Efficient ambient-light ray tracing (like Lumen) is amazing. It contributes massively to making environments feel believable and immersive.

Path traced reflections and shadows are a indefensible waste of processing power (for now).

Upscaling and frame generation are crutches that are actively harming gaming right now. From disocclusion artifacts to unsightly “sharpening” distortions to developers/publishers skipping optimization because they expect DLSS/FSR will pick up the slack, it’s a cool thing that has unfortunately resulted in games being worse all around.

When videogame rentals were a thing, developers often intentionally made games unreasonably hard to spur repeat rentals or purchases. My money is on that.

Not social media. Capitalism.

The internet was ALWAYS social (e.g. telnet). It wasn’t ruined by people using technology to connect, it was ruined by capitalism finding new, insidious ways to monetize the human social drive.

The Longest Journey. It’s one of the best adventure games ever made, and has one of the best stories in interactive storytelling.

Sacrifice. An old Interplay title where you are a sorcerer in service to a god. You summon armies of creatures and cast world-altering spells using the souls of creatures you’ve sacrificed to your god.

But… something something security and something something not a monopoly… am I doing this anti-consumer white knight thing right?