I see all the graphics technologies as an extra bonus to the gaming experience. It might make the game experience slightly better; but it alone doesn’t make the best experience.
I’ve tried various team based shooters over time like Dirty Bomb, Overwatch, Paladins, and even now I try newer stuff, like Marvel Rivals. However everytime I feel get bored of them, I hop onto TF2 and no other team based shooter gives the the same satisfying gameplay loop compared to it.
Regardless of graphics; a well made skill based game can keep players for a long time inside it; i mean just look at aoe2, it’s the chess of strategy games and a ton of people still play it to this day.
Yeah, I’m sick of it as well. Having to guess whether my rig will play something at a framerate that won’t make me sick because a dev studio chose pretty graphics (that aren’t really much better than AAA 10 years ago) over good optimization.
Most of the games I play are relatively undemanding for this reason. That and because indie games don’t have as much monetization.
There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn’t what it used to mean. In fact I’d be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an “AAAA quality” game with Skulls & Bones or how it’s called and it’s a total flop.
The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it’s kind of safe at this point to just assume by default that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don’t trust them to produce a good game).
Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren’t found so easily. But they exist. There’s no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.
The rabbit hole of looking harder and being amazed by what exists will probably never end if persons keep looking (till they become proficient enough to be the ones making those things).
There are many games where you just install and play them. I’ve found many after excluding both AAAs and popular indies.
As far as AAA goes, the very emphasis is on graphics, sound, etc (big ehhh to the gameplay). Popular indies are also not my thing because it has become more of a social activity and the makers themselves play on that a bit. Aside from those two categories itself, I’ve got maybe a hundred good games which can be played maybe hundred to a few hundreds of hours each, maybe more. Most of them unplayed.
Old games are also something which are not going away if you check compatibility in advance (or use GOG preservation mark games, which apparently try to fix those problems).
I’m currently playing Battlefront 2004 and Monster Slayers (deckbuilder) but have a shitload of games from many genres installed. Most of them unheard of, being good quality in game design and enjoyable for many hours.
2023 was a phenomenal year for gaming. One great game after another. AAA and indy. Of course there will always also be bad games. But I think we do have enough good stuff. And looking at Ubisoft it seems like customer’s dissatisfaction with bad spectacles seems to reach the big companies. And with development tools becoming ever more accessible I think we’re looking at a bright future.
Working my way through Baldurs Gate 2 ee. Never finished it back in the early 00s. Maybe this time I’ll rescue Imoen and figure out Jon Irenicus’ deal. Currently still side questing.
The bubble of AAA gaming and reviews/benchmarks definitely has that kind of thing going on. But you can really just ignore that subset entirely and have so many good games to play from smaller studios and devs.
It’s not really a new thing, I remember when Crysis came out and it was all about the graphics and hardware to run it the fastest.
The best games these days are almost all indie games, stuff about AAA & ray tracing etc etc is more of a nerd hobby fueled by the industry rather than entertainment.
Also there are many retro games that used to be AA & they are just as good today as they were 20 years ago. If you want good gameplay there are so many amazing games to play a lifetime is not enough to even scratch the surface.
I think you’re going about this wrong. You need to represent this as a potential legal issue so they pass it off to the legal department, who will then do things to cover their ass
You don’t want to threaten, just make it legalese enough to make customer support get nervous. Something like citing GDPR sections and expressing your concerns that they have not properly complied with your legally mandated request, then officially requesting all data they still have on you and citing that section of law
Smart…well damn, if they’re that blasé about it I’d consider it a public service to escalate. You could contact Microsoft’s legal department, they might take it more seriously
You could also reach out to an organization like the ACLU in your country, they may or may not do anything with it, but they’ll probably make note of it at least. It could push them to take action in the future
FWIW, I respect you for going this far, and doing so intelligently. It might just be a little thing, but it’s fighting for your rights. Every inch matters, because they’ll take them all from us if they can
I think realistic graphics in 3D games got to be good enough that further improvement doesn't really matter any more in 2011 (Skyrim) but I can see an argument for putting it as late as to 2016 (Witcher 3).
I feel like I might get a ton of downvotes for this, but I kind of disagree. Maybe when it comes to things like texture detail, we certainly don’t need every single hair on Roach modeled with full physics or anything.
That’s only a subset of what constitutes graphics in a game though. I think that while it is computationally expensive, the improvements in lighting that we’re seeing contribute to making graphics more realistic and do matter.
I get that people meme on Ray Tracing and the whole RTX On thing, but lighting techniques like Path Tracing, Global Illumination, and Dynamic Illumination are just as much a generational shift as physics was in HL2. Output resolution and texture resolution got pushed to a point where any further gains are marginal improvements at best. Physics is getting to that point, although there’s still room for improvement. Look at how well the finals handles destruction physics, or the ballistics models used in Arma 3. Lighting is the next thing being refined, and it has a ways to go. I’d bet that in 10 years full, real time, dynamic, ray traced lighting will be taken for granted, and we’ll be arguing whether there’s any value or added realism benefit to increasing the number of individual rays cast by each light source, or how many bounces they take. I’d also not be surprised if people were memeing about RTX Sound On at that point and saying that game audio peaked with HRTF or Spatial Audio.
What you’re describing is not exactly gaming, but a different hobby entirely which is sometimes referred to as benchmarking. I’ve dabbled in it myself for some games, and the goal isn’t to experience and talk about the game as it is, but to figure out how to benchmark, best settings for performance and all that jazz.
Discussions about specific games for their merits are still very much alive on the internet though, you usually have to go to reddit and look for a dedicated subreddit for the game you’re interested in or their itch/discord if it’s a small indie game.
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Aktywne