editorial quality is great, but it's not a tabloid by any stretch.

    The guardian is a tabloid rag with bigger words.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago* (7 children)

    Dang, was asking a question and discussing the way it has been presented to me and got buried, great discussion guys! Feeling like I'm back at home at Reddit :)

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    These days it's difficult to tell if it's ragebait or trolling and some people here think things are obvious because we too live in an echo chamber, and some will just downvote and move on if they see something they disagree with or don't like. I wouldn't worry so much about downvotes here, you don't get really buried like on Reddit and it doesnt matter overall (or at all). The Guardian is a very well known centre left newspaper that isn't run by a large news corp, but that doesnt make it fringe, and tabloids are known for low effort journalism/gossip so it doesnt fit those categories. Either way, I hope you don't get discouraged from contributing here if you are genuinely adding to the discourse. If you baitin then ya got me.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Nah I don't bait, I'm a real person but from another country so the Guardian is not a news source I grew up with, except when they had an article that filtered its way down, which was uncommon. Mostly only ever saw it on Reddit or other places, and it is often disparaged when posted, or at least it used to be, so I was asking what the general consensus was on the paper.

    I also thought it was interesting to note that in the USA it is typically disparaged and viewed poorly, or presented poorly, to people, probably do to its left of center alignment, which in the USA would be considered farrrr left (sad I know).

    Either way, I think that downvoting discourse unless someone says something that is really obviously a troll (3.50, cumbox, creepypasta, just being an asshole), is a dumb thing to do. It is a hallmark of my experience on reddit and I thought this was a place where real discourse could happen.

    I believe that calling out poor practices with upvote/downvote is a way to consider what kind of culture we have here, and want to build, as the community expands.

    I came from original Digg to Reddit now to Piefed, so I have watched the ways the culture has grown and expanded on these communities, in the past I just watched and said nothing. This time I feel compelled to be a part of the discussion because I watched both Reddit and Digg go to shit.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry, I was just answering your question and honestly didn't mean it to sound agressive. English isn't my native language so apologies if that came across as mean spirited, that wasn't my intention

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Your answer was golden my friend, nothing wrong with the language you used, thank you for it! I would not have guessed you did not speak English natively.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    no, you see you got your replies, which was "no, it's not that", which kinda ended the discussion right there and being uninteresting to most it got downvoted, nothing to be disappointed about.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    not disappointed, but downvote brigades on actual discussion were a serious problem on reddit, I would hate to see it carry over here, you can discuss something even if you disagree. You shouldn't downvote good faith discussion or questions, but maybe we fundamentally disagree on the point of up/down voting.

    If you don't come to read the discourse, why come to the comments my friend?

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    • [–] 34 points 7 months ago (17 children)

    As a PC gamer I would never condone such a statement about my console brethren (and sisters), but lol.

    The new Super Mario Galaxy Movie is out today – as expected, it is a bare-bones story supported by a cavalcade of Nintendo cameos and bright action scenes. Dubbed “a bland screensaver of a movie” by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, expect smooth-brained entertainment for Nintendo enjoyers.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Is it bad that smooth-brained entertainment for Nintendo enjoyers sounds about exactly what I'm equipped to handle right about now?

    Like zoning out to some seriously tepid nostalgia-slop sounds good.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    I do very much enjoy playing super mario galaxy on my steam deck. It's pickup and play when I have a quick 5 - 15 mins of free time. The cheerful colours and sounds can be an enjoyable escape. A nice change from some of the death and destruction in many more "serious" pc games

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Last time I checked Mario Bros was supposed to be happy and fun and simple not an art house intellectual experience.

    I wonder if a lot of the reviews are just the bitterness that it's going to be a 1.5B movie and that 'real cinema' movies do pitifully at the box office these days, very rarely to they even make $100mil

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    Nintendo fans are smooth-brained thesedays though. I dont think its console specific, its Nintendo specific.

