nytimes.com

Plume, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

It feels like very few progress was made graphically in the last eight years. We’ve reached a plateau. I mean, STAR WARS: Battlefront (2015) to me is as good as it gets and that was almost ten years ago. We used to have massive leaps in graphics all the time, but that’s no longer the case.

The big difference is that, that game ran at 60 fps on the Xbox One and the PS4. Games barely look better or as good as this, but are atrociously harder to run. That’s the big difference. The death of optimization and the “just throw more hardware at it” era.

t3rmit3, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

Most executives at large publishers aren’t gamers. Pretty pictures are more likely to entice them than deep mechanics. They could assign 5 people to make a game like Balatro or Stardew Valley, but they never would because they don’t work like that, they came up through the MBA route and think in terms of enterprise software development lifecycles. Also, “making money” isn’t good enough for them, they want to make so much money that they can pay themselves millions of dollars despite never actually contributing to the game.

BlackLaZoR, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@BlackLaZoR@fedia.io avatar

Did executives misread the market?

The problem isn't detailed graphics, the problem is shit performance. The new generation of UE games look average, and require ridiculous hardware + upscaling to run smoothly

zipzoopaboop,

The problem is shit design, the same games we’ve played before mechanically over and over with increasing price tags

gnygnygny, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

Games industry tend to have realistic graphics since the begining. End of the story.

JokeDeity, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

Guess I’m alone, I really do love good graphics, I love getting lost in the digital world… I’m just not going to pay $100 per game for that experience. It’s the endlessly growing list of shit they want you to buy on top of buying the game itself that’s destroying the video game market. Every new game that comes out has DLCs and expansions and season passes and skins and bullshit bullshit bullshit. Piracy is back in the rise because all the corporations forgot and got too greedy again.

MountingSuspicion, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

Kinda seems misleading considering they said they need 7 mil copies sold to break even and 6 months after release it had sold 11 million. Blaming the layoffs on this seems like a transparent misdirection to make people think they lost money here. They want to spend less money, and I get that from a business standpoint, but it seems like they’re looking for reasons to make people accept worse looking games. I don’t really play high graphics games, but if they start decreasing the graphics budget I expect to see a decrease in cost. Don’t pay the same for less.

I agree with the other comments saying it’s about fun and not graphics, but this seems to have been published to get people to expect worse graphics regardless of fun.

Ulrich, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@Ulrich@feddit.org avatar

They’re simply drawing all the wrong co conclusions here:

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.

The layoffs don’t mean the game or company were unsuccessful, it means they found other ways to eliminate those jobs.

Warner Bros. Discovery took a $200 million loss on Suicide Squad

That’s nothing to do with graphical fidelity, it was a shit game that followed up a shit movie.

Sony closed the studio behind Concord

Lots of potential reasons for this. If you ask me, they released a $30 game into a genre chock full of “free to play” games.

Personally I appreciate “cinematic” games but titles like Balatro and Stardew Valley (neither of which I own) are proof of the simple fact that making games that are actually fun to play is far far more important, and far more profitable.

Mad_Punda, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

I would argue fancy graphics help sell it. It’s the easiest way to grab attention, be it in a trailer or while watching a streamer. Depending on the game it also helps immersion, but not all games need that. All AAA games need to be sold though (at least that’s the aim of any AAA publisher). And people have bought them. And they still do. But they’re starting to learn that attention grabbing graphics doesn’t equal good game.

socsa, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@socsa@piefed.social avatar

Photorealism just puts a lot of constraints on gameplay mechanics and art direction.

Gamers_mate, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

I am literally playing minecraft without any of those shader texturepacks because I kind of prefer games not being ultra realistic. If being realistic was more fun than we would not need games to have fun because we have real life which is as real as you can get.

jarfil,

Texture packs or not, IMHO the key point is they’re optional, not a requirement for the game to be playable. Games that depend on photorealism, are bound to end up in deep trouble.

Lanthanae, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Many people (including me) consider the best game of 2024 to be Balatro.

Balatro. A game made by one guy who legitimately didn’t even think anyone other than his friends and family would buy it.

AAA studios do not understand what people enjoy at all.

DdCno1,

Balatro is 1) a fluke, an exception, a rarity and 2) not something big studios could even possibly replicate. What would be the point of a big studio trying to make a game that one developer can pull off? The closest the likes of Ubisoft in particular are getting to games like Baltro are their Indie-esque side projects that parts of their bigger studios engage in on the side, like Valiant Hearts. Those can never be enough to finance a big operation though.

