The Gaming Industry's Losing Bet on Realistic Graphics

[Bruce]

Quotes from an article in today's New York Times (I provide a gift article link below, but I don't know if it will work in this venue):

"Video game graphics have become hyperrealistic over the past four decades, with companies pouring money into the technology.

"But in recent years, the visual upgrades have had diminishing returns. They are less apparent to players and an expensive commitment for studios.

"The industry, which was hit with layoffs and studio closures this year, is now wondering whether a longtime marketing tool is instead a financial liability.

"There are a number of theories why gamers have turned their backs on realism. One hypothesis is that players got tired of seeing the same artistic style in major releases. Others speculate that cinematic graphics require so much time and money to develop that gameplay suffers, leaving customers with a hollow experience."

The author mentions the success of low-graphic quality games like Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite. In a comment that I posted, I included Sundew Valley.

The gameplay is the thing, not the graphics. Sundew Valley is one of the most enjoyable and absorbing games that I have ever played due to its story, features, and challenges. Its pixelated graphic quality has gone from being a non-factor to actually charming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/arts/video-games-graphics-budgets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kU4.hZjg.mNlRqjAtFyh2&smid=url-share

[ChrillBill]

There are many layers to this, one is that gaming is supposed to be an escape from reality so when things look too realistic, it is having the opposite effect despite the world the game takes place in (which might be a fantasy world). A good example of this was FF15, despite being a buggy mess upon release, there were also a lot of references to our world while still trying to mix it up with the usual fantasy elements present in the series. This divided the audience quite a bit. I happen to like the game, it's quite beautiful and has a OK story. But I can also understand the criticism as it does not feel like a traditional FF game. Despite liking it, it made me long for some of the older titles in the series which I feel has left a deeper impact. They might not have looked as "pretty", but they were good nostalgic games which is usually the ones you remember the most.

And that's another point, like the article mentions but which I would like to elaborate on;
You can usually tell when the hyper realistic graphics are the main selling point, which is very disappointing because while a trailer and other marketing strategies can make the title look exciting, it usually says very little about the actual gameplay - which may be crap. Crap that they tried to cover up with beautiful character models as well as environments. This is not what gamers in general wants.

We want well developed games that leaves an impact.

Another factor is the economy. Have games ever been this expensive? When times are tough, I think many people tend to look elsewhere to find something enjoyable in terms of games. Many people have actually discovered new enjoyable genres as well as indie developers this way. Stardew Valley is a great example of this too I think, and also how you can use a simple concept, and turn it into something amazing.

Now, there are some really good titles out there as well that are using high end graphics. I think Baldurs Gate 3 is a good example of this - it looks beautiful but it is also a very entertaining game in pretty much every aspect (combat, story, roleplaying etc). At the end of the day, it usually boils down to balance and management I think. A studio might do well in maybe cutting the budget for the graphics, so that the actual story and gameplay don't suffer because they ran out.

On the other hand, pixelated and cartoonish looking games has also fallen back into being trendy, which I think is a quite natural process. You see this with pretty much everything - movies, fashion and even music. So like I mentioned at the beginning, there are many layers here and therefore it can be hard to pinpoint exactly why.

Personally I think it is a mix of everything.

[red255]

OK, this article, I believe is due to the recent failures of several triple A releases, notably,

Dragon age the veilguard, concord, a bunch of ubisoft releases, skull and bones, Star wars outlaws, the upcoming assasins creed brotherhood. Suicide squad.

there are likely more I'm missing.

but you got a game studio like sony, spending 8 years to get out a hero shooter clone, and apparently 400 million dollars? yes it failed.

the issue wasn't the graphics, the issue was the team they had working on it, didnt know what they were doing so they made a product and after 4 years they had to outsource to people who knew what they were doing to make a passable product over the next 4 years.

we can get into the political reasons why they hired people to make a triple A game for 4 years who didn't know what they were doing. why it took them 8 years to make a hero shooter. but 8 years dev time on a game chasing a trend is insane.

Dragon age's graphic were nice. apparently nice vistas to stare at, the characters you wanted to die, but needed to slog thru a 70 hour game grind to murder them all. I do not know why they saddled you with unlikable characters.

Game itself is actually fine, if you cut out 50 outs of grind.

the issu again is the years of production of 'content' forcing them to price the game at a premium, for a game thats generously 15 hours of enjoyment. and thn they padded the game to try and justify it.

the issue isn't the graphics its the bloated dev team and duration to build the games.

the issue is the studio themselves. Ideally the gamee should be made of a team of like 50 people who know what they want to make, know how to make it and get it done.

instead these studios employ thousands for making a product over the course of 8 years they might not even still be at the company when it releases.

theres no OWNERSHIP of anything. its all a business transaction.

