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  • Counterpoint:

    The reason they will be out of touch is that they will have better impulse control and better spending habits than kids raised on modern games with their FOMO MTX and gacha bullshit.

    So basically, actual 'nerds' are rasing another generation of 'nerds', except this time, nerds 2.0 will probably actually be more socially intelligent than the brain dead zombies being raised on fornite, roblox and tiktok, who have negative attention spans and cannot fathom the concept of doing any actual thought-work, when chatgpt can just do their homework for them.

    They'll also be more tech savvy, like being exposed to or having to learn at least some of how emulation works, which kinda de facto makes you understand things like a file structure, which an increasing number of kids (now adults too) raised on modern mobile UIs... have no clue about.

    Oh, they'll also likely just be generally more literate.

    • You're not kidding about file structure. I haven't got a fucking clue how to do it with phones. Every thing is just "in here somewhere" and it'll pray the search feature can find it when I eventually locate the file browser.

      I miss my PC

      • Due to circumstances, I've had to emulate more on phones. You very much can figure out the file structure so long at its Android (and 9 times out of 10 shit is just in the download folder). I swear my wife's iPhone is a little black box, though.

      • Do yourself a favor and install a FOSS file manager system, if you can / its not too much trouble on your particular phone.

        Basicslly every phone OS goes out of their way to make their particular file browsing app batcrap overcomplicated and unintuitive if you want to do anything other than exactly what they want you do do.

        Which is usually sync everything on your phone to their cloud and your account.

        I am running a sort of jerry rigged, half baked, de goodled android, ... basically I have torn out, replaced or disabled everything I can without root, but left in play store and core g services so i can actually still use it for common apps... done the best I can to lock down everything to its bare minimim privelege set, never use a big ole shared account for anything, everything is a separate, old school email account.

      • You're in a virtualized container that only exposes some directories, also those directories are mostly hidden from you, also within this container you generally don't have any permissions to them, and also every application completely obfuscates it's folder access via some file access API.

        It's crazy to me how hard consumers got fucked right from the start on phone software and how normalized we are to it.

      • I haven’t got a fucking clue how to do it with phones.

        In a certain way, probably me neither. I use ls, df, md5sum, cp, mv, rsync, tar, gzip, gpg, vim, touch and mkdir in Termux (terminal emulator for Android). For example, say I am replacing MP3 for FLAC. I really like to keep the timestamps of when I added the specific song, but I can't find any better way than touch -r oldfile.mp3 newfile.flac

        But I also use FX File explorer for certain tasks, as it thankfully keeps timestamps. I absolutely hate how moving photos in Google Photos updates the modified timestamp to the date of when the file was moved. Why?
        And I also have an ancient version of ES File explorer, version 4.0.2.3. Before it enshittified.

        But I am not sure whatever that is installable from within the device, or it's old enough to require adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block app.apk like some other old apps I use.

        Anyway, I have no idea what's going on with iPhones and files, or whether that's a non-existent concept there.

    • Yeah the nerds usually find themselves in very powerful social circles if they survive school. Circles of emotionally mature experts with strong careers.

      Kids' needs are of course very important, but abandoning engaging hobbies in favor of some phantom desire to fit in is dumb.

    • Apples and oranges.

      '90s equivalent to "them goshdang tiktoks and fortnites" isn't Half-Life and Ocarina of Time, it's Television. The Simpsons or DBZ. Or those awful "classic" animated shows from the '80s that were designed from the ground up to be toy ads. "Impulse control" my ass, most of y'all were glued up to the TV screen like a moth to a lamp and only got consumption impulses out of it. Calling young people "brain dead zombies" is such an "old man yells at cloud" moment, look at yourself.

      There's more culture than ever being created now thanks to the incredibly lower barrier to entry. There are more incredible microtransaction-less indie games made in the last 10 years than the exhaustive library of most gaming consoles back then. Celeste, Outer Wilds, Expedition 33, Baldur's Gate 3, Tunic...

      The existence of slop is a constant across generations, and clinging to an idealized past is such a foolish endeavor, and will cause you to lose out on so much relevant cultural discourse happening right now. How many classic video games from the '90s might a queer kid growing up nowadays look up to? How many?? How many had, oh, I don't know, a goddamn female protagonist? And don't say that Samus counts. What a lame-ass culture to let our daughters grow up in.

      • I mean, as a 90s kid, and tech dork... yeah, I largely did drop TV almost entirely, in favor of console and pc gaming, and exploring the early public internet on a 56k modem.

        I would imagine most tech dorks of the era did as well?

        Like, as soon as I learned how to block ads on the internet, then later on youtube, as well as uh, obtain audio visual media without cost... I did that regularly, never looked back, began to actually not be able to stand TV due to ads everywhere all the time.

