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[Last Hearth]

It's funny seeing some of the comments here agreeing with the article when those same people are the first ones to shit on an exclusive xbox/playstation game if it dosen't look 'next gen' to them.

Well, if you bought a PS5 for 699, wouldn't you complain if the game doesn't look any better? I mean, other than graphics, what's the motivation for upgrading to a new console?

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

For most players, it seems that even if you have high-end hardware, pushing it to its absolute limits isn't necessarily the priority. Relatively unambitious live service games aren't either, considering the brutal failures of Sony's Concord and Warner Bros. Discovery's Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, cited by the New York Times.

Kill The Justice League is a notable example. It was billed as a sequel to the immensely popular Batman Arkham series of single-player hand-to-hand action games, but it is now rebilled as a live-service third-person shooter. Studios are not doing a particularly good job listening to their audiences when these mistakes cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thank heavens it seems some in the media are actually getting what the real reason for these big AAA failures are!

Rami continues, "How can we as an industry make shorter games with worse graphics made with people who are paid well to work less? If we can, there might be short-term hope. Otherwise, I think the slow strangulation of the games industry is ongoing."

---

Copy Arrowhead Games with Helldivers 2, or Hello Games with No Man's Sky, or the Palworld dev with Palworld.

The list goes one and on.

I'm at a point now where most AAA massive budget games are so "designed by committee" and play it so safe that I just don't get the same level of euphoric joy out of playing them as I do from some of the best indie games.

No Man's Sky, Sub-Nautica, Astroneer, Palworld and Helldivers 2 have been some of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in my 40 yrs of gaming.

If the industry focused on these small more creative games to fill out their portfolios each year, between the biggest tentpole AAA games that they actually took their time to make (after cleaning house to get rid of all the woke trash activist devs from their studios) then the industry would be in a much healthier and much better place, and many of the most disgruntled gamers would renew their love for gaming again.

 

[DirtyBast8rd]

Give me better physics and interaction, graphics have reached a good enough point.

 

[Shifty1897]

Hyper realistic AAA game graphics are still affordable in Asia, but not in the US and Europe.

 

[PeteBull]

Rami continues, "How can we as an industry make shorter games with worse graphics made with people who are paid well to work less? If we can, there might be short-term hope. Otherwise, I think the slow strangulation of the games industry is ongoing."

---

If u dont overinflate game's budget on useless dei hires and place dev studio in area with relatively low salaries u can make plenty cash back even with moderate success of ur game, to not look far:

In the United Kingdom, RoboCop: Rogue City debuted at fourth place in the physical charts.[37] The next week, the game fell to 13th place, after a 64% decrease in sales.[38]
Rogue City exceeded Nacon's expectations and was the publisher's biggest launch, with the game reaching 435,000 players in its first two weeks since release.

Łatocha revealed in an interview that it took the team a total of three years to fully develop the game.[16]

60% discount on steam currently,over 10k reviews with 89%rating/very positive, game is barely 1yo

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

The New York Times...

Stop reading at this point.

 

[diffusionx]

Sony games are even pushing graphics nowadays they are just PS4 games at high framerates with clean IQ.

some yes some no, Spiderman 2 makes heavy use of RT.

The question should be "Why is it difficult to replace these people?"

And I'm afraid that the popular answer in this thread - because of DEI - isn't satisfactory to me as the main culprit, because we're still talking about a free market.

In this respect, calling it a competence crisis is just covering up the real issue: which is that the most talented people probably don't want to work in this industry when they can find greater success elsewhere and at a lower personal cost.

Sclerotic bureaucracies have a tendency to scare away good talent. For example, look at the US Government.

 

[Hugare]

You talk as though TLOU is some pinnacle of storytelling.
It's not.
There are dozens of games made years before it came out that have much better stories.

Try telling a deep story with Planescape Torment like graphics in 2024

There may be indies focused on storytelling, but they sure as hell dont sell nearly as many copies as a Naughty Dog game

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Sclerotic bureaucracies have a tendency to scare away good talent. For example, look at the US Government.

That could definitely be part of the issue. But then you'd also expect many talented developers to go out on their own and form independent companies. Some have done this, and out of those perhaps a few have succeeded. I'd need to look at numbers to tell the full story.

