The Forgotten Art of Game Design or Today's Gamers Only Pay Attention to Graphics?

And that's why I never leave the cathedral without purging stones, because it's not worth climbing out of the depths for anything other than the ember.

 

I figured that out now.

That's the joy of Dark Souls. The stuff is all there. I'd encountered purging stones a long time before I got to the depths. But of course I saw no practical use for them and ignore them. The game gives you all the tools to do things. But it doesn't take any time to hold your hand and point out which tools you should be using.

 

This is why you pick up anything not nailed down. Worst case you can always throw it out if you need something else.

 

Am an actually ever going to use all those hollow loin cloths that are cluttering up my bottomless box? I haven't thrown them away on principle. But scrolling through the entire box is a bit of a pain now.

 

I haven't actually gotten around to playing Dark Souls for more than a few minutes, but that's the way I learned to play some text adventure games. Magnetic Scroll's Wonderland game had a tendency to make items required and no way to backtrack to acquire them. Infocom was more forgiving but would occasionally do it too.

 

You do eventually get to sell your crap once you ring both the bells. By that point, the function is just there to clear out your inventory rather than making any money back.

I personally find the game is a little weird about that. Early on, the only time they give you items that are really useful when you get them is the gold pine resin in the upper undead burg which is useful against demons (all kinds of them, including the two in the undead burg). Later on it's not that uncommon to find enemies that drop purging stones fairly close to enemies that curse you, including a boss, but early on it does everything it can to separate healing items from where you need them. Oh, and if you don't have blooming purple moss (explicitly BLOOMING purple moss), don't go to Blighttown yet.

There are a bunch of cases of subtle hints, where something in the level is vaguely alluding to the fact that this will be useful on the boss, the gold pine resin being one example and an occult club that can be found later on is another. On one hand the game does provide the opportunity to experiment, but on the other experimenting can cost you, and ultimately the game doesn't think you need to.

 

I think that the hardware became so much better, and the game devs feel pressured to reach the limits of the current hardware, like they did with mario. And because the visual quality gets more and more distracting, the game design part becomes less important for the player at first. However! once the player starts playing the game, they will quit the game if they dont like the game design, and so game design is still very important part for us game devs.

 

I think there is more to it than just companys feeling obligated to reached hardware maximums (Which I am not denying may happen to an extent). The styles of the games and their art changes with each genre and style. The gameplay between a platformer and a open-world role-playing game are completely different as is the art that has to go into it. If Nintendo made another Super Mario Bros I highly doubt anyone would be expected them to to fully detail everything down to the dirt under Marios fingernails, because it is not apart of the SMB style.

Immersion is another factor that changes the art. A game like Skyrim or Call Of Duty is going for complete immersion of the player, and provided more realistic graphics allows for the player to easier relate to it and be immersed unlike the older graphics in the video you provided.

Graphics are more important to the designs of games these days because they serve more purposes now than just showing you where the player and enemies are.

 

That is an interesting point about immersion. I've never seen that connected to overall graphics style or quality. More to the flow. That continual feedback loop. It is the reason my girlfriend can play SMB or D3 for 3 hours and it feels like only 30 minutes have passed at most. She is so into the game so completely focused it is hard to imagine greater immersion than that.

 

These games are also something you and your girlfriend, I'm assuming since you still play them, are used to and have been playing for a long time. It's hard to imagine the newer generation growing up with newer games and still looking back like "That game is rad" (I'm not saying some won't) because they are used to much larger, more extensive games.

Games that are trying to be realistic like COD are expected by the consumer to provide the realism, including the graphics. As soon as a COD is released with 8-bit graphics, I'm sure that a majority of that community would be in an uproar. Unlike a game like SMB or Borderlands where the graphics can be lower quality or cartoon-ish because the experience trying to be delivered is different.

 

That is possible. I have a different view of games as far as how much realistic graphics matter. To me a COD in 8-bit is something that would likely get a lot of attention and quite possibly would be very popular. I'd probably still not play it because I haven't liked COD games since the PS2.

