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Comment by 3dbrows | Hacker News Reader

> It is amazing how much we regress as software gets bloated with feature creep.

Yes. This week I set up a new Windows 10 laptop for an elderly gentleman, who wanted to continue to play the classic Solitaire game. I eventually found the edition that shipped with Windows 3.0 and installed that. I then tried some of the standard Microsoft free games you get now and had a poor experience:

Horribly slow to load. Advertisements in your face constantly. Demands that you "sign in" to Xbox Live. Not having internet connectivity is treated as weird. Noisy user interface; multiple clicks to start a game.

Compare this with the old-fashioned games e.g. Solitaire, Minesweeper:

Loads instantly, ready to play. No advertisements, connectivity requirements, or user data harvesting. Even the simple graphics add an aesthetic all of their own, but that of course is a subjective opinion.

I agree with you.

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I live in a nearly perpetual state of outrage over the need to sign in and be tracked for things that have absolutely no reason to require an internet connection.

I'm even more outraged when I see popular video games that are clearly targeting children to become addicted and buy in-game currency to progress (or worse- not do anything at all like Fortnite skins). I played fucking The Legend of Zelda on my Nintendo and it was great. What ever happened to creating a product and selling that product once? If it doesn't suck we might buy the next product(s) you make.

I am no fan of IAP-laden games but there’s a lot of stuff skins with no obvious game effect do in a multiplayer game.

* status games - I have this old/hard to get/expensive skin and you do not.

* social games - me and my buddies all dress identically/similarly. Gang colors, the All-Shrek Squad, GTA’s roving gangs of purple/green alien gangs...

* role play games - does dressing up like Superman make you want to play the game differently than dressing up like Little Bo Peep, or like Freddy Krueger?

This has very little effect on a single player game (though I know I sure do spend a while making my character look cool in games with character creation and visible equipment) but “choosing your visual style” is an important part of social signaling.

And of course selling this stuff to the captive audience in your popular game is a pretty nice way to keep a small army of artists busy cranking out stuff, so you don’t have to worry about firing them while the next big project is in the planning stages. Or to just have a giant cash cow of a gentle IAP funnel with a few bits of whale bait here and there.

actually let me amend "no obvious game effect" to "no effects with regards to the games mechanics or statistics" since these can be some pretty obvious game effects

A few years ago, I made the mistake of installing the utility software that came with my new Razor keyboard - I thought it was some special driver thing - and I had to make a new account and sign in? It's a keyboard.

When you plug Razer stuff into a modern Windows 10 computer in the default configuration, Windows will actually silently download and install their crapware. Even if you are not admin. Even if the machine is part of a domain(!)

Oh no! That's awful. I'm still on Windows 7 and I moved to a Logitech keyboard that I prefer - but while I don't think I'm going to try any other Razer products in the future I'm aware many other hardware companies do this sort of thing as well.

Ooooh. I wonder if that download pipeline forgets to do certificate verification...

(Can you flood a subnet with DNS A responses, or does that not work due to sequence numbering?)

You can still pay once and play the latest Legend of Zelda on your new Nintendo! They’re actually one company keeping the old world alive.

None of the games I play on my switch is nagging me to sign up or buy anything. Mostly Super Mario Odyssey, New Super Mario Bros and Zelda, but the same goes for most Nintendo games.

> What ever happened to creating a product and selling that product once? If it doesn't suck we might buy the next product(s) you make.

At a price that doesn't actually fund the quality you expect.

Graphics and art got harder, but gamers didn't get any less broke or salty. So you gotta subsidize with Whales.

Even programs that are _not_ done well, get replaced with infantile crap.

My wife really likes Scrabble, in-person ideally, but on-line as well. The iOS app was something you could sign in to, or play as guest, but with login you could play your friends. It was clearly buggy as hell, unstable, with all sorts of weird quirks. When it worked though, it was fine (enough).

They've basically started shoving users away, and now there's a new app. I think you might have to sign in with Facebook or some such nonsense, but anyway, it's like the expectation is that it's hung over a baby's crib. Flashy blinking cruft everywhere, and of course the board is shrunk to make room for the superfluous, distracting crap.

I'm sure the latter version is only populated by bots now, because it's well nigh unplayable for a human.

Had to do the same for an elderly solitaire fan recently, may I recommend Most Popular Solitaire - https://www.goodsol.com/mps/ - for a mere $17

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