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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

I first noticed this "Gen-Z" mode trend when I played Mario Kart on Wii. Compared to N64 or SNES, the screen was so busy. I honestly had a hard time keeping track of where my player was and where the "track" was compared to all the colorful fast-moving background cruft.

I'm not a gamer so maybe I'm just not used to it. Fortnite seems like another example of how "Gen-Z" and headachy a digital environment can be.

For sure people will downvote me for not being a gamer who gets it, or for being an old fuddy-duddy. Wanted to provide the perspective though.

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Are you sure the N64 and SNES Mario Karts weren't just less busy due to hardware constraints? N64 had limited polygon count compared with modern gaming systems.

Also, the Wii came out in what, 2006? It's definitely a millennial gaming system.

>It's definitely a millennial gaming system.

In fact I can't think of another product that's more quintessentially millennial than the Wii.

> In fact I can't think of another product that's more quintessentially millennial than the Wii.

Antidepressants come to mind

Competitive gamers agree with you and have been trying to increase visual clarity for a long time. I remember finding out about picmip back in quake3 and never looking back [0]. In AoE2 there was a mod called 'pussywood' that made the trees smaller so you could see things. People then also started putting borders around tiles and cutting buildings so they didn't block what was behind them [1]. In SC2 some weird settings made invisible units more visible, I think you set everything ultra-low apart from shadows or something. There are hundreds of other examples, if you watch any competitive gamer stream, their game will look different to the default experience you'd get if you installed the game yourself (unless it's a tournament stream, they'll turn all the settings up to max for that 'gen-z' factor).

The problem nowadays is that companies are incentivized to reduce visual clarity by selling super flashy rainbow skins(doesn't apply to Mario Kart, applies to Fortnite).

[0] https://twitter.com/cabbagebrains/status/1246155602625064961

[1] https://imgur.com/hqRkLh2

Visual clarity vastly depends on the game and what sort of playstyle it's going for. For competitive shooters, it matters a lot more to be able to visually detect enemies slightly visible behind corners, eg. Valorant with red outlines on characters. However, regarding Fortnite, having a flashy animated rainbow skin actively makes it easier for other players to spot you, so if they were really incentivized to sell flashy skins they'd make it so you could choose a skin that other players see and a separate skin you see.

Mario Kart on Wii was released in 2008, when the oldest of Gen-Z would have been 11 years old. I'm pretty sure that's too young to be setting design trends.

It is the perfect age to be stamping pliant young brains into the shape they'll retain for the remainder of their lives. They associate informational assault with happy and busy and expect the association to be a part of the world.

I have the same feeling sometimes. With some games it's really easy to understand the world and figure out what's going on. With others I feel like I'm spinning due to how blurry everything is or that I'm starting into the sun due to the intense brightness.

As for user interfaces, video games are excellent case studies. My favorite example is the Ace Combat series. It shows how a functional interface themed after aircraft screens can be easier to manage than futuristic interfaces. At the same time, the futuristic interfaces manage to show a lot of geographical information in 3D instead of 2D maps.

It's always impressed me how much story telling is done through these interfaces. Before every mission, there is a briefing video where an officer explains context to the player and other pilots in the squadron. It's stylized as an officer literally booting up military software, authenticating with it and using it to present data.

https://youtu.be/dHsBpf9As-0

https://youtu.be/ctun9SEza4Y

I can't seem to find a single video of the menus themselves, apparently everyone cuts out the parts where they're navigating the menus.

Fortnite is pretty visually clean if you ask me

I don't think the Wii is a gen z thing.

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