In terms of games that were so advanced they almost feel like they were made by time travellers:
Elite (1984) - procedural open world space sim
Ultima VII (1992) - full NPC schedules, open world and day/night system so you could rob stores at nights, follow people, etc. and awesome exploration. In 1992!
X-COM (1994) - a voxel-based LOS system, destructible environment, z-levels, natural elevation on terrain (deforming the isometric grid), reaction fire, etc.
Daggerfall (1996) - a faction system, procedurally generated areas and quests, a lot of options to get to different areas (climbing, levitation, etc.)
Thief (1998) - a full sound simulation with different materials having different properties, the ability to extinguish torches (dynamic lighting!) and cover metal surfaces, a light system for visibility too (now commonplace).
Baldur’s Gate (1998) - a semi open-world AD&D2e implementation - with co-op multiplayer! (most modern games don’t manage this)
Deus Ex (2000) - a branching FPS/RPG campaign where choices matter with a basic stealth system and lots of approaches to each level. It was basically a completely modern game out of nowhere in 2000.
Runescape (2001) - one of the first major graphical MMORPGs with a full player economy.
Morrowind (2002) - a fully 3D open world with a lot of options for magic (including custom magic) and exploration.
Hitman 2 (2002) - first stealth-focussed game with a full disguise system, map, etc.
Oblivion (2006) - like Morrowind but with some NPC schedules (like Ultima VII), a stealth system (based on Thief) and Havok physics based traps.
Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009) - fully destructible buildings and environments in an open-world campaign.
Those are the ones that really stick out (also Super Mario and Zelda on consoles, especially the SNES, N64 and recently on the Switch handheld). It’s a shame that the rate of progress seems to have slowed down a lot at least in terms of ground-breaking features and simulations.
But who knows maybe Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield will both be on future lists like this.
Ultima VII really sticks out as just crazy though, that game could have released 10 years later and held up.
Also the original X-COM was so far ahead of its time - a voxel-based LOS system, destructible environment, z-levels, natural elevation on terrain (deforming the isometric grid), reaction fire, etc.
In theory it’s easy to monetise - allow some targeted ads to communities and/or occasional relevant boosted posts, or paid awards like Reddit, etc.
The issue is greed / growth. They always need more and more - so you end up with more irrelevant ads, political ads, more boosted posts than natural ones, etc. - most companies aren’t happy to just do one thing well with a skeleton crew maintaining it and keeping costs low - they need constant growth.
How would this work? What about people that need to contact their parents?
We need to move away from schools just being prisons for children while parents are at work, and encourage learning and more autonomy over what to study. Imagine having full access to Coursera and EdX and being able to choose what you wanted to study and collect credits like that - building your own syllabus from some of the best educators in the world.
Let kids program video games together at school, build sensors and robots, do basic genetic engineering (e.g. plant patterns), simulate and build model bridges, etc. like stuff that is actually fun but requires basic skills. So you’re not just memorising the trigonometry equations but really learning it because you need it in your projects.
And have zero tolerance for disruption and bullying with cameras, etc. It should be a place for collaborative learning, not a prison. It should feel like a much better place to learn than anywhere else.
UMG once talked about making their own streaming service but fortunately that didn’t happen and things have stayed open with good catalogues on all services.
A: A lot of people have some weird idea that this web site is a Bad Place, a place for hackers, software pirates, and anarchists. The reason that they think this is that there are informational text files on here about hacking, piracy, and anarchy.
However, there are also text files on here that discuss politics; democratic, right wing, left wing, libertarian, communist, and everything in between, but this is not a political web site.
There are files on here that discuss Jesus Christ, Muhammed, Buddha, Crowley, John Smith, and “Bob”, but this is not a religious web site.
There are files full of short stories, science fiction, humorous articles, and great works of literature, but this is not a literary web site.
There are files with information on rocketry, radio broadcasting, chemistry, electronics, genetics, and computers, but this is not a technical web site.
This web site is about INFORMATION. All sorts and all viewpoints. Some of the information you will agree with, some you will find shocking, and some you will probably disagree with violently. That is the whole point. In this society we go to schools where there is one right answer: The Teacher’s. There is one acceptable version of events: The Television’s. There is only one acceptable occupation: The pursuit of money. There is only one political choice to make: The Status Quo.
On this web site you are expected to make decisions all by yourself. You get to decide who and what to agree with, and why. You get to hear new viewpoints that you may have never heard before. On this web site people exist without age, without skin color, without gender, without clothes, without nationality, without any of the visual cues we usually use to discredit or ignore people who are unlike ourselves. All of these things are stripped away and the ideas themselves are laid bare.
You will change. You will transform. You will learn. You will disagree.
You will enjoy it.
It’s a shame now the modern internet has switched from anonymity to identity politics, from freedom to cancel culture.