It's not that I don't appreciate larger "fancier" games or her either for that matter. We both like Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen a lot and she will happily bounce between SMB and DDDA. I have read a lot of Reddit and other forum threads regarding graphics in games from the perspectives of gamers. And the basic theme is that younger (teenage and perhaps low to mid 20s) players are much more focused on graphics and are also generally the ones talking about how bad or awesome a game looks. So maybe that has something to do with it because I am in my late 40s and my girlfriend is in her early 30s. I dunno really. It is a fairly complex subject because it is based on people and how they view things.

 

I agree with you, but I wonder if as I get older graphics matter less as my eyesight gets worse or whether I've gotten to the stage where graphics might still impress me initially but I wouldn't play or not play a game based on it. It seems to me that to many people won't play a game if it doesn't look good no matter how well it plays

 

It possibly would but I wouldn't play it either.

It definitely is a very subjective matter because some people prefer quality over quantity and some prefer the opposite. I personally don't want to play a game that looks like crap (Where they clearly put no effort in), but at the same time I'm not expecting the game to look like it would if was actually there. I spend my time analyzing the game play, and the story because those are what matter to me.

 

This isn't anything new though. People have been talking and complaining about graphics since they were worth seriously criticizing. When the debate was Sonic vs Mario, do you think graphics weren't a major part of the argument?

 

That is exactly how it is for me. When I see a game that looks superb of course I notice it. I appreciate it. Wow this looks awesome. But beyond that what does it actually matter? This is where I (and it sounds like you and of course many others) differ from the other group. Whether a game has a superb hi-def high quality look to it or not to me has absolutely nothing to do with it being a good game or a bad game.

I also don't know if I agree that it is mainly younger players so concerned about graphics despite what I read. If so, I think it would be more the late teen and 20s players. But I dislike grouping people by age because it is a really lousy way to do it that takes no account for individuality. I think there are a lot of early teen and even younger players who loved Minecraft and spend a lot of time playing games on Kongregate (for example) that have some pretty bad graphics although the game itself being quite fun.

I think it is more likely there are people who just don't put nearly as much importance on the graphic quality (as far as hi-def superbly drawn or modeled and textured) as others do. Just a personal preference. There are many people who grew up playing NES and older games who now hate how those games look and play. There are others who even playing them for the first time have a lot of fun. So... I think it always goes back to each individual. I hesitate to say that maybe some people can see beyond the graphics and others cannot because that makes it sound like I am saying yes we are the superior gamers! lol Safe to say different people put different weight on the graphics. There is no right or wrong it just depends on what is important to you. What you like and what you do not like.

 

I agree. Even 30 years ago it was common to hear "the graphics are out of this world!!" and others saying "who cares the game sucks!" and vice-versa. lol The only way I can explain it is different people focus on different things.

 

This comment made me think of something relating to dating. In my younger years, beauty was all about the outside, but as I have grown older and experienced more of the inner beauty from girlfriends (and now my wife) the outside is not as important.

Could it be that younger players just don't have the life experience to really appreciate good game design, and that makes it easy for game companies to hit a target market with good looking graphics.

 

I'm not so sure, I've seen the 3D market evolve into all or nothing (whether right or wrong).. They want amazing graphics, they want awesome gameplay, they want big worlds, they want an involving plot and they want it to be cheap and run on crap.

There has to be some give somewhere, I can say sure you can have that if our min specs are a GTX 980TI. But people wouldn't be satisfied with that, there was quite a lot of hoopla over the Witcher 3 graphics downgrade..

To me it still looks gorgeous, just as the Witcher 2 did. But again, there has to be some give (somewhere)...

AAA's are struggling with this concept, never mind us little Indie's.. Luckily, there's always games out there that prove an exception to the rule.!

Bethesda isn't well known for making good looking games, let's face it Fallout 3 looked crap.. Even when it got released, BUT! It sold very well and the gameplay was excellent. Hope isn't lost yet, I'll just try and make the best product I can (whether it looks next gen or not) .