But out of the examples that come to mind I can think of more that have not been successful. For example, the developers of the Rebel Galaxy series: Double Damage games. Or Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami's company.

Ultimately there are several problems in this industry and it would probably take a more thorough quantitative analysis to understand the interplay between them all. But I'm fairly certain that technology and resources not keeping up with audience expectations is a big one, as it's been making headlines for decades at this point.

 

[KXVXII9X]

I see, the classic bullshit of "good graphics and physics = photorealism". Games like these don't seem to have much trouble. I wonder why.

Games like Wuthering Waves and Ghosts of Tsushima are the good cases of realism mixed with stylization, imo.

A while ago, I would be stylized or bust, but after playing stuff like Metaphor/Persona 3 Reload, and Visions of Mana, I was also a bit underwhelmed. Those games to me had somewhat poor lighting and shadows, textures and geometric count.

But then I play even more retro looking games like Animal Well and Unicorn Overlord and don't run into the same issues. Animal Well may appear retro at first glance but it also has modern lighting and shadows, fluid particles, and some physics.

I think this is more complex than just photorealism vs stylized.

 

[diffusionx]

That could definitely be part of the issue. But then you'd also expect many talented developers to go out on their own and form independent companies. Some have done this, and out of those perhaps a few have succeeded. I'd need to look at numbers to tell the full story.

But out of the examples that come to mind I can think of more that have not been successful. For example, the developers of the Rebel Galaxy series: Double Damage games. Or Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami's company.

Ultimately there are several problems in this industry and it would probably take a more thorough quantitative analysis to understand the interplay between them all. But I'm fairly certain that technology and resources not keeping up with audience expectations is a big one, as it's been making headlines for decades at this point.

Well there are two things, one is the people who are in the industry who are talented, and yes many of them tried the indie thing (think of 360 arcade and kickstarter, both brief fads) and many of them left and many of them just lost that firea nd see it as a job now.

But there is another angle, that is the people who will never enter the industry because it sucks now. Like whoever is Carmack today or someone else of a high level is not going to be founding a videogame studio, because videogame making sucks. They will go do crypto or whatever, I have no idea, but something that is cool and fun to do with your bros which is what the industry was lke for a long time.

 

[ultrazilla]

I grew up with Pong/Atari 2600/Odyssey 2/Colecovision, Intellivision and Vectrex. These graphics are fine for me.

I'm playing Berzerk above on the Atari 2600+ and I had a huge grin on my face the entire time.

I play games to have fun and take my mind off "real life" for a little bit.

The industry pivoting to thinking they have to make all huge AAA game with life like graphics.....I think is a bit misguided.
If anything, I'd be all for studios/developers making smaller games with an emphasis on fun without breaking the budget with graphics tech. It would
also (hopefully) speed up the development process.

Trust me, I'd take Berzerk over Hellblade II any day of the week simply because it's a funner game to play. So not all us "older folks" are stuck
up on needing realistic graphics for all our games.

 

[Wildebeest]

It isn't just the graphics. The content is also old and uncool. The western games industry is just very set on making very safe and bland content with no rough edges. Maybe this is a generational thing, and Millennial devs and business people are hyper aware about appearing offensive or politically incorrect. Maybe it is just about the huge financial stakes and being laser focussed on only making the things that are proven to be able to sell 10 to 20 million copies.

 

[Denton]

Make your game look like Minecraft or anime and I will not buy your game, it is simple.
I do not require high-end AAA graphics in every game, but it sure doesn't hurt.
Kids may like Minecraft but kids are not the ones with disposable income.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Pretty graphics wear off five minutes into the game. Great gameplay is what keeps you playing.
Also the number of studios that closed chasing gameplay over flashy big budget graphics is zero.

 

[strike670]

Instead of pushing higher end graphics with diminishing returns and GAAS slop, that only a few titles hit it big with, just create innovative titles that push boundaries on how to engage with the game, with new mechanics. F.E.A.R which is 18 years old, shits on a lot of games released today, for how the enemies interacted with the environment. It is also critically important to make sure your game is fun.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

You talk as though TLOU is some pinnacle of storytelling.
It's not.

That's not what Hugare was saying... Like at all.

You have to be really poor in reading comprehension to take that from their post.

They're literally talking about using modern graphics and animation tech. to support the storytelling, i.e. the tech that supports modern production values.

