People still listen to the radio. In other words, little will happen in your hypothetical situation, other than, just perhaps, Valve make a liiiiitle less money.

Originally posted by Commodore256:

Let me put it this way.

First we had Radio plays, people were happy for a bit, but then we got Television. People got unhappy with their radio.

People got happy with their TV, but then Color came out. People got unhappy with just B&W (especially with late 60ś and early 70' Pantone glamorizing color)

People got happy with Color, but TVs got bigger and Cable got in the picture. People weren't happy with just color.

People got happy with big screens with cable, but complained there was nothing to watch. but the we high def bigger screens with even more channels.

People got the high def TVs with these streaming services that are algorithmically tuned to the user and people still complain thereś nothing to watch.

When AI content comes custom to the viewer's taste, people will complain there's nothing to watch. Chimps with pleasure at a button press implant just rot. If something like that happened with humans, people will choose to have it add pain to make the pleasure feel extra good and they'll still feel nothing and rot.


I think there will still be a market for video games, itś just I think all this hyper consumerism will eventually go away. I'm just concerned steam once people in mass start to feel "you know what, video games are fun, there's just more to life"

Steam will always be here but it will also be heavily censored in the future, Thats just the way the wind blows. If you are worried about losing your games in the future, Buy them all on gog and make several backups. While steam said they have a plan in place if steam ever closes I really doubt it cause of the DRM everywhere.

I'm saying a lot of companies are financed with an infinite growth assumption. It just sounds like a bad idea to assume that. I think valve can ride that storm, they are a private company, so they don't have to worry about with appealing to shareholders that believe the exaggeration. Even Nintendo, even though they're public, they say in their investor reports that "we don't pander to investors". Though I think they might be starting to do more nickle and diming.

People will always complain, it's what people do. And yet those same things people complain about, do well.

Also, you can enjoy games and still think there is enough other things to enjoy in life. It's not mutually exclusive.

We still have both radio and TV.

Originally posted by robilar5500:

We still have both radio and TV.

I know, but Cable is mostly for old people and radio is more for car, it's not like an event like listening to the shadow was 90 years ago or watching WWF Pay-Per-View Parties in the 90's.We have more hyper-appealing media today. Not only is it sensitizing us to less hyper optimized media seeing it as "boring", but I will say for most people, it's all they look forward to and it's sad.

During the days before we shooted for home entertainment technological ambition, what brought friends over was good company and human based activities. They had party games, they had cocktail hour, they had poker. One friend would have a pool table, one would have a Foosball table, one would have a vinyl collection and then I think it became "The Jones' got a new big screen TV and hosted all the 'Big Game'™ Parties, I'll show them who's the king of the street, I'll get a bigger TV and everybody will have to come here" and the guy that only had the Foosball table had a Foosball table had a Foosball table and a big TV and once everybody got what was exotic people forgot why they wanted their toys to begin with...

I think Valve should look into a multiseat console where they set up 2 TVs on a coffee table especially one that uses expired Wiimote patents and fun games that aren't shovelware that really take advantage of it. I think it's something worth looking into. Licensing of past titles would be tough and not so much select future titles though I think the hard part would be convincing people they want it. People these days are missing community and I think that product might sell a lifestyle that people don't consciously know they crave

Originally posted by Commodore256:

I think it became "The Jones' got a new big screen TV and hosted all the 'Big Game'™ Parties, I'll show them who's the king of the street, I'll get a bigger TV and everybody will have to come here" and the guy that only had the Foosball table had a Foosball table had a Foosball table and a big TV and once everybody got what was exotic people forgot why they wanted their toys to begin with...

I think you're buying into too many TV tropes with a generous dashing of doom and gloom. Real friends gather because they enjoy each other's company. That's it. It's not a competition of who has the bigger whatever. If that's the defining point of a group gathering, then that group isn't gathering over any perceived friendship but because they're pretentious show-offs. Are those really the sort of people you want to care about?