        And yep, I am still calling anyone who watches ads for anything, anyone who buys into incredibly exploitative business models that waste your time, money, or both, yep, I've been calling them idiot consumer zombies since the 90s, consistently.

        You are right that there are more non bs indie games now. That is great! That is good.

        Are more games more diverse now?

        Yes! Also good.

        ... But I've had basically the same opinions on all this since the 90s, I am not rembering an idealized past, I am one of the nerds thats been this way the whole damn time.

        They call Gen Z the digital native generation, but this omits the ubernerd Millenials such as myself (and others from other generations) who forged the way, who were early adopters from a young age, who were digital visionaries that forged the path before the ecosystems got to be more user friendly, more accessible, more mainstream.

        Like uh, without potentially doxxing myself, of those indie games you list?

        Yeah, I know a few people on one of those game's dev teams, personally, met them online when I was first like like 13, back when multiplayer games had server browsers with private custom servers, some of those also had their own websites and forums, all we had for voice comms was ventrilo... I met these people way back, have regularly voice chatted and gamed with them for... 20 years?

        I myself have been modding (as in making mods) for that long as well, I literally taught myself how to code so that I could do it, before I got out of high school, before any high school offered coding classes, before Adobe bought out Macromedia, and flash games on Newgrounds were all the rage.

        Not to try to gatekeep nerddom with some kind of official checklist you have to measure up against, but I think you are considerably underestimating the potential nerdiness of a lot of really dedicated nerds from that era, and thus writing them off as 'old men yelling at clouds'... when we've been yelling at those same clouds since we were kids, then we went on to actually implement the changes we deemed necessary, as best as we could when up against the corporate and financial behemoths constructed by Boomers.

    • Never discount the sheer volume of text and dialog contained in the average mid-90s JRPG!

      • 4 CDs of text to be read!! Though I'll gladly replay the 2 CDs of Chrono Cross for the beautiful graphics, music and characters.

  • There are plenty of games up to the PS3 era that every kid would do well to play at least once. Stuff that is objectively good, that aged well, or close enough.

    The problem, as I see it, is that if they get too used to mobile games, they won't have the patience for typical console or PC games, because those, on average, aren't dopamine dispensers and won't be rewarding every second click or button press - more importantly, they should NOT nag the player with cash shops.

    Also important: limit the amount of games available - this is valid both for current and retro games. The moment you have "all the games" at your disposal, several things kick in: analysis paralysis, appeal to familiarity (will only play what you already know or someone knows), seeing no value in the games^[If, when you were small, you only had a limited selection of games, which was common during the cartridge era, you would be very careful with choosing new games to ask your parents to buy, though renting was an option to see which ones were good or not. You had to make do with the little you had. When you got bored with one, you either looked through your collection and played something else, or did something else entirely; you never threw away a game (unless it really sucked) and you never got a new game on a whim. That is good.].

    Others mentioned the social aspect, which is true as well and something they just can't experience nowadays anymore. Minecraft and Roblox are famous because they're easy for kids to pick and play with friends. Back in our days, we had to physically sit beside one another and play together, or pass the controller on death; we also physically lent and traded games, so the games also had value within our little social circles. While fully digital games are extremely convenient, the "scarcity" gave them a social value that they completely lack today and which I suppose boardgames now fill out (yes, you can play them online, but playing on an actual table is almost always better)

    • i don't think i've ever heard anyone call it "the ps3 era".

  • Telling my five-year-old that if they can beat Ecco the Dolphin in front of me I will take them out for ice cream, but I'm not sitting down to watch more often than once a week.

  • i caught my 5yo playing golden eye the other day and i was not disappointed!

  • Spiderman 2: I solely play as Peter Parker. My daughter solely plays as Miles Morales. I wish the game was 2 player.

    Minecraft: my daughter watches the YouTube videos yet somehow I'm the one who got us diamond armor. Go figure.

    Super Mario Odyssey: She always makes me Mario and she's a good cappy.

    She's not even remotely athletic but she's brainy and is pretty popular with her friends. Go figure.

  • Nah... it's okay. She won't be out of touch. Nintendo is going to release these games for the Switch 2 for $80.

  • This will be me when I have children and I am not sorry.

    I'll help them build that foundational understanding of what games were and then if they still wanna play the modern bs, they can.

  • as if everybody gaming in the 90's we were all in sync with each other. lol i was rocking pc win98 tie fighter, and old floppy disc knock off games/ sim city, one kid down the street, she had a Nintendo with 3 Disney games Aladdin, lion king etc, one had a Sega with zombies ate my neighbors, that paper boy game and some sanic. it was pure chaos even later when "everyone" had a ps1 everyone's tastes were completely different. sure there were trends but nobody felt they were stuck in a outdated bubble like op is implying except for that Atari kid. only played pong, fuck that bubble kid neanderthal mutherfucker. lol

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