 

Yeah I read some comments either on one of the game sites reviewing Witcher 3 or else on a YouTube video reviewing it and a few people were talking about how bad the graphics looked compared to what was shown in an earlier preview. Lots of comments to those saying the game still looks fantastic AND there is more to a game than graphics. But the biggest problem the gamers seemed to have is that earlier preview version looking much better. So, I think the smart thing might be to actually show some downgrade version of your game then surprise everyone with better graphics on the release day. I think people expect that to happen not the opposite to happen where an in-development game has these stunning graphics and then later after more work is done it is downgraded. lol

 

There was definitely a compromise, and they skewed for the open world. You can look at Arkham Knight as an example where they didn't compromise and ended up not understanding the bottleneck they clogged up. Loading stutter is probably costing more frames these days than lack of gpu power.

Speaking of compromise... the Witcher is a prime example for when the thing being compromised is the budget. The graphics are terrible (to the point where everything looks like an eldritch abomination, even before the eldritch abominations show up), the controls are full of problems that frequently come down to bad colliders and weird pathing, and generally suffers from a host of design flaws (some of which it probably inherited from the engine). By most people's expectations, it feels like a game that got half way through beta before it shipped. It has issues you will likely come across every time you play, to the point where shadows cast by the sun and moon are off angle by about thirty degrees. And yet, I am told that somewhere underneath all this is a poorly translated, poorly voice-acted gem of a narrative (I'm holding out till chapter four, but so far chapter 2 is about five hours too long).

 

For 2008, crap is not the word I would use. I would say mediocre. They weren't high quality but they weren't crap at the same time. Bethesda is definitely one of the diamonds in the dirt though that focus more on the gameplay and story than the graphics. At the same time they don't have to because of the GECK and the Creation Kit. Why spend millions getting superb graphics when the community will do it for themselves for free?

I think this model needs to extend to other games and genres (The modding) on a larger scale. After then I feel the companies can spend more time on the game play and the whole issue of graphics will solve itself. If players want stock graphics then can use the stock graphics. If they want 8-bit, they can make a texture pack or download one. High Resolution? Model Overhaul? It'll surely be out there somewhere.

But that's just my two pennies... I love modding. What does everyone else think?

 

@Magnite7

Fallout 3 was a bad example, damn I forgot how old it is.. Doesn't time fly. Skyrim wasn't much better though and Crysis 2 got released around the same time, I've NEVER seen anything come out of Unity that looks as good as C2.

So let me flip the discussion on it's head, Crysis 2 was developed in 2007. It's based on tech nearly 8 years old, so is it that gamers only pay attention to graphics, or is it that many can't compete with things being developed nearly a decade ago?

It's a sign of quality, if a PC game looks old on first impressions. It shouts signs of inadequacies, if they can't manage graphics from a decade ago then what else are they skimping on?

 

These games are also developed on two completely different engines that were designed for different purposes. The Creation Engine was built with a focus more towards role-playing games and game play because they knew that the modding community would make the game look or feel how they wanted it to after the game is released. And this is something that Todd Howard has even said. They never needed to make a huge push for graphics because the communities would do it for themselves.

I'm sure people can compete with Crysis 2 especially since the engine it was built with is available for commercial use. I just don't think there is a need to go as far over the top as Crysis 2 did. Remember, Crysis 2 was built as a showcase for the power of CRYENGINE3 therefore they had the need to go all out and make it look as good as possible. It would be bad marketing for the engine if they made a game with just "alright" graphics when they have potential for so much more.

And you have a good point, if a company can't manage mediocre graphics for that time period then there is definitely something wrong.

 

I'm gonna stop you there because that kind of comes off as PC elitism. When a game is clearly skewing toward a style-less, "realistic" effect (just pick any zombie survival game), then that is typically good grounds to assume something is fishy.

Generally speaking though, game development is zero sum. You only have so much of a budget that gets divvied up across the components of the game. If the graphics are terrible, there is probably something done exceptionally well. Likewise you can have a FFXIII with great graphics, while the rest of the game will be a steaming pile of S***.

 

It's nothing to do with PC "Elitism" and you're taking a massive gamble that something else is going to be good. I'm not saying that shiny looking games equates to a fun game (like FF13). I'm not sure what Square Enix's problem is, they seem to chuck money at the wall whilst they purposely try to make games ridiculously simple and mind bogglingly off the wall for no real reason.

But the game is only as strong as it's lowest common denominator and if the graphics suck, it shows to me a lack of effort on their part.

End of the day, end users don't care you're an Indie, they don't care what engine you use and they don't care about your budget or your skillset.. They want a good end product..

 

And yet I have never heard of any reviewer that gives final scores to games based on what the lowest aspect's score is. People can, and usually do, overlook what's bad to find what is good once they try it. Not many people seem to mind that Micheal Bay films have terrible stories and terrible acting, so he makes money hand over fist.

The real reason graphics need to be good is for marketing. When the only thing people have to judge a game are screenshots, it's helpful if they standout. At that point every other aspect of the game is effectively a pot of leprechaun gold that could disappear at any moment, while the graphics are something you can already judge.

At the very least, I don't think I've ever heard of someone quitting a game because the graphics were bad (seizure inducing maybe, but not bad). In-game, graphics have almost no bearing on play, or at least no negative impact to play. The point of graphics is to inform on the state of play, Minecraft being an excellent example in that it informs you of the state of the world for which you play with. So long as they fulfill that function, the graphics are just the conveyors for the underlying gameplay model's state.

 

But I have heard of many reviewers including a 1/10 scale for graphics, which ultimately can pull down the overall score. I'll agree marketing is a strong proponent for graphics, but it's also a part of cohesion and immersion.

Minecraft is a one off, nothing more. You can't base the whole games industry around one product...

It seems to me like you're trying to justify a lack of effort in graphical development, there is obviously a lot of common sense involved in this. Diablo 3 isn't going to look like a realistic FPS, but there's been a lot of effort put into it..

I've seen 3D side scrollers come out for console that stylistically look amazing. There are no excuses for crap looking graphics, the only place where it is difficult to achieve is in open world games as you'll have to use dynamic lighting. The trade off is that it's heavier and it doesn't look as good..

End of the day, I'm not saying that graphics are the sum of all the parts.. Look at the mediocrity the Order 1886 put itself in, it's about balancing everything in a game to achieve a vision and putting the effort into all areas to achieve it.

Again, there are no excuses.

 

What I am trying to justify is looking at where the effort was actually put in. Game development is zero sum, and you can only allocate so many resources. Working on one area robs from another. There is only so much time and money that can go into a project, and shipping is the most important thing that has to be delivered. This is a jack of all trades mentality that is destructive in it's own way.

In an ideal world the target would probably be to aim for competent with anything that isn't of the utmost importance for the experience that's trying to be delivered. The reality is that even hitting mediocre usually takes away from the primary focus enough to negatively impact it. Too many people are accustomed to AAA art which typically start at having 200+ hands work on it continuously for at least two years. Even medium sized studios can't compete with that size of an asset pipeline, and attempting to compete is to the detriment of every other aspect of the game. Maybe you make a game with a similar asset density, but without repeating assets to the point that it's telling, you end up having to severely reduce the scale and length of the game.

I have a problem with people judging games on what they aren't trying to be. If a game is presenting you gorgeous vistas, coming to the conclusion that graphics are sub-par after doing some texture licking is asinine. Seeing tons of palette swaps isn't bad if it actually serves to inform gameplay and helps expand upon it. If a game manages to do something phenomenally, it should still be worthy of praise even if much of it is otherwise flawed.

 

Edit: I'll try not to waffle:

In short, you keep saying GD is zero sum but talented indie's prove that wrong constantly (Vanishing of Ethan Carter (3 guys now 8), Torchlight (IMO better than Diablo 3), a new game in Alpha that looks very promising (made by one guy) called Allison road), PAMELA, some of them both graphically and in terms of gameplay put AAA to shame. (I could go on)..

AAA artwork is just artwork, it's the same workflow accessible by any semi-competent artist. What AAA can do is more of it faster, although this has also proven a misnomer. It's becoming noise as opposed to adding anything relevant to visual enhancement.