How on God's green earth does that equate in your mind to a claim that TLOU is the pinnacle of storytelling?

If they'd have used RDR2 as the example would you been as triggered to knee-jerk strawman the poster's argument in the same way?

Some of ya'll need to relax. We get it. You hate ND/Druckman. Did he creampie your mom or something...?

There are dozens of games made years before it came out that have much better stories.

Dozens?... Name 8?

We'll wait...

(I also didn't miss how you cleverly moved the goal posts from storytelling, to games with better stories)

 

[KXVXII9X]

there's more to this issue than that tbh.

not only are these "high fidelity" graphics extremely expensive, I also think they kinda suck ass...
with this "fidelity" and this new graphics tech comes artifacts and low resolutions to make them work in the first place.

in my opinion, to this very day, there's not a single game on the market that looks as good as the Wii U Zelda graphics demo from 2011.
it doesn't use any modern graphics effects, just HIGHLY polished tech from the past.



immaculate planar reflections, great baked lighting, amazing use of normal mapping, hand placed light shafts, smooth Antialiasing, just enough polygons to make it look seamless, good looking shadow maps and prebaked shadows.

it looked basically perfect and ran in real time on Wii U hardware in 2011.
and yes, graphics demos are a whole nother beast compared to actual games... but come the fuck on! 13 years later not a single actual video game looks this cohesive and flawless.

since then so much temporally unstable bullshit has been added to games for the sake of "fidelity" and "realism" that TAA needs to blur the image to hide the instability of shadows, AO, reflections and even the fucking hair of characters!
I really wonder what a AAA dev team could accomplish using exclusively graphics tech from the PS360/Wii U era, and pushing it as far as they can on modern consoles and PCs.
no dithered SSAO, no SSR, no real time GI, no RT, no TAA etc.

I've been asking the same exact question for most a decade now. It looks so great! I am heavily impressed with the new Zelda titles on a technical sense, but I am also itching for something near the fidelity of this demo that is more narrative focused.

While this is a different scenario, I have been playing a bit of Sleeping Dogs: The Definitive Edition. While you can tell it came from 2 generations ago, there is a sense of realism and immersion there that is lost on many modern games. Just the NPC count alone and the cinematic feel to the game make the world feel a lot more alive.

It has more emergent gameplay moments like having ambulance rush to an injured person you just punched and aiding in returning someone's stolen purse and other random events. I don't see that as often in games anymore.

 

[bender]

Try telling a deep story with Planescape Torment like graphics in 2024

There may be indies focused on storytelling, but they sure as hell dont sell nearly as many copies as a Naughty Dog game

And we are approaching the point where Naughty Dog games don't sell enough to support the production costs. There is a reason why Sony has dipped more than their toes into the PC marketplace. Something like Spiderman 2 is a worst case scenario as it requires licensing/royalties, but those Insomniac leaks showed it needed to sell ~7 million copies to break even if I recall correctly, but as development budgets balloon in the quest for better graphics, we probably aren't too far from that sales target being needed without licensing an IP. There are a few more moves Sony could make to offset these costs (day one on PC, maybe raising prices again) but I do think we are reaching a saturation point.

We often bemoan modern games feeling simplified or lacking depth and that probably has a lot less to do with talent and ambition and more about not wanting to alienate potential buyers. When you need to sell that many units, you'll play it safe by following current genre trends to cast as wide a net as possible.

I always like to think about the metrics of success. To qualify for Greatest Hits status on the original PlayStation, titles were required to sell 150,000 copies. That number jumped to 400,000 on PS2. Now look at that break even number for Spider-Man 2.

 

[March Climber]

Just 2 to 3ish more console generations to go of articles like this.

 

[viveks86]

Am I the only one that thinks this is a “problem” that will get solved soon enough? With meta humans, procedural generation, realtime lighting, photogrammetry, ai based textures and image generation, scalability of photo realistic graphics is just a matter of a few years. After that, all that is going to be the differentiator is art style and creators can just focus on that. Seems like a lot of whining and misdirected complaints. The industry is struggling because people aren’t buying new games and the core gaming base is not growing. The number of consoles selling is literally in the same ball park for several generations. This doesn’t have much to do with graphics as people make it out to be. There is certainly a bunch of studios pushing out mediocre shit with good graphics. But take away the graphics and their shit will likely still be mediocre

 

[MacReady13]

Mario Wonder is one of the most gorgeous games I’ve played in the last 5 years. It isn’t all about pushing the most polygons at the highest resolution. Vast majority of gamers don’t give a fuck about that shit. The beautiful graphics may catch their eye but the gameplay keeps them there and many games today are technically amazing with shallow gameplay.

