Rediscovering the passion of video gaming when AAA has lost it’s way.

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Video gaming has lost its way. There was a time not too long ago, when gaming was about the simple things. Getting from point A to point B, solving a puzzle to get to the next level, or winning or losing a match. This was true from the 1970s to the early 2000s. From arcades, to consoles, and PC, games tested dexterity, problem solving skills, and more. Playing video games was a great way to pass the time, or compete with your friends for fun. Back in 2019 I felt a disturbance in the force, but I could not put my finger on it. Unfortunately now I have a better picture of what’s going on.

Classic gaming

Over the years gaming has gained more popularity than the movie and music industry combined. Unfortunately this grabbed the attention of soulless corporations. Game design went from a handful of passionate guys who focused on making the next great thing, to bloated corporate development teams whose focus is to please investors and not the consumer. Large financial institutions are pushing their progressive social agenda in exchange for funding. New developers have replaced the legendary ones who had a passion for making games. Activists and narrative consultants are the new creatives, all pushing “their message” into games. I’ll get more into that in another post, but the rot in the industry runs deep and the only way out of this mess is for a total collapse of the modern AAA gaming industry.

Bad games

It’s no secret modern games are failing, people do not want this garbage. Changing a game’s essence and expecting people to blindly consume it, just doesn’t fly anymore. People recognize that the current trend of gaming narratives and representation feels forced. It stems not from genuine passion, but from imposed ideologies. Games are no longer about getting from point A to point B, they are now about social narratives and checking boxes. Corporations obsessed with the new modern audience, turn their backs on the existing one. But in their effort to court this new audience they have alienated everyone..

What we’re up against

Progressive consultant grifters such as Sweet Baby Inc have convinced corporations there is this whole other audience of consumers out there. They convinced them this customer base exists, and that they are missing out on that untapped revenue. This aligns with the agendas laid out by banking investors like Black Rock. But this new modern audience has not shown up yet. AAA releases are losing massive amounts of money. Tens of thousands of developers have been losing their jobs. Several major releases flopped this year and that trend doesn’t look like it’s going to end, unless there is a huge shake up. I fear these companies are too far gone to be helped.

Good games

How can we make it better

But it’s not all gloom and doom. There are a lot of great games in this sea of soulless corporate cash grabs. Around 10,000 to 12,000 video games are published every year, offering plenty of mainstream choices. The same way the indie scene has saved movies and music, it is also saving gaming. A lot of gamers have extensive backlogs of games they can use to ride out this mess. There are also game developers who haven’t sold there soul and have made hits like Space Marines 2, Black Myth Wukong, and The First Descendant. These titles have been delivering the experiences gamers want, and coincidentally are selling very well.

I on the other hand have been exploring some real obscure indie games. They may be rough around the edges but they make up for it in other ways with heart, passion, and originality, but most of all fun. So I’m going back to 1984 with some Retrowave Racing.

Retro wave racing

Gaming should spark your imagination and be the escape it was meant to be. Video games should be timeless and fun, not a representation of current year politics or propaganda. And don’t let this trend of corpo-gaming get you down, gaming will find it’s way back to its roots. There are plenty of fun and exciting alternatives out there. Explore indie developers on twitter. See what they are creating and get excited again. Until next time, keep having fun and reject corpo-gaming!

PC Gaming is DEAD, Long Live PC Gaming!

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It’s been a fun week for me regarding PC Gaming. First was a text from my daughters friend. She helped my daughter a lot in school and would come over the house a lot to play Overwatch together. She would play on my back up PC. The one in my previous post where I took some unemployed components and put them together and gave them a second life. The kid had it tough regarding having nice things. So I gave the PC to her and she very appreciative. It’s nice to give happiness to someone who deserves it. When I got the text it made me smile. Not only was she still using it, she upgraded it herself! New motherboard, ram, processor, cooler, and graphics card! I’m really proud of her.

