Probably the most obvious for this community is being very enthusiastic about technology but loathing anything with "smart" in the name. (I still use a flip phone and 15+ year old appliances)

Similarly I grew up always enjoying video games but it feels like a burned out husk in the modern era. Most of the big dollar "video game" market is now just MTX gambling and even a LAN party probably routes everything through Steam or Epic's servers

Good news: video games are still fucking awesome. Since it costs nothing to make one, weird and smart and cool people from all across the world are trying the craziest stuff. It's true they're purchasable through steam, mostly. But there's spectacularly creative stuff at low or no cost. For example, skimming my steam right now I see:

- Tales From Off Peak City (surrealist walking simulator with a film camera mechanic; 9.99$)

- Baba is You (sokoban puzzler; 14.99$)

- Straftat (brutalist/surrealist competitive shooter set to jungle music focusing on randomized community-map style alternative fps gamemodes; free)

- Untitled Goose Game (light puzzle coop set to dynamically scored classical piano music; 8.99$)

- Norco (prescient pre-gen-ai pixel art VN about AI, faith, and the environment; 5.24$)

- Brazillian Drug Dealer 3: I opened a Portal To Hell In The Favela Trying To Revive Mit Aia I Need to Close It (it's quake; 3.75$)

I agree with you with respect to smart, cloud, etc

I think we should support people who are uncomfortable about this stuff, don't ridicule them with "tinfoil hat much?" type sentiments

By the way, GOG.com treats you well wrt cloud/privacy/etc. All games they sell are drm-free and can be downloaded, installed and played offline.