I can only really think of two games that really justify enormous development costs, and that’s Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3.
If your game isn’t pushing things to that level of expectation, you really need to rethink what you’re doing with that budget.
What about destructible environment, physics, attention to details?
All what I see nowadays are mediocre products in flashy packaging. Consumers seem to prioritize aesthetics over quality; if a game is colorful and visually appealing, it often sells well. Whats up with freedom of jumping on that crate, blowing up that wall, shooting up the props etc.
At times, it feels as though I am confined within an enclosure, where the visuals and sounds serve merely to distract me from this realization.
the broader genre of single-player action games has mostly diminished to Soulslikes and gacha games a la Genshin Impact
I call bullshit. There are all kinds of awesome, successful, action games that don’t fit this mold. This whole piece reads like it was placed by a high level exec that’s preparing to lay off a bunch of graphic artists and devs.
Art > graphics, but this article sucks.
bruh Im out here still playing Beyond Oasis. Just make a good fucking game and I’ll play it for 30 years. I dont think people making games actually listen to people playing games.
Animal Well was the best game I played this year and it was made by one dude who built his own engine.
Balatro is a close second with the best soundtrack. The Dev bought it on Fiverr.
9 times out of 10, I won’t see your brand new AAA title for several years after release. While there are occasional exceptions, I don’t really buy at launch. Your cutting edge graphics mean nothing to me without story, characters, and writing. If you invest in looks without substance, I will never waste my time with you.
add me to the crowd where graphics is not a major thing. its great ad can make one game preferable to another but im all about character customization both in look and abilities.
I mean, how are they supposed to pay the execs millions of dollars if they have to pay the developers to make the game do the thing?
Damn, nobody in here is excited for the future of graphics? Guess I’ll be the outlier.
I’m looking forward to ray tracing being commonly available. Having actual reflections in game really improves that subconscious immersion and even could open up strategy in some cases. Imagine using a mirror the see someone coming around the corner.
Every time I walk into a bathroom and the mirror is just some generic gray texture it pulls me out.
Realistic lighting, textures, and character models are also pretty great. I want to see the pores on the protagonist’s face.
That said, obviously the game needs to be fun more than have good graphics, but man do I love the immersion of high quality visuals.
I think at a high enough level, the likes of raytracing could actually reduce costs for the developers.
We seem a long way from that though.
Imagine using a mirror the see someone coming around the corner.
I don’t need a mirror to see someone coming from behind me in Super Mario Bros. Sometimes it is a matter of perspective, point of view and camera angle.
raytracing is insanely expensive. If you saw what current cards can render in real time, you would see a very very noisy, incomplete image that looks like shit. Without ai denoising and a lot of temporal shit (which only looks good in screenshots). It is very very very far from being able to render an actual frame with decent performance.
I am. I love great graphics and more offten than not play at 40fps 4k native max settings than 60gpd and reduct graphics. I mostly play single player or co op games though so I’m I’m the minority. Thing is cheating the graphics dragon is an expencive hobby which game industry is trying g to cheat and fake with AI and upscaling. I’m all 4 best graphics, what i am not for is fake graphics tricks and unoptimized pules of AAA garbage with a fancy package.
Look when full path tracing becomes playable easily on a 60 series mainstream level card, I’d be all for devs spending their time on it. Until then what’s the point? I have a 4080 and not a single path tracing game runs in playable framerate/resolution
That why I said I’m looking forward to it.
According too the article, you’re a vocal gamer in your 40’s or 50’s.
Or someone with disposable income.
Graphics are not everything, for me it’s game-play first. I’m playing Carrier Command 2 now for a month straight and it has mediocre pixel and low-poly graphics, but the immersion is fantastic. It’s a time sink and I forget when I should quit playing it. Hyper realistic graphics have their audience, but now they’re at the point where a little improvement in graphics has diminishing returns, hence the high cost.
I used to play carrier command back in the day. It had low poly graphics, but it was great for the time. I used to love flying a Manta to escort a walrus to hit a long distance target. Did you play the original? How does it compare?
Great, new game to try. Love me some quality time sinks.
Fully agree on graphics- I want to enjoy a game, graphics are only a component of that, and its not necessarily hyper realistic.
Art design will always trump straight up graphical wizbangs anyway. There’s a reason Tears of the Kingdom is gorgeous and impressive over here running on a potato versus a lot of games that need more horsepower to run.
TOTK looks and runs like crap. Also the world feels bland and empty compared to most other open world RPG’s. At least a little effort from Nintendo would go a long way, but especially climbing some mountains with crappy textures and jagged edges looks eerily similar to a lot of PS2 games I still play.
I agree with you. TOTK (and other open world games) on the Switch is an unpleasant experience. The hardware just isn’t capable of it
I do however think the developers did put some effort into attempting to mitigate the underperforming hardware - hence the seeming emptiness of the world. It just wasn’t enough. There are games that run well on the Switch - Metroid Prime Remastered is incredible, for example, but we must ask why: the answer is that that game’s world consists of a large number of small rooms, basically the polar opposite of an open world design.