Finally having one strong point in a game is expecting a commercial spiral of decline, yeah the UI is great but the rest of it sucks, sure the animations are great but the graphics are rubbish.

I've never seen a professionally made game not try to balance everything out. As a customer I'd be severely disappointed if they didn't try to make the best in all areas, as an Indie I know what small teams should be capable of.

 

Yes, with a skilled and experienced artist, programmer, and a full-time sound engineer/composer, it's possible for them to spend several years to make a good looking, nice sounding, and well playing game. Rarely do any of these games ever do anything noteworthy. At best they deliver competency for ten hours, but I have to ask: what's the point? What merit is there to something that is just alright?

Once in a blue moon you get a Bastion that does do something of note, but everything that isn't a part of the audio and narrative is merely passable for the limited time you play it. When you don't have skilled artists yet still make something of note, you end up with Mount and Blade. You end up with something that looks terrible and repeats assets everywhere, yet it's not uncommon to play it for two hundred hours. It's a game with two hundred hours worth of gameplay, but five minutes worth of mediocre art.

 

They didn't take several years, some took one or two years only. Which is a great thing don't you agree?

All I'm trying to do is play devil's advocate here as the question was, do gamers only pay attention to graphics? No I don't believe they do, but they expect a certain standard. In which if they're paying for it they probably should.

Personally I'm not a graphics snob, didn't play M&B but used to be an avid fan of C&C. I do have a limit though, I can't play FF7 any more (I loved it at one point) it didn't age well. Even though I like modern shinies, I'd much prefer to play Seiken Densetsu (2D, Secret of Mana) than play FF7.

I also still think Dragon Age Origins looks pretty good, most don't seem to agree with me on that one though ..

P.S if only we could get more games based on winning formula's, at this point I'd settle for good games as opposed to original ones.

 

That kind of goes back to the marketing thing. If you sit people down to play a game blind (foreknowledge blind, not gouged out eyes blind), they would probably ignore the visuals to get to what's underneath. It's just that in a lineup, people are trying to filter out what seems worthwhile. People do judge books based on the cover.


DA:O did not leave a good impression to me. A good chuck of it was just the palette, and the rest of it was all the specular mapping. I found it a bit too common during that period to see specular used where it shouldn't be or overblown (skin being the biggest offender). Haven't played it in ages (hell, I never even finished it) so my memory of what it was like is iffy, but the camera was not the best for trying to show off pretty graphics.

I generally don't care much for arguing whether a game's graphics are good because it's usually a matter of tastes and perspective. I find Skyrim striking, but I seem to be in the minority since everyone seems to want to play it with the entire game-world smeared in vaseline using some post-processing FX mod.

 

Issue is most people have eyes, immersion and cohesion matter a lot in visual mediums. Just like mixing a song to be clear and high definition to me sounds better.. Of course there are people who say things are "too sterile", no matter what you do someone will argue.

Whilst marketing as said is a proponent, it's only a small part of it. Which people can argue it until they're blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is you'll get lower sales if the graphics are worse.. Whether that's right or wrong is another matter, although it's not a risk I'm willing to take. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to beat state of the art here just leverage what's available to me.

Hmmm Skyrim... It was really meant to be a more realistic venture and when playing the dev hat screamed out.. The artwork was sloppy (bad texturing, poor UV mapping in areas, rocks that looked like oddly deformed rectangles). The lighting was poor, the post effects weren't great and the shaders were ummm yeah and the animations were laughable.

In spite of that it had good cohesion, it didn't look bad per-say but that's one game where the graphics would of suited being better. Manufaktura4K worked on Witcher3 and it looks a hell of a lot better, his stuff has been around for years as well.

But as a game I really enjoyed it, as an experience it fit together well.. Plus it sold like mad and had a lot to do without being OTT.