Lanthanae,
@Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You’re missing my point and arguing against a strawman here. All I’m arguing is that the things AAA studios focus on (like hyper-realism) are not the things that make a game fun, and AAA studios sound be putting fun as the focus.

DdCno1,

I’m not arguing against a strawman, but against someone who might want to look into this topic a bit more closely. Balatro sold two million copies less than Star Wars Outlaws. People obviously want flashy spectacle more than tight mechanics - it’s just that even those higher sales figures weren’t enough to compensate for the bloated development budgets. That’s the real lesson. The old method of spending more and more money to make more and more money isn’t quite working anymore - not that people don’t want pretty graphics anymore (because they still do want those more than basic Indie art).

Lanthanae,
@Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Yeah you’re still not even contradicting what I’m saying, you just think you are. You’re arguing against positions I don’t hold lmao.

Ulrich,
@Ulrich@feddit.org avatar

Balatro is…not something big studios could even possibly replicate

…and why not?

What would be the point of a big studio trying to make a game that one developer can pull off?

…money?

DdCno1,

…and why not?

Because Balatro is a single developer’s vision realized without compromise, without producers, writers, tech people, art directors, etc. all meddling with the production in the usual “design by committee” approach that large studios are using. This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.

…money?

The mantra of big studios and publishers is to spend lots of money to make lots of money. Balatro sold a mere 3.5 million copies over the course of a year, for a price of $14. That’s just $34.3 million taking Steam’s 30% cut into account. Huge money for a solo dev (especially given that the budget was just $125,000), but both the sales figure and the sales revenue are in serious flop territory by big studio standards. Star Wars outlaws underperformed at 5.5 million copies sold, since it cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, including having the highest marketing budget of any game ever made. To put this into perspective, this means they spent significantly more than $150 million (the usual figure for a top of the line AAA game these days) on marketing alone.

You can not generate the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.

Ulrich, (edited )
@Ulrich@feddit.org avatar

“design by committee” approach that large studios are using

They don’t have to use that.

This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.

That’s just very clearly wrong.

You can not generate the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.

Wrong again. If anything, only large publishers can lose the kinds of money that they sometimes do.

DdCno1,

Okay, I’ll bite: Since I’m very clearly wrong about everything, show me a large studio that doesn’t use the design by committee approach, makes small games on Indie budgets and survives on that.

Ulrich,
@Ulrich@feddit.org avatar

You’re wrong because of the specific words you’re choosing to use. Even if they aren’t, it doesn’t mean they can’t.

DdCno1,

Ulrich, mate, you’re more German about this than I am - and that’s not meant as a compliment. Allow me to take the scepter as the most anal German user in this discussion back with another pedantic, probably too condescending reply.

I don’t remember if I explained this to you directly or someone else in this discussion, but the thing with large studios is that they are incredibly art-heavy (lots of texture artists, 3D modelers, animators, etc.), because you can compartmentalize art and have many little worker bees work on their little flowers (both figuratively and literally) in parallel and then assemble it all together into one big mess of an open world game with a billion map markers for you to ignore. For many years now, ever since the seventh console generation, this has been the ticket, this brought in the big bucks in the gaming industry.

The Western studios that pioneered this approach are now being threatened on two fronts: 1) Eastern (non-Japanese) studios that use the same art-heavy approach (but with different organization, which doesn’t matter here, because they too are spending lots on many worker bees) on F2P and Gacha games, which offer spectacle and impressive vistas and a billion trillion map markers (but for free*) and 2) a tiny handful of absolutely ginormously successful Western titles - Indies, former Indies and AAA - that don’t care one bit about the presentation, spectacle and artist-driven content beyond the most basic of necessities (see: Minecraft’s blocky blocks and unfiltered textures) or a litany of tie-ins simulating variety and freshness (e.g. Fortnite, Rocket League), but instead shine through organic player interaction and user-generated content.

It’s not Indie darlings like Balatro and Stardew Valley that threaten these publishers. Like I explained before, the revenue those games are generating is not sufficient to sustain large enterprises and because their success is incredibly random and unpredictable, big studios can’t just divide their armies of worker bees into smaller teams that each work on a little game, with all those little games then in bulk creating the same revenue as a large titles. Since it’s possible to find 500 people that can draw horse testicle textures, but not possible to find 500 people on the job market that can write a good script for a game or design a fun gameplay loop (seriously, those are the rarest talents in the entire industry) and finish the damn thing in time too, the idea you’re proposing simply isn’t realistic. The most you can hope for is that Ubisoft and others find a few people in their large studios and allow them to work on little artistic high-concept side projects every now and again (like for example Grow Up/Home), as an image boost for the company, a treat for fans, but not to make money, because these projects really don’t.

