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Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can't count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with handicap features, and also to find Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, you'd lose a number of hours exploring every nook and cranny finding them!
You didn't have to deal with random re-balancing changing your gameplay, spying and tracking embedded in everything, hackers ruining the game or targeting you, invasive DRM (consoles), being forced to update your system for an hour before you can play, being forced to sign up for bullshit accounts in order to play the game you just bought, games that have required updates the day they come out, your games disappearing forever because the publisher changed their mind and removed it from the store, game content being removed to sell as DLC instead, being pressured to link social media accounts, bigger companies buying the game and forcing you to use their services to play it, companies monitoring and recording player interactions, companies going under making it impossible to play the game you already bought...
Holy shit. I never realized how bad modern gaming has gotten.
Modern AAA gaming, this is like complaining that all movies are copy+paste superhero flicks because that's all you see at the cinema!
I think that's a fair point.
A lot of my favorite games are indie titles or from small dev teams.
I did a post a while back, it's a great time to be playing games even if you have to ignore a lot of crap
Fucking capitalism. Ruins everything. Including, according to studies of divided Berlin; sex.