    ~ Former Nintendo Game Enjoyer

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  • [+] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    The smooth brained entertainment comment was just referring to the Mario Galaxy movie.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (6 children)

    lol

    They literally make games for the lowest common denominator and everything on the Switch 1 and 2 is so much worse than anything they've ever made prior to these systems. They look nice, but they are pretty brainless to play, geared toward young children, the elderly, and people who have never ever played a video game before.

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  • [+] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    I think the Nintendo fanboys need to take a step back and look what is actually being said.

    They are smooth-brained games for smooth-brained players. As in they are basic, simple, and hand-holdy. There is no challenge. You basically do not need a brain to enjoy Nintendo games.

    That isn't meant to imply they can not be enjoyable. But there was a time when Nintendo made games that were way more complex than anything they have made in the last few years.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Please give an example of a Nintendo game that you consider to not be "smooth-brained". Because I'd argue that at least since the 90's their games have had the same level of simplicity and hand holding. If anything, some of that was stripped back in the switch generation. A lot of the "complexity" and "difficulty" of their older games stemmed from developers not knowing how to make a game approachable or easy to understand because the gaming industry was in it's infancy. And realistically, if you want to talk about complexity, Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom have physics and cooking systems that are far more complex than any of their old games. So what counts as a complex and challenging game for your massive wrinkled brain?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I'd argue that at least since the 90s their games have had the same level of simplicity and hand holding

    What games in the 90s had tutorials that were not "here's every basic obstacle in the game on the first level; figure it out?" One of the best video game tutorials of all time is World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros and it does it without even telling you anything.

    A lot of "complexity" and "difficultly" of their older games stemmed from developers not knowing how to make a game approachable or easy to understand because gaming was in its infancy

    By the time Nintendo started making video games, the video games industry was over 20 years old. Not to mention literally thousands of years of game design in the form of not video games that existed before video games.

    Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom have physics and cooking systems that are far more complex than any of their old games.

    We're talking complexity of the challenges in the game; not the complexity of the programming that goes into it here. What would make it more complex and challenging to not be smooth brained is making the physics puzzles more challenging and the cooking system more than just selecting what you want to throw in the pot and getting a little cutscene of it cooking. It's the difference between making potions in Skyrim vs making potions in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    While I'd agree with you that World 1-1 is a great tutorial, the complexity of the game pretty much boils down to "move left or right, jump over obstacles, touch powerups to get some kind of bonus" Its not hard to convey a small amount of gameplay concepts in an approachable level. But with the amount of different things you can do in a lot of games nowadays, its beneficial to have at least a little explanation on what a button or skill does. That's not to say we need a pokemon style 15 minute cutscene explaining the basic concept. But like a one time 2 second prompt is a good spot in my opinion. Looking at something like Ocarina of Time in the late 90's, had kind of a hybrid. They gave you a small sandbox and freedom to explore it. There are also signs around that directly tell you how to do something. But people who never read those signs can end up never learning how to do that thing.

    Yes you are right that video games existed for decades before Nintendo made them. But any complexity in those games that was more than "move and press 1 button" required reading through an instruction booklet to understand how to do anything. Playing something like Adventure on Atari without an explanation would be a painful experience.

    As far as the puzzles or cooking in Zelda goes, its as complex as you want to make it. The freedom and depth allows you to get creative with solutions that don't necessarily have to be the intended one. And that's a highly complex thing that weren't really in older games unless you brute forced or exploited something. Admittedly I have only played KCD and heve not yet played KCD2, so I don't know if its significantly different or not. But making potions in KCD, while novel and fun in it's own game, would be a miserable experience in a Zelda game. Only the most hardcore players would ever even do it. KCD pulls it off, because everything about the game is difficult to do and that is part of the fantasy. It's more of a realistic simulator than an adventure game.

