How Modern Game Engines Degraded — And Who’s to Blame?

Probably a combination of multitude of factors, such as:
- Insane cost of game dev nowadays
- Complimentary to the point above - very long dev times for AAA games
- Having a proprietary game engine isn't cost effective
- The vast majority choosing "easy to use - hard to master" UE5 engine. It's a great engine - but many just either don't have the knowledge, capability or time to properly optimize their games leading to awful experiences such as unoptimized mess, stutters, inferior tech etc.
- Physics and AI, while nice to have - just don't interest most people so directing dev resources to such features probably ain't really worth it
 
That was a whole lot of uneducated nonsense. UE5 is perfectly capable and state of the art. It doesn't mean it will magically optimize the software built on it, nor does any engine.

No one is coding to the metal anymore except for some big-brained indie devs and maybe Nintendo's A-team.
 
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Fuck RTX, Lumen, Nanite and fuck Tim Sweeney.

Fuck yellow paint and desaturated colors, fuck having half the level being covered in ugly fog.

Fuck deferred rendering and fuck off with those false transparencies that even the Sega Saturn would be able to dab on.

I hope for modern AAA games to go back to the good times of building and using custom engines:

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Check out those vivid colors and that crisp and clear image output. Meanwhile lots of current-day games are blurry has hell. Fuck that shit.

Imo this is how modern games should look like and specially RUN LIKE. My PS4 was able to run this at almost constant 60fps.
What the hell is going on with modern devs?

Purple hair is now a minority?
Got a chuckle out of me lol
 
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it's not just the engines. it's the imaginations of the larger developers that've degraded, also. something even properly functional engines can't correct or make up for, imo...
 
The problem is that it's not just the engine. The engine fucking sucks. We know that, and I don't think it's worth debating. But it's not just that - it's a lot of the dev teams in AAA these days that frankly aren't up to the task. It's also the management in AAA. And it's the priorities in both gameplay and visual design. They seem oblivious to why people like video games in the first place. It's a mess.

My hope is that indie teams (the ones more focused on bigger, more ambitious productions) will eventually see value in rolling their own engine as that whole development scene goes more upscale and the devs get more experienced. Right now, there's not an obvious need for it other than that Unreal absolutely sucks, but I dunno. Maybe there'll be a need for a more performant, bespoke solution as priorities shift towards supporting more handheld devices. Wishful thinking, I suppose.
 
Most of the western studios filled their ranks not with actual, deserving talents but witless idiots, who think themselves really smart. And we can see the results clearly.

As much as I wanna stay neutral about UE5, I really don't like the monopolization of UE5. Monopolization may seem good but it isn't on this matter. On the other hand UE is just a tool. It is up to devs to actually work/learn with the damn thing.

But I cannot hate enough the shader, travel stutter of UE5. Disgusting.
 


Unreal Engine 5 has been around for many years. A lot of projects have been made on it, but developers still can't master it.Even five years after the release of this engine, we still get unoptimized games that don't work well even on top-of-the-line PCs.Have developers really not learned how to create games on Unreal Engine after all these years? Or is this a problem with all modern engines and technologies? And most importantly, why were developers able to do 15 years ago what modern developers are unable to do?

India.
 
Most of the western studios filled their ranks not with actual, deserving talents but witless idiots, who think themselves really smart. And we can see the results clearly.

As much as I wanna stay neutral about UE5, I really don't like the monopolization of UE5. Monopolization may seem good but it isn't on this matter. On the other hand UE is just a tool. It is up to devs to actually work/learn with the damn thing.

But I cannot hate enough the shader, travel stutter of UE5. Disgusting.
I think there is an overall narcissistic tendency in western culture (cyclical) where the person sees themselves as far far superior to what they produce (how they build games as far more important to what they actually deliver) sometimes.
 
Infinite stack of middleware. Infinite level of abstraction.
This is true. And plagues almost all branches of software dev. You can see it in its most extreme manifestation in web dev, however, where fucking React, which is a framework for Javascript, has some frameworks for it to make it "simpler". It's literally stacking towers of shit.