The unfortunate thing is that the likely reaction to the success of Chinese and Korean F2P/Gacha games is that Western studios will try to emulate those. It’s not even a thing for the future - this has already started. The whole loot box nightmare we’ve all been moaning and groaning about is a direct copy of South Korean MMO mechanics - and Ubisoft’s AAAA(AAAAA) pirate MMO disaster was a blatant attempt at going after the kind of audience, but they wanted to have the cake and eat it too, release it as a full-price game and keep people busy with busywork loot boxes. Same thing with Bioware’s Anthem. One of few successful Western games of this type is Destiny. Ubisoft, EA, ActiBliBethMic (and Japanese publishers) are likely going to bet hard on the large Gacha game idea (at least that’s what I’m expecting), because they can use their existing experience with managing large art departments in those games as well, only having adapt mechanics, monetization and marketing accordingly. I doubt they’ll be successful, but maybe this can save them. Our hope as players who aren’t enjoy game mechanics and monetization that are optimized to drive up the credit card debt of whales [players who spend a fortune on F2P games] is that these projects end up making enough money so that some of the profits will get spent on games that aren’t thinly disguised Skinner boxes.

Feel free to tell me whether or not this makes sense to you. I have a love/hate relationship with this discussion and topic. They are both equally frustrating and interesting.

CrowAirbrush, do games w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good

Then don’t, i doubt people get sad when they realize they don’t have to buy another overpriced gpu to run the game they anticipated the most.

Zacryon, (edited ) do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@Zacryon@feddit.org avatar

Just saw a video today about how on steam roughly half of the best rated games are indie titles. Needless to say that the 2D graphics are not photorealistic.

Maybe, instead throwing money on graphics alone, focus on making fun games?

Video: youtu.be/qiNv3qv-YbU?si=4W75-Z7xPSAxDkkO

Elkenders,

I like that we can get both indie and AAA and that indie developers can successfully create a whole of the former without big business. Not many places any more where a single person can offer a quality product that sits next to a business’ with hundreds of millions of investment.

JohnnyCanuck, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca avatar

To be fair, I don’t think all of the blame can be laid on execs. Game directors and Art directors are often the source of the issue.

I’ve seen execs come to a studio and say: “Make something AAA, a single player game with unique gameplay and a great 10 hour story, and get it done in a couple of years. Don’t worry about the bottom line, we want a showcase experience.”

Then the directors come back with: “Okay, showcase you say? How about a AAAA 20v20 open world multiplayer shooter (nobody is doing that!), SaaS (to keep’em coming back), with ultra realistic graphics (it’ll be epically fun that way), a $100million budget (we’ll outsource to save money), MTX so we can make tons of money (we get profit sharing right?), and we do it in 3 years (for work-life balance)?”

Devs are just sitting there shaking their heads and thinking… “Here we go again…”

SaltySalamander,

How about a AAAA 20v20 open world multiplayer shooter (nobody is doing that!), SaaS (to keep'em coming back), with ultra realistic graphics (it'll be epically fun that way), a $100million budget (we'll outsource to save money), MTX so we can make tons of money (we get profit sharing right?), and we do it in 3 years (for work-life balance)

I 100% believe most of these unrealistic expectations come from the execs. Decisions like these aren't made by art directors. They come from on high. Art directors and game directors aren't the ones making the monied decisions.

JohnnyCanuck,
@JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ve seen it first hand. Repeated statements by the corp execs asking for one thing, studio directors trying to push something else.

I mean, I’ve also seen execs ask for ridiculous shit as well, I’m just saying sometimes it really does come from the studios themselves.

circuitfarmer, do gaming w Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I think the issue is a bit more nuanced. Graphics have gotten so good that it is relatively easy to get character animations which sit in the uncanny valley.

The uncanny valley is bad. You can have beautiful, photorealistic graphics everywhere, but if your characters are in the uncanny valley, the overall aesthetic is more similar to a game which didn’t have the photorealism at all.

In the past, the goalpost was at a different spot, so putting all the resources towards realism still wouldn’t get you into the valley, and everyone just thought it looked great.

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