God
Video Games
I wonder if we're seeing the death of a medium playing out? While it's true that people have been prematurely writing epitaph's for various aspects of video gaming for a long time-- PCs, consoles, and so on-- what we're going through right now is unprecedented.
On all of my friend lists on every ecosystem-- Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, etc.-- it's like a ghost town. And it's not just because my friends and family are aging either: I have numerous of my kids' friends on the lists from back when we used to all play Minecraft together-- they either hardly log on at all, or they just play the same two games over and over.
By contrast, I remember in the 2000s and even the early 2010s, when my lists were hopping: like during the 360 days, we went from Oblivion to Mass Effect to Gears of War to Lost Odyssey, from one big hit, cutting-edge game to another. Nowadays, there's... what exactly?
On top of that, no one can build PCs anymore: video cards are a fortune, RAM is a fortune, Western Digital says their hard drives are sold out through the entirety of 2026, the Steam Deck is sold out globally, I heard one CEO recently say that they expect PC components to basically be sold out "through the end of the decade"...
And then I saw an article the other day, that people are-- very sadly-- choosing porn, gambling, and crypto over video games these days. Then you look at the lack of creativity, technical, and aesthetic acumen on display in games over the past five-to-ten years, and it's no wonder everyone is losing interest.
On a partially-related note, I saw this, and was sad-- but not surprised-- to see that faith in God was only Americans' fifth-ranked concern, while in Germany and the UK it didn't even register in the top ten concerns. On the rare times I'm subjected to modern advertising, or modern films or TV shows, I feel like they come from another planet.
Instead, they say they value "family" and "health"-- which of course, are one hundred percent due to, and from God! If God ceased willing us to exist, the whole universe would blink out instantly! The ability to make money, having safety, and so forth-- those are all gifts from the Lord! It's only due to God's grace that we can quite literally do anything.
But back to video games, I have been enjoying buying and playing Saturn repros with what time I have had to indulge. The Saturn not being able to do "3D" is extremely overstated. The most recent repudiation of this commonly-held view is Grandia... the game is filled to the brim with complex scenes like these, which I think actually look much cleaner than anything on the PSX:
On all of my friend lists on every ecosystem-- Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, etc.-- it's like a ghost town. And it's not just because my friends and family are aging either: I have numerous of my kids' friends on the lists from back when we used to all play Minecraft together-- they either hardly log on at all, or they just play the same two games over and over.
By contrast, I remember in the 2000s and even the early 2010s, when my lists were hopping: like during the 360 days, we went from Oblivion to Mass Effect to Gears of War to Lost Odyssey, from one big hit, cutting-edge game to another. Nowadays, there's... what exactly?
On top of that, no one can build PCs anymore: video cards are a fortune, RAM is a fortune, Western Digital says their hard drives are sold out through the entirety of 2026, the Steam Deck is sold out globally, I heard one CEO recently say that they expect PC components to basically be sold out "through the end of the decade"...
And then I saw an article the other day, that people are-- very sadly-- choosing porn, gambling, and crypto over video games these days. Then you look at the lack of creativity, technical, and aesthetic acumen on display in games over the past five-to-ten years, and it's no wonder everyone is losing interest.
On a partially-related note, I saw this, and was sad-- but not surprised-- to see that faith in God was only Americans' fifth-ranked concern, while in Germany and the UK it didn't even register in the top ten concerns. On the rare times I'm subjected to modern advertising, or modern films or TV shows, I feel like they come from another planet.
Instead, they say they value "family" and "health"-- which of course, are one hundred percent due to, and from God! If God ceased willing us to exist, the whole universe would blink out instantly! The ability to make money, having safety, and so forth-- those are all gifts from the Lord! It's only due to God's grace that we can quite literally do anything.
But back to video games, I have been enjoying buying and playing Saturn repros with what time I have had to indulge. The Saturn not being able to do "3D" is extremely overstated. The most recent repudiation of this commonly-held view is Grandia... the game is filled to the brim with complex scenes like these, which I think actually look much cleaner than anything on the PSX: