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points by gorgoiler 4 days ago | 0 comments

Gaming used to be done in arcades for 25c a play*.

Over time NeoGeo realized they could sell you the hardware to play at home (“on-prem”) at arcade quality albeit at a price out of reach to most people. Alongside them, Nintendo and Atari gave you 80% of the fun at 20% of the cost. History will view games arcades as a flash in the pan compared to gaming at home.

Namco, Capcom, and Konami went into selling software instead of hardware but it feels hard to imagine buying a home copy of Fable** for $X,000 any time soon.

⸻

* That’s for video games. In fairground arcades you’d literally pay for tokens then use tokens for play. The analogy almost writes itself.

** The model, not the video game.

[–] asdf88990 4 days ago

If you think the idea of buying Fable like model is hard, you should really try some of the latest open models like Qwen 3.8. They’re getting there very fast.

[–] jacquesm 4 days ago

Qwen 3.8 and GLM 5.3 are my workhorses right now. Qwen for simpler stuff because it is wicked fast using 'ninfer', GLM 5.3 because it is very good a more complex stuff and less likely to get stuck so I can let it run for much longer without intervention.

[–] dekhn 3 days ago

I have Qwen 3.8 running under ninfer or Strata sized to fill my 5090.

From a fair bit of coding with the agent, my experience with Qwen 3.8 (Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-GSQ-RCO-IQ3_S-0 on Strata, Qwen 3.8 27B on ninfer). In my particular case, I was trying to clone a recent HN post which allowed you to visualize how out of tune your singing was relative to a song, but as a web app or portable native app.

My experience is that both those models will generate an enormous amount of noise (literally: it was running audible unit tests on my machine to test the note-detection algorithms) while coming to a solution, if they do find a solution- while Claude (whatever the latest model is) or ChatGPT (ditto) will do 1/10th the amount of work to get the right solution. I suspect if I had the resources to run GLM 5.3, it would probably be significantly faster to get to a working solution than Qwen-3.8 27B, but likely still somewhat inferior to Claude or ChatGPT solutions, and also would generate a much larger energy bill on my part.

[–] spwa4 4 days ago

How do you run GLM 5.3?

[–] morgoo 4 days ago

Their parent comment claims they have 8 GPUs and 2 DGX sparks.

[–] spwa4 4 days ago

Even 2 DGX sparks are limited to Q2 at best. As for GPUs, it of course depends, but anything under 50k just can't run it, not even Q2.

And at Q2, I think you're better of with Qwen3-coder-next on one DGX spark (or much better: on any apple silicon max, we are currently in the ridiculous situation that a second hand m1 max 64G will beat a DGX spark that's at least triple the price)

[–] cyanydeez 4 days ago

Halogen flash server for strix halo runs qwen3.8 flash next in 40gb

[–] wjnc 4 days ago

This being /u/jacquesm would imply it is kinder to assume him having that setup than claiming to have that setup.

[–] snarfy 4 days ago

I like this analogy a lot.

It reminds me that coin-op SF2 champion edition was like $6000 new, and you rented time with tokens. Eventually you could play a very good but more limited SNES version of SF2 at home for no tokens. And then PC hardware matured to the point where you can play the exact bits via emulator at better than original fidelity.

It will be very nice when AI gets to the emulator stage.

[–] doubled112 3 days ago

> It will be very nice when AI gets to the emulator stage.

Do you think we'll be longing for the nostalgia hit of LLM models from 2025 in 2050?

Maybe we will collectively miss being completely right and inappropriate em—dashes.

[–] JacobLeeCadLaw 2 days ago

I'm already nostalgic for very early Dall-e LSD-like art. Ref: "Sleeping Horses - Nov 2021."

Those early GAN image generators were so weird that they produced art that felt genuinely creative. I don't know that whatever people are using to create modern Tung-Tung-Tung-Sahur instagram reel slop is even capable of producing similar things.

[–] pipes 4 days ago

I'd say Nintendo gave you 10x the fun of neo geo. Yeah it looked cool, but mario and Zelda on the nes played like nothing else. And then we got street fighter 2 on snes which is better than any snk fighter I've played :)

(I'll run for cover now as I'm sure neogeo fans will disagree!)

[–] ASalazarMX 3 days ago

I'll agree, since arcades could never give the experience a JRPG could. No shop would allow a player to occupy a machine all day unless they spent a lot of quarters.

[–] MrBuddyCasino 4 days ago

2D action games peaked with Metal Slug.

[–] jonhohle 3 days ago

/SOtN entered the chat.

(I also adore MS)

[–] echelon 4 days ago

I'm stealing this analogy. This is good.

But also look at live service games and the shit modern game studios are doing to try to go back to the old world of rent seeking.

[–] senordevnyc 4 days ago

Daily reminder that this isn’t what rent seeking means.

[–] doctorwho42 3 days ago

> Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth.

Game industry has first manipulated the economic conditions by restricting access to game content (skins, modding capabilities, always online drm, etc.) that previously was included in the price (buy game, you own that game outright).

Manipulation of public policy was a more recent thing with the laws surrounding underage gambling via 'loot-boxes'.

So I think the onus is on you to show us why these behaviors, which increase the wealth the companies are able to extract per game, are not rent seeking behavior.

[–] senordevnyc 3 days ago

Changing how you sell your own products is not "manipulating economic conditions" whatsoever. If it was, that would mean that every business in the history of commerce has engaged in it.

As for the laws on underage gambling, countries all over the world are outlawing that, suing gaming companies, etc. The public is not in favor of underage gambling, and it's unclear to me how banning it increases the wealth of these companies? So I think the onus is on you to explain how this is an example of rent seeking.

[–] doctorwho42 2 days ago

Modern gaming companies can be considered rent seekers not because they charge money for their products, but because many increasingly rely on extracting additional revenue from consumers by exploiting market power, consumer lock-in, and artificial scarcity rather than creating proportionately greater value. In economics, rent seeking is the pursuit of economic gains through the exploitation of existing advantages rather than through productive activity. Developing a great game is productive; leveraging an established franchise or player community to extract additional money without providing equivalent value is rent seeking.

Consider the use of microtransactions, battle passes, paid progression, and downloadable content. These systems often exploit the time, money, and emotional investment players have already made in a game. By deliberately slowing progression, withholding content, or introducing artificial scarcity, companies can encourage consumers to spend more money not because they are receiving a better product, but because they want to avoid frustration or access something they already value. The company is monetizing the player's existing commitment rather than necessarily creating new value.

This does not mean every gaming company or microtransaction is inherently rent seeking. Selling meaningful new content is a legitimate business activity. The criticism is that parts of the modern gaming industry increasingly prioritize extracting revenue from an existing player base over developing better games. When companies use their control over popular franchises and digital ecosystems to extract additional money from consumers who have few alternatives, they exhibit the very characteristics of rent seeking that economists criticize in other industries.

[–] senordevnyc 2 days ago

In economics, rent seeking is the pursuit of economic gains through the exploitation of existing advantages rather than through productive activity

No, it’s not, you just made that up. Why doesn’t this match your previous definition?

The rest of your long AI-written comment has nothing to do with the principle of economic rent seeking.

Not sure why I’ve been wasting my time, but I’m out. Peace!

[–] zahlman 3 days ago

Going to the arcade was about a lot more than just the games, though.

[–] behringer 3 days ago

You've stumbled on exactly why the big providers are lobbying for regulation and big claims that Ai is unsafe. They don't want you running these at home.

[–] fsckboy 3 days ago

>Gaming used to be done in arcades for 25c a play.

in the early days, 2 plays for a quarter was not unusual (but you couldn't buy one)

[–] LogicFailsMe 3 days ago

Arcades mostly failed to adapt to the advances of home consoles to provide experiences you couldn't get at home. That's on the dimwitted game suits of the 1990s who cared little about novel gameplay, networked gameplay, or better NPC AI and physics. Then mobile happened and there was a brief glorious Cambrian explosion of new ideas until the Zynga playbook and DLC. Evidence: lived through it as a small game studio developer trying to do original things. The fun experiment now and then is to break out your 1980s video game consoles and play through their libraries. Most of the games are objectively terrible but gems like Yar's Revenge are still gems today IMO.

[–] InsidiousWombat 4 days ago

It will take a while till prices drop to a level where affording 256GB card (even if it would be shared between few coworkers) will have any sense over buying tokens.

And the AI debt bubble price spike will probably stay there for a while.

[–] jauntywundrkind 3 days ago

Intel Crescent Lake is dropping. 1.4TB/s of LPDDR5X, up to 480GB. It's not going to be cheap but it's much better than trying to buy gddr based cards.

Still (as bit over) 1/2 the ram bus width of a single HBM4 stack though! (1280b vs 2048b).

[–] jacquesm 3 days ago

That's going to be pretty pricey though. And I really want to see some independent benchmarks, that all looks very good on paper but there are some complications (notably: chip count, run length of the traces).

[–] cyanydeez 4 days ago

Well, if thw ai bubble implodes, youll sudden be exposed to real costs. Thats when a real opinion will be formed.

Uber took a decade but eventually, the real cost of a taxi service went up for many use cases.

Your argument is only solid if we are headed to the singularity.

[–] doctorwho42 3 days ago

> Your argument is only solid if we are headed to the singularity.

Perfect encapsulation of the problem. I may steal the wording you used for future conversations.