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This article disproves its own thesis. The article shows that technology has gotten objectively better, the problem is that better technology is a double edged
by root_axis 4y ago
This article disproves its own thesis. The article shows that technology has gotten objectively better, the problem is that better technology is a double edged sword, but cynics only like to acknowledge the negatives.
This contradiction is perfectly embodied by the first example where the author bemoans 45 minutes to download 20 gigs over the internet (which is even a bit slow by today's standards). In the time of the n64 that the author alludes to you couldn't even download 20gb from local media to a hard disk in 45 minutes, not to mention there is no hard drive or media even available on the order of tens of gbs. This is objectively better technology, in fact, the technology is so unbelievably amazing that the author is actually impatient about waiting 45 minutes for what was literally a feat of grandiose fiction as imagined by the video game player of 1996.
Of course, it's not lost on me that when you want to just sit down and play a game, it's frustrating that advancements in technology can also be used to create a barrier to your enjoyment, certainly this is not good and nobody likes it, but it doesn't then follow that the technology is objectively worse because of it. Also, there are others who actually like this, they'd be excited to know that they're getting the freshest experience with bug and content updates, there are many people who deliberately hold off playing new games so that they can wait for the first round of patches to fix major issues.
All the other examples suffer from the same kind of contradiction, but I won't elucidate each one, the point is, technology has gotten objectively better.
I should write an article, "Old Man Yells At Cloud: Ungrateful hedonists don't know how good they have it"
- acdha 4y ago> This article disproves its own thesis. I wouldn’t be so quick to be defensive here. While it’s true that networks and drives are faster, it’s also true that the metric affecting the user experience in question is time to load rather than bits per second and many modern games are much worse on that front compared to a Nintendo which was playable in about the same time it took a CRT monitor to boot up. A more thoughtful criticism would be thinking about how gaming companies could offer the things people want (high resolution imagery, for example) with more care for the user experience - e.g. downloading in the background or after someone’s done for the night, optimizing their file structures so a small change doesn’t force most of the assets to be retransferred, telling you whether an update fixes a critical bug or can be deferred, etc. If you simplt attack people for accurately criticizing something you like, you miss out on a chance for it to be even better.
- root_axis 4y ago> it’s also true that the metric affecting the user experience in question is time to load rather than bits per second That's the metric the author has cherry-picked, and I acknowledged their legitimate frustration, but my point is that this frustration is one isolated facet of massive technological progress. I will emphatically agree that companies have leveraged improvements in technology to encroach on their customers in increasingly frustrating ways, but I disagree that this means technology is worse.
- acdha 4y agoI don’t think defining “time to play” is an unfair metric to judge a gaming system on, and it’s certainly not isolated.
- root_axis 4y agoAgain, it's not "unfair", it's myopic cherry-picking. It's also wrong to label the time it takes to download a 20gig patch "time to play", an honest accounting would recognize that "time to play" is typically a couple seconds.
- acdha 4y agoIf you go to start the game and it blocks you on an update, it counts in time to play. Consider why every holiday gift guide tells parents to put their kids new console online the night before Christmas so it can patch and ask whether it’s really unfair.