Gaming Then vs Gaming Now

Meme transcription: A table comparing the steps to start a game ‘then’ vs. ‘now’.

Content of the “Then” column:

  • Double-click GAME.exe
  • Play game

Content of the “Now” column:

  • Launch Steam

  • Steam updates

  • Steam opens

  • Close Steam’s ad window
  • Select Game

  • Game launcher starts

  • Game launcher launches Game launcher updater

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Ok

  • Would you like to sign up for our newsletter?

  • No

  • Our EULAs have changed. Please review them before continuing

  • Scroll
  • Scroll
  • Scroll
  • Scroll
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes, sell my soul
  • Start game
  • Skip vendor intro
  • Skip vendor intro #2
  • Skip vendor intro #3
  • Sit through nVidia The way it’s meant to be played
  • Skip opening cutscene

  • Main menu opens

  • Would you like to connect your Steam account to account?

  • No
  • Press play.
  • Play game.
_number8_,

i’m tired of software constantly needing to download fucking updates for every little fucking thing. you can’t just use sEcUrIty as an excuse to make things 2000x more annoying

bleistift2,

It would go a long way to provide a changelog so we could appreciate whatever work went into the update. Looking at you, steam.

scubbo,

Gamers are the only people who complain when something is improved for them for free.

KrankyKong,

deleted_by_author

    •
    ElectricCattleman,

    X-COM: UFO Defense has joined the chat.

    Dubious_Fart,

    wasnt there a XCOM knockoff game that deleted your tire C drive if you uninstalled it?

    casmael,

    Oh my god I both do no don’t want this to be true

    Dubious_Fart,

    Theres been a couple games that had this issue.

    I know Myth 2 had it if you installed it into the wrong directory or something.

    There was some not-mainstream MMO that had the issue too at one point.

    but I cant remember the name of the xcom knockoff that had it.

    and I cant find anything about it cause I keep finding 5000 pages of results about recovering uninstalled games.

    twistedcarbon,

    Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor was one of them.

    Valmond,

    One big game installed itself as a boot option

    Turn PC on

    Want to play or open windows?

    O_o

    Damage,

    Set up soundblaster irq dma bzzz bzz

    Sphks,
    @Sphks@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    “NOT ENOUGH CONVENTIONAL MEMORY”
    Ok. Time to set and launch a specific autoexec.bat.

    altima_neo,
    @altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

    “Please insert disc into drive D:/”

    BuboScandiacus,
    @BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz avatar

    You alt-tabbed ? Then fuck you and your unsaved progress

    WhyIDie,

    mortal kombat 2 on pc was a game changer tho.

    but I’ll bring up one that’s a step further, startropics on NES: dip a manual page in water to reveal the code, or you don’t get to progress, mid-way through the game

    averagedrunk,

    I’m full l having flashbacks to Fantasy Empires. I don’t know if I ever had the manual. I think I just got a list of words from someone.

    Jimmycrackcrack,

    Hate this bullshit so much.

    revlayle,

    I had ME legendary edition in my steam library. I wanted to play. It asked me to sign up for all the EA bullshit.

    I still haven’t played it.

    guiguinofake,
    • Open cracked games folder
    • Find game
    • Double click .exe
    vox,
    @vox@sopuli.xyz avatar

    you can disable steam ad windows

    maniel,
    @maniel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Don’t forget about:

    #THIS GAME SUPPORTS AN AUTOSAVE FEATURE DON’T SHUTDOWN YOUR COMPUTER#🆗

    doctorcrimson,

    TBF it used to take a really long time with multiple disks to install literally anything.

    Atomic,

    Diablo 2 was like 3 different discs. One for every 2 acts i believe.

    chillhelm,

    It was a “Game Disc” and a “Video Disc”. You could choose to copy the Videos during install or you would have to physically swap discs when you got to a rendered cutscene (which was only between acts, but still).

    Blackmist,

    You guys were installing things?

    I used to load my games from scratch. Every time. From tape.

    Dave,
    @Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

    From tape? Amateur. Why doesn’t anyone key in the code for games that were printed in magazines anymore?

    NigelFrobisher,

    Somebody clearly doesn’t remember boot disks and configuring your soundblaster hardware interrupt number.

    Droechai,

    Going through .ini-files to find any bugs and manually change to get it to run is something I don’t miss with modern releases.

