I could be wrong, but my personal impression is that much like on HN, it's the enthusiasts who are quite into niche stuff like indie games and bemoan the graphics race, where as the silent mass of "average" gamers are more like "oh man, the new Call of Duty has even better graphics! I can't imagine playing the old one anymore."
All while getting worse; advertisements, terrible interfaces, privacy invasions, frame gen, weird color options, etc. I don't hate capitalism or anything, but new TVs are dumb as heck.
It's very interesting. I played that new-ish Marvel: Cosmic Invasion game and recently played Fight 'N Rage. I believe both are built in the exact same game engine. Fight 'N Rage, which is undoubtedly the better of the two games (although both are quite fun) had a tiny roster. I think there was a single primary developer, and then one guy did the music and maybe 1-2 other people helped with things. The Marvel game was made by a "real" studio and had tens (hundreds?) of staff to build what was effectively a slightly lower quality game. (although the Marvel game had a much smaller staff than anything like a modern AAA release.) Famously, Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams.
I don't know what the answer is, but there just seems to be unavoidable bloat all around. Staff, cost, complexity, system requirements, etc.
Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd, but consumers are also demanding better graphics.
The industry and its fans are its own worst enemies. However, if you don't go bonkers over recent AAA games, gaming has never been more accessible or cheaper. I didn't buy a game this steam sale for more than $3, and each game would run on more or less anything.
I'm just so frustrated by how quickly and easily people give in to these things. People face relatively small inconveniences and quickly give away their rights. Smart phones and social media (in large part, enabled by always-on, always-present smart phones) have so, so many negatives effects and people won't even consider moving on. "It's hard to find parking" or "some restaurants are now inconvenient to eat at" are measured next to "the suicide rate of teen girls is spiking" and "we've enabled government tracking and surveillance on a scale never before thought possible." I don't know how else to be. People are so obsessed with immediate impulse satisfaction and immediate comfort that they'd give up anything. I think if you offered to remove someone's right to vote, but told them they would be able to gamble for free once a month you'd lose half the votes in the country.
Well, I guess our only choice is to own an expensive corporate surveillance device. There's no other option. The ancient polynesians managed to learn to navigate huge, open seas by memorizing the stars. The ancient Greeks managed to measure the size of the sun with trigonometry and grit alone. We've mapped the genome and soon we may even cure inherited illnesses, or bring extinct species back to live.
But I hear you. What if I wanted to know what movies were playing, but I was already at a restaurant? What could I possibly do? The only answer is a smart phone. There's no choice, and no escape.
Ah, sorry, I wasn't familiar with him. Looks like he was born in 1989, and so is not so young. I'm a bit baffled to hear that he doesn't think he can escape his smartphone given that he was resourceful enough to jailbreak an iPhone 4 back in the day. I understand he's speaking poetically and emotionally. Maybe he just means he has the knowledge but not the means.
Maybe in the area of your expertise, but ChatGPT probably knows most of the Habsburg dynasty. (just as one example) The breadth of knowledge, even when the depth is quirky and limited, is genuinely a big deal.
I really like this style of writing in short bursts, and I appreciate the author's tone and concerns.
I do wonder if the author is very young. As much as I enjoyed his small essay, a few things stuck right out at me:
>I tried having a flip phone once (2014), but you couldn’t find out what time the movies were playing because moviephone just redirected you to their app.
This has been a solved problem for a long time: you look up the movie times and such prior to departing for the movies. No smartphone needed.
>And it’s not like there’s anywhere to go. The real world is strip malls and axe throwing and escape rooms. Oh god people actually go on a hinge date to axe throwing and think it’s the real world.
You can escape, but you'll never hear about it by either checking online, or by listening to very-online people. Go on a hike. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Just go do it. Maybe say hi to some people you meet while you're there. You probably won't develop a deep friendship with them, but you will have a real, face-to-face human interaction.
Living away from the internet can now only be done intentionally. It can be done, though, but it's not the automatic choice. It's not even difficult ... it's just "manual." You must always think about what you want to do and how you want to do it. It's a skill that will come back to you. Or, if the author never learned it, a skill he still has a chance to learn.
What we've lost is getting to feel like you're connected to a common culture. This is a big, big loss, but it is not everything. The tools you need to escape are all around you. Power off your devices. Get some books at your local library. Try leaving your devices off all weekend, even when you get anxious, and bored, and your brain cries out for the easy, automatic stimulation it's become so accustomed to. Lay in bed and stare at the ceiling until your brain creates interesting thoughts out of your boredom. It's possible.
