| This logic doesn't hold up. > Memory tends to play tricks and we remember older games looking better than they actually did We compared what League of Legends, Valorant, and Inscryption look like now with what those other games look like now. There's no rose-tinted glasses involved - this is an apples-to-apples comparison. > Those games you've mention run on advanced and heavyweight fragment and vertex shaders to create a specific look If that same look is being created in a far more performant manner by other games, then that means that the game is poorly optimized. > cartoony graphics in Fortnite Same effect class as Valorant and League, with lower visual fidelity, and worse performance. > there's a million effects on screen a dozen levels in a Risk of Rain game Risk of Rain is incredibly laggy in the menu, with zero mobs on screen and a single small scene as the background. > yet everything else is 20 years ahead of that game tech and complexity wise Again, see Valorant, LoL, and Inscryption. > Also not sure what your friend's PC is like, because a 5 year old PC can play all of those games with ease, though perhaps not at max settings. Core i3-5015U with Intel integrated 5500[1] - so, 7 years old. Yet, it can still run League and Valorant at >60 fps with default settings, and 20-30fps Inscryption and Dota 2 with reduced settings - meanwhile, Fortnite, DRG, RoR2, and Valheim are all slideshows with all settings turned all the way down. The claim that "these new games are just so much more involved than older games" simply doesn't hold up against the reality that there are recently-released games that look better and perform better simultaneously than these examples. My lived experience, my understanding of computer graphics, and knowledge of things like the GTA Online incident[2] strongly indicates that this line of reasoning is incorrect. [1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/84698/i... [2] https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times... |