Huh, topical.
I started getting old a decade ago - it's been something like 15 year since I last build a PC from scratch, and at least 12 years since I've last had a proper stationary PC at home. This change was driven by the offspring seizing control of my spare time in an iron grip, and having to actually work for a living, post-uni. For the longest time it felt unreasonable to invest in any sort of powerful hardware that I was just not going to have the time to use. AAA games either required a time investment I just couldn't bear, or decreased rapidly enough in price that waiting always felt prudent, since I was unlikely to see the cultural benefits that come from sharing a cultural phenomenon at a given point in time.
In the interim I've been gaming on the Wii, a DS (which has been handed down to my daughter - scary) and a variety of Mac laptops from work. This period coincided with new games journalism (especially RPS) and the indie boom influencing my tastes, as well as the PC power curve flatting, meaning that I always had something of fitting scope and complexity to play that didn't require a "gamer PC". And since the work laptop upgrades meant I could eventually play even Wolfenstein: New Order on my laptop, why bother investing in something more powerful? Like many others I have also accrued a games library (calling it a backlog suggests that I'm going to ever get through it, a complete fiction) of truly ridiculous size in the process, largely driven by Humble Bundle, at surprisingly low cost, over this period.
So, for more than the last decade or so, I've been behind the curve, both in terms of what I've played, and what I've been playing it on, all the while acquiring ever more interesting games, some of which may not have been playable at the time of purchase, but which inevitably became so over time. It's only in the last 2 years or so (not surprisingly coinciding with the younglings becoming more independent) that I've actually had to - very occasionally - give up on games because of underpowered hardware, in a way that actually left me frustrated. I've also slightly more often had to hold out on buying games I wanted, but knew were out of reach (nuDoom, Wolfenstein II, maybe Prey).
But again the flattening out of the hardware power curve has come to help me: I bought a decommissioned PC from work for a nominal amount a year ago - we always use SSDs and top CPUs, so it is quite snappy for a 7-year old piece of hardware - but haven't had strong enough of an incentive to set it up. However, a couple weeks ago I also got an old monitor for free (old enough that it's 1900x1200 rather than "1080p", and tops out at 60Hz). So I bought a graphics card for the rig, a low profile GTX 1050 Ti - literally the best current card that can fit into the thing, due to power and form factor constraints. Yes, that's scraping the bottom of the mid-tier, but given my monitor configuration it is still powerful enough that I can now comfortably play the most demanding games in my library at max resolution and, if not Ultra, then at least High, settings, and I've not yet played anything where I couldn't somehow get 60FPS without lowering the resolution. I'm also still GPU limited, so the rest of the system is holding its own. Even on Ultra, Shadow of the Tomb Raider get a very reasonable 45FPS. That seems... quite good? No, it's not 4K@144Hz, but the cost to get to there from 1080p@60Hz where I currently am, just seems extreme.
In other words, I've been that guy from
xkcd for a long time, and a decade spent in that state of mind has seen the FOMO subside to a near whisper, even if it does stir at times. The evolution of my game tastes also mean that I'm much less interested in teh grafix heavy genres than I used to (VR is also out since I don't have stereoscopic vision), so the hardware is not likely to be a critical factor in what I actually want to play the most, anyway - and I'm actually quite content with that situation. Maybe I'll build a 4K-capable rig when the kids leave home, but there's no rush.
And of course, the console I most want is... the Switch. Maybe the kids will get one for Christmas.
The curse of Fortnite eh! Same with the youngest.