    Or buying a game and realize your specific graphic accelerator isn’t supported in the dark ages before DirectX

    JokeDeity,

    The enshitification of everything.

    neonred, (edited )

    Install with GOG a single time. Be able to archieve old versions in case gameplay changes.

    wine ./bin/x64/Cyberpunk2077.exe

    Done.

    JoeCoT,
    @JoeCoT@kbin.social avatar

    Do people forget that games used to require you to have the CD-ROM in the drive before they would run? Even though most of the time the entire game was installed on your hard drive? It was an anti-piracy measure, but incredibly annoying. Even for games I owned, I would find patched no cd exes to avoid it.

    Before I figured that out, if you lost or damaged your CD, you were just screwed. Buy the game again. My dad had a lot of character flaws, but at least when I was a kid he would take the time to call game companies and get a new CD for a few dollars if the disk stopped working.

    Using Steam is incredibly more useful than what came before. Almost every game I owned in the era before Steam is just plain lost. There's only one set of games I still have easy access to -- Half Life, because you could register your CD key in Steam. I have a bin full of old game CDs, and I'm sure none of them work. But any game I've bought through Steam, in the last 20 years, I can click to download and play right now.

    Add on to that that, no, lots of games did not actually work well out of the box, and needed updates to work. And you had to hunt down those updates. And a lot of those update sites do not exist anymore. Any game I install from Steam is the latest version of the game, and will auto-update if there's a new one.

    pjhenry1216,

    Do people forget that games used to require you to have the CD-ROM in the drive before they would run?

    They weren't always like that though. Don't forget piracy didn't start with the video game industry. It only started once it took off. CDs came later.

    Source: person who remembers playing games off 8" floppies.

    Edit to add: a game 20 years ago will only run because Windows says it's ok. If it's a linux-based game from 20 years ago, then it depends on a lot of other stuff. It's not Steam that keeps them running. Steam just provides you a copy for the most part. GOG exists and doesn't have the DRM that Steam allows. Does it have the same library? No. But we shouldn't support DRM to begin with, so if it's not on GOG, than I don't trust the game itself.

    JoeCoT,
    @JoeCoT@kbin.social avatar

    I also played games off floppies, sure. And there were anti-piracy measures there too. I remember playing a pirated copy of Leisure Suit Larry as a kid, and you had to answer questions about pop culture kids wouldn't know, followed by specific questions about wording in the manual. Before CDs, manuals were the anti-piracy measure.

    mark3748,

    I used to play Faery Tale Adventure on Amiga. The anti-piracy was code phrases around the edge of a paper map.

    Valmond,

    Hello fellow oldie :-)

    All those young kids have never heard of the no-CD crack you think?

    aksdb,

    Also updates were typically incremental to save bandwith. So not only do you need “the update”, you may need a cascade of updates you need to download and install, in order.

    Atomic,

    Only for noobs who didn’t rip the CD to an ISO and used that with a mounter 😎

    Zerush,
    @Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar

    I hate this, above Steam client is slow as hell (GOG isn’t much better). But you can hack it in most games to start the game clicking in the Icon. Look at the properties of the games in the folder, there is usually a game launcher, it is this one whose icon appears when this game is installed, it is this one that launches Steam (or GOG), but apart from that there is usually the original executable (look also in the subfolders, mostly in bin) which directly launches the game without Steam or GOG.

    Atomic,

    If your steam client is slow. Try disabling hardware acceleration. Worked wonders for me. Steam went from being slow to super responsive.

    Zerush,
    @Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar

    Maybe, but anyway I use it only to install the Game, but not to play it. All this shit when launching a game, with all the Steam loads makes me sick, plus it stays resident after finishing the game, having to close it separately, uselessly spending RAM on my poor Laptop which is not very bulky in this sense either.

    elxeno,

    EULA bullshit

    • uninstall
    • reinstall
    • uninstall
    • reinstall
    • uninstall
    • reinstall
    • uninstall
    • reinstall
    • uninstall
    • reinstall
    • uninstall
    • refund

    😬

    pineapplelover,

    Itch.io is pretty straightforward. Download .exe and play.

    sounddrill,

    Same with gog except it needs installation

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • [email protected]
  • Food
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • Ask_kbincafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • KbinCafe
  • Socialism
  • SuperSentai
  • All magazines
    •