Optimization Memes

Remember when game devs were literal coding demigods who could squeeze a full RollerCoaster Tycoon into Assembly language and fit shooters into kilobytes? Now we've got bearded dudes stealing breast milk while shipping 500GB games that still need a "day one patch" bigger than entire operating systems from the 90s. Modern AAA game development has truly evolved from "how can we optimize this to run on a potato?" to "just buy a new PC, peasant." And don't forget the always-online single player games because heaven forbid you enjoy content you paid for without a constant internet connection. The industry went from "first few levels free as shareware" to "that'll be $70 plus $20 for the season pass, $15 for the cosmetic DLC, and $10 for the soundtrack we removed from the base game."

OH. MY. GOD. This is the coding equivalent of finding a HAIR in your GOURMET MEAL! 💀 Imagine spending TWO YEARS hunting for a performance bug while your game crawls like a snail having an existential crisis, only to discover you've got nested loops iterating through EVERY. SINGLE. PIXEL. of a sprite with a light diffusion algorithm running INSIDE that loop! 🔍 The absolute DRAMA of having your game's framerate PLUMMET because someone decided to process lighting effects with the computational efficiency of a potato calculator! And that recursive position_meeting() check? *faints dramatically* It's practically BEGGING the CPU to burst into flames! No wonder they had to rewrite the entire engine! This code is the reason therapists stay in business! 😭

The epic showdown nobody expected: Old-school pirate-themed game engines vs. modern anime girl physics engines! Left side shows "THE STRONGEST GAMEDEV IN HISTORY" with a menacing skull pirate that ran smoothly on a Pentium II with 4MB of RAM. Meanwhile, "THE STRONGEST GAMEDEV OF TODAY" features a cute anime character whose hair physics alone requires a NASA supercomputer and makes your GPU beg for mercy. Your RTX 4090 isn't sweating because of ray tracing—it's calculating each individual strand of that anime girl's hair during a gentle breeze.

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.