The second was upgrading my friend’s son’s computer with components he got for Christmas. We tried to upgrade it on Christmas Eve but we ran into a snag with a bad motherboard. I felt so bad bad this kid was not going to have a working PC for Christmas day. To make matters worse I was going to be out of state for the next week and wouldn’t be able to get to it until I got back.

So when I returned I went to helping them right away. With the new motherboard it was a breeze. Everything went together without a hitch. Hit the power button loaded the drivers and we were ready to go. They came over to pick up the unit and I showed them what to do when it came to driver updates and care for the machine. His son was so happy he gave me a huge hug. The next day when I saw my friend at work he said his son loved it and was playing games all night.

Building PCs is fun and rewarding. Not only for yourself but when you do it for others as well. Sometimes the PC hobby feels like this solitary thing. Like you are the only one into it irl. Sure I’m involved with many groups online and have many friends there. But as much as I like to play the character of the basement dwelling tech recluse, it is fun to interact irl with people who are into the hobby. Knowing I made some ones day a little bit brighter is a reward in itself.

Gamer Achievement Unlocked

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A few posts ago I mentioned I had an affinity to V’s Northside Apartment. Well to my surprise my wife got me a Street Fighter arcade machine. It just adds so much to the aesthetic I was going for. It has a lot of meaning to me because it was one of the first games we bonded over. 25 years later she can still kick my ass, but that’s ok. It was worth it for the member berries.

Laptop Upgrades

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I recently went on vacation and had the opportunity to bring my gaming laptop. I got his as a present from my wife for my 50th birthday during the height of the pandemic. I don’t use it much but this was an opportunity that forced me into a situation where I had to if I wanted to game. I thought about getting a Steam Deck but I’m still on the fence about getting one. But being I already had the Laptop I decided to stick with it. It is a MSI GE75 Raider, one of those you always see pallets of at Costco. Nothing Ground breaking but very capable with some obvious caveats. The 16 gigs of ram and mechanical hard disk would prove to be the things that were frustrating. Playing Cyberpunk 77 at medium settings gave me a solid 70fps and it actually looked really good. Games like Forza looked great on high with about the same FPS. But loading times for games were horrendous. Click the icon, walk away boil some water, and make some coffee kind of bad. Now that I look back I think this was a reason I didn’t use this machine as much as I should have. I was use to such a snappy response on my desktop it was more of a pleasure to use.

So I bit the bullet and ordered 32 gigs of ram, a 2 terabyte NVME, and a one gig SATA SSD. The brands I picked were for nothing else other than the convenience of getting the same day delivery off of Amazon. But TEAMGROUP, Crucial, and PNY are solid brands so I had confidence in ordering them.

Out with the old and in with the new.

I usually hate working on laptops, but taking the back cover off the MSI was quick and easy. For the most part it used the same screws all around with the exception of 2 of them, and the back cover easily snapped off. I knew there was an empty NVME slot and planned to one day to fill it. But being that I was going to take it apart I figured I might as well upgrade everything while I was there. Replacing all the old components with the new ones turned out to be a breeze. I then put everything back together, turned on the machine, and formatted the new drives.

Now I don’t do any science based testing. My perceived experience is worth more than numbers on a spread sheet. I want to click on an icon and have the program open instantaneously. I didn’t have that feeling before the upgrades, now I do. It doesn’t even feel like the same machine, it feels like something new. Programs load fast and stutter in games is gone. It really is a pleasure to use now.

I wish this is something I could have done sooner but to be honest would have been out of my price range at the time. The total cost of the upgrades was just over $200.00 Three years ago a 2 Terabyte NVME would have been well over $300.00 on it’s own. The initial cost of the laptop was $1,500.00, as it is now would been over $2,200.00 with the upgrades. Like I mentioned before not only do I like gaming but building and upgrading computers is also part of the fun. This turned out to be a project in which not only was it fun, it also brought a capable machine into a great gaming machine.

