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We are living in the lamest of times, a look at the completely insane videogame evolution of older days

iQuasarLV

Member
The trouble with generational leaps in modern gaming is the inherent diminishing returns of graphics and the like. The push from 1080p to 4K is barely noticeable when you play a console from across the room, but it requires significantly more computing time. Same is true with increased 3D modeling fidelity and textures. We have gotten so good at faking lighting and shadows that they often look essentially the same as ray tracing to the untrained eye. Linus tech tips just did a video testing this idea for ray tracing.

I doubt my wife could even tell the difference between a late gen PS4 game and a crossgen PS5 game at the moment.
That is because there are bottlenecks my friend.

Not bottlenecks in hardware anymore, but software. To this day we are still being offered games that have to store their textures in an individual 256MB buffer, per texture, to avoid crashing the game engines. 4K resolution needs oh so much more than that to store a proper resolution texture. You are gaming at 4k with 1080p textures at best. It is goddamn glaring every time I boot a game @4k and just look to the horizon. This is why almost every game is a tunnel simulator these days. They have to hide it. Else, you would be like WTF am I looking at GameCube graphics?

What is sad is I first noticed it way back in WoW:Cataclysm when you could fly over Azeroth in all its low resolution texture glory. I could see the checkerboard landscape stretch for miles. Cataclysm relesed in 2010. I have been waiting 11 years for the limitations in code to be removed, or at least the goalpost moved.
 
boomer thread. what you remember so fondly is your youth. now you grab a controller and your fingers hurt. you play for more than 2 hours and your back hurts. that is if your kids let you play at all. in the 90s you could play all day without a care now you need to pay the bills and worry about a million things.

gaming is better than ever and there is no question about it.
That part about the controller and back pain...you talking about me?

Oh my...that's so me.
 

Diddy X

Member
8th and 9th gen were just about games being more polished in all technical aspects, the jump just hasn't been as substancial as prior gens.
 

ManaByte

Member
boomer thread. what you remember so fondly is your youth. now you grab a controller and your fingers hurt. you play for more than 2 hours and your back hurts. that is if your kids let you play at all. in the 90s you could play all day without a care now you need to pay the bills and worry about a million things.

gaming is better than ever and there is no question about it.

Poor Gen X. Always being labeled boomers these days.
 

A.Romero

Member
Innovation is still there. It might not be in the flavour everybody likes but the industry is pushing forward.

Game development is more accessible now that it has ever been. That's a big push compared to how it was 20-30 years ago. A team of Australian devs made an Ace Combat that's almost at the level of Namco's, that's crazy on it's own right.

Online experiences that exist today were pretty much unthinkable back then. Check out Final Fantasy XIV.

I can start playing in one device and continue playing in another with stuff like Xcloud and Play Anywhere.

A few years back we could take the role of commander on Battlefield using a tablet while other 63 (63!!!!) players are fighting in an expansive map in a multilayered conflict.

You can watch other people play live together with a huge audience pretty much real time.


Seriously, gaming has never stopped innovating. You know what's different? Those games you listed came out when our mind was the most impressionable so we remember them differently. Right now kids are feeling that way about stuff like Fortnite and Among Us.

And of course VR being the most innovative tech used for gaming released in the last decade. It's not for everyone just as Doom wasn't the best game for people that were fans of text based adventures.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
Lot of saur people in here.
Maybe quit playing games if u hate it so much? PS4 was a great generation and this one will probably get only better.
Bloodborne
Witcher 3
Pubg
Fall guys
Among us
Hades
God of war
Resogun
Nex machina
Spiderman
Forza horizon
Ori
Cuphead
Breath of the wild
Odyssey
Fortnite
Dead cells
Horizon
Etc etc etc if u don’t like any games that come out, it’s on you. Look for a new hobby maybe
I will say this.

A lot of those games mentioned are only categorized in this generation only because of their launch dates. A lot of those games are exactly what this thread is speaking of. Games that epitomized the very essance of 90s gaming styles. Take Fall guys, Among Us, hades, Ori, Cuphead, Dead Cells as examples of my point. They were never conceived because this generation afforded them the breathing room to do it. They were games of passion made not to push the current gen, but the medium of which they love.
 

CeeJay

Member
Development costs aren't the same for all games. When they say cost rise significantly that is a bullshit used to justify selling for higher price and mtx. They rise because they have put in more money in marketing than development, because they brought in celebrity talents to hype up a game, they rise because they pay to keep licenses exclusive. Not everything is AAA budget. CP2077 spent more on marketing than development, and certainly all FIFA games.

In fact you could also argue development has never been easier with way CHEAPER & robust tools available, as well as different ways to market and raise funds from Kickstarter.
Larian didn't develop Divinity 2 with AAA budget, Hollow Knight is by 3 people.

The ones that keep saying rising development cost are like Star Citizen, a game that keeps on raking money, selling $4kusd ships while still not shipping after a decade.

Let me tell you, the game CEO's aren't walking away with less money.
I don't think there is any doubt that the trend for development costs is rising steadily. Yes every game costs a different amount to make but on average they are rising.

Just look at the amount of people working on these games.

Mario 64 made by 15 people
Doom made by 5 people
Goldeneye made by 9 people

Take a look at a long running series such as GTA, the original 1,2 and 3 made by DMA design with a team of around 25 people. Then onto San Andreas and GTAIV made by a few hundred upto GTAV made by over 1000.

Just looking at the cost of the staff wages alone its clear that games have got more expensive and the teams that are making games are generally getting larger all the time. The teams who made games that at the time were at the cutting edge such as Doom, Mario64 or GoldenEye would be classed as a small indie development team nowadays. As games get more complex with higher resolution assets, higher fidelity sound effects, Hollywood voice acting and bigger marketing budgets just to stay in that AAA bracket then its a no brainer that they are getting more expensive to make.

A game made by a team of around 10 is going to be able to take more risks with experimental gameplay than one made by over 1000 by economies of scale alone regardless of whether that game was made 20 years ago or today.
 

Romulus

Member
I feel like most every form of art is in decline. I can see obvious strokes of consistent genius throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

What changed? In my opinion social media. The need to be connected to a device is a constant distraction for creatives and I would imagine right brain people too.
It doesn't seem like much but there was a time where people were locked in a room together with nothing but talent. No distractions.
I could be wrong, but i dont see it as a benefit to cohesive development. I see it as a underrated killer of creativity.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
Development costs aren't the same for all games. When they say cost rise significantly that is a bullshit used to justify selling for higher price and mtx. They rise because they have put in more money in marketing than development, because they brought in celebrity talents to hype up a game, they rise because they pay to keep licenses exclusive. Not everything is AAA budget. CP2077 spent more on marketing than development, and certainly all FIFA games.

In fact you could also argue development has never been easier with way CHEAPER & robust tools available, as well as different ways to market and raise funds from Kickstarter.
Larian didn't develop Divinity 2 with AAA budget, Hollow Knight is by 3 people.

The ones that keep saying rising development cost are like Star Citizen, a game that keeps on raking money, selling $4kusd ships while still not shipping after a decade.

Let me tell you, the game CEO's aren't walking away with less money.
Well at least someone did a r/quityourbullshit response. Saved me time.
I am so tired of that excuse to justify lazy management skills and corporate interference.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
I feel like most every form of art is in decline. I can see obvious strokes of consistent genius throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

What changed? In my opinion social media. The need to be connected to a device is a constant distraction for creatives and I would imagine right brain people too.
It doesn't seem like much but there was a time where people were locked in a room together with nothing but talent. No distractions.
I could be wrong, but i dont see it as a benefit to cohesive development. I see it as a underrated killer of creativity.

Ohhh you are not wrong. We are practically living the movie Idiocracy right now. The only creatives left are crushed under the sheer weight of the corporate giants and their marketing / PR machines. Sadly the trope of the flower surviving in an urban wasteland does not translate to reality.
 
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vpance

Member
While there's no doubt creativity is dwindling in general, the pretense of no innovation now is a bit like saying there's no more innovation in aviation anymore. Aircraft just get bigger or faster, so boring!

