video games. i don't get it.

I'm dating myself here, but the first video game consoles I ever played were the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. I also played games on the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64. After that came the Nintendo Entertainment System, and I was more or less the exact age Nintendo was targeting when that system was released. I also had a Sega Master System at one point, then some years later the Nintendo 64. After that, some PC games. Then a few years after that, the very last game console I ever bought, the Nintendo Wii.

And then that was it. I stopped playing video games completely. Well, almost completely. I do play KMahJongg on Linux:

...but that's pretty much it.

Did I get old?

Yes. As a middle aged dude, playing anything more than a casual game for a few minutes feels like a complete waste of my time. I'd rather be doing something else, such as playing guitar or writing.

However, it's more than just my age talking.

Modern games aren't easy anymore. I'm not talking about game difficulty, but rather all the crap you have to deal with just to play.

I'd argue there are only two ways to play games with the least amount of complications. Either play games using the offerings from the file repositories on a Linux distro, or open source games from F-Droid for the smartphone.

Anything, and I mean anything outside of that means dealing with complicated crap and a lot of it. Gotta sign up for an account. Gotta deal with long load times or be forced to wait through screens so companies can show their logos. An internet connection is "required" even for single player games (which makes no sense at all). Games even with minimal graphics take up gigs and gigs of space for no good reason. There's more, but you get the idea.

You really do have to deal with a lot of crap to play a modern video game these days.

A modern console like this or this or this is prohibitively expensive. Many PC games start at 40 bucks with some at $70, and not even for a special edition.

So there's high cost, a lot of crap to deal with and a lot of waiting just to get started playing.

In other words, a lot of suffering.

That doesn't sound like "fun" to me.

I'll stick to my KMahJongg.

Published 2024 Oct 10