Modern Gaming

This morning I had a bit of time to kill and, seeing as I’m lucky enough to own an Asus ROG Ally, I thought: why not? I’ll quickly load up Forza Horizon 5 and have a blast around.

Reader, I was wrong.

Gaming in the 90s

I don’t want to come off all “it was better in my day”, or get too misty-eyed about my childhood and gaming back then (34 years+ 🤦🏻‍♂️), but it used to be simpler, didn’t it?

First you’d ask Mum & Dad if you could play. If permission was granted, it was usually after some completely arbitrary tasks had been insisted on (I swear purely for their own entertainment). Then you’d choose a game, shove the cartridge in, and within five minutes you were off. Racing, jumping, crashing, whatever. Straight into Sonic’s chaos, or bombing around Spa in an F1 car, or, best of all and still my favourite, flying missions as an Apache pilot in Desert Strike or Jungle Strike. Hours of fun, with minimal faff.

Even when I moved over to Atari, and yes, I was ridiculously fortunate to have an Atari ST, loading and playing games felt easy. Or did it?

To test my own theory, I dug out my Mega Drive (yes, I still own one). After a fair bit of head-scratching and adapter hunting, because modern TVs apparently only speak HDMI, I dusted off Desert Strike and within about ten minutes I was playing. Lovely. Although it really hasn’t aged well, and it comes with a few questionable political vibes.

So, alright, I was right-ish. In the early 90s, going from selection to loading to playing was quick, or at least reasonably quick.

Gaming in 2026

So why the comparison? What am I actually trying to say here?

Mainly this: turning a device on, loading an app, and starting a game in 2026 is not a trivial process. The first hurdle, obviously, is Windows. I don’t want to be “that guy” who constantly hates on Windows. As a Mac user for years I know it’s an easy habit to fall into. But honestly, the updates, the restarts, and the “just one more thing” routine feel unbelievably obstructive. That is true even if you barely use the device, which I most certainly do.

Once I’m through that, into the Xbox app I go. Forza Horizon 5, please. Right, it needs downloading. That’s on me. Fine. Ten minutes over Wi-Fi and we’re good. The excitement builds.

My small window of free time is shrinking, but we’re nearly there. I click Play and…

• Downloading updates…
• Optimising your PC…
• Connecting to the game servers…
• Loading your Xbox Game Pass profile…

All in, about 30 minutes passes before I can actually drive a car around a map, never mind the lovely menus that seem mainly designed to sell you add-ons, packs, and whatever else.

Now, as a software developer, I fully understand the complexity here, at least conceptually, having never built a game. The sheer amount of work involved in building a massive open-world thing like Forza, across console, handheld, PC, and everything in between, must be an absolute nightmare. And once you’re in, it really is brilliant. You can just drive around, stumble into events, do missions (I’m sure they’re not called missions), and it’s genuinely a great experience.

But I still maintain, and this is the point, none of that matters if the player is already annoyed before they’ve even touched the throttle. Surely we’ve learnt in the past 34 years that attention spans are short, and that frustration at the “getting started” stage kills the mood?

My Two Pennth’worth

Given how much care and attention we put into software when it comes to speed, user experience, and interface, surely game developers and platform owners need to apply the same standards? Or is it me? Have I just been spoiled by the simplicity of 90s gaming and I’m looking at the past through rose-tinted CRT glass?

Either way, I do think Microsoft could take a leaf out of Sega’s book. Let people play, and leave the admin for later. Make updates a choice rather than a forced ritual. Get the player playing. Because, after all, the name of the game is the game.