Glider
Biplane
Fixed wing propeller
Jet propulsion
Supersonic flight

Look at that progression. Damn those were the good days.
 

Damigos

Member
The unfortunate thing is that you can discover the wheel a number of times. Not every generation of games can be revolutionary.
Same thing happens with supercars. Nowadays there are ferraris with 800 and 1000 bhp. But no ones cares. We loved the 400 bhp F40 back in the 80s.
Same thing with music...
Same thing with movies..
Maybe the same with books..
 

lachesis

Member
I think the games these days made quite some stride on "narrative" and "cinematic" department in general.
Many of the older games didn't really age well in terms of polished storytelling - asides handful games.

Probably because it's easier to invest in storytelling to appeal to the masses, than providing groundbreaking new concept of gameplay and take risk of sales bomb.
And such direction, did provide us a lot of great AAA games. Some may call it "walking simulator" or "interactive movie", but personally I find well made games are still enjoyable.

But it's not all the genre can offer, and I'm sure even the creators know it too. It's just little harder and tougher to make that jump to something new... just like smartphone has reached certain plateau, I think videogames also have reached plateau in terms of gameplay, and bar is set up higher than ever - as the gaming market has hit mainstream and matured.... I know someone will break thru eventually - but the frequency will be far and few in between.
 

Valentino

Member
You all got old and things change in your head and in the gaming world too. Ya’ll subconsciously trying to play new games through you past selfs child brain and ultimately struggling to transcend in to the game your playing. Fortnite kids will be making these kind of threads in 20 years too. Sooner you realise that the less times we can keep talking about how “back in day” was apparently better. Because maybe they were. But we’ve had tremendous games since.
 

Xeaker

Member
PS4 was a great generation and this one will probably get only better.
Bloodborne
Witcher 3
Pubg
Fall guys
Among us
Hades
God of war
Resogun
Nex machina
Spiderman
Forza horizon
Ori
Cuphead
Breath of the wild
Odyssey
Fortnite
Dead cells
Horizon
giphy.gif
 

luffie

Member
I don't think there is any doubt that the trend for development costs is rising steadily. Yes every game costs a different amount to make but on average they are rising.

Just look at the amount of people working on these games.

Mario 64 made by 15 people
Doom made by 5 people
Goldeneye made by 9 people

Take a look at a long running series such as GTA, the original 1,2 and 3 made by DMA design with a team of around 25 people. Then onto San Andreas and GTAIV made by a few hundred upto GTAV made by over 1000.

Just looking at the cost of the staff wages alone its clear that games have got more expensive and the teams that are making games are generally getting larger all the time. The teams who made games that at the time were at the cutting edge such as Doom, Mario64 or GoldenEye would be classed as a small indie development team nowadays. As games get more complex with higher resolution assets, higher fidelity sound effects, Hollywood voice acting and bigger marketing budgets just to stay in that AAA bracket then its a no brainer that they are getting more expensive to make.

A game made by a team of around 10 is going to be able to take more risks with experimental gameplay than one made by over 1000 by economies of scale alone regardless of whether that game was made 20 years ago or today.
Everything has a risk, if you want to make AAA games, there's a risk it will flop and you will not make it back, and that is a risk the developers need to manage, it is NOT our fault/problem.

Just like movie making, you can make Water World and tank, but it has nothing to do with us. Yes, prices and cost in general do increase, but gaming industry is just full of bullshit and lies.

In the past, digital was pushed under the reason that they can reduce the price of logistics so you'll get a cut too, turns out they didn't. Now they keep on pushing half baked games at the cost of full price, and tries to sell you "color variation" for 5usd.

The number of workforce increase because there are options to do so much more. With the same amount of people and with current cheaper tools, you can make way better games than Mario, Doom & Golden Eye. Remember that one of the best game "Hades" is made with 15 people. If you go for 500 people, that's your issue, not ours. The lack of innovation due to cost is always an excuse the executives make.

A number of smaller and medium companies are still trying to innovate. But when they can churn out the same recycled content and sell it back to you, why bother innovating? The Sims 4 was ripped apart and sold back in parts, when Sims 3 already had those features. And remember,these CEOs has never walked with lesser money.
 