Art style trumps graphical fidelity, but you do need a decent baseline capability to be able to pull it off.
Also, if you enjoyed TOTK don’t let me ruin your fun - it’s a subjective thing. Just don’t tell me there’s objectively no problems with it, because there clearly are
The latest game where I thought “damn this looks good” was Sifu. I get like 200fps on my half-potato (5500XT), and that’s at ultra quality, definitely “let’s turn on vsync to get rid of the fan noise” territory. The reason it looks good is good lightening choices, fluid animation, as well as well-decorated levels. As you can see the textures and geometry are often very simple – a red fire hose box in a a hallway is just a red box. No fine detail at all, and that’s sufficient: It’s enough detail so that things don’t feel empty, your brain isn’t thinking “there should be more here”, a whole uncanny valley of its own as the brain gets kinda queasy if there’s nothing that it can ignore, but not enough detail as to be cluttering, that is, detract from the readability of the graphics.
Good style and execution will always win out over realism.
And yes it’s a 30G game, high-res textures and not kitbashing the levels tends to do that. Also, storing stuff uncompressed the download size is 20G.
(And btw whoever made that video is a good player deliberately playing like ass. You can tell by how they’re taking ages to get through the level, the pitiful score, but still not dying or really taking much damage at all).
Graphics in my opinion peaked at around 2015. I still boot up games from that time and I think they’re not that different from today’s titles
So true. A couple years ago, I upgraded from an RX 480 to an RTX 3070. I was excited for ray tracing and so much more. It was very underwhelming.
The amount of effort for such imperceptible improvements is insane.
Also insane is how shit modern games run without multi thousand dollar hardware, even if you turn down settings, but then it also looks like ass in addition to running like shit.
Yup. I got the Mad Max game or $3 at a steam sale and it’s graphics and gameplay is just right.
I recently tried Star Wars Battlefront from 2015 on my PC and holy crap it looks good.
Some of the game industry followed the movie format: make a visual masterpiece with barely a plot or purpose.
Unlike the movie crowd, gamers usually want more depth and fun. Personally, I’ve been grabbing indie games with simple/pixel graphics and great gameplay.
I remember when Gears came out - it was made as a playable movie, and they did it well because it had a story line with characters we were invested in. Character deaths sucked, it was engaging, and it was unpredictable but comfortable.
Nothing wrong with the movie format, but you’ve got to tell the story.
Yep, offering more advanced graphics has always been a factor in gaming. But not the only one. I will never understand how much money a big company can spend, while ignoring the importance of writing, voice acting, and telling an impactful story.
I’ve put like 1000 hours each into Stardew Valley and Rimworld. Not a single ray traced, no advanced boob physics, just good fun.
I recently got Necesse and Oxygen not included. Each one has the potential for many many game hours.
That’s because games require some engagement/ investment. Even if avatar has a mid plot you can still turn your brain off and enjoy the spectacle. But you’re not going to put mental effort into learning a boss with shitty mechanics to “save the land” you barely care about.
They apparently are aiming for photorealism these days. That’s much harder than good anime graphics or good “dreamy painting” graphics. Also kinda harmful, even people without special conditions don’t feel too good after looking at such graphics.
Then stop making games with cutting edge graphics. I just want to play it on a steamdeck anyway.
The problem is all the AAA publishers just keep increasing budgets to keep up. This creates a situation where games are so expensive they can’t take risks, so they just follow a formula and are boring and generic. That’s how we’ve gotten to where we are now. AAA games are failing because their budgets are too large. They need to make more smaller, interesting and unique games rather than one massive budget game.
I have essentially fully turned away from AAA personally. Thinking about it, I can’t actually tell you the last one I played. Indie games are where all the good stuff is.
Same! Maybe builders gate 3 but they kind of straddle the line between aaa and indie.
For real. I’m just having a blast playing Hades right now.
Honestly. I prefer games that don’t make the steam deck use its fans.
What games accomplish that?
Aside from indies or 2D games I guess.
Yeah, that’s basically it.
Risk of Rain, Dungeon of the Endless. I can play DRG Survivor at 80% scale without triggering the fan.
Whereas BG3 turns on the fans for the title screen.
Hades is great.
This is a totally reasonable request yup.
Shooters with beard hair that waves in the wind but gunplay that sucks and broken physics.
Nailed it. Here I am playing Celeste on Pico-8 and loving it. Gameplay matters before graphics. This is why Nintendo has a loyal following despite their litigious ways.
But also graphics doesn’t necessarily mean crazy 3d graphics, pick any game by supergiant and it’s gorgeous with beautiful music and fun gameplay.
Know what you’re willing to invest in and make design choices to reflect that.
And hardware that’s GENERATIONS behind.
