weebdeluxe

You may have noticed some pretty awful gaming headlines over the past year. The death of physical games, the plague of AI slop and vibecoded indiegame flipping, studios being closed, developers loosing their jobs and livelihoods… it’s all pretty bad. Enough to make you want to turn away from modern gaming all together.

In May I did exactly that. I chose to only play games that were 20 years old for a whole month. Not only was it a fun challenge during which I played and finished some games that I haven’t played since I was a teen. It also helped me gain a new perspective on my hobby and what I really value.

The first and most important thing upfront: I want to own my games. Like, really own them. If they are digital, I want a DRM-free version of them, if possible. GoG has been great in that regard and I have started using it more often ever since. If a game is available there, chances are I’ll get it there. Unless there’s a physical version of course.

The thing about physical versions is, that I don’t want to support Sony anymore. I have a big enough backlog on my PS4 and PS5, so I’ll be using those devices for a long time to come. But giving money to Sony? Absolutely not. Their decision to screw gamers and movie watchers alike has been a huge turn off.

Which leaves Nintendo. Not the greatest company, granted, but at least some Switch 2 games are completely on the cartridge. That’s at least something worth supporting. Even though I’m pretty sure that they will do the same move as Sony does at some point. This might just be another generation away though, so I want to enjoy this nice thing as long as possible.

Then what does the post modern gaming world look like for me? For the most part, it means supporting indies who do DRM free versions of their games. But the other thing I truly value now is my collection. Playing the immense backlogs I have and going back to older games and consoles is a true joy. It’s pretty stress free, you don’t have to worry about all the discourse and noise happening and it’s almost like a time out for the modern world.

It won’t make its problems go away, but at least it makes me feel whole for a bit.

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