4070RTX Video card upgrade

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I upgraded my video card from an 3070RTX to an 4070RTX. I did this because I noticed the card was running out of V-ram. Which is a shame because it runs games at great frame rate. I first encountered the problem in Forza Horizons 5. The game updated and defaulted all my settings to max. I noticed things looked remarkably better. Especially when I was driving at night, the fireworks at the festivals were amazing. But, I was getting a low memory warning at the top of the screen. Sure enough I opened the task manager and memory was maxing out. Another reason I wanted to upgrade was to replace the 1080GTX card in my back up gaming rig that my wife uses. It was also my birthday and I figured now was a good time.

The 4070RTX is a really good card. Seems like a lot of reviewers don’t like the 4070RTX for one reason or another. One of the things I like about the card is that it only takes up two slots. I was tempted to get a 4070TI, but I can’t see giving up 3.5 slots for a graphic card. The 4070RTX also better on power consumption and has a 22% increase in performance over my older card. To my surprise I really like the NVIDIA reference design, it has a really clean industrial look. The card is built very well, it’s so sturdy I don’t need a support like I did for the 3070 to keep it from sagging. Although I love RGB lights and aggressive design, this card delivers on another level. This card just looks good. The wide wall styling and vent lines look purposeful and accent the lights in the case.

Final Thoughts.

The packaging on this card was awesome. I’d have no doubts this would survive any shipping mishap. The performance of the card is on par with a 3080 and I am fine with that. The extra V-ram lets me get the most of my favorite games and was the primary reason for the upgrade. The aesthetics took me by surprise. I normally go for RGB everywhere but the design looks great. Until the next up grade.

With a little inspiration, I updated my gaming setup.

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For me, the one thing which makes PC gaming so fun there is always something new. New tech, games, and peripherals are always exciting. When I first got a PC back in 1992, I didn’t know what to expect. I wanted to play games but I also wanted productivity like making art. And once I connected to the internet, it seemed like I entered a world that was a living and breathing entity. It was an exciting time.

The inspiration.

In Cyberpunk 2077, V’s Northside apartment inspired me to change things up. For the longest time I rocked the color red, now I embraced the full RGB spectrum of color. I’ve been going through this eighties renaissance, such as synthwave music and art. We had some really rad arcades back in the day and I wanted to capture that feeling. This arcade called Spaceplex was peak eighties performance. There was nothing else like it. To get in you to walk through a neon lit tunnel. It felt like getting transported to this futuristic place, an ultimate escape. Lights and sounds caused a sensory overload. No matter which direction you turned or looked you could not get away from the fun and excitement.

It’s nice to have a place where I can unplug from the world and relax. I love basking in the neon glow of a reality I created and surrounded by things I like. I don’t think of myself as a gamer. I’m just a guy who likes to play games. But I do embrace the idea of game or computer culture. Such as Playing games online, streaming games and watching streams for instance. Sharing memes and trolling relatives on social media is also a lot of fun.

Final words.

Pc gaming in my opinion allows creative individuality while uniting like minded people. In a time where it seems like division is stronger than ever, gaming and computer culture unites us. Stay true to yourself and have fun. Trolling is ok too, such as in the case of fake gamer site Kotaku, but try to be excellent to each other.

White guys, Dungeons and Dragons is no longer for you.

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Kyle Brink is the executive producer of Dungeons and Dragons. He was just in a podcast saying that white guys can’t leave Dungeons and Dragons soon enough. This is disheartening to hear. DnD always had a special place in my heart. Growing up in the eighties it was one of my favorite past times. Granted I haven’t played in a long time due to numerous reasons. I want to, but life kind of gets in the way. Although I still buy, well bought, books and dice. But hearing my money is no longer needed or wanted because I’m white is kind of strange. Dungeons and Dragons back in the day did no favors for you socially. You were considered an outcast, a geek or nerd. I always welcomed anyone who wanted to play. But times are different now. Something I once loved is telling me I’m no longer needed or wanted for the crime of being white.

