Things that make you feel old.

[privatehudson]

Similarly, I described a game as being "3D" to my niece and she answered me "no it's not on a headset" (basically associating "3D" with "VR").

I vaugely remember VR style TV gameshows in the 90s that were quite interesting but rather niche. Always loved Knightmare as well, although that was a bit different.

Good point about the games changing more in their early history though, I remember half life coming out on the PC as a demo and playing that for weeks. Fun times...

 

[JollyRoger]

1986 was the year I started to remember some things.

1986, the year JR started college and was working on his own twisted version of the Freshman 15, was the year I started forgetting things.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

My back.

Every morning.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Yeah, really, this is a whole thread in itself, but basically you have the following factors:

• Hardware generations.
• Increased application of psychology in video games (good and bad, often very bad).
• Multi-platform and cross-platform releases.
• Post-release support (into "live service" models).

Hardware is a big thing, but the big problem in PC gaming at least is the hardware variance. Forcing people to upgrade hardware feels bad (and this ties into console generations and how they're lasting for several years, if not more), but at the same time you can't be held back by literally antiquated hardware. But even if you define a cut-off via minimum specifications, you're still having to support a bazillion (or more) hardware combinations. And this is before we consider operating systems, etc. Consoles, by contrast, have fixed hardware that only changes when a new console is released, allowing developers to optimise in a variety of (clever) ways.

Psychology can be used to deliver improvements to UX, game mechanics, you name it. Something that "feels good" is, at its core, psychological. This is "impressive good", when games designers are able to nail this. The problem is how various companies have realised they can tune this for profit, leading to a lot of the mobile gaming ecosystem, and more than a fair bit of the modern console and PC gaming market. This is "impressive bad", in a number of ways. It still requires competence, investment, etc, but it's not a healthy thing for the industry or us lot playing the games.

Multi-platform and cross-platform releases are the other side of "hardware generations". Something that runs well on a console is in no way guaranteed to run well on (any) PC, and vice versa. There have been some changes in the latest console generations that (I think) brings their hardware more in line with what you'd expect of a modern gaming PC, but the problem here is still supporting legacy hardware / software combinations (which for specific genres of PC gaming is very much required to hit market saturation). This is before we get onto things like UNIX vs. Windows, Vulkan, etc.

Post-release support is a complicated inevitability in modern gaming. People say "games are released early" (and there are, 100%, an increasing number of high profile examples of this), but there is a similar expectation in that games are expected to be supported for longer. People don't always want a sequel. They want their favourite version of their favourite franchise to be supported forever (a recent example of that is the announcement of Age of Empires 1 content being added to AoE II: Definitive, with people sad this means the original Age of Empires is no longer getting updates - nomatter how impractical this may be to do). So the way companies approach launching and supporting a game have changed in light of this.

And this is without touching on "companies are greedy and want to make money", which manifests in a ton of ways (and affects everything I said above, usually for the negative). But yeah, this is why I think things are lasting longer. And there are absolutely new, innovative games being made (a favourite of mine is Hades, it's a very fun and competent "roguelike"), it's just that the existing, at this point mammoth popular franchises tend to dominate the market.

Whew. Okay. I kept it short

Next time I'll talk about how press events have changed in the past 15 years or so. That'll make me feel old (even though I'm only in my 30s).

You're correct, I overlooked many things which changed in the gaming industry.

My mindset was still in the premise about "people in the 90's couldn't imagine video games would become what they are now". Trying to remember the teenager I was in the 1990's, I actually perfectly imagined games to become increasingly photorealistic, and maybe even I would be disappointed they aren't more.

 

[Akka]

I also had a conversation like that with young folks who were telling "people in the 90's couldn't imagine video games would become what they are now". I objected it, saying that the gaming revolution from 1978 to 1998 (basically from Space Invaders to Zelda Ocarina of Time) was actually far more impressive than the one from 1998 to 2018 (from Zelda Ocarina of Time to Zelda Breath of the Wild). They weren't convinced, more or less perceiving me as some kind of paleontologist talking about dinosaurs and implying that nothing before PS1 could even qualify as a video game.

Similarly, I described a game as being "3D" to my niece and she answered me "no it's not on a headset" (basically associating "3D" with "VR").

