Back then a CD had about as much storage as your entire hard drive. Also, lego island isn't really a AAA game. A AAA game from 1997 would be something like final fantasy 7, which came on two whole CDs. Drive capacity hit a boom around the 2000s and 2010s, and only recently have AAA games been catching up.

People always want to blame this shit on game developers being lazy, and they're not wrong that a lot of AAA games are bug ridden messes designed to please shareholders. But games are getting more and more complex, and these developers are being forced to work under strict time constraints.

That doesn't mean there isn't room to improve. Maybe offering different download options depending on your storage needs should become a common practice (iirc some games used to do that back when internet bandwidth was limited).

[–] pascal@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Final fantasy 7 was 3 CD on PlayStation and 4 CD-ROMs for the windows version.

I know, I was there.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

UT 2k4 was a seven CD box, just saying. Yes, 7.

[–] pascal@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh I remember that, the Linux installer was included on the CDROM, it was very unusual for that time!

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it was one of the few games that actually shipped with Linux binaries. Also after like 8 months, they released a huge update with some 10 new maps, new characters and a new game mode as a free download instead of calling it a "DLC" and charging money for it. Back when games were actually made to be played instead of being a marketing platform.

[–] eclectic_electron@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Some games still do AoE 4 has the HD assets as an optional DLC so you can decide whether it's worth the drive space/download time.