Some Things Never Change

The evolution of gamer expectations is brutal. In 1997, blocky polygons had us gasping in awe like we'd seen the face of God. By 2013, we're complaining about "pixelated" graphics that would've melted our 90s brains. Fast forward to 2020, and we're cursing our $2000 rigs for struggling with photorealistic landscapes that NASA couldn't have rendered 10 years ago. It's the tech equivalent of kids today not understanding why we were excited about 56k modems. "What do you mean you had to WAIT for images to load? Like, more than 0.001 seconds?" Meanwhile, developers are in the corner having nervous breakdowns trying to render individual pores on NPCs that players will rocket-launch into oblivion anyway.

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."

The ultimate crossover nobody expected: payment processors vs. gamers. This meme references how Visa and Mastercard have occasionally blocked payments to certain gaming platforms or content creators, citing "policy violations" that often leave both users and developers scratching their heads. It's the digital equivalent of having your mom call the arcade and demand they stop taking your quarters. Except now you're 35 with a mortgage and still can't buy that DLC because some executive in a boardroom decided your game was "problematic." The "Gooners vs Gamers" labels perfectly capture that moment when casual players transform into payment rights activists after their transaction gets declined. Nothing unites the internet faster than payment processing drama.

Game developers know the pain! The guy is happily riding his bike with a stick, then suddenly the stick passes through his body like a ghost because—surprise—no collision detection! In Unity and other game engines, forgetting to add a capsule collider is basically inviting physics to take a vacation. That stick should've bonked him on the head, but instead, it's phasing through him like it's quantum tunneling. Every game dev has had that moment of "why isn't this object interacting with anything?!" only to realize they forgot the most basic component.

Patrick claims "C/C++ is a deprecated language" while SpongeBob looks horrified holding an Unreal Engine shield. Then SpongeBob runs into a series of tech ecosystems—first encountering Unity, then Windows, followed by a keyboard graveyard of programming languages, and finally Adobe design tools. The journey ends with SpongeBob escaping to the safety of Linux, where he can breathe again. It's basically the digital equivalent of telling a chef "knives are obsolete" and watching them sprint through the culinary world trying to find someone who agrees. Spoiler: they end up at a Linux commune where everyone makes their own knives from scratch.

The financial priorities of PC gaming enthusiasts in their natural habitat! Rejecting a $630 Nintendo Switch 2 as "too expensive," but gleefully dropping $4000 on an RTX graphics card without blinking. Because nothing says "reasonable budget management" like spending the equivalent of a used car on a component that'll be obsolete in 18 months. But those ray-traced reflections in Cyberpunk are totally worth eating ramen for six months straight.