No Time To Play
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Weekly Links #76

Hello, everyone. In accordance to the new policy, I'm skipping the introduction. This week's theme is game performance. Nightwrath sent me this link about what Kotaku thinks is a low-spec laptop. And it's scary. I could rant about it at length, but these three recent tweets do a better job:

People using 7+ year old computers as their main system is common. Stop being a fucking asshole just because you have something newer.

— puppy (@duckinator) June 27, 2015

Y'ALL ARE TOO BUSY OPTIMIZING FOR DEVELOPER LAZINESS ON $2k+ MACHINES TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO CAN'T AFFORD THAT.

— puppy (@duckinator) June 27, 2015

ALSO, I haven't even gotten into budget systems! They still sell single-core systems with motherboard-integrated graphics, folks.

— puppy (@duckinator) June 27, 2015

Having recently switched from a 7-year-old computer to another 7-year-old computer myself, I heartily agree. Especially as I have friends — and I mean in the US, not Romania — who would love to have my "ancient piece of junk". More about this in an article soon.

In the mean time, consider this: there are people out there still making amazing games for 33-year-old 8-bit computers and pushing the limits. Imagine the kinds of games we could still make for the machines that used to run Baldur's Gate 2, if only we cared about making the best of what we already have. But we don't, because apparently it's easier to build a marketing campaign on raw numbers...

And because I mentioned games for old computers, @gnomeslair links to a list of homebrew games for legacy platforms. I actually played one or two of them, and you know what? Even the primitive Atari 2600 can do a lot more than its hardware specs would suggest. Think about that.

Last but not least, you know what those 8-bit computers gave us? Generations of good programmers — people who grew up knowing that computers are made to be tinkered with, as someone from Microsoft points out.

Having grown up with the ZX Spectrum, like many of my friends, I can confirm that's indeed the case. Modern software development may be infinitely easier, but it's nowhere near as inviting. And that makes a difference.

It's not for the best, either. Have a nice week.