606: Cutting Edge

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Cutting Edge
I remember trying to log in to the original Command and Conquer servers a year or two back and feeling like I was knocking on the boarded-up gates of a ghost town.
Title text: I remember trying to log in to the original Command and Conquer servers a year or two back and feeling like I was knocking on the boarded-up gates of a ghost town.

Explanation

Half-Life 2 is a computer game (a first person shooter) released in 2004. In this comic, Cueball plays it in 2009. New games usually require recent and powerful computers, which are expensive. However, even a very weak 2009 computer will comfortably run a 2004 game, plus the price for a game, even a new, highly-anticipated, AAA game, is almost definitely guaranteed to have fallen due to the presence of newer games and the relative maturity of the present game. (Since most of the expected sales of a game happen near the release, a game would not be deemed that lucrative after 5 years, prompting a price drop to justify its sales or even printing.)

On the last panel, "The cake is a lie" and "This was a triumph" are references to the Portal, a videogame released in late 2007. It is presumed that in 2013 references to Portal are rather old-fashioned. Incidentally, both Portal and Half-Life 2 were released by the same company, Valve. Portal 2 was released in 2011.

Transcript

[Megan is standing. Cueball sits at a computer.]

Megan: Where've you been all week?
Cueball: Playing Half-Life 2!
Megan: ... that came out in 2004.
Cueball: I get games on a five-year lag. That way, I never have to buy a high-end system, but get the same steadily-advancing gaming experience as people who do -- and at a fraction of the price.
Cueball: There are no downsides!
Megan: I can think of one...
Early 2013.
Cueball: Guys!
Cueball: The cake is a lie!
[Musical notes surround an italic line, suggesting Cueball is singing.]
Cueball: This was a triumph.
Cueball: The cake is a lie!
Megan, friend: Sigh


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Discussion

Today is early 2013. This comic is right. Greyson (talk) 16:52, 5 March 2013 (UTC) I tested the hypothesis in the last panel by announcing "FREE CAKE!", setting down an empty cake box with "The cake is a lie" written inside it, and running. The results were highly conclusive: memes do not magically revive after five years. 107.204.46.198 00:43, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

"The title text also points to another flaw in this strategy: multi-player gaming requires other players, so if you play a game five years after everybody else, there's nobody else to play with. It's even worse with online gaming, as the company hosting the online server may have shut it down a long time ago." Unless the game happens to be team fortress 2.162.158.6.246 23:06, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

update on Command & Conquer servers

The servers have been shut down in 2014, about five years after this comic was launched, but game enthusiasts managed to run their own servers. So it is still possible to play this game now in 2016. :-) Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-07-command-and-conquer-multiplayer-saved-following-gamespy-shutdown 162.158.133.138 16:46, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

This explanation should be marked as incomplete, as it totally fails to explain what the heck FREE CAKE! and The Cake is a Lie! are all about—which frankly seems to be almost the only thing that needs explaining at all after you have taken care of the game itself. I KNOW Portal is a game, but I have no idea whatsoever about the cake thing. 108.162.246.161 11:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

According to the Wikipedia page, Portal promises Cake to whomever solves all the puzzles. "Still Alive" is the song played over the end credits. These things should be explained above but aren't. 172.68.142.89 17:27, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Rectified.