PC gaming has a pricing problem, and the memory crisis is compounding it in a way that's utterly heartbreaking for our hobby
Here we go again. But worse.
It's not like this is a pc only problem, it's only a matter of time before it hits consoles too. If high costs persist I could see a return of arcades and pc gaming cafes.
Not just consoles, but phones, tablets, smartwatches, smart televisions, anything "smart" really including things like home automation devices, automobiles of all varieties, e-bikes, network routers and other networking equipment.
This has to get solved somehow or it's really going to cripple a ton of industries.
Stop putting chips into everything?
I never asked for a ''''''smart'''''' future, and I hate that even a fucking toaster asks for a WiFi.
But why would you, the corrupt cartel/cabal of relevant oligarchs, want to solve this?
You're just describing whole sectors of products that can be financed via loans, rented out, made part of some tiered subscription program, something like that.
You will own nothing, and you will be a broke, compliant, debt-slave.
Hypercapitalism -> Technofeudalism.
Enshittify everything.
That seems unlikely. The more likely result is game makers targeting machines that have lower hardware specs then they otherwise would've
I could see a return of arcades and pc gaming cafes.
I hate everything about destroying pcgaming and pumping the generative AI bubble. But this I'll allow it. We need more arcades in Europe and NA so we stop being ass at "Versus fighting" games.
We also need more local gaming because playing online sucks ass between Kernel Anti-cheat, cheaters and trash tier netcode, playing online competitive is dumb.
Hear, hear, all I see nowadays are those stupid crane games and maaaybe a basketball dunking machine. I nearly cried with joy when I saw a LOTR pinball machine in a bar the other day.
It won't persist. It's just AI hype and massive upscaling of data centres.
Yeah but it could be a few years. That's a long time to wait.
Low power gaming is better than ever. AAA graphics games are uncommon and unremarkable. It doesn't take great hardware to play like 99% of great games of the 2020s. Same with pretty much everything before 2020. Steam Deck is a non high end laptop
Exactly that. Got a Steamdeck finally last year and am having fun with anything and everything that plays on it. Too bad if you like the latest FPS online shooters, I guess.
Whatever. I'll be over here playing indie games on my used Thinkpad forever
Long live Cataclysm DDA!
It's the same thing with pretty much everything I think. I'm a car guy and the hobby is dead. Now you can put a fancy paint job or wheels on a car but that's it. Few people want to dig into the complexity of modern automotive systems.
My wife sews. It used to be cheaper to make your own clothing. More recently, pricing for fabrics and other materials went so high it became an expensive hobby. And now that Joann's has gone out of business she literally can't get fabric "reasonably" anymore.
Humans ruin everything.
Capitalism ruins everything, not humans.
Capitalism is all about maximizing profits no matter what. Human lives, a healthy society, personal freedom, none of that matters in the endless persuit of profits. Capitalism is the root cause of suffering in the world right now, after that, religion.
Religion
Mostly again as a way to make people worship capitalists.
Well I'm pretty sure you're wrong. First, humans invented capitalism. Second, I'm pretty sure when the white man came to America and committed genocide on the Indians and took their land it wasn't strictly capitalism. Third before someone is stuck in an iron maiden or an oven or is water boarded, someone has to think of that idea. If someone rapes your wife, is that capitalism? Unfortunately I can go on and on. Humans are terrible to each other, capitalism is just a mechanism.
I remember begging my parents, at the age of 12, for the cash to put together my first gaming-capable PC.
When I was a teenager in the nineties in France, it was a big deal that there was some PCs under 10000 francs (~1500€). PC parts pricing has been rough for years.
Was there really a time when a decent budget gaming PC could be built so cheap compared to middle class income? I'm not saying it's not getting worse, but I'm wondering if the past is not idealized.
My first pc I remember most components costing about £80 for something decent but not amazing. Maybe the graphics card (a Radeon 9500 pro) was £125 or so? So I think it was in the region of £500... Too many years ago to mention. With inflation, that's way over £900, which is more than a $1000.
I built a basic box 2-3 years ago. Everything except the Graphics Card, Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse cost me $480. I must have pulled the trigger at exactly the right time, because I got a used 3050 for $300, and a monitor for $50. I already had the keyboard and mouse I use. That means I managed to just barely squeak in under $1100. If you compared that to 1990 prices I think I would have managed to make a much worse machine in 1999 for around $1500 then, or about $3000 today.