Elite computer science grads are making 3x in other industries.
This is also true. And you get much saner working hours in other industries as well.
 
I feel like there was a great reset after 2020. They had to regress games across the board to make costs and development time more sustainable.

I believe this is why games coming out today aren't as good or as advanced as their predecessors from even the early 2000's. I.e i l think there's more depth and things going on in Mass Effect than Starfield...
 
The problem is not modern game engines, it is one modern game engine, that being UE5. It's a piece of shit. Companies that use their own custom technology put out games that look better and run better without the technical issues. They may not have the same checklist of features but who cares if it comes at such a cost.
Its a piece of shit for its intention which is to be a widely used, scalable mass market product.

When you get the real engine designers/developers in it they can get some good results but considering it markets itself as "just click Lumen on and all works" its pretty hotshit and a bloated mess.

Bespoke engines have always produced better results. Renderware UE5 is not

Edit: Essentially when we do an analysis in the future of what truly went wrong with this gen of gaming its gonna be apparent that certain devs outed themselves as artist driven studios, developer secondary studios.
 
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The problem is not modern game engines
Have you ever developed any game? -> If no, then why do you think you have any expertise to judge engines?
You know how to play games, but you know jack shit about engines or development.
, it is one modern game engine, that being UE5. It's a piece of shit.
Have you ever developed a game with Unreal Engine 5? -> If no, then why do you think YOU have any expertise to judge this?
Did you know alot of VR indie games are made with UE5 and they run with 90 and even 120fps at 4000x2040 resolution without any problems?
Of course you didnt, because you are too dumb to realize that the problems you are complaining about only happen with AAA games and have nothing to do with the engine.
Companies that use their own custom technology put out games that look better and run better without the technical issues.
Have you ever developed a modern custom engine? -> If no, then why do you think YOU have any expertise to judge this?
Cyberpunk 2077 ran so well with their custom engine that they had to spend 125$m to fix it. Most studios dont survive a disaster like that.
They may not have the same checklist of features but who cares if it comes at such a cost.
See this is your problem, you only see your OWN cost but you are completely oblivious that there is a cost for studios too.
- Most studios and publishers are unwilling to drain their finances for a custom engine that might never work as well as UE5!
- Most studios and publishers will have a hard time to find enough experienced people while UE devs are easily available.
- Most studios and publishers dont want to wait years before their custom engine has matured enough.
- Most studios and publishers dont want to develop their game and engine at the same time, as that can lead to alot of dev overhead and bugs.

I have worked with more than 10 different engines in my lifetime in a professional capacity, including UE1-5, CryEngine, and various Custom engines.
It is rarely the engine´s fault if a game runs badly, it is pretty much always the publisher being unwilling to pay for optimization.
So you sir talk out of your damn ass!
 
I haven't built my new machine just yet, but I still play some games on my 1070 Ti and it's like running on a garbage can at times. Then I remind myself that I like old games too, performance wasn't something to focus too hard on, and how I didn't think about this race to just run a game decently. Now I'm thinking about it and the more it really hinders my experience. The less optimized a game is, the less I can compliment the game. Be that my own fault for waiting forever to upgrade or picking a game cause I meet the minimum specs. I've dropped more game lately that met my machine's specs just because it was optimized like garbage. As someone who played console for 30+ years it's almost impossible to appreciate the same aspects in a PC game unless it came from a godly developer.
 
We can also not buy games that run like shit.

That's ineffective. Refusing to buy games that are built on Unreal isn't going to have a meaningful impact (and publishers aren't going to connect the dots as to that being the reason), and there's not really a viable alternative. Frankly, we're stuck. Until there are compelling reasons why developers can't use Unreal engine (inability to target important endpoints or something), it's going to keep getting used.
 