    Nintendo games are designed to be approachable by anyone. Not designed for idiots who are too stupid to figure out a more complex game. It can be figured out by a kid, and it lets a hardcore player get more in depth with it if they want to. That's a difficult thing to pull off and I'd say its a very complex thing to design in a game. Their games also include parts of them that are actually very challenging to a new player, regardless of your gaming experience. Fighting a Lynel for the first time in BOTW, will absolutely kill you. The last few levels of Super Mario Odyssey are excruciating in their difficulty. But you only have to engage with that kind of difficulty of you want to. And most players prefer not to rip their hair out for the entire game.

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    • [–] 23 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Good oppurtunity to work on your backlog.

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    • [–] 25 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Well, no shit.

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    • [–] 10 points 7 months ago

    Cause Jensen needs to keep buying weird jackets. Only way to achieve that is by selling GPUs to AI ghouls. 

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    [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Posted on April fools. Is the joke that it's such old news?

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    • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    I asked AI and my RAM charged my credit card

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    [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    I feel a lot of first-world privilege out of having all my gaming hardware from before the AI boom started. Around the time sanity lost the election, I decided to get a new GPU because I was worried all economies would turn terrible, and I was basically right.

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    [–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Gaming has been getting expensive long before the latest AI Fad started.

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    • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Businesses started acting like every product ever is a luxury product and people keep paying the higher prices.

    The only way to get prices back down as to not buy them.and hope the little businesses survive long enough.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    The only people with money to spend are the upper-middle class consumers. Incomes of 100K+. 60% of consumer spending across the USA comes from people in this bracket... and for people under 100K income, spending is going down. Only 18% of USA population makes this level of income...

    Hence if you want to make money, you have to move your products up-market to appeal to people who have all the disposable income to spend. This trend is all over the economy. Travel, clothing, food, etc.

    The days of appealing to the mass market of lower and middle class consumers, is over, because they are broke, so nobody gives an F about them.

    Going forward it's about fewer sales, but higher margin sales.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The days of appealing to the mass market of lower and middle class consumers, is over

    It's not over forever. We've had K-shaped recoveries in the past, which is why we have a name for it.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    nobody is investing in the lower or middle classes. they are de-investing.

    everyone is investing in the rich people. especially other rich people who are trying to grow their businesses.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    The wealthy have become very easy to sell to. Disposable cash they dont think about and a tailored algorithm and wide variety of available designer drugs.

    Do some ketamine, go on an amazon binge and book a holiday to Greece to see a band you barely like cause fuck it, world is burning and I want a good time.

    Honestly we just need to move on and start doing our own things and try to get into a place of power to maybe shore up some of the wealth hoarding.

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    • [–] 8 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Gaming is pretty cheap, playing the latest new releases or hardware or collecting a massive library has always been expensive

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    • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (26 children)

    Gaming is cheaper than ever. Just don’t buy new games. I haven’t bought a new AAA game in decades. There are thousands and thousands of games you can play for free or nearly free.

    It’s like music. You can listen to lifetimes worth of music for free or nearly free. The only expensive thing is going to some fancy concert and giving a ton of money to Ticketmaster.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    Well, you still need something to play it on. And since GPUs and RAM costs about a child and a half these days, I'd say it's quite expensive.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Sure, though you don’t need a state of the art PC to play 90% of the games ever made. These days I play a lot of my games on an old 3DS (hacked to the gills)!

    I also have a huge steam library of games, many of which I bought for next to nothing in huge bundles during past sales. Many of them I still haven’t played! They would run fine on a 10 year old PC though.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    You do have a point there, yes. My backlog of games I want to play is ... Long ...

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    The AAA game industry wants to leverage FOMO to keep you engaged, keep you buying the newest game, forgetting about your backlog.

    If they had their way, older games would no longer be playable, just to force people to keep buying new games.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Not if you use geforce now, that's easy cheaper than buying a new pc

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Short term it's cheaper, but to an enthusiast the lag, and the lack of ownership really rankles.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I've never had an issue with the lag.

    The games are owned outside of gfn.

    I've never lost access to any game yet.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    That's cool, where do you buy your games?