Stuart360

Member
Cant believe someome earlier in the thread actually said there was more creativity and variety in games today compared to past gen, unless they were talking about Indies, in which case i would agree to an extent, but they didnt mention Indies.

I love gaming today, but for me the 16bit and 32bit gens were the 'Golden age' of gaming. Thats where the creativity, variety, and magic was.
Still love gaming today though, and i'm a huge open world fan so gaming today is gravy for me, but from a pure variety and creativity angle, the 16bit and especially 32bit gens were where its at.
 
it's sadly the save route nowadays to have movie like games that try really hard to feel like Hollywood productions instead of actual focusing on the interactive bit
I mean, take the most popular games out there. COD, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Battlefield and so on. Sure, they're multiplayer, but they play and feel like games. Doom Eternal was fantastic with all the secrets, collectables, Combat Loop and Unlockables. It's hard for me to pick up other games that are simply too boring.
 

Krizalidx11

Banned
Cyberpunk 2077 is a generation ahead of everything else in 2020 all the way to 2023 and people say we live in lame times :messenger_tears_of_joy: :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Yes it's broken now but when it's fixed in a couple of months you can't deny it leaps ahead of everything else on every aspect of gaming
 

iQuasarLV

Member
Everything has a risk, if you want to make AAA games, there's a risk it will flop and you will not make it back, and that is a risk the developers need to manage, it is NOT our fault/problem.

Just like movie making, you can make Water World and tank, but it has nothing to do with us. Yes, prices and cost in general do increase, but gaming industry is just full of bullshit and lies.

In the past, digital was pushed under the reason that they can reduce the price of logistics so you'll get a cut too, turns out they didn't. Now they keep on pushing half baked games at the cost of full price, and tries to sell you "color variation" for 5usd.

The number of workforce increase because there are options to do so much more. With the same amount of people and with current cheaper tools, you can make way better games than Mario, Doom & Golden Eye. Remember that one of the best game "Hades" is made with 15 people. If you go for 500 people, that's your issue, not ours. The lack of innovation due to cost is always an excuse the executives make.

A number of smaller and medium companies are still trying to innovate. But when they can churn out the same recycled content and sell it back to you, why bother innovating? The Sims 4 was ripped apart and sold back in parts, when Sims 3 already had those features. And remember,these CEOs has never walked with lesser money.
What is funny? It is when people use company sizes or the advancing complexity of game creation to justify the budgets these corporate publishers push.

1. If it is the size of the team that costs so much, why is it they get shafted on their salaries to the point that they are talking unionizing industry wide for better wages?
2. Why do marketing budgets far outstrip the actual development cost of the game, but get lumped into the overall cost of the game when publisized?
3. Why with ever increasing automation tools is it harder today to make games than in the past?
4. How is it a company with 26 employees churn out shit then turn around and advance that shit into a playable respectable product with no additional cost to the gamer?
5. Why do jackoffs reach for one off numbers to justify their Philip Fry mentality of 'shut up and take my money'?

Who knows? Don't care!
If anyone has actual cost sheets somewhere on the dark web of the cost breakdown of a AAA game I will shutup. Because I think that if you compare costs the actual development of the game is sweatshop compared to the fat cats sitting in their glass houses telling the masses below just what they should like.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Why you never solely rely on new games to scratch the itch.

Never forget that all those classics are available to play and enjoy. I'm a huge advocate for maintaining familiarity with previous generations in gaming, so many timeless games to revisit over and over.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
Why you never solely rely on new games to scratch the itch.

Never forget that all those classics are available to play and enjoy. I'm a huge advocate for maintaining familiarity with previous generations in gaming, so many timeless games to revisit over and over.
Yea, I think I am going to revisit Dragon Age: Origins. I just recently got burned out on anything current. Ima take your advice and just revisit some classic awesomeness.
 

Fare thee well

Neophyte
2010-2021 - Pretty graphics, heaps of microtransactions, slow grinding of repetitive content, and 'players are the content.'


Not to say I don't find my happy little niche of gaming, but it certainly isn't what's mainstream anymore.
 