 

The problem with immersion is that it's usually used by people who don't understand what immersion really is. Something I've heard enough times is people talking about how not being able to enter every door in a city hurts their immersion, because then the door is just for decoration, and there clearly isn't anything behind it, so it's all an illusion, and oh dear god I'm playing a videogame... You just have to gloss over the fact that if they were really immersed, they wouldn't go into any random house because that would be trespassing. So in a funny way, the person's notion of immersion already includes the acceptance that they are in a game, otherwise they would carry over notions of morality and law.

Now that I think about it, visuals alone aren't that good at drawing people into the magic circle. Visuals are pretty poor at drawing out old memories, something that smell is supposed to be the best at, but hearing can do fairly competently. This is the reason why the leitmotif is a thing, because audio is good at establishing emotional associations and re-evoking them. Visuals almost universally don't to this, and worse yet they can be ignored. Visuals are good at establishing a boundary, but those require conscience input to properly cross, which audio evocation doesn't require (this suddenly started to sound like I'm talking about actual magic).

Well, that was a bit of a tangent.

 

Thing is I've seen plenty of games openly berated for their graphics (not by a few people either), so are you part of a minority? Or am I missing something here?

It wouldn't be a question in the first place if there wasn't something to it.

 

I don't want to disrupt your dialogue with @RockoDyne because it is an interesting read. Just wanted to say that you may notice the games getting criticized for "bad" graphics and it makes more of an impression on you because it resonates with your belief system. The same as when I see a modern retro style game making a lot of sales I notice that and it has more meaning to me than a sparkling AAA making great sales. Because the former resonates with my belief that a great game can have even primitive graphics. It's that confirmation bias thing. Gotta love how people want to label everything. I don't see it as confirmation bias although am not opposed to people using that term. I see it as just common sense. We see what we look for. We notice what is important to us, the things that align with our beliefs.

Anyway, it's not that one should not try to make the best presentation possible but that given a choice between allocating time and other resources to gameplay or presentation I would choose gameplay if I am making a game. At the end any remaining time and resources can be focused on polishing the presentation. On the other hand, if I was out to make a graphics demo of what an engine (or team) could do I would hire a fantastic artist and all resources would be focused on making the greatest presentation possible and at the end try to wrap it into something more as needed.

 

It's nothing to do with beliefs really, I'll use singing as an example. There will always be people who "believe" they can sing even though they're tone def, but the majority will know they suck an that's not really a debate. Even though it's an "art form" they're either in tune or not which is more of a technical matter.

We use the world around us as a point of reference, even if it's stylistic or not. We subconsciously understand colour pallets and light sources, again some that are completely ignorant to that but again they're a Minority. In short, people should be able to tell the difference between good and bad graphics and if you can't well said indie is probably not in the right industry.

I do think older gamers are more forgiving, we grew up with games no where near as pretty as today. But even since conception the goal primarily in graphics has been to improve..

Where the lines divide is style, as long as the visual input is of a quality nature it becomes preference. Some prefer stylistic, some prefer 2D and some prefer realistic, nobody is right or wrong there.

 

I don't disagree with this. This is not the same thing I was replying to though. You were talking about seeing many games where the graphics were berated. That is possibly because you notice that more. I might read the same comments and focus on a bit that mentions "the game is a ton of fun".

 

Sorry, I get you.. It was hard not to notice, the first 50 or so comments only mentioned how the graphics sucked.. Nobody actually mentioned how the games play. So as a developer, what's one to think of that?

 

Having seen your work around the forum in your case I'd probably think okay I am going to do these graphics as quickly as possible because even my fast "bad" graphics will be fine for the journey to get onto Steam Greenlight or Kickstarter or an early WIP demo then I can focus on building the game. After you get support and hopefully some funding then you will make these graphics shine as good as the rest of the game and blow people away.

 

At the very least I find little merit in the "graphics can always look better" argument. Technically it's true (hell, it's always true), but performance can always be crappier and the draw distance can always be shorter and the number of assets can be fewer and... To me it's more off putting to hear assets are repeated a lot, although that comes with the territory of being an explorer. My general view is assume everything was deliberate. Assume everything that shipped was done to the best of their ability with what constraints were present.