 

[SlimySnake]

Some of ya'll need to relax. We get it. You hate ND/Druckman. Did he creampie your mom or something...?

lol I’m stealing that insult.

 

[Last Hearth]

That's not what Hugare was saying... Like at all.

You have to be really poor in reading comprehension to take that from their post.

They're literally talking about using modern graphics and animation tech. to support the storytelling, i.e. the tech that supports modern production values.

How on God's green earth does that equate in your mind to a claim that TLOU is the pinnacle of storytelling?

If they'd have used RDR2 as the example would you been as triggered to knee-jerk strawman the poster's argument in the same way?

Some of ya'll need to relax. We get it. You hate ND/Druckman. Did he creampie your mom or something...?



Dozens?... Name 8?

We'll wait...

(I also didn't miss how you cleverly moved the goal posts from storytelling, to games with better stories)

Your attempt to throw vulgar insults at me has not won you any arguments, except make you look like a child emotionally.

And your reading comprehension is at about the same level, so I'm going to do something I don't usually do, which is to explain English to you.

He made the point about TLOU and it's graphics, the point he was trying to make is that the storytelling power of TLOU could only have been achieved with its high level of graphics, and anything less would not have been able to accomplish it, as a means of emphasizing the importance of graphical fidelity to story telling.

My response was that more powerful stories have been told in games with far less graphical fidelity. So the idea that graphical fidelity being inherently necessary to story telling in games is a faulty assumption.

 

[Gambit2483]

These targeted ads are scary accurate

 

[diffusionx]

And we are approaching the point where Naughty Dog games don't sell enough to support the production costs. There is a reason why Sony has dipped more than their toes into the PC marketplace. Something like Spiderman 2 is a worst case scenario as it requires licensing/royalties, but those Insomniac leaks showed it needed to sell ~7 million copies to break even if I recall correctly, but as development budgets balloon in the quest for better graphics, we probably aren't too far from that sales target being needed without licensing an IP. There are a few more moves Sony could make to offset these costs (day one on PC, maybe raising prices again) but I do think we are reaching a saturation point.

We often bemoan modern games feeling simplified or lacking depth and that probably has a lot less to do with talent and ambition and more about not wanting to alienate potential buyers. When you need to sell that many units, you'll play it safe by following current genre trends to cast as wide a net as possible.

I always like to think about the metrics of success. To qualify for Greatest Hits status on the original PlayStation, titles were required to sell 150,000 copies. That number jumped to 400,000 on PS2. Now look at that break even number for Spider-Man 2.

7 million copies when you are the console hardware maker should be like, the minimum. Nintendo sold 8 million copies of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U for heaven's sake. They've sold like 50 or 60 million of the game on Switch. And I would argue that making your game a brilliant technical showcase on your own hardware has benefits beyond just ROI. It is a flagship title for your hardware and your platform that shows what other devs can do. It gives your platform something you can't get anywhere else. Which is why just porting the games to another platform to get some quick cash is such a stupid thing to do.

 

[spookyfish]

It’s incredible how mainstream media thinks the whole gaming is AAA while completely ignoring smaller games.

“Mainstream media” can only take a surface look at any given issue, and must be fed releases on what it all means. Like “tRiPlE AyyY gAmeS!1” it is just a shell of its former self.

 

[bender]

7 million copies when you are the console hardware maker should be like, the minimum.

A lot of first party titles would fail that standard.

 

[JohnnyTropics]

Try telling a story like TLOU with PS1 era graphics

Deus Ex.
And it had soul.

 

[Hugare]

Deus Ex.
And it had soul.

State of the art when it was released, in 2000, not 2024

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Okay, I have to visit this Reddit.

No you really need to visit a capitalist subreddit.

Wait a second that might not exist.

 

[powder]

I’ve thought for a while that the long-term solution to most of this stuff should probably be just making games more episodic, or fit to a season format. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened yet. Games could be cut down to 15-20 hour episodes and released on a much quicker schedule.

