Yeah I did read the article. That’s why I know what the article is about, and the fact that he’s complaining about graphical fidelity in games and not getting the profit benefit. clearly AAA studios aren’t actually having this issue because, like I said, the winner of the game awards this year was a cartoony game, so clearly they are well aware that graphics aren’t everything.
I’d say it’s less about imagination than gameplay. I’m reminded of old action figures. Some of them were articulated at the knees, elbows, feet, wrists, and head. Very posable, but you could see all the joints. Then you had the bigger and more detailed figures, but they were barely more than statues. Looked great but you couldn’t really do anything with them.
And then you had themed Lego sets. Only a vague passing resemblance to the IP, but your imagination is the limit on what you do with them.
I may be outsider but lower graphic level horror games actually work more for me, because imagination fills the gaps better than engine rendering plastic looking tentacles can
I just played Dragon Age Veilguard, and I’m now playing Dragon Age Origins, which was released 15 years ago. The difference in graphics and animation are startling. And it has a big effect on my enjoyment of the game. Origins is considered by many to be the best in the series, and I can see that they poured a ton into story options and such. But it doesn’t feel nearly as good as playing Veilguard.
Amazing graphics might not make or break a game, but the minimum level of what’s acceptable is always rising. Couple that with higher resolutions and other hardware advances, and art budgets are going to keep going up.
Agreed; Veilguard has pretty okay graphics. Not great, but acceptable - the high mark for me is BG3. But moving back to the earlier entries, they may have had stories that felt more ‘real’ (e.g., the setting felt more internally consistent) and gave more options, but the graphics and gameplay haven’t aged well.
Similarly, Fallout: New Vegas hasn’t aged so well. It was a great game, but it looks pretty rough now, unless you load it down with hi-res mods.
I don’t demand photorealism, but I’d like better visuals than PS3-level graphics.
Yeah, that frustrates me a lot, too. They almost had it right, that they need to go beyond realism to make truly good-looking games. But in practice, they say that only to show you the most boring-ass graphics known to humanity. I don’t need your pebbles to cast shadows. I can walk outside and find a pebble that casts shadows in a minute tops. Make the pebbles cast light instead, that could look cool. Or make them cast a basketball game. That’s at least something, I haven’t seen yet.
I like the way you think. The logic of video games and what they display don’t have to be limited by anything in the real world. They can invent entirely new forms of perception even (like that Devil Daggers sequel that lets you see behind yourself using colour overlays).
Gifted my kids, both of them already young adults, one of those retro gaming sticks. An absolute bang/for/buck wonder, full of retro emulators and ROMs. Christmas Day, at grandmas was a retro fest, with even grandma playing. Pac man, frogger, space invaders, galaga, donkey Kong, early console games…. Retro gaming has amazing games, where gameplay and concepts had to make do with the limited resources.
My son has a Steam deck, but he had a blast with the rest.
GSC in my opinion ruined stalker 2 in the chase for “next gen” graphics. And modern graphics are now so dependent on upscaling and frame gen, sad to see but trailers sell.
Eh. I want hyper realistic graphics, but I also want a solid story and good gameplay mechanics. If hyper realistic graphics took a backseat to story and mechanics I’d be just as annoyed as a focus on hyper realistic graphics over story and mechanics.
Edit: Generally speaking, of course. There’s quite a few modern games with non-realistic graphics I enjoy, but I’m always waiting for that next hyper realistic game to push the boundaries.
You can select the text that’s over that background to make reading easier. Most of the article is below it, so you should be fine after a couple taps of Page Down.
Or use Firefox reader view, which cleans it right up. :)
You know the budget is spent almost entirely on the art when you actually pay attention to the credits and you see names for like 250 artists, but only 3-5 programmers.
The big problem for these AAA studios is that this is their unique selling point. Hyper-realistic graphics and sprawling game worlds. If they stop doing these, they’re hardly different to the games from five years ago (which you can still buy and cheaply at that). And they’re hardly different from indie titles. They would enter quite the competitive market.
I do agree that we’re at somewhat of a breaking point. The production costs grow to absurd levels. The graphical advances are marginal. And not many gamers can afford the newest hardware to play these titles. But I don’t think, there’s an easy exit strategy for these AAA studios…
It’s nice to see gaming covered in NYT at all. The article generally rings hollow to me. I’m not an industry expert, but:
It’s easy to be profitable when you’re just making a sandbox and your players make the games, but at that point are you a game developer? (Roblox)
High end graphics cards have become so expensive that people can’t afford gaming with good graphics
AAA developers aren’t optimizing games as well as they used to, so only high end hardware would even run them
AAA is more focused on loot boxes, microtransactions, season passes, and cinematics all wrapped up in great visuals. That’s at the expense of innovative gameplay and interesting stories. Making the graphics worse won’t get execs to greenlight better games, just uglier ones. And they’ll still be $70.
Even when games are huge successes and profitable, studios are getting bought and shut down (EA, Microsoft, Sony?), so it’s hard to say the corps are hurting.
High end graphics cards have become so expensive that people can’t afford gaming with good graphics
Not only that, but mid range cards just haven’t really moved that much in terms of performance. The ultra high end used to be a terrible value only for people who want the best and didn’t care about money. Now it almost makes sense from a performance per dollar standpoint to go ultra high end. At launch the 4090 was almost twice the performance of the 4080, but only cost about 1.5x. And somehow the value gets worse the lower end you go.
Meanwhile mid-high end cards like the 4060 and 7600 (which used to be some of the best values) are barely outperforming their predecessors.
This article’s reasoning is faith based. The cornerstone assumption is that industry profits and layoffs obey the preferences of the market.
To those who follow the industry, this is demonstrably false. What follows is the lack of awareness on full display:
and even though Spider-Man 2 sold more than 11 million copies, several members of Insomniac lost their jobs when Sony announced 900 layoffs in February.
It is hard for me to take seriously a hand-wringing industry that makes more money than most entertainment industries. Capitalism is the primary cause of articles like this. Investors simply demand moar each year, otherwise it is somehow a sign of stagnation or poor performance.
AAA studios could be different, but they choose to play the same game as every other sector. Small studios and independents suffer much more because of the downstream effects of the greedy AAAs establishing market norms.
We need unionization, folks. Broad unionization across sectors to fight against ownership/investor greed. It won’t solve everything but it will certainly stem the worst of it.
Overall good article with some inaccuracies but the answer to the articles question is to me an easy no. The whole industry won’t recover because its an industry. It follows the rules of capitalism and its a constant race to the worse and while good games by good people happen on the side, they happen in spite of the system. Everything else is working as expected and will continue until you pay per minute to stream games you rent with intermittent forced ads and paid level unlocks.
nytimes.com
Aktywne