I'm a bit of a two minds about this.
I somehow agree with them about how I couldn't realistically/seriously imagine how games today would be while playing in the late 80s. I would dream about, but in a whimsical "not gonna happen" way, or "what if ?", but I don't think I would really believe in something like GTA5 or Star Citizen. Morrowind was actually a literal dream come true when I first played it.
On the other hand, it's true that the speed progress has considerably lowered. Many games released 10 years ago can actually really hold a candle to most recent game, even on a technical aspect. The Witcher 3 could be released today and I wouldn't notice its age.

In fact, to combine both "you're getting old" aspects of my previous post and illustrate the latter point, Crysis is actually closer to Doom (the original) than it is from Overwatch 2. That is pretty staggering when you think about it.
Or when you remember that this is Doom :

Spoiler :

This is Overwatch 2 :

Spoiler :

And this is Crysis :

Spoiler :

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah, see, to me, Overwatch 2 looks a ton better. I'm sure the image compression doesn't help, but I've played through Crysis enough times to know the weak parts graphically.

Still amazing when it was released though. CryEngine was a serious achievement (that I believe ended up not being supported properly compared to other licensed engines? Crytek had some real issues, if I'm remembering correctly).

 

[Kaitzilla]

I check peoples' age by looking at the back of their hands.

Nobody gets plastic surgery on their hands.

Ugh, my hands.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Yeah, see, to me, Overwatch 2 looks a ton better. I'm sure the image compression doesn't help, but I've played through Crysis enough times to know the weak parts graphically.

Still amazing when it was released though. CryEngine was a serious achievement (that I believe ended up not being supported properly compared to other licensed engines? Crytek had some real issues, if I'm remembering correctly).

Fortunately Overwatch 2 looks better! It's been released 15 years after Crysis!

15 years is the time span between this:

And this:

But I agree with @Akka. It's really in the last 10 years that game started to visually stagnate. There are still improvements, but it's a lot more subtile.

 

[Narz]

You're correct, I overlooked many things which changed in the gaming industry.

My mindset was still in the premise about "people in the 90's couldn't imagine video games would become what they are now". Trying to remember the teenager I was in the 1990's, I actually perfectly imagined games to become increasingly photorealistic, and maybe even I would be disappointed they aren't more.

Yeah, if you'd asked in the 90s I thought we would've had super immersive realistic VR by 2010 or earlier.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

In less than ten years graphics went from this:

To this:

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I remember going to a family friends house in 86 to look for Haleys Comet. Not sure if I saw it I think I could find that house now but idk. Would have been 7 or 8.

Before that memory is disjointed for international events. Vaguely remember 84 Olympics.

I didn't pay attention to the Olympics until 1988, when it was held in Calgary. After that I became a bit of a Winter Olympics junkie, though I did enjoy the Barcelona games as well.

I remember talking to someone on another forum about films and I mentioned Apocalypse Now and they said they don't watch old films
As far as I'm concerned it has to be b&w before I'll consider a film old.

I was once in an argument over on TrekBBS about black and white vs. color movies. That person said that nothing black and white could be good, and he wouldn't watch it.

That happened to be a weekend when a Katherine Hepburn movie marathon was on TV. So out of curiosity I watched some of it - both in black and white and in color. My grandmother would have been pleased that I finally got around to watching The African Queen - that was one of her favorite movies, but at the time she nagged me to watch it, I was like that guy on TrekBBS - not into black and white.

And this in spite of the fact that we didn't have a color TV until I was about 7 or so. It blew my mind, the first time I saw my favorite shows in color, whether after we got a color TV or if I was visiting and they happened to have that show on.

Of course we did watch a lot of CBC back then (having only 2 channels meant there wasn't much choice), and CBC didn't routinely use color in their news programs until the early '70s.

Nowadays, I don't have that anti-b&w prejudice. I remember enjoying the early Doctor Who seasons when PBS got around to them (color wasn't a thing for that show until the Jon Pertwee era of the early '70s), and I loved the Richard Greene Robin Hood series (late '50s). Mind you, the Richard Greene version of Robin Hood should only be watched in b&w. The first time I saw a colorized version of it, I nearly fell off my chair laughing. Holy crap, those costumes looked ridiculous! That shade of green in the costumes did nobody any favors.

