Oh you are more than correct. I’m just slow to buy games because there is such a large backlog of amazing games out there. For example, I only played Witcher 3 last summer.

Also, I’m old. PC games used to be much cheaper in terms of real physical dollars. And they were no better or worse than what is available now. An example I can provide is quite literally, Syndicate. I got it as part of a one of those big cardboard sleeves of 6-10 cds you could buy from places like compucenter or other big box stores. I think it was on the order of like… $10-30? It was a mix of demos, freeware, and full games. I know for a fact that in the same sleeve that I got Syndicate in, I also got Populous and Realms in the same pack, either 1993 or 1994. At least one or two of the CD’s were just a bunch of demos or small free-ware games. Those were the games I remember and it had 5 other games, at least.

So in inflation adjusted dollars we’re taking $35. For all that. Practically new, when there was no such thing as digital distribution. These days everyone seems to think their “whatever” game is worth, a lot? But like, it didn’t used to be this way. What would be considered AAA games were simply cheaper (for the PC versions) in real inflation adjusted dollars, back in the day.

There was a fundamentally different spirit around games back then, especially PC games.

The Realmz demo was such a good game, I probably put hundred or thousands of hours in. And I bought a bunch of the expansions. Its mind-boggling to me how they weren’t sued into oblivion by D&D, because it was basically a clone of AD&D. The expansions, you quite literally just mailed them cash and got mailed back codes.