Meme transcription: A table comparing the steps to start a game ‘then’ vs. ‘now’.
Content of the “Then” column:
- Double-click GAME.exe
- Play game
Content of the “Now” column:
- Launch Steam
-
Steam updates
-
Steam opens
- Close Steam’s ad window
- Select Game
-
Game launcher starts
-
Game launcher launches Game launcher updater
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
- Ok
-
Would you like to sign up for our newsletter?
- No
-
Our EULAs have changed. Please review them before continuing
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes, sell my soul
- Start game
- Skip vendor intro
- Skip vendor intro #2
- Skip vendor intro #3
- Sit through nVidia The way it’s meant to be played
- Skip opening cutscene
-
Main menu opens
-
Would you like to connect your Steam account to account?
- No
- Press play.
- Play game.
Absolute bullshit, lol. Nowadays you can boot your PC, launch Steam and start into your game while 20+ years ago you were still looking for the damn CD.
And don't get me started with game updates, you had to do them MANUALLY. Go to the developer website, look at a download page, then you get offered updates: 1.0.1a, 1.0.1b, 1.0.2, 1.0.2b, 1.0.3, 1.1.0, 1.2.0, 1.2.1abc, ...
For smaller updates you had to install them in order, so you download 1.0.1a, install it, then download 1.0.1b, install it, then download... if you are lucky the bigger updates like 1.1.0 or 1.2.0 could be directly installed without any in-between steps.
Oh and installing games? World of Warcraft had 4 CDs and if you bought it with Burning Crusade you had to use 8 CDs in total for installation! And the install took ages too.
And during the installation you had to type in a cd key, which took longer than all your popups you're describing together.
I've been mostly playing on PC for the last 27 years, what we have today, even if some stuff is annoying, is 100 times better than how it was back then.
The fact that the "then" is missing so much of the bullshit we dealt with back then shows whomever made this "meme" never gamed back then.
There's also the issues with your disks getting corrupted, discs getting scratched, or losing them because they came with so goddamn many.
DOS/4GW Professional Protected Mode Run-Time Version 2.01a.
Fatal error (1307) not enough memory. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE…
Runtime error (1604). PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE…
Error (2504): can't create swap file "." DOS/4GW Professional fatal error (1101): initialization error [1] PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE…
Ok, guess I’m just never going to play Wing Commander then…