This problem is doubly worse if you have a family. No one keeps track of their subscriptions. I found out my wife had a NYTimes game subscription she'd forgotten about. She never used it and it cost us an unknown (but likely $100-$200) before we figured it out. Is this the end of the world? No, but we wasted money because these things intentionally obfuscate themselves and received no benefit whatsoever. When was the last time you paid $200 for software? It's been a while for me, but we paid a bunch of money for some stupid subscription that escaped our notice.
Can anyone explain why coverage networks even exist? What exactly makes it so expensive for an insurance provider to deal with an out-of-network health care provider? That same health care provider would not be expensive for an in-network insurance provider. I have no sense whatsoever for why the same health care provider would be expensive in one case and inexpensive in another case.
For mobile apps? I don't. Mobile apps are generally worse than anything you can get on a real computer. I use as few mobile apps as possible. I certainly don't add additional mobile apps unless there's no other choice. (ie, OTP app from work)
No, no, never. Subscriptions never benefit the consumer. They all work exactly the same way:
- Get the user hooked into their ecosystem
- Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time
- The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise.
Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change under your feet. It will get worse, and in effect, it will be taken from you.
I'm not paying for the subscriptions. If everyone moves towards subscriptions, I'll move into a shack in the woods. I don't care. I don't want your subscriptions. If you think subscriptions are a good idea I don't want to hear from you, and I wish you had no say in how anything was built.
[edit]
If the counter-point is that mobile apps will suffer, then good. I don't like or any want any mobile apps whatsoever.
Not everyone is pleasant to interact with, but that's not quite the same as whether or not they are a good person. The world's a better place with him around.
You would be surprised just how quickly you can re-learn the focus to enjoy long-form writing and novels. Much like exercise, don't let your ego get in the way. Find something you enjoy, even if it's a bit trash, and just make it a habit. Like with everything you do regularly, your brain will get better at it, the habit will become more automatic, and you'll find yourself wanting to read more, and more often. It's very much not too late to turn the ship around on an individual level.
I was stuck on a plane years ago and it was the only reason I watched a transformers movie. The back half of the movie had the American villain CEO travel to China, where the pure and correct Chinese CEO discovered the evil corruption of the American CEO, and reluctantly saved the American CEO as he immediately switched from "movie villain" to "cowardly child."
I never did look up if I'd watch an international version, and whether the US release was different, but pandering was quite surprising.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of modern writing. People think that 'mature' and 'realistic' character is interchangeable with 'a character who is a bit of a piece of trash who is awful for no good reason.' You have ridiculous stances such as 'I had to savage the countryside because people treated me wrong when I was younger.'
It's as childish as the older pure-good vs. pure-evil stories, except that instead of being satisfying in a simple sort of way it's just annoying and bad storytelling.
This sort of progressive activism has an incredibly high cost given what is at stake. (ie, bad movies and bad TV shows)
It's very over-the-top, and very preachy. Once you notice it, it's impossible to stop noticing. "Did you know that people who look like you are bad, and stupid, and laughable, and that people who look different are good, and also you're bad. Did you know you're bad?" I'm sure people are going to issue with that characterization, but it really is everywhere these days, and has been for well over a decade. Are there counter-examples? Yes, but this is really getting tiring.
I claim it has an outsized effect since it doesn't _really_ matter who is represented in movies or TV. If I'm represented poorly in television, it doesn't really have bearing on things that matter; my political rights, my socioeconomic standing, my job prospects, access to health care, etc. But it does push that little tribal button in people's heads. It's lobbing a tribalism grenade. It's hard to ignore, hard not be aggrieved about, etc. Does this mean I am oppressed? No, certainly not. oppression is not people expressing opinions. But damned if it's not annoying and alienating.
And so, for very, very little benefit (ie, representation of ideology in movies) people are fanning the flames of tribalism nearly as aggressively as they can get away with. It's just one more thing inflaming tribal impulses today.
For my part, I really don't watch movies or TV for the most part anymore. I was disappointed, offended, or annoyed too many times and I now I just assume a movie is going to be trash unless it can demonstrate otherwise. Really they have probably done me a favor. I'm just trying to read books as my default leisure.
- An enormous amount of artillery pointed at South Korea. South Korea would likely suffer the worst outcome in any intervention into North Korea.
- A nuclear-armed power who is truly ideological. Unlike Maduro, merely killing the leader is unlikely to dissuade the North Koreans. (a lesson the Trump admin is currently learning in Iran)