Alternative title: what are you playing on your standardized linux-based laptop designed for efficiency and battery life over raw graphical power in an age of IP abolishment?
I've been thinking about what gaming would look like in a near-fully Socialized economy, and what modern games would fit the idea best. The biggest kicker here is that I don't believe endless graphical improvements to push and sell more powerful hardware would still be driven as much. Efficiency over raw power. Essentially, the tagline from the perspective of a future Socialist being called a Revisionist online is infecting my thinking.
That brings me to some ideas: Minecraft, Celeste, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, Crosscode, Caves of Qud, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Dwarf Fortress, either open-ended or extremely tight and replayable games tend to fit my idea of what gaming would look like. Fallout: New Vegas, Disco Elysium, and other great games would be big too, as well as emulators. In an era with IP abolishment, gaming would look very different IMO. New Vegas, Minecraft, and other highly moddable games would likely thrive.
What are your thoughts? I'm imaging playing these on a standardized Linux-based PC designed to be repairable with commonly produced parts, haha.
Side note: board games count, too! TTRPGs and whatnot that don't require excess waste and are based around standardized systems like dice and playing cards would be cool to hear about as well.
Kind of a ramble, needed to please the brain worms piloting my rotting corpse
Generally agree that we’re rapidly approaching peak graphics and we’ll see a shift from graphics processing dick measuring contests to user-experience focused development.
I’ll say that roguelikes/roguelites as a genre would fit well into that new paradigm. Procedurally generated levels and emphasis on unique stat builds per run offer huge efficiency/return value. Only issue is roguelikes are rather constrained in terms of storytelling because there needs to be some plot device that rationalizes infinite runs so you can’t have an absolute ending.
For a not-traditional video game option, and was brought up here recently, variant sudoku. Historically not strictly a video game, but the advent of the fog ruleset has moved it into that realm of “not possible with pencil and paper.” Highly customizable, super low resource dependency, big community development angle, nerdy in the true sense instead of media consumption/brand identity “nerdy.”
Even Hades' solution to that issue was kind of hamfisted tbh