I'm current stuck in a long term cycle of mainly Project Zomboid, Factorio, Valheim, Oxygen Not Included, The Lone Dark and Rimworld, were when I'm fed up of playing the last of them, it's been long enough since I played the first one that it's once interesting to play it. Even when I manage to be fed up with playing all of them at any one point, I still have other progression games with complex emergent gameplay (often but not always games which have algorithmically generated game areas) like Kenshi. 7 Days to Die or OpenTTD that pull me in and if that fails, I can always pick up one of the old open world roleplay jewels such as Skyrim and play that. I've barelly tried anything else in the last couple of years and of those only Oxygen Not Include was the only one with any lasting power and I picked that one years ago. It's not even because I can't afford it (though out of principl I refuse to pay more than €20 for a game) - whenever I try an AAA game nowadays (always games that came out years ago) it's almost invariably an inferior experience that either feels too constrained or doesn't have enough gameplay variety and complexity to be fun for long.

Yes, I am using Arch btw Sorry but I couldn't resist the opportunity

I'm not young or American, but I can tell gaming has been changing. I can't even remember what was the last "AAA" game I bought, because it must have been a couple of years ago. Most games I buy are 40€ connoisseur titles or 20€ indie games. I don't hear about any "must-play" AAA titles through the grapewine these days. I *do* hear about interesting indie stuff all the time, though. Most of the 60€+ games I hear about are kind of niche stuff.

The Cult of Consumption

I know mine has gone down, but I'm not playing less games. ‍️

They're charging more money for lower quality games. Glad less people are buying.

What are you talking about? They're both estimates extrapolated from samples. I think most statisticians would prefer stratified sampling over one company's payrolls processing, but whatever. Maybe chuds would argue that ADP is so much more efficient/accurate because it's outside of the "swamp" of govt, it's certainly *an* independent data point. I mean I agree with you in that BLS is not reliable either. Real time economics is hard. If you honestly preferred ADP all along and will continue to espouse it's superiority when it next contradicts your view rather than confirming it (as it will because data are noisy) then more power to you.

Older games are better plus gamers can play all our existing games.

GameCube games were $50 or $20 for player's choice titles

Well now you've met a statistician, a person with an Econ degree, specialization in Econometrics who is telling you the BLS numbers have been garbage for 2 years, based off of how many revisions they have to keep doing, and the magnitude of those adjustments. I've been a professional data analyst at multiple large companies for years, I'm not going to explain this further unless you want to pay me for the full 40 page methodology breakdown. Real time economics is not hard for me, it was my career until I retired. Damn near every single measurable metric in the US economy beyond what's in the most easy to consume, most non specialist oriented media is screaming that everything is going tits up. Hey when wss the last time the Fed had to significantly jump into the Repo market to bail it out? Oh, right, it was this past week. I'm not going to bother to list out every single indicator because 1) I'd break the lemmy comment post character limit (its 10k, btw) and 2) I'm used to being paid for such detail.

Ah an economist, say no more fam.

We are ripe for another Luddite movement with this giant AI grift the Tech Bros are forcing on us.

This is why publisher's are trying to derail "Stop Killing Games." When they are done with a a game the don't WANT you to continue to play and enjoy it.... ...they want you to forget about it and buy the next product they have

I will say though, if you're the kind of guy who likes MMOs and RPGs (like me) you'll *love* dune. I used to play a ton of RuneScape back in the day, and recently I've been playing Eve and Star Citizen but dune is just a better game in every possible way than those three. I've been so obsessed that I had to uninstall it this week so I could get to sleep on time for work haha

Nice! I am too, I'll have to check out the modpack loader thingy that sounds fantastic!

Funny how that happens when people don't have any money.

It's fun how when you could really most use a reliable distraction you start to not be able to find joy in things you used to.

Can't afford a home, holiday and now videogames.

Any AAA game I got in the last decade I waited till it was dirt cheap. Red Dead 2 was the last one I bought and played through was maybe 15-20 bucks or something?

It's a two part answer. One, gamers have less money to spend, along with everyone else. Two, expensive AAA title games these days tend to be shit, from a graphics, code, community, and content standpoint. If you want good games, cheaper is usually better. Last AAA title game I bought was Borderlands 3, and I don't see myself buying anymore in the next two years or so.