[anon_cow1111]

Probably the most obvious for this community is being very enthusiastic about technology but loathing anything with "smart" in the name. (I still use a flip phone and 15+ year old appliances)

Similarly I grew up always enjoying video games but it feels like a burned out husk in the modern era. Most of the big dollar "video game" market is now just MTX gambling and even a LAN party probably routes everything through Steam or Epic's servers

[jasinjames]

Good news: video games are still fucking awesome. Since it costs nothing to make one, weird and smart and cool people from all across the world are trying the craziest stuff. It's true they're purchasable through steam, mostly. But there's spectacularly creative stuff at low or no cost. For example, skimming my steam right now I see:

- Tales From Off Peak City (surrealist walking simulator with a film camera mechanic; 9.99$)

- Baba is You (sokoban puzzler; 14.99$)

- Straftat (brutalist/surrealist competitive shooter set to jungle music focusing on randomized community-map style alternative fps gamemodes; free)

- Untitled Goose Game (light puzzle coop set to dynamically scored classical piano music; 8.99$)

- Norco (prescient pre-gen-ai pixel art VN about AI, faith, and the environment; 5.24$)

- Brazillian Drug Dealer 3: I opened a Portal To Hell In The Favela Trying To Revive Mit Aia I Need to Close It (it's quake; 3.75$)

[ahartmetz]

Straftat is made by two French brothers but the name is German, meaning criminal act / criminal offense / felony. It's a fun choice of name.

[WastedCucumber]

+1 For Untilted Goose Game, it's wholesome and brilliant, also as a solo game.

[raincole]

I resonate with what you said, but I kinda don't know what it has to do with the article

The article defines guilty displeasures as things you don't like but you hope you like. I don't think you hope yourself to like modern AAA games.

[anon_cow1111]

I despise smartphones (and related), but they're really incredible hardware and software, I SHOULD like them, a lot. Imagine being a nerd in the 90s and getting access to this tiny computer running on 3 volts of battery power that's 10x more powerful than your desktop. Holy crap.

I'm even somewhat resentful of modern games, I feel like they should be... more fun? More often then not I just kind of throw something old in an emulator and play that. My comment might have come across as the opposite but I think it can be interpreted either way.

"I should be enjoying this stuff, why does it suck so bad now?" Is probably the vibe we're trying to get at here.

[dwedge]

I consider myself a minimalisr so I should love smart phones. I carry more stuff with to avoid using them

[animuchan]

Different person's POV here: I fully expect from my mind to enjoy video games.

Then I open Steam, and feel the strong sense of rejection, like eww this is well and truly a disgusting selection of repackaged Unity assets, and I'd like to have absolutely none of that please.

It's this cognitive dissonance maybe, that's the guilty displeasure. Because I do keep coming back, we all do.

In the grim darkness of the right now, with former gaming companies focusing on live services and loot boxes and advertising, core gamers' very conception of video games is simulacra, a copy without the original.

With time, this will fade; like when searching for Jesus, you don't really expect to physically find the dude hidden in the corner of the church. Expectations decay.

Maybe I will visit Steam on the Internet Archive and still browse, when everything is gone and dead, and the guilty displeasure feeling will have outlived the displeasure, and the guilt.

[onli]

Sounds nice, but it doesn't fit. Games are awesome right now. There are so many and so many good ones. You can play the free ones Epic releases each week and have a good selection only by that. Baldur's Gate 3 was already mentioned and is not only indeed really good, it's only the tip of the iceberg: There was a resurgence of CRPGs the last years. Including some offsprings, like Disco Elysium. A game so awesome that all "games were better in the past" statements immediately get disproved. If that's not your genre no problem, all genres thrive currently.

Sure, there are games with repackaged Unity assets on Steam. But it's on you if you just open steam and browse the new releases. Go by proper game reviews or recommendations by friends with similar taste, which has always been the right way to go, even three decades ago.

[VorpalWay]

Depends on what sort of games you are into, but Baldur's Gate 3 is modern and amazing. Great single player campaign with mod support. No DLCs or expansion packs, you get it all in the base game, finished, done.

[m463]

I agree with you with respect to smart, cloud, etc

I think we should support people who are uncomfortable about this stuff, don't ridicule them with "tinfoil hat much?" type sentiments

By the way, GOG.com treats you well wrt cloud/privacy/etc. All games they sell are drm-free and can be downloaded, installed and played offline.

[Rounin]

With regards to GOG and privacy, though, it's worth noting that GOG write that they "may use Google Adwords, Doubleclick, Sizmek Versatag, Yandex.Metrica, Twitter Pixel or Facebook Pixel and other similar technologies" as well as "Google Analytics, Google Optimize, Matomo, Hotjar", and that they incorporate either the privacy or cookie or ad policy of most of these services by reference into their own cookie policy: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000498685-Cooki... So if they really are a privacy- and consumer-oriented company, that must be the slip-up of the century.

[m463]

But if your games don't need a network interface, who cares?

maybe on their website (which you can block, unless you use google/etc payment methods)

I just put some money in a gog wallet once, then block everything and talk to gog only for browsing, buying games, etc

[nicbou]

It's not a guilty displeasure. I get annoyed by smart stuff. It's grating to deal with a smart TV demanding more attention than a display deserves. Over time we just stopped trusting that technology will better our lives.