I love board games, and own a game shop. Many companies are creating board games (and other types of games) that require their app, then after a few years they abandon the app making the game useless and unplayable.

I play darts, we used to write on whiteboards with sharpies. Now nearly every club has a computer with some kind of software. Usually this software is closed source and sends all the data to some kind of server. We as players have no choice if we want to play the tournament, we have no control. Many clubs also use the computer for training. So everyone can see when you are playing, where you are playing and how you are playing. Great to see how good your next opponent is. Also great to track people. But way worse is the fact that everyone just talks about their average. Oh I played so bad my average was under 60, I still won 3-0 but I was so bad. I hate this. I want back the times where I play shit, win the game with a nice finish and can proudly say it wasn’t good but a nice finish and we stop talking, not hear from someone not even in the room how bad I played.

Kinda a niche topic to rant about I know, but no one in this hobby seems to get my concerns.

The industrial revolution resulted in climate change that makes it borderline impossible to be active outside in the summer.

I like to work on cars. Behold modern cars and all of their overcomplicated bullshit.

The ability to model things in 3D let modelers add way too many details on miniatures, making them fragile and hard to paint

Solar, batteries and portable music has wrecked most of my favourite camping areas.

Video games. Streamers, YouTubers, and other ”content creators” have had a massive negative effect on the hobby as a whole.

The bandwagons driven by these people can destroyed games that should have had a mediocre reception, but instead were panned by a couple creators then that criticism was parroted loud and wide. Where a game could have had a nice little niche audience, instead it was shut down a year after launch due to the shitty bandwagons.

These people also drive companies to make horrible balancing and content decisions. Since these people play games as their jobs, and play them daily for 8-10-12+ hours, they have wildly different desires and perspectives on games. These perspectives again get parroted loudly, the game companies hear it, and make changes/decisions based on people that play all day every day. This destroys gaming for not only casual gamers, but all gamers that don’t play one game for 8+ hours a day every day.

I could go on and on, but these trash reality TV stars for nerds have done so much damage to the industry.

Well I play video games, and woo boy, let me tell you about microtransactions, crap DLC content, season passes, never ending early access, unfinished releases, and anti cheat root-kits! If you’re on console you pay a premium to play online, if you’re on PC you have 18 different game launchers and DRM bullshit. Digital only stuff means you don’t own your games, cant loan them or trade them or sell them. I’m sure there’s more, and admittedly there’s good with the bad. Graphics have come a long way, and some rare innovations are fun to see. I still have fun with it, but wow it is a fucked up landscape full of way more land mines than it used to be.

Electric guitar and the quality of digital amplification. Takes all the pain, inconvenience and expenses of the traditional amp as a PA system away while letting you sound good. Really awesome TBH.

Honestly, technology has made getting high and playing video games and D&D MUCH better.

If you don’t like what tech has done to your hobby, just do it the old way, right?

gaming, so much better. more people can create games with more types of games.

Board games have been nearly ruined by kickstarter.

Instead of buying a well reviewed and recommended game from a store, you have to back a hyped up sales pitch, and then wait 18 months for delivery, if the producers don’t just bail with your money or go “oops, we couldn’t finish what we promised, and we already spent all your money…”.

And if you don’t back it to later read the reviews, the game is out of print and still waiting for the first wave of deliveries, meaning a second print is still at least 1-2 years off.

Also, the ratings are heavily skewed by people rating on the hype or early/review copies, meaning the rankings are heavily amazonified.

EtA: Also games are heavily bloated with social media candy: heavy and fragile minis, box stands, blingy crap periferals (branded dice holding toucan) and still needing organisers, player aids and mods from third parties who’ve gotten review copies to make said supplements…

Oh, and the stretch goal extras (get another 150 vanity minis/3D printed scoring tokens) for only $250 and an 18 month wait!

Edit: updated with more recent time & cost estimates (even higher!)

I LOVED books as a kid. I was reading at a high school level by the time I started kindergarten, and I just absorbed every book I could get my hands on. I would bring a 100-200 page book to school every day and would finish it before I got home in the afternoon.

I also enjoyed writing and would write my own stories. I was part of an organization in elementary school called Young Authors that encouraged kids to write, and I wrote 3 books through that group. It was my dream to be an author one day.

Then the Internet became a thing.

Suddenly, I didn’t need to spend hours in a library reading through dozens of books to find information I needed. I could just do a quick search on Infoseek, or Excite, or AskJeeves, and have a repository of knowledge at my fingertips. It was life-changing!

As the Internet evolved and more data got dumped on it, I started spending more time perusing its depths and less time reading physical books. I ended up getting a job in IT because computers fascinated me so much. Eventually, I realized I hadn’t picked up a book in years. Everything I wanted to read, I could find online.

Now here I am at 40 years old and my dream of being an author is gone. In our modern age, most people don’t read physical books anymore and authors don’t make enough to survive, unless they make it on a best-seller list or something. Even Stephen King is more well known today for his political commentary on Twitter/X. I haven’t heard much about any books he’s been writing in a long time.

I once wanted a library room in my dream home. I still kind of do, for the aesthetic. But I don’t really read physical books anymore, and I could only fill maybe a single wall with the books I currently own; mostly treasured classics from my childhood that have been stored away in boxes for years. I’d be better off having a PC gaming/theater room in my dream home, as that’s more where my modern interests lie.

I love the Internet age. It revolutionized my childhood and brought us into a wonderful age of information. But I can’t help but think about how completely different my life would’ve been if it hadn’t been invented. I sometimes wonder if I would’ve been more happy and/or successful in a world without the Internet.

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