Devs could essentially just release games in much shorter-length playtime chunks and create a schedule where they could just continuously release new chunks every year or so. Akin to getting a new season of TV to watch, but applying that games. It’s kind of what DLC already is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they started doing this with full-length games at some point.

I don’t even know if I’d want this as a player but I can’t help but think it’s coming unless dev costs get halved.

 

[xanaum]

Man! I’m playing the Silent Hill 2 remake, and I’m blown away by the graphics. Honestly, it didn’t look like it’d be this good in the trailer.

77-year-olds kids don’t buy games, I do, and I love amazing graphics. Good luck with that metric. People said the same thing about mobile games back in the day, and yeah, it’s a profitable niche, but it didn’t kill AAA games.

 

[K' Dash]

They can afford to actually be creative and create good gameplay tho.

If you serve me an exceptionally good looking game like Horizon but it plays like shit, then it is useless to me.

Graphics are nice for the initial 30 min wow, gameplay is what drives the rest.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Make a great game people like and span it across multiple platforms to max out its reach. Everyone says porting costs are low in the grand scheme of things. So if a game company is big enough with money and people power just do what every other company does. You try to sell as much shit as possible to as many people. And I'm not talking snooty high end watches or cars. I'm talking mainstream stuff which people of all ages can enjoy on their device.

You dont see Nabisco or Coke limiting cookies and pop to only one store. They try to make the same product across tons of stores and sizes to fit everyone's buying habits. Same core product, but they spend money making different packages across the production line. If Coke has 10 different configs of Coke, it doesn't take 10x the cost of R&D. That's what economies of scale are. Simple to understand. And should be simple to execute as long as you got the resources to do it. And if there's one industry that should be able to do it the easiest is software. The entire side of manufacturing, shipping and inventory doesn't even apply to software makers who get their product listed on an e-store for downloading when a gamer feels like it.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

State of the art when it was released, in 2000, not 2024

You could argue apart from graphics gameplay shots on most games nowadays.

 

[Generic]

Thank heavens it seems some in the media are actually getting what the real reason for these big AAA failures are!



Copy Arrowhead Games with Helldivers 2, or Hello Games with No Man's Sky, or the Palworld dev with Palworld.

The list goes one and on.

I'm at a point now where most AAA massive budget games are so "designed by committee" and play it so safe that I just don't get the same level of euphoric joy out of playing them as I do from some of the best indie games.

No Man's Sky, Sub-Nautica, Astroneer, Palworld and Helldivers 2 have been some of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in my 40 yrs of gaming.

If the industry focused on these small more creative games to fill out their portfolios each year, between the biggest tentpole AAA games that they actually took their time to make (after cleaning house to get rid of all the woke trash activist devs from their studios) then the industry would be in a much healthier and much better place, and many of the most disgruntled gamers would renew their love for gaming again.

Helldivers 2, the niche game made by arthouse company Sony.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Your attempt to throw vulgar insults at me has not won you any arguments, except make you look like a child emotionally.

And your reading comprehension is at about the same level, so I'm going to do something I don't usually do, which is to explain English to you.

He made the point about TLOU and it's graphics, the point he was trying to make is that the storytelling power of TLOU could only have been achieved with its high level of graphics, and anything less would not have been able to accomplish it, as a means of emphasizing the importance of graphical fidelity to story telling.

My response was that more powerful stories have been told in games with far less graphical fidelity. So the idea that graphical fidelity being inherently necessary to story telling in games is a faulty assumption.

There you go moving the goalposts again.

Nowhere in your original post did you say anything about graphics technology.

You literally replied with, "you talk as if TLOU is the pinnacle of storytelling..."

You're changing your argument now because you can't admit you were completely wrong.

It's a terrible look.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Helldivers 2, the niche game made by arthouse company Sony.

Way to miss the entire point of that post.

Nowhere in that post was the size of company producing the games important or relevant.

The post was about the size and scope of games made to fill out a publisher's annual release slate.

But don't let facts and well reasoned logic stop you from posting entirely irrelevant and tangential horseshit. That'll stimulation intelligent discourse... /s

 

[ahtlas7]

The number of graduates plopping out of modern gaming design and development schools should be making quality proper games with graphics, art design, gameplay, engineering easier than ever. Not to mention modern tools for development. And teams of 10s of thousands. What the hell is going on?