Role playing games are near and dear to my heart. Although I focus my time more on PC gaming than table top gaming these days. The first role playing game I ever played was an obscure game called Might and Magic. My mother got it for me one Christmas. It was early 80s, I had no Idea what it was. It was a rule book and a quest book and two small 20 sided dice. This wasn’t your average table top game where you read the inside cover of the box to learn it. You had to read an entire book. So I learned it, it was different and fun. I mentioned it at school and one of my friends. He said if you like that, you have to try Dungeons and Dragons. Intrigued I bought that and a couple of quest books. I was blown away. The presentation, the dice, the rules was so much fun.

There was a lot more art. I’m a very visual person and the art in these books fanned the flames of my imagination. The back of one book in particular, Dungeon Module B2; The Keep on the Borderlands. I’ll never forget the day. It was late fall and cool, the window in my room was open and there was a nice breeze. I was laying in my bed staring at this illustration. It was four adventures going up a winding path to a dark ominous castle. The sun was setting, golden hour if this was a photograph. The setting sun highlighted the adventures who were merely silhouettes. It was hard to tell their classes. Maybe a wizard, fighter, thief, and a paladin. One was definitely female because I see boobs, well boob, actually maybe its just part of their cape. Anyways, the color pallet was haunting to me, the yellow, reds, and purples. The contrast it cast on the castle highlighting the battlements and towers gave an ominous feeling of what lies inside. To this day this image still give me chills. I got my graph paper and mapped that castle out and the multi level dungeon underneath. The monsters, the combat, the adventure, the picture was DnD.

My friends and I had a blast. Their were times we had to recruit our reluctant brothers and sisters to get a full party but we got by. Exploring dungeons, fighting monsters, slaying dragons, looting treasure, and gaining XP. It was simple. It was fun. It was Dungeons and Dragons. We even survived the satanic panic. Then we all kind of moved on with our lives, many moved out of state, got jobs had families. So the books and dice were put away.

Although I really wasn’t playing anymore I always kept tabs and whats going on with DnD. I can only shake my head. People who were trying to be allies were actually showing their racial biases. When a website called Orcs problematic because if you chose that class you had to take a racial modifier. They tried equating Orcs to people of color even though you can be a person of color in the game, you know human. Equating Orcs to black people says more about you than the people who don’t make that connection. Then came the Tumbler audience and they started injecting sexuality into the game. Then gamers were accused of using math and complex rules as a gate keeping tool for keeping minorities out. Again something we never said, but they implied. Wizards of the Coast started to amend the rules which were never set in stone anyway. Rules in DnD were always just a guide. I don’t think my friends and I ever stuck to the rules. We just had fun. But if Dungeons and Dragons wants to hate me, and they do, I’ll just bow out. Especially at this point in my life its super easy. I’ll always have great memories with my friends and the fun we had. They’ll never take that from me. It’s a shame, but this white guy is out. Kyle Brink, I really don’t know what you were trying to prove if it was just virtue signaling or something else.

Fans of Harry Potter raise their wands and middle fingers to woke cancel culture

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I’m so tired of gaming getting attacked from all sides. You have people on the right saying violent games are bad. People on the left accusing games of not being inclusive enough. After a days hard work and fitting in family time, I just want to unwind and play a game. Period. Now I have no interest in Harry Potter. I saw the first movie once and I liked it. I never felt the need to read the books or play any of the games. But there are a lot of people who do like it. I see the cosplays at the conventions. I see the online presence of fans and the passion they have. The Harry Potter universe is their escapism. It is what they enjoy.

Hogwarts Legacy first came on to my radar when they tried to cancel Troy Leavitt. He was a game developer on the team who came under fire for a YouTube video. I never heard of him before. I watched the video in question and found it to be quite tame. It focused on some video clips from Thomas Sowell and was about the justice system and how it could be affected by social justice. Some how he was labeled far right because of this. Which is kind of ironic because the in the video character assassination was briefly mentioned and what happened to Troy actually kind of proves him right. Although his job was never in jeopardy he decided to bow out gracefully. This action caused the mob to stand down, for then.

Now I never had any stake in Hogwarts Legacy or Troy. Now as a Gamer I feel like I do. He seemed like a person who had a passion for the art of gaming. He came under fire for an opinion. That just didn’t sit right with me. Now I feel partly vested in this, I didn’t want to be, but here I am.

