Glass Gives Me Nightmares

Going to prison in 2009: GTX 480 was cutting edge. Coming back in 2023: "DLSS? Ray tracing? 40-series? Is this even the same planet?" The hardware acceleration gap hits harder than prison food. At least in jail you expect to get stabbed - graphics card prices these days are the real crime.

The perfect representation of Steam's age verification system! Steam asks if you're old enough to view mature content, you click "Yes" despite being 12, and Steam just... lets you right in. No ID check, no credit card verification—just pure digital trust in an era of zero trust architecture. It's basically the digital equivalent of a bouncer asking for ID and then immediately stepping aside when you say "trust me bro, I'm totally 18."

The GPU upgrade cycle strikes again! On the left, we have the poor souls who panic-sold their RTX 4090 graphics cards before the 5090 launch, sitting in a dark, depressing cave view. Meanwhile, the smug gamer on the right who held onto their 4090 is enjoying a gorgeous sunset vista. Classic case of tech FOMO backfiring. Turns out the "free upgrade" to 5090 was just Nvidia's marketing department playing 4D chess with our wallets again. Those 4090s are still absolute beasts, and now the sellers are stuck with regret and probably a lighter bank account. The circle of GPU life continues: buy expensive card, panic when new one is announced, sell at a loss, repeat until retirement fund is depleted.

Ah, the evolution of game development—from heroic optimization wizards to corporate dumpster fires. Remember when devs were literal coding gods who could fit entire games in kilobytes and make them run on a potato? Now we've got these "Triple A" clowns shipping 50GB broken messes, requiring NASA computers, and forcing you to be online just to play a single-player game. The best part is the "optimization" advice. "Just buy a better PC, bro" is the game dev equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?" except it costs you $2000. And let's not even address whatever the hell is happening with that breast milk situation. Modern gaming, everyone! 👏

The first thing I do after buying a new game is hunt down these four apocalyptic horsemen and banish them to the shadow realm. Nothing says "I want my game to look like actual gameplay and not a pretentious indie film" like turning off every post-processing effect that makes my GPU cry. Game devs think we want our screens to look like we're playing through a vaseline-smeared kaleidoscope while having a migraine. My RTX 3080 didn't die for this.

Ah, indie game developers and their groundbreaking ideas! First, they'll make a "top-down RPG" (revolutionary, never been done before). Then they'll make it "Earthbound inspired" (because apparently that's a personality trait now). And finally, they'll add "crafting" (because every game needs to let you combine sticks and rocks for some reason). Meanwhile, Squidward is all of us experienced devs dying inside as we watch the 500th pitch that's basically just "Stardew Valley but with guns" being presented as the next gaming revolution. How daring indeed.