My solution? SBC gaming! A customizeable console with a ton of cool games in the palm of your hand! Don't like the os? Swap the SD card and boot another! Vertical orientation, horizontal, with or without analog sticks, so many models to choose from! Weird factor forms! Half baked software! Fuck up your emulator configuration and spend the rest of the afternoon unfucking it! Realize you spent more time tinkering with the device than playing games on it! A time sink for all ages and genders!
You joke, but this, unironically.
I am a bit tongue-in-cheek here but I genuinely enjoy SBC gaming. It has re-kindled the spark that I had for videogames.
So this thread made me look and the cost to build my PC today would be around double what I paid at the time.
you can always play xonotic tho
Xonotic is fun for a while. But you must be a hardcore arena shooter fan to give it more than one evening.
It is a game I play often in short intense bursts, but also a lot of Quake engine adjacent singleplayer content works great in Xonotic co-op and there is defrag racing too which is a blast all on its own.
Pc parts picker says my computer would be $2835. I paid $1950 just over a year ago at microcenter. That's with a slightly "lower" video card since the one I bought isn't even available anymore.
My guess is that the "next generation" of PC gamers will be getting the next generation of consoles instead. Hopefully that doesn't also mean that we stop getting PC ports of the good console titles.
This problem affects all technology, not just PCs. Phones, consoles, tablets, anything that uses DRAM at all. All consumer hardware is at risk.
Not with Steam doing this well
Steam Deck (or similar, the Legion Go S is nice too) for little games.
PS5 for big games.
Fuck big PC gaming, one scam or another has put the pricing way out of line for a long time now.
We're also way past time that PC gamers stopped accepting that you need the game to be in RAM and VRAM. There has to be a better solution than this wasteful shite.
I mean the solution is faster RAM
I agree. There's way better solutions than this wasteful shit. PC gaming and big tech in general has been corrupted. Unreal engine and AAA gaming I believe has actually been fully captured by venture capitalists. They artificially pump up the video game specifications so that you require newer and newer hardware since the diminishing returns on graphics is just about been hit with our current architecture. This is why we've been pushing AI systems and rendering so hard because we've plateaued mostly with traditional methods. The only way for AAA gaming and big tech that to survive the way that it has is to continue to push out new games that are impressive enough to sell new hardware. That's how it survived in the past and that's how it's trying to survive now but it needs to do it. Artificially. Which is really funny considering they're using "artificial intelligence" to achieve this artificial technical jump.
Realistically using traditional optimization techniques instead of relying on pure hardware and AI garbage would put new games coming out easily playable on older cards. Big tech can't have that.
And now that the writing's on the wall. Billionaires are trying to capture compute in general. So that computers are too expensive and we all have to subscribe to using them. I don't think this is going to work but things are going to get a lot fucking worse for a second.
Don’t forget the steam machine, I refuse to buy the PS5
PC gaming has a specs problem when a mid range gaming PC from only a few years ago can't play the latest games. In 2010 I bought a very basic gaming laptop and it could literally run any game at the time. Old games are just as fun anyway. I'll play the newer games when it's more affordable to.
So this must be why I kept all my old consoles.
PC gaming has a shit games problem, above all. There are some exceptions but the last 10 years have been ass.
Unpopular opinion: it feels weird to call pc gaming a hobby. It's like calling watching TV or masturbating a hobby. It occupies time to be sure, but it seems a lot more like a way to blow extra time than to invest it, and I played WoW for 13 years.
A hobby is just something someone does in their free time for pleasure, so yeah, watching TV would certainly qualify. I suppose masturbating could too but I would argue that falls closer to a physiological desire rather than a hobby. Hobbies can be just about anything - bird watching, walking, caring for a pet, reading, playing sudoku, etc. Playing video games has been shown to be good for mental acuity and hand eye coordination, so I would argue it's even good for you! Hobbies don't need to be an investment of time at all, they just need to bring you pleasure. We as humans need relaxation and decompression time, and that's exactly what a hobby is. Sure some hobbies produce things or results of some kind, but they don't have to.
I don't think by your own definition you can exclude masturbation. It's free time for pleasure. It's non obligatory.
It also makes looking out the window a hobby... which makes me think this definition is overly broad.