Comparing my attention span to concentrate on a single topic to the generations younger than me, even though my own is not renown for it.

I wish this was a joke.

I've noticed that my attention span is a lot worse now than it used to be. There's so much online now - I tend to flit around from site to site, spending a few minutes here, a few there, read a chapter of a fanfic, do a couple of levels in a game, go back to FB to argue with someone, post here, read a news story... at least Maddy keeps me grounded in the here and now. She's not shy about telling me when she's hungry.

(Oh, hello, Maddy - she just put her paws on my knee, so I need to go feed her...)

 

[Remorseless1]

The above makes me feel old. My first contact with computers were huge IBM computers with lots of magnetic tapes and card-punch input. When I was in 6th grade, I participated in tests concerning how computers could be used in public schools. Pretty simple stuff -- a picture or photo came up, and I picked one of three options as an answer. Then I'd ride my bike to 7-Eleven and play the hottest video game on the planet -- Pong.

Fifty-three years ago.

 

[stfoskey12]

I remember talking to someone on another forum about films and I mentioned Apocalypse Now and they said they don't watch old films
As far as I'm concerned it has to be b&w before I'll consider a film old.

IMO anything before 1970 is clearly old. I'd consider good movies from 1970-1999 to be classics, but not old, if that makes any sense.

 

[Gorbles]

But I agree with @Akka. It's really in the last 10 years that game started to visually stagnate. There are still improvements, but it's a lot more subtile.

It seems to be more that there's nowhere else to go. Photorealism is a neverending target. VR (and AR) have some really tricky feedback issues, not to mention miniaturisation issues in getting the tech wearable.

It's not for a lack of investment - Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc, have all been investing in (for example) VR hardware. It's just that these problems are (surprisingly!) hard to solve.

But in the meantime we've made huge improvements in things like lighting (a lot of good modern games owe their realism or general atmosphere to good technical lighting) and shaders (which in turn has been driven by how the GPU market has changed in the past decade - multi-card setups aren't the in thing they were around 2010).

It's wild, really. I bought my first computer 16 years ago (which isn't that long ago, people have been building computers for decades. Only decades, but still). I bought my most recent build 2 years ago. The difference in hardware in that time can't be measured in the additional memory it has. My 11th-gen Intel has comparable clock speeds to my 3rd-gen (of the new generations released over the last 12 years or so), but performs massively better. That's 8 years of architectural improvements, even with the speed itself not really changing.

Heck, my parents bought our first family PC 25 years ago. This was late by the standards of my (nerdy) peers at the time, but it cost a few thousand pounds. That's a lot of money! The one I bought 9 years later cost a third of that. The one I bought 2 years ago cost less than half (not even accounting for inflation). And both have been capable of far more than 3x the output.

Nothing like tech to make anyone feel old. I'm in my 30s, and I remember smartphones taking over. So I should. It was only 15 years ago or so

One of my mum's first jobs was with punch card computers in the Post Office. That's how recent this stuff is. We're talking one or two generations (in terms of commercial availability).

I don't think games are stagnating (though the drive to make money is incredibly risk-averse as a rule), but I do think tech in general has come on at a blistering pace, perhaps faster than any other field of development in history. Fast doesn't always equal good, but it does equal impressive. And with that we expect the fantastical.

 

[Kyriakos]

Retro-gaming has been a reality too, for more than a decade. Most of the indies made use 90s graphics.

 

[Joij21]

And yes, time passes all too quickly, when it used to move so slowly. Endless winter, waiting for Christmas (with the classic "100 days to Christmas!"), but also even endless afternoons.

That is one of the few powers of childhood I wish I still possessed.

I sometimes feel old when I do calculations about how long ago something was vs how many years I still likely have left. Recently I came across a work document from thirteen years ago. I thought to myself that I likely don't have 13 years left in my job. This document doesn't feel like from long ago at all, so I know the coming 10 years, say, will pass equally quickly. And then some shortish time after that I'll be dead (if not before, of course).

What kind of job is that? Work till you die kind of career I guess.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Doesn't have to do with work specifically. I'm just trying to capture a way my brain has started working. I take something from X years in the past, and then think "how will things be when right now is X years in the past?" And sometimes the answer to that is "You'll be dead, Gori."

