Buying Games > Playing Games

Oh honey, the AUDACITY of non-programmers approaching developers with their "brilliant" game ideas! 🙄 The first panel: "I have a great idea for a game..." *IMMEDIATE REJECTION* Because sweetie, ideas are a dime a dozen and your "revolutionary concept" is probably just Flappy Bird with cats. But the second panel? "...and I've already created the graphics, 3D models, sound effects, music and everything else you'll need." *INSTANT ATTENTION* NOW we're talking! You've actually done the hard part instead of expecting me to manifest your fever dream into reality for exposure and a pizza! The bar is literally on the floor and you somehow managed to step over it!

The perfect metaphor for that moment when a dev who's been happily coding in their comfortable high-level language suddenly discovers the raw power of C++. It's like watching someone who's been driving an automatic transmission their whole life suddenly discover they can control EVERY gear manually. "You mean I can manage my own memory? And directly access hardware? And create memory leaks that will haunt my nightmares for years? SIGN ME UP!" The wide-eyed "WOW" is that brief moment of amazement before reality sets in and they're debugging pointer arithmetic at 3AM while questioning all their life choices.

That moment when your roommate's forgotten meat perfectly resembles the low-poly nightmare fuel from 90s PlayStation games. The texture mapping is spot on - 256 colors of pure horror. Probably has the same shelf life as those games too... measured in decades. Just waiting for it to T-pose and clip through the refrigerator wall.

The evolution of GPU power requirements is getting ridiculous. Remember when a simple 6-pin connector was enough? Now NVIDIA's over here like "Your new graphics card requires *checks notes* breadboard jumper wires and direct access to your local power plant." Next gen they'll just skip the middleman and require you to build a small nuclear reactor in your basement. The RGB lighting alone will probably require its own dedicated circuit breaker.

The eternal hardware arms race strikes again! Console gamers (depicted as happy little Squirtles) are devastated when a game is next-gen only, meaning they need to shell out $500 for a new console. Meanwhile, PC gamers are practically having a Victorian death scene when a new game requires RTX GPUs - because that's not just $500, that's potentially $1500+ for a graphics card that's perpetually "out of stock" or "slightly cheaper than a kidney on the black market." The irony? Both groups will still find a way to buy the hardware while complaining about ramen dinners for the next six months.

The brutal reality of modern gaming licenses in one perfect comic! Steam says "You don't own your games" and gets a cute response, while Ubisoft says the exact same thing and suddenly HR is on speed dial. It's the digital equivalent of agreeing to Terms & Conditions without reading them until something breaks. Game ownership in 2023 is basically paying full price for permission to maybe play something until the authentication servers get unplugged. The finest print in software licensing agreements: "It's not yours, it's just your turn."