I see nothing shocking or unexpected. Do you?

This should be obvious to everyone with minimal observation skills, but here we are…

You may be wondering why games that come out these days are shit more often than not. They are plagued by bugs, have crap performance, especially on PC, but in general for the last few years it looks like things are moving backwards, or stalling if you want to be more optimist. But all of this has actually a very SIMPLE motivation. It’s one of those rare cases where it’s possible to generalize without getting lost in the complexity of the world.

A few years ago I followed on twitter the profile of a someone who, at that time, I think was involved on low level code for some emulator. There’s few people that usually engage with that type of very technical work that requires such a wizardry that you can’t simply teach yourself. You need to build competence over a bedrock of native talent. Native talent that is VERY rare. That woman was eventually scouted and then plucked by Nvidia, and very quickly rose through the ranks. Until she made into inner cabal itself in record time. You know, imagine being a teacher, having this pupil of yours who seems very talented. So you encourage her, you provoke her, and guide her study. It would be such a satisfaction and marvel to see this kind of flower bud grow so quickly and become majestic. That’s precisely what happened. She knew just the very basics, but they threw her problems, gave her some nudges into the right directions, and saw her mastering concepts and finding new solutions at record speed. Until she was able to stare her masters at eye level.

It’s not important to be precise, and I only know this story by putting together the scarce pieces of twitter messages, but she wrote how those who engage with low level, drivers code, the “black box” that software engineers within game development NEVER touch, are like a hundred people in the world, total. If you put them of a plane, and were that plane to blow up, you’d get a VERY serious problem, because there would be no one left in the world being able to do that type of work. And no one to teach it. Because, and this was her part, she wrote how the complex aspect of this whole thing is that these people that work at that level have to make very tricky choices. Their time is valuable, they can either work to fix a problem, or spend their time helping someone else who may eventually one day be able to do the same job. They never know if the time spent to “train” new talent is going to be worth it. Because these type of people also burn out quickly, and they don’t suffer the blackmailing of “losing their job.” They are too good to care, they have that type of talent where money involved is not a factor anymore. She even mentioned they had to sign extremely strict NDAs, to protect the closely guarded industry secrets, yet the pool of people working on that stuff is so minuscule that they ALL know each other, they move from Nvidia to AMD, then back to Nvidia, pretending to wear different man-suits. They all know each others “secrets” to the point that the NDAs are just a game of let’s pretend… A joke. It’s the top level execs that force them signing those contracts who don’t know shit about anything, but they all know those secrets among themselves. There are no secrets, and if there were, they would need to be exposed just so that the job could get done.

So how this story ended? She got bored and permanently quit. For her learning was the fun, and eventually the problems grew stale. I think she picked up chemistry after that.

All this to say that these type of talented engineers not only and fundamental, but they are also a SCARCE COMMODITY. PC games optimization hasn’t been shit just in the last few years, it has been declining for a very long time, roughly with the rising commercial importance of consoles. The reason behind this is very simple: the best engineers are allocated where the most money is. PC was a driving force originally, up to the first Doom and Quake. After that consoles took over, and that’s where the best engineers went. PC games technical competence started nosediving simply because resources were allocated elsewhere. Only in the last years we’ve seen things being moved BACK to the PC side. Yet, more recently things suck. They got worse both on the PC and consoles side.

But you can observe the same pattern in different areas, for example American comics. You can open now an issue by Marvel or DC, and on average they have really BAD ART (and worse stories, but the problem of the stories has a different nature). It’s another simple consequence of resource allocation. Comics aren’t “big” anymore, they don’t attract money and they don’t attract talent. If a kid in the 90s picked up an issue drawn by McFarlane or Jim Lee, that kid would dream about becoming a comics artist one day. It was a big deal. But right now the bubble’s burst, comics artists are marginal. Kids still love and pursue art, but they’d rather work for Hollywood, on the big screen, or to make games. The hard, regular work required for a monthly comics issue is more an horror than a dream, these days.

Then why is the technical quality of games nosediving these days? Well, because of AI. Not because of what AI DOES. It’s not because AI is replacing jobs, and you see all the layoffs in the game industry and think it’s because of AI taking over. Nope, that’s all bullshit, but AI is indeed the main reason.

The truth is that, whether you believe AI is the future or just another hype bubble, it’s sucking both money and resources like a bottomless black hole.

The best engineers now work on AI, no matter the “area” they were trained on. They all get repurposed to work on AI at various levels. It’s all software, after all. If pre-Covid the Game Industry was growing exponentially, becoming the apex of the entertainment world that could only grow from that point onward, and so drew all kind of investor money from the most clueless rich people in the world, the AI craze took over signaling “THIS IS IMPORTANT”, and therefore all money was redirected there.

Go figure. People sometimes wander how it’s possible that we “lost the technology” to land on the moon. It’s the fuel of all sort of silly conspiracies. But the truth is of course about the money. The money is the only reason why we got to the moon so fast, only for not being able to anymore. Because it had a symbolic and practical function at that time, and now pretty much none. The money simply isn’t there.