 

Funding isn't a problem, it's a personal thing. I prefer working in a small team, I enjoy doing things myself.. I've done realistic rendering tech demo's before and arch viz, I can make it as realistic as one would like without too much effort (dependant on performance factors). It's not really the issue:

In truth I agree with @RockoDyne on some things, artwork is a massive time suck. Sure I could employ another 50 artists (for a short time), but again I've been down that path and it was more hassle than it was worth. So I'll spend longer on it and do it the way I want to, when it starts feeling like drudgery and working to live I'll give it up.

@RockoDyne

I have seen the min specs spike horrifically this generation and it's only going to get worse with engines like UE4..

 

Just the load times on console are telling when it seems apparent to me that it's mostly from pulling eight gigs of data (when/if uncompressed) off of the disc and shoving it into memory. This then leads to more streaming, but then the biggest limiters are the buses which Moore's law hasn't favored. Another issue is that artists don't have the same pressure to be conservative that they used to have. *theatrics*8K textures might seem a little extravagant, but 4K and 2K should be a minimum right?*/theatrics*

 

Lots of interesting stuff here I'd love to reply to, but for now I'll just point out that complaining about graphics doesn't mean you'll refuse to play graphically mediocre or "poor" games. I have a radeon 290X, I think graphics can be very important, but that doesn't stop me from playing FF VIII or Grow Home or something.

 

Okay I understand that. And yeah that is what I was getting at when making the thread. Why so much emphasis on graphics (actually presentation in general) all of the time? I get putting some effort into it. What I don't get is continually bringing the ever more powerful hardware to its knees, churning out masses of fluff content to fill up the hard drives and increase waiting times and so forth. To me it shows an emphasis on the wrong stuff.

 

It's kind of like when 360 and PS3 came out and same or better level of PC graphics cards. People talked about all of the amazing power and how developers could now for the first time make whatever they wanted. Of course, I heard the same thing for previous generations. And same thing for PS4 and One and any all new graphics card and other tech for PCs. What do I think whwn I read these things? "Nope. It won't be a game changer at all. They're just going to fill up all of the space with higher res graphics and more of em. More speech acting. More movies. It is the same outcome every time. No matter how powerful the hardware becomes devs will overload it with presentation. The more room that is available the more crap they will shove in. The more rendering power available the higher the polygon counts and texture sizes will be. lol

 

Well this is the interesting discussion, optimisation and hardware has had a positive and negative impact. Worlds are bigger requiring lighting technology that cripples hardware, more stuff is put in games for the sake of it "to create immersion" which is silly because I'm pretty sure my back yard doesn't have 63 variations of rocks.

Forget the N00B curve for a second, artwork has remained the same for decades pretty much. The only thing that's really changed is hardware / art budgets and graphics tech, because whilst ray-tracing / photon mapping etc. has been available for decades now, were still no-where near the stage it can be run real-time. But expectation is pushing us in this direction, why was there a need for VXGI? Really?

What all this has lead to is expense and time, which equates to less focus on the game itself. From a AAA standpoint, I agree they are focusing on all the wrong things. From an Indie standpoint being honest in a lot of cases they need to work in the opposite direction.

Although this brings things into my age old argument, if the tools are available in-engine so you don't have to mess around with tech all the time. Then that time is freed up for the game at hand right?

 

Tell that to DA Inquisition, The Witcher 3, even AC unity with its insane crowds (though of course the game's horrible state at launch must be mentioned), or FF XV. There are definitely games that use the more powerful hardware for technical or gameplay advancements, even if most don't.

Incidentally all of these games manage to look great, but they also have huge open worlds, a franchise first in some cases, that brings the lore and world to life in a completely new way.

 

What is the most advanced game now for AAA in terms of gameplay? Considering play mechanics and world size for example. I'd like to compare that game to Minecraft or some older games on PS2, N64 and so forth and see just how much things have progressed beyond presentation.

 

So when was the last time you exploited an enemy's inability to pathfind? Or a simple AI that was easy to exploit and manipulate? Or played a game having little, if any, persistence, like when the vile anti-camera revives enemies just because they went off screen?