Fredrik

Member
The jump from Skyrim to Skyrim VR through Quest 2 has hit me like a hammer. Wasn’t prepared for that. Same old game but the immersion especially with HIGGS and VRIK mods makes it feel like I’m doing everything again for the first time even after playing the OG release for hundreds of hours.
 

abcdrstuv

Banned
I actually don’t see that much evolution in genre and mechanics.. Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Metroid Prime, all the way up to AC Odyssey are all foundationally identical - you move a character, you interact with an environment and navigate enemy encounters, you solve puzzles and collect items.. whether it’s jumping and triple jumping or slashing a sword or shooting and scanning, over time it’s just a matter of pushing graphics and design, tuning gameplay, pacing and storytelling, and creating a uniquely balanced experience..

Mario to Banjo-Kazooie to Donkey Kong 64 to Ratchet and Clank isn’t a series of enormous leaps.. Mario Kart to Mario Kart 8?

Innovation in gameplay doesn’t always copy well.. there aren’t any “Braid clones” or “Rocket League clones”, Portal and Portal 2 were brilliantly innovative puzzle games but you can’t really replicate them.. there’s only one Tetris. Punch-Out is brilliant but kind of a dead end. And something like Bioshock is just an atmospheric, well-executed, engrossing FPS with a great hook tying in-game stats to moral/thematic player choice..

The entire industry has a kind of chronic sequel-itis, most games are just more/better of the same. A great game is usually one where all the design elements come together exceptionally well, pleasurably, memorably, but rarely one breaking new ground.

All the big ambitions for Fable 2 and 3 went bust, Spore was a bust, it’s very very difficult to invent - or implement - new game systems and genres.

Breath of the Wild, Minecraft.. that’s all I can think of off the top of my head for games in the 21st century that are genuinely *new* and not just refining and improving what already existed.. And BotW just layered its systems over an open-world action-RPG base..
 

SumJester

Member
Poor Gen X. Always being labeled boomers these days.
No one really cares about the meaning of the labels.

It's "Boomer" for old people that they don't like and "Millenials" for young people they don't like. Click bait did this.

I saw a good number of people whining about millenials that were by definition one. (Born around late 80s, early 90s)
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
Breath of the Wild, Minecraft.. that’s all I can think of off the top of my head for games in the 21st century that are genuinely *new* and not just refining and improving what already existed.. And BotW just layered its systems over an open-world action-RPG base..
Maybe Factorio?
 

wolffy71

Banned
Games now are vehicles to sell skins, loot boxes, the other half of the game that they held back at the start, season passes, and whatever else they can squeeze in.

The industry is expensive to develop for and they need to get the recouped somehow. But whole games, made to play from start to finish, are exceedingly rare.

Studios with the most talent are also the studios most slave to the grind and lack the freedom needed to take big risks. Or simply make games fun. Theres always some method to extract extra revenue.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Games now are vehicles to sell skins, loot boxes, the other half of the game that they held back at the start, season passes, and whatever else they can squeeze in.

The industry is expensive to develop for and they need to get the recouped somehow. But whole games, made to play from start to finish, are exceedingly rare.

Studios with the most talent are also the studios most slave to the grind and lack the freedom needed to take big risks. Or simply make games fun. Theres always some method to extract extra revenue.
Comes down to company management. The big corporations are at record profits so it's not like they are tight on cash. So for all the hoopla about giant dev teams and huge budgets, it's cant be that bad if the earnings reports say record net profit at high margins due to digital and mtx.

Some big companies I've worked for (non-gaming) maintain the status quo and just do small updates to brands. While other big companies I've worked at somehow keep growing the business with a combo of adjustments and brand new brands added to the portfolio. And the company even has fewer employees than the above one. Yet they can still pull it off.
 
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BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
Minor iterations in games seemed a lot more impactful back in the day. Technology also advanced numerous aspects of games at a more rapid and noticeable rate in years past.

I'll say that your list goes to show that overall studios maintained a more consistent level of quality game-to-game. These days it seems like a major accomplishment when a studio merely manages to follow-up in a franchise with something at least as good as the previous game.
 