 

[GymWolf]

There is space for both, thank god not everyone is following nintendo route and we can still enjoy high production values in some videogames.

 

[RagnarokIV]

So I actually decided to visit the forum and posted a question. I wasn't trolling and I remained very civil and respectful.

I got a lot of replies very quickly. Seems like it's a very busy subreddit but most people have answered to play Disco Elysium and Fallout New Vegas.

Quite the interesting responses.

Now I really need to find out what Disco Elysium is all about because I keep hearing about this game even here.

This guy.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Well there are two things, one is the people who are in the industry who are talented, and yes many of them tried the indie thing (think of 360 arcade and kickstarter, both brief fads) and many of them left and many of them just lost that firea nd see it as a job now.

But there is another angle, that is the people who will never enter the industry because it sucks now. Like whoever is Carmack today or someone else of a high level is not going to be founding a videogame studio, because videogame making sucks. They will go do crypto or whatever, I have no idea, but something that is cool and fun to do with your bros which is what the industry was lke for a long time.

People like Carmack are pioneers in spirit, so they enter domains where there is pioneering work to be done. Gaming is no longer at that stage anymore, and I don't think it has much to do with sucking, although like you I also miss the early days when technology standards weren't yet set in stone and genres weren't so strictly defined.

Those days were indeed very exciting, but the trend of most industries is to go through periods of rapid growth followed by periods of maturity and stability, and that's where we're at now. For the same reason, the Wright Brothers wouldn't enter aviation today.

I think part of what our generation is experiencing is nostalgia for a time when both the industry and ourselves were younger, and that's natural.

The good news is there is still room for rapid improvement and creative engineering within the possibility space of gaming, but it's not necessarily in the area of graphics. We should look elsewhere to areas where iteration times are shorter and experimentation is cheaper: mechanics, interfaces, level design, etc. In my opinion realism is actually holding us back from exploring these to their fullest potential.

We should be encouraging developers to create wild and original concepts without the paralyzing fear of bankruptcy at the first instance of failure. We should be encouraging smaller experiences with quick turnaround times and smaller budgets, so that developers can go from initial idea to market feedback within a year or two, tops. That's how you foster creativity and that's how you discover new ways to entertain. It's also how you attract new talent.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Go back to delivering a locked 60fps in every game and tweak from there.

In the last year or so of the consoles life, I'll take some drops to the 40s while they push games but then it should be locked 60 with the new gen.

Rinse and repeate.

 

[apple_of_enlightenment]

A lot is resting on GFA6. If it doesn't perform the industry will change around it.

 

[Hypereides]

(...)

Copy Arrowhead Games with Helldivers 2, or Hello Games with No Man's Sky, or the Palworld dev with Palworld.

The list goes one and on.

I'm at a point now where most AAA massive budget games are so "designed by committee" and play it so safe that I just don't get the same level of euphoric joy out of playing them as I do from some of the best indie games.

No Man's Sky, Sub-Nautica, Astroneer, Palworld and Helldivers 2 have been some of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in my 40 yrs of gaming.

If the industry focused on these small more creative games to fill out their portfolios each year, between the biggest tentpole AAA games that they actually took their time to make (after cleaning house to get rid of all the woke trash activist devs from their studios) then the industry would be in a much healthier and much better place, and many of the most disgruntled gamers would renew their love for gaming again.

This is another issue. Modern AAA lack "teeth", "grit" and "bite". They're trying their hardest to not step on any toes and please everyone while at it. Its also taking away some of their allure and that's not good imo.

Personal opinion, but I actually think AAA could benefit from some more "oomph" in that regard which could make them regain some favourability and good word of mouth in the public even if it might sound counter-intuitive to AAA developers out there. I honestly get the feeling some of the younger peeps are aching for something more "raw" from AAA these days. Maybe its just me.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

A lot is resting on GFA6. If it doesn't perform the industry will change around it.

I don't see how the success or failure of a game that is impossible to replicate would impact the industry in the least.

The next "big one" to fall from grace is CD Projekt.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

This is another issue. Modern AAA lack "teeth", "grit" and "bite". They're trying their hardest to not step on any toes and please everyone while at it. Its also taking away some of their allure and that's not good imo.

Personal opinion, but I actually think AAA could benefit from some more