It shouldn’t be surprising at all if now Nvidia’s having all sort of problems. They had a monopolistic role for years, cemented already by a dominating role in the PREVIOUS years. That kind of power and control you’d expect only to progress. So why are things turning into utter shit? Not just the quality of hardware, with the 5xxx series offering close to zero performance upgrades despite costs skyrocketing. But also something so straightforward as driver stability. How can this happen, how can things get worse?

Well, it’s again because those engineers are a scarce commodity. These days Nvidia doesn’t give a shit at what was its core business. All those engineers work on AI now. No matter their specialized training, even the janitor who cleaned the floor now works on AI. And you can’t expect AMD to be your savior, because they ALL move in the same direction.

This is where it all turns into absolute schizophrenia. Because those engineers, and that talent being so fundamental to the modern world, we treat them like shit. Trump’s warfare against education and science surely’s going to help nurturing that necessary talent, right? Only that a statistically significant portion of that rare mathematical wizardry happens to be those slightly autistic, generally neurodivergent, often “trans” that you keep fighting against as outcasts. Alienating that talent pool that is fundamental to sustain the modern world (obviously, trans, autistic or whatever, you don’t necessarily develop some rare useful talent, it just happens to be a relevant side effect). It reminds me of Eden of the East. What would happen if someone rounded up and game a meaningful sense of direction to that mass of outcasts, rather then undermining and fighting them as if they were garbage to get rid of?

These are your kids that you’re slaughtering.

Nintendo spent the last year destroying the lives of technically-proficient people working on emulators. You know, as a basis to learn those things at low level, solve problems and develop that kind of knowledge that is actually priceless. Those kids that are supposed to MAKE YOU MONEY, but that instead you want to destroy. Nintendo, you should lick the sole of their feet, and worship them as GODS, just because they CARE about your shitty games, to try make the best of them, preserve their art rather than the filth of their commercial value. They care and love, and because they care and love you destroy them. Your future talent.

But of course you don’t want good engineers. You want obedient slaves. Nintendo is Evil Incarnate. The more cutesy and colorful their characters, the darker their hearts.

If there’s a lesson to learn from all this is that, no, there’s no incoming revolution. Only the idiots rise to the top, like long dead, bloated bodies.

AI is a wonderful extension to human stupidity. If AI destroys the world it’s not because it became some evil mastermind, but because one stupid man with too much money and power decided to rely on the stupid tool. AI can indeed destroy lives, because it empowers stupid people to delegate their own stupidity to dumb tools.

And then claim no responsibility. A(in’t)I (who) did it.

Pretty much.

I’m more ambiguous than most about what is going specifically right now, because everyone opposing Trump and Musk is way, way, WAY too hasty picking up any tiny victory or proof of being “right.”

Too easy, too fast, pointing at this defeat.

The other meaningful part is summarized and explained here (the embedded video).

People who know more than me about economic theory are aware that a great depression can also be conductive to a great rebound. The volatility of a market is essentially NEVER a proof, of anything. It’s just knee-jerk reaction that you can never trust. Whether it confirms and flatters your beliefs, or pushes back.

Tesla stock going down? Great news. But great news that is utterly worthless if it’s just a short term anomaly. You don’t know what’s past the corner. A cheer for victory BECOMES defeat. Do we really trust that the pressure on Tesla is going to be persistent? Because if it’s not it’s all a pure waste of time and, for us, awful gloating that will be punished, AGAIN.

Once again we give the enemy weapons that will then be used against us.

What if tariffs are removed (or delayed) just a few days later? You think it’s one Trump defeat, but in truth it’s just another SUCCESSFUL TROLLING. What we are is dancing monkeys to HIS TUNE, and for his amusement. The fact that he can stop the tune at any point, to give the world some respite, only reinforces his power and control. It’s not a crack into that power, it’s the basis for more.

All protests and exhibitions of outrage is precisely what Trump expects and laughs at. His funny dancing monkeys. The only way to fight it is being disruptive to expectations. Everything that I’m observing as consequence of tariffs isn’t Trump losing control and losing support, it’s instead watch a perfectly choreographed monkey dance.

(It’s also quite funny observing, after Switch 2 announce, everyone blaming tariffs for the higher costs. Again dancing monkeys to the tune, of big corporations instead. The price announce comes BEFORE tariffs. If anything tariffs WILL PUSH THE PRICE UP. All the tariffs you see, RIGHT NOW, are FEELS and projections. You have YET to see tariffs HAPPEN. Nothing that is happening right now is BECAUSE of tariffs. We are only fretting at announces. Which is why it’s all so stupid, nothing is actually happening, only the blackmailing has started. Big corporations will indeed use the inflation and higher costs as the motivation to cause inflation and higher costs. It’s precisely how they enslave a population. Not through money, but through beliefs. The belief that they have no choice other than to FUCK YOU.)

EDIT: I wonder why I bother writing, it’s so fucking predictable. The world is just a predictable trainwreck.