It isn't a morbid thought, by the way, Kyr, just a realistic one. But it's only started to happen to me recently, so I take it as an old-man thing (and thus something that makes me feel old). I think it's a specific version of just the basic realization that I've got more time behind me than ahead of me. When you are younger, you're future oriented, planning all sorts of things. The older you get, the more of those things aren't open to planning any more; they're settled; they're the life you have lived.

By the way, here's a thing that makes me feel old. I hear the thread title to a certain tune, from a late night talk show from years ago, that had an expression similar (verbally similar--same number of syllables, and starting with the same four words) as the lead-in to a particular bit. A good number of the younguns on this site probably never saw that talk show, and possibly have never even heard of its existence.

In other words, some people on this site's whole lives have been lived out in the time since a particular talk show I used to watch was cancelled 29 years ago. Where will I be when Tucker Carlson has been cancelled for 29 years? Very possibly dead. I'll have lived out all of my life.

 

[Kyriakos]

Doesn't have to do with work specifically. I'm just trying to capture a way my brain has started working. I take something from X years in the past, and then think "how will things be when right now is X years in the past?" And sometimes the answer to that is "You'll be dead, Gori."

It isn't a morbid thought, by the way, Kyr, just a realistic one. But it's only started to happen to me recently, so I take it as an old-man thing (and thus something that makes me feel old). I think it's a specific version of just the basic realization that I've got more time behind me than ahead of me. When you are younger, you're future oriented, planning all sorts of things. The older you get, the more of those things aren't open to planning any more; they're settled; they're the life you have lived.

By the way, here's a thing that makes me feel old. I hear the thread title to a certain tune, from a late night talk show from years ago, that had an expression similar (verbally similar--same number of syllables, and starting with the same four words) as the lead-in to a particular bit. A good number of the younguns on this site probably never saw that talk show, and possibly have never even heard of its existence.

In other words, some people on this site's whole lives have been lived out in the time since a particular talk show I used to watch was cancelled 29 years ago. Where will I be when Tucker Carlson has been cancelled for 29 years? Very possibly dead. I'll have lived out all of my life.

Fwiw, I hope you will live for a very long time still.

Some people who used to post here, have died, and not all of them from old age. In the Civ3 forum, we lost a couple very early, due to depression (afaik). I still remember them.

This October, I will have been in the site for 20 years. I recall vividly my first weeks as a Civ gfx creator, 2 decades ago...

And yes, you are of course right regarding the sense of orientation, due to theoretical time left. Then again, if nothing else, at least when one dies they get to experience what loss of any self is (or whatever else happens). It has been a question in most people's lives, but we'll all find out in the end.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Doesn't have to do with work specifically. I'm just trying to capture a way my brain has started working. I take something from X years in the past, and then think "how will things be when right now is X years in the past?" And sometimes the answer to that is "You'll be dead, Gori."

It isn't a morbid thought, by the way, Kyr, just a realistic one. But it's only started to happen to me recently, so I take it as an old-man thing (and thus something that makes me feel old). I think it's a specific version of just the basic realization that I've got more time behind me than ahead of me. When you are younger, you're future oriented, planning all sorts of things. The older you get, the more of those things aren't open to planning any more; they're settled; they're the life you have lived.

By the way, here's a thing that makes me feel old. I hear the thread title to a certain tune, from a late night talk show from years ago, that had an expression similar (verbally similar--same number of syllables, and starting with the same four words) as the lead-in to a particular bit. A good number of the younguns on this site probably never saw that talk show, and possibly have never even heard of its existence.

In other words, some people on this site's whole lives have been lived out in the time since a particular talk show I used to watch was cancelled 29 years ago. Where will I be when Tucker Carlson has been cancelled for 29 years? Very possibly dead. I'll have lived out all of my life.

Unless I'm mistaken, you're referring to Arsenio Hall? I used to watch his show.

This is the episode I remember most, in the aftermath of the riots in 1992:

 

[Gori the Grey]

You got it. I phrased it precisely so that it could be a quiz.

How many of you younguns here know "Things that make you go hmmmmmm." ?

I thought not.

And get off my lawn!