The game is set in Canada sometime after weed became legal. That happened in 2018. So it can't be 2017. 2023 makes more sense. Although an alt reality would explain the other anachronisms. But if we ignore the bio that says Beth and Nessa met in university before same sex marriage was legal, and we ignore Frank's teenage bedroom, then 2023 seems to match pretty well.
So you basically just threw your own wrench into the timeline.
You want to ignore some cannon background info and insist the day/date matches real-world year 2023, despite the fact that if the year was 2017, which would also fit the day/date info, then the background information in question would actually fit perfectly into the narrative? That seems a much more relevant point to focus on than the throw-away line about FF16. The weed thing is much more relevant, but it's as strong an argument as the legalization of same-sex marriage, so that's an interesting conundrum.
Still, all this is just fodder to justify or counter the idea of a
single individual growing up without becoming internet savvy in the 21st century, something that is way more realistic than many F95Zone users can probably appreciate.
YouTube, which is pretty much the catalyst for how we view the internet today, was "founded" in 2005, which, if it is 2023, would be a year after Abby was born.
We saw how insecure and focused on financial problems Frank already was before that, and every indication is that he's never really become internet savvy. He knows enough to operate his website, search for houses up for sale on the internet and, if he puts his mind to it, re-learn enough photoshop to make a new background image and replace the one on his home page.
I know real people -- both in their late 30s and early 40s -- who would fit that description. Of the people I know who do, at least two of them would fall into Frank's level of understanding internet culture and monetization opportunities.
So the idea of one socially-awkward person -- living his life with the idea that he has to provide for his family first, never really becoming internet savvy -- is pretty easy for me to believe.
So whether the game takes place in 2023, 2017, or some alt-world that doesn't match the real-world calendar is really irrelevant to the entire argument.
One of the best lines in "Men in Black" is when Tommy Lee Jones's K is explaining to Will Smith's Jay why aliens have to be kept secret from the public:
A Person is Smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
This is true in reverse as well. "People" know how the internet works, know about pop culture, and know what's happening in the bubble of the groups they interact with. A Person knows what they know.