That's ineffective. Refusing to buy games that are built on Unreal isn't going to have a meaningful impact (and publishers aren't going to connect the dots as to that being the reason), and there's not really a viable alternative. Frankly, we're stuck. Until there are compelling reasons why developers can't use Unreal engine (inability to target important endpoints or something), it's going to keep getting used.
Yeah yeah, I didn't mean it as of that's going to fix the issue. I'll just don't buy poorly-optimized games.

There's already 30+ years of videogames behind us. I'd rather get those for cheap than spend 70-80 bucks on a half-finished game that runs like crap while looking all blurry.
 
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Yeah yeah, I didn't mean it as of that's going to fix the issue. I'll just don't buy poorly-optimized games.

There's already 30+ years of videogames behind us. I'd rather get those for cheap than spend 70-80 bucks on a half-finished game that runs like crap while looking all blurry.

Right on - I'm in the same boat, honestly. Actually, I've been meaning to build a dedicated Windows XP gaming PC because I want a good excuse to go back and play the games I missed from an era where things weren't so damn broken. We didn't know how good we had it.
 
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We can also not buy games that run like shit.
Hahahaha yes, I´m sure publishers will care about a few lost sales from hardcore players when the mainstream keeps buying it regardless.
Once most studios have switched to UE5 you will cry in a corner for not having any AAA games to play.
Here´s where you will end up at in the future - but replace MW2 Boycott with UE5:

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And most importantly, why were developers able to do 15 years ago what modern developers are unable to do?
I don't really think that was the difference you think it was.
UE3 performance was largely a complete disaster for an entire generation of consoles, and when developers started switching to CryEngine (that 'was' a trend in late 00s) the story repeated again just with a different engine.
PS4 era was only better because we had one 3rd party middleware that was actually designed to be lightweight out of the box - so at least smaller games performed better (those that didn't run on UE4 anyway).
 
Fuck RTX, Lumen, Nanite and fuck Tim Sweeney.

Fuck yellow paint and desaturated colors, fuck having half the level being covered in ugly fog.

Fuck deferred rendering and fuck off with those false transparencies that even the Sega Saturn would be able to dab on.
Singalong with this Tool song (timestamped):

 
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Creating a game engine has become increasingly complex, so you have companies that are dedicated in creating those with all the features for any game possible and more (Unreal).

When working with your own custom engine you add features along the way, when working with Unreal you have to strip it from features you actually don't need.

Problem is that it requires a lot of time and effort to do that. For instance: the most basic object in UE5 is the Static Mesh, which is just a 3D object without animation or logic attached to it that simply has to render.
Even that object has so much stuff in it, to accommodate for other features that you maybe using, that it has a relatively large footprint in memory.

Bigger devs like CDProjekt then write their own object structure to gain performance.
Smaller devs just use what they get from UE.

It is probably still cheaper for CDProjekt to customise UE than to maintain their own engine, but it's not something that is possible to do for a lot of other teams. Hence the many games with bad performance.

I think the huge emphasis on visual quality above anything else is also due to the 'E3 effect'. Where an evening of awesome looking gametrailers made people hyped and pre-order.
 
There is a localization bug in current UE versions that eats your.FPS if you switch to languages like Thai, Hindi or Arabic. Also if you are developing really just turn off Nanite, Lumen, and Lumen Reflections and you'll get performance on par with UE4. Average consumer hardware is just not ready for those yet.
 
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My last 4 games i played where on UE5 on the PS5:
-Lies of P (runs and looks good)
-Wuchang fallen Feathers (looks good, some fps hickups)
MGS Delta (looks good, fps all over the place)
-CO Expedition 33 (looks fantastic, runs fantastic)

So i cant blame the game engine for this, when 2 of this games that run very good are their Studios first game!
And the soso game is also the studios, well first game.
The game that runs the worse is the Konami one.
So in the end, dont blame UE5 for games running bad.

Im 45 now, I've seen the UE cicle a few times now, mostly since UE3.
UE releases people shit on it, then the new UE releases, the prior UE is goated and the current one is shit and so on...
 
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