[ChrillBill]

I also want to add, that realism can mean different things in this regard. You have realistic graphics, environments and character models. Then you also have certain elements that are typical for our world, like certain politics for example. I think when you start incorperating too much of our world in that sense, and also into games where it really doesn't belong or make much sense - people will turn away from it. Red brought up Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which I have finished through and through on PS5.

It is a beautiful game, but the writing could have been so much better. I won't dive deeper into that here, but I can see that this is happening a lot today in the gaming industry where you kinda forgot about the actual execution and perhaps also had too many writers trying to come together as one (which in itself can be extremely difficult).

[Coffee Addict]

good ol sundew valley, love that game

[Sstavix]

I had read something similar around a decade ago (maybe longer) from a Nintendo executive. He was saying that the graphics of a game are getting to the point where everything is looking realistic. As a result, the players will start focusing more on the gameplay and the story, rather than the look.

Which kind of explains Nintendo's philosophy, really....

But this was said at the time before VR and when graphics really started to get hyper-realistic. Yet the message remains the same. We've long since passed the time where players are completely overwhelmed by how a game looks. The appearance of the game is a nice feature, but I think players are more interested in how a game is played than how it looks. As we can see games like Stardew and Terraria, you don't need to have hyper-realistic, extra polished, system-straining graphics to make a great game. A good game still needs to have a nice look, but at the same time I don't think it should be the #1 priority when making a game.

But I'm not a game developer, so what do I know?

[EleventhStar]

just reading the quotes from the article they are massively missing the mark as is expected from journalists these days.

the closest they got is when they say it costs a lot of time and money, but then they somehow didn't make the leap to exporting that work to cheap labor countries which is already a common industry practice.

but technical aspects are only a minor part of budget bloat in western AAA game studios.

[NBOX21]

While I do agree that the push for realistic graphics is taking away from the most important aspect of a game, that being fun gameplay itself, it is far from the only thing holding many newer AAA games back from their full potential and any chances of success they could've had.

Many games nowadays also have no respect for the players' time or intelligence and instead constantly hold your hand throughout, barely letting you experiment on your own to figure out the way forward, putting priority on other things like highly cinematic cutscenes or flashy visuals that don't add to the interactive game experience at all and are just to make them look nice even if the game's mechanics are very shallow.

Whereas games like Stardew Valley, Terraria and Minecraft, as well as older games like Tomb Raider and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, just drop you right in and expect you to figure things out on your own like a proper video game. Finding secrets or hidden areas, as well as learning more advanced techniques felt special and rewarding as you were the one that went out of your way to discover them yourself, making it feel like you've grown as a player. I'm still learning new things about this game now even with over 600 hours spent playing.

But these games also had fun mechanics that make playing them enjoyable in their own way. They invoke the imagination of those that play them and allow players to immerse themselves in the game world while they play. I highly doubt that the games I listed above would've been as successful or popular as they were if they didn't have the gameplay side of things going for them.

That's not even mentioning how a lot of publishers tend to focus more on the monetisation aspect of their games over a satisfying progression structure that rewards those that invest their time into it. The only paid extra Stardew Valley has is the OST.

[Hiroko]

Its actually incredibly simple. If the game sucks, the graphics don't matter. If the game is good, the graphics don't matter. They just don't matter. People play games for gameplay. Gasp!

All these article 'writers' know that of course, but job security has them writing fake news and sensationalism. They're as much a dirty leech on the gaming industry as diversity hires. Don't read them. Don't visit their web pages (generating ad revenue). Give them 0 support. If your super cool poe2 dev team announces that they let article writers have an early addition of the game 'for review purposes' call out the bs practice. Let that entire market die out. They're seriously such a bad influence on games. Random people on the internet will do 1000x better work for free without fail every single time, because they are actually invested in the game and not a job.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Hiroko:

If the game is good, the graphics don't matter. They just don't matter. People play games for gameplay. Gasp!

there is absolutely a quality floor for graphics.

if put a god tier game from my childhood into my pc it'll look so horrendous it's unplayable. 640x480 graphics with inverted colors, yeah the quality is going to affect your enjoyment, even your ability to play at all.

same with stuff like pong or tetris, timeless games but nobody plays them on the original graphics anymore. or take MS-DOS games you can play in your browser nowdays, they all have upscaled resolution.

it's also hard to deny updated graphics aren't the primary selling point of remasters.

[Meteorange]

A Stardew Valley like open-world game is still my dream.