Derktron

Banned
Xbox 360/PS3 era was honestly the last-gen that had creative games. Don't get me wrong, Xbox One/PS4 era had some great gems but after that. I don't know.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
All the big ambitions for Fable 2 and 3 went bust, Spore was a bust, it’s very very difficult to invent - or implement - new game systems and genres.

Breath of the Wild, Minecraft.. that’s all I can think of off the top of my head for games in the 21st century that are genuinely *new* and not just refining and improving what already existed.. And BotW just layered its systems over an open-world action-RPG base..
I'd say it depends on the scale you look, you can find more innovation on smaller scale projects since there's less risk. Minecraft for example was a one-man project that just happened to have gone really really right.

You can find more examples like Factorio&Satisfactory revolving around production logistics with some tower defense on the side, Kerbal Space Program with a more "realistic" approach to space exploration and rocket building science, Stormworks involving rescue operations, Noita with the notion of a fully physics and material based rogue game, etc. Even on the AAA space we got Death Stranding revolving around terrain traversal and full gamification of package delivery.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
ITT people pretend that gaming is nothing but big-time corporate productions and conveniently ignore the masses of stuff produced by independent and small-scale devs. Which is ironic given that historically gaming was built upon the output of these lesser outfits, because there was and always has been many times more of them than teams run internally by platform holders and super-publishers.
 
No, at the time 1998 was amazing. I remember it vividly. The year kicked off with things like RE2 and StarCraft and ended with Half-Life and Ocarina of Time. I still remember loading Unreal on my PC for the first time.

Something I forgot to include there was that the Beta for EverQuest began that fall as well and I remember how amazing that was too.
I picked Zerg for my big box, which one did you go with?

Also, did you try shooting the swimming fishes in Unreal? Hehe.
 
Ah, perhaps just me. Personally, when I look back at 98' and in a way this is the year I really started gaming, the only games that come to my mind are: Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Tenchu 1/2, Driver etc. Those were my main games or series that I stuck with. I didn't bother with anything else. I realize some of the games I mentioned may not have come out in 1998.
One look at your list and it's apparent you played more of your PS1 than a PC at the time. It's interesting because depending on which platform you focused on, your view of the various zeitgeists would be different.

I mainly got to play on PC for that period, so when friends introduced me to PS1 games my first hour or more was just trying to remember which button is which.
 

Alebrije

Member
Well if you have been playing videogames since Atary 2600...you know how big has been the evolution of videogames.

But if you began playing at the PS1-PS2 era it could feel like just graphic improvements of the same formula.

3D was the last big jump on gaming and unless virtual relity becomes better and cheaper we will be on the loop for more time
 

StormCell

Member
We will never see another jump as large as the jump in the 90s.

As I get older, I'm starting to realize that the 90s was the peak of our society.
I've said it a couple of times now, almost snidely and politically... if the '90s somehow acquired time travel, they would come to the 2020's and completely kick the shit out of our world. This liberal maoist thing that's going on would be over within hours. That's how much attitude the '90s has. One swift Chuck Norris roundhouse kick will do.
 

Azurro

Banned
You can look at virtually every genre around that time and see an explosion of evolution as new tech became available. It changed as much in 2 years as we see in 15 years because of the smaller and cheaper development times and less corporate pressure. Best of times.

You got 2 out of 3, it wasn't because of corporate pressure, since that always existed even if the teams were much smaller. Of course it did help that a team of 10/20 people could pump out a game in a year or two max, but the biggest reason was that we had enormous jumps in technology in a very short timeframe.

There were constant innovations in IC as well as multiple fabrication node jumps that meant huge and cheap performance jumps very easily, relatively speaking. The tech has matured quite a lot though, the number of transistors in GPUs/CPUs/APUs number in the billions now, and on every platform, the energy requirements are becoming a challenge, while it's becoming incredibly challenging to go smaller in fabrication nodes.
 
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People act as if 60fps is the newest most cool thing to ever happen to video games, but I just want some new visuals at the cost of 30fps instead. Give me an actual evolutionary jump in lighting by using ray tracing for real global illumination and then I'll be happy. Heck, at 30fps, I wonder if they could do global illumination and ray traced reflections at the same time.
 
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