    Even streaming from my desktop to TV downstairs using ethernet is noticeable to me! It's alright for some games but not great for fast stuff.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

    Steam, green gaming man, epic, etc. multi player stuff maybe, I don't think I've tried that but for single payer, I've seen no obvious lag unless maybe use WiFi instead of ethernet.

    What cat is your ethernet cable?

    The latency added by a Cat 6 cable itself is imperceptible, typically adding only about 0.5 microseconds (0.0005 ms) over a full 100-metre run. For comparison, electricity travels through the cable at roughly 200 million metres per second, meaning it would take a cable over 100 miles long just to add 1 millisecond of "ping".

    So cat6 which a lot of people use some new imperceptible. Maybe there's an issue else where on your network

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago*

    It could well be the rendering step on my PC. Maybe the router is a bit old too. I can't remember whether cat 5 or 6 but as you say it's unlikely to be the cable in isolation. It was playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Gross!

    AI nonsense makes owning your own computer too expensive and your solution is to reward the same assholes by paying a subscription to use their hardware with bonus lag? Have you no shame?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    It's better than what I could afford.

    It's pretty astounding actually. I have zero lag and the graphic fidelity is exceptional.

    I couldn't afford a PC system even before the price rises. So this is the bestway to experience high quality gaming for the majority of people.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    You can buy new AAA games. Be /patientgamers. Just wait a few weeks or months after release and they almost always go on sale when companies want to boost server numbers to make quarterly reports look good. I haven’t paid release price for any AAA game in years. And it should go without saying: Do not preorder!

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Brother, this isnt 2004.

    AAA games rarely go on sale anymore, Dragon Quest Builders 2 is like 7 years old, and still 50 bucks, and last sale it went down to 25. 25 for a 7 year old game is just brutal absurdity.

    and I just use that as an example, its the same almost across the entire board.

    The only saving grace in gaming right now is indie games. Which are typically affordable.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Literally BF6 is on sale right now for 40% off. It was 50% off on some locations on Black Friday. It was 30% off 4 months ago. It was released early October. That’s 4 sales in 7 months for a AAA game.

    I’ve bought Stray, Cyberpunk 2077, GTA, Elite: Dangeorus, Borderlands series, and many others all on sale and even a couple games for free.

    I can’t help it if your particular games don’t get discounted, but telling me AAA games rarely do is completely wrong.

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah, and you are conveniently skipping over the most relevant part.

    Lowest price history for cyberpunk 2077 is 20 bucks. 20 bucks for a 5 year old game is ridiculously overpriced.

    Grand Theft Auto never goes under 15 dollars, which is over priced for how old the game is.

    I personally wouldnt consider borderlands AAA games, but congratulations, you found the one game that had an actual legitimate sale and age related price drop with Elite: Dangerous, with the base games lowest sale price recorded as 2 bucks. WIth it currently on sale for 5. for a 11 year old game. Which is what the prices should be for an old game, and what all the other games should be doing once they are out of their content window.

    Also, you don't have to be so goddamn dismissive and hostile. I gave an example of my argument. Did you expect me to spend 3 weeks researching so i could produce a scientific paper detailing every game that is over priced?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    There was nothing hostile in what I said. Maybe you don’t like being proven wrog? I didn’t expect anything of you much less a hyperbolic research paper, but nonetheless you chose hyperbole and shuffled the goalposts instead of actually continuing the discussion. I never said when I bought the games, but convenient of you to arbitrarily decide how old a game is before it’s not worth it for you. Nonetheless they’re on sale by your own admission, so that blows your “rarely” out of the water while you ignore BF6 being repeatedly on sale. But I suppose you’ll make excuses about that too?

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  • [+] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Are you the thread nanny?

    games are more expensive in general

    Straight up nonsense. Complain all you want, but if the cost of games even approached parity with inflation they would be FAR more expensive than they are right now.

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  • [+] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)
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    • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    Open AI - “I don’t understand why everyone hates me”

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    [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    I'm shocked that the guardian outright just called people idiots.

    Is this since kind of April fools, it was posted on the 1st of April.

    I thought they were a legit publication.

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