What videogames are you playing in 2025?

[Ruin Explorer]

you should make a very long footnoted post about it in a thread that's dedicated to the topic then make a YT video about it. You seem passionate enough and since it's the internet I'm sure you'd get a ton of likes for it.

I have a face for radio imho and am too old so I think YouTube is out lol.

Like, I think it's worth noting that for every one person who has played Doom, there are at least three, maybe four who have played Goldeneye.

What's your basis for this very extreme claim?

Doom (1993 video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"up to 20 million people are estimated to have played it within two years of launch."

That's just up to 1995, and I can tell you for a hard fact, people were still playing Doom in 1998 and 1999, because it ran on anything. Are you forgetting Doom was shareware on PC and going solely on sales, maybe? But that would lead you to a "2x" figure, not 3-4 so... Unless you have some kind of basis for that, that's just a bizarre claim to make. Maybe you're replying to someone I have on ignore? Especially as you're claiming "at least", which means you must have a source, right?

I think it's incredibly unlikely that that's true if there isn't a source, if you factor in that Doom came out on just about every platform over the rest of the 1990s (including the N64!), and was shareware on PC. Like, when I was at university, it was installed (secretly) on just about every PC there, I personally played it with over 20 different people just there - most of them not "gamers" generally either - i.e. they didn't own any consoles or computers at the time - some didn't even grow up having one in the house.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I can certainly say that I have played Doom but not Goldeneye.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I can certainly say that I have played Doom but not Goldeneye.

Yeah to me it seem very, very unlikely that more people played Goldeneye.

I mean, compare:

Goldeneye

• Only on N64
• 62% of N64s sold in the US, and another 19% in Japan meaning most of the world saw very few. This is a very, very different pattern to the same-era PS1.
• Full-price physical game

Doom

• On PC and soon thereafter pretty much every console for a while
• PCs existed in virtually every country on Earth
• Shareware versions were free
• Possible to download or distribute copies freely by 3.5" floppy

None of this is to say Goldeneye didn't get played a ton, and I'm sure more people played it than paid for copies of it because it was multiplayer. But the same is vastly more true for Doom because of the triple punch of shareware, the ability to freely copy it on a couple of 3.5" floppies, or download it freely via the internet (which went rapidly from "barely practical" in 1993 to "trivial" by say, 1998). And PCs were increasingly common in Eastern Europe, parts of Asia, and Latin America by the later 1990s, and I'm sure a lot of those people played Doom (whereas pretty much zero of them played Goldeneye).

But if there some shocking-but-well-researched figure that like, every copy of Goldeneye got played by an average of like 20 people somehow, I would be interested in that.

 

[Gradine]

I have a face for radio imho and am too old so I think YouTube is out lol.


What's your basis for this very extreme claim?

Doom (1993 video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"up to 20 million people are estimated to have played it within two years of launch."

That's just up to 1995, and I can tell you for a hard fact, people were still playing Doom in 1998 and 1999, because it ran on anything. Are you forgetting Doom was shareware on PC and going solely on sales, maybe? But that would lead you to a "2x" figure, not 3-4 so... Unless you have some kind of basis for that, that's just a bizarre claim to make. Maybe you're replying to someone I have on ignore? Especially as you're claiming "at least", which means you must have a source, right?

I think it's incredibly unlikely that that's true if there isn't a source, if you factor in that Doom came out on just about every platform over the rest of the 1990s (including the N64!), and was shareware on PC. Like, when I was at university, it was installed (secretly) on just about every PC there, I personally played it with over 20 different people just there - most of them not "gamers" generally either - i.e. they didn't own any consoles or computers at the time - some didn't even grow up having one in the house.

You are right, of course; I was conflating sales figures with actual player numbers, and the Doom shareware was very popular. Quake too; when I was looking up all this stuff I found accounts that Quake II's sales figures were much lower than you'd expect because people figured out how to easily crack the shareware version that was going around before the game ever actually released.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You are right, of course; I was conflating sales figures with actual player numbers, and the Doom shareware was very popular. Quake too; when I was looking up all this stuff I found accounts that Quake II's sales figures were much lower than you'd expect because people figured out how to easily crack the shareware version that was going around before the game ever actually released.

Ok, thank you, feeling more sane! I was beginning to wonder if I'd profoundly missed something!

Re: Quake 2 oh yeah I remember something like that - I think I had a cracked version before release, but I did make myself buy the actual release version when it came out. I remember being very pleased with myself because the release day was a Friday on the UK, and I was able to play through the whole of Q2's single-player campaign in the day (having bought it at like 9.30am) and then still go out clubbing all night (as was the style at the time), which made me feel like I was "da cool nerd" or something like that lol. Let's not talk about whether I had university coursework/research to do!

 

[Gradine]

In other news, the latest Blue Prince with zero context, having "beaten" the game on Day 19, I'm now on Day 65 and zeroing in on I think the last few puzzles left to solve. Just put together the final piece of one late game puzzle by... walking past a lunch box.

Also I'm pretty sure my mom was an anti-fascist terrorist? And also that she was maybe murdered by her co-conspirators? And that my great-uncle covered it all up?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've mostly been playing Diablo 4.

Not because it's amazing - I think both the Path of Exile games and Last Epoch are basically better ARPGs, but there's something compellingly brain-off arcade-game-like about D4. It's interesting that it started out very much consciously aiming to hearken back to Diablo 2 when it released a couple of years ago, to be slower-paced and more thoughtful than other ARPGs, but has absolutely ended up as like an improved version of Diablo 3 - i.e. very speedy and simplified-feeling. I genuinely like that you can play it on Adventure with basically no story at all, because so many modern videogames are drenched in story, and sometimes you just want to do stuff. Even beautiful Hades/Hades 2, sometimes I wish I could say "No, shut up, no story, no talking, just game!" (not often but sometimes).

 

[Gradine]

I haven't played a game on PC that isn't Phasmophobia in a very long time. My wife and I have tried playing Diablo II and III on console, and while it does make it so much more convenient to play together, it just doesn't feel right to play a Diablo game without rapidly clicking on monsters until they explode into loot. Button mashing just doesn't feel as good in these. I haven't even given Diablo IV a try yet

 

[payn]

All this hack ‘n’ slash has got me wanting a champions of Norath remaster that’s probably never gonna happen.

 

[MarkB]

Andor's got me in the mood for some Star Wars gaming. I'm considering downloading The Old Republic again.