This wasn’t enough for people. Eventually the mob got incised again. Now they had to call for an all out boycott of Hogwarts Legacy. Although I’m terminally online and well aware of the perceived culture wars that are going on, I just generally don’t care. Sure I troll here and there but I don’t lose any sleep over anything. As much as I’m online, I exist in the real world and things are different. The hate for J.K. Rowling has brought out the narcissism in people. People who can not separate the internet world from the real world. These people have such vitriol and hatred for this woman that is beyond comprehension. It’s laughable. I’m sure J.K. Rowling laughs too, these people are that ridiculous. Now here’s the thing. Rowling and I differ in our political views. I don’t even think she’d like me. But she makes valid points and being a father who has a daughter It’s nice to see someone of influence looking out and bringing attention to certain things regarding women. Now I feel like I have to defend her. Although she doesn’t need me, she does just fine herself. People not only want to see her canceled but broke and destitute. They want her to sell the Harry potter franchise so they can enjoy it again. It’s weird. If they could just put a fraction of the effort into their own lives as they do this boycott and their hate, they’d have better lives.

Now how is the boycott going? Oh yeah it failed on a spectacular level. This single player game broke records all across the board. Even in failure they spammed posts and message boards with spoilers trying to stop this Juggernaut, but no one cared. This game would not be as popular as it is without the help of this boycott. I think it would have been an OK release if it didn’t have the dramma. I think it would have done well. But this boycott and lecturing gamers what they can and can not buy signal boosted it to the next level. They even made a site to see if your favorite streamer played “That wizzard game.” They are so juvenile and pathetic they can’t even say Hogwarts Legacy. Like saying the name gives it any kind of legitimacy. Zooey Zephyr a public representative even supported making lists of people who played the game, again weird. These are the people who can not separate the internet from the real world. Any normie looking in has no idea of their perceived culture war. They don’t know what TERF means and nor do they care to. They did more damage to their movement themselves than anyone on the right could have done.

Gaming sites didn’t help either. Gamer Gate was the downfall of gaming sites. So when people see them rally around a cause they tend to do the opposite. They call themselves gaming sites but they are really like CNN lite. Writers of the gaming sites are activists first and foremost. Sites like Polygon, Wired and Kotaku don’t have the passion for the hobby and that’s why they fail. They rarely talk about the game and talk more about the perceived politics that surround the game. They don’t even like people who play games. Most of the writers don’t even play the games they review. I like the fact sites like Kotaku didn’t even get review copies and sales still exceeded expectations. Also Instead of just reviewing the game they have to issue an apology first or a disclaimer. Weak.

Playing this game makes you nothing more than a gamer and a Harry Potter universe fan. It doesn’t make you a phobe or a bad person. Make no mistake this is a win. People tried to stop the thing you love, and they failed. I feel bad for these people. I think they only boycotted this game because it was easy. In the past one anonymous person with three followers could make a Tweet and force the hand of an entire company. It was nice to see them just ignored and fans put first. The success of this game will lead to more content and fun for you. So play your game and enjoy. If you stuck around to the end thanks for hanging in there and keep those wands raised.

People and their Gaming PCs are awesome.

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Twitter is an ugly cesspool of negativity. You can try to control what is fed to you but it is a two edged sword. Blocking negativity to ease your sanity or bombarded with the mundane. So I took it on myself to find the good. In the search I typed, “My gaming PC.” I was rewarded with post after post of people showing off newly constructed rigs, or their old faithful go to. It was a great experience. To see something so simple, computers and gaming, that united everyone. And it was nice to see people proud of their builds, and they should be. Someone as seasoned as myself never forgets where I came from. A nervous kid inserting an ISA sound card wondering if that drop of sweat that just landed on the motherboard will fry the machine. Then the sense of accomplishment of inserting several floppy disks and running DOS commands to have it actually work. This may sound goofy but I was genuinely happy for these people. Reading these posts really brought me back those memories. What was really cool to me was no mater how big or small, that excitement factor was the same.