One thing worth noting: exciting progression in video games does not exclusively need to come in the form of better visuals. For example, check out this video. Remember way back when I wrote about Flight Simulator right when it came out? Notice how most of the post has nothing to do with the game's graphics: rather, what stunned me about it was its use of web service calls, AI models, and other crazy non-visual things. In the case of the aforelinked video, I would play a game which looked like that if it did super novel, experimental things with physics and AI. I'd spend hours just walking around talking to NPCs, probing how the system works, and be amazed the whole time.

In other gaming news, I stealth read the "Video Game Critic" forum. They are a bunch of Gen X'ers with similar backgrounds in the medium as myself. But any time politics comes up even tangentially, the place becomes super cringey: you see, the people on that forum are so out of touch with contemporary politics and social movements that they are stuck in a 1980's view of what Democrats and Republicans are. When "The Critic" panned "God of War: Ragnarok" in part because of what he called "forced diversity" (at least he sort of gets it), the clueless idiots on his own forum started attacking him! "What's wrong with black people in games? I didn't even notice until you brought it up, hurr durr."

Those kinds of people will be the first ones in the gulags-- and they will have zero comprehension right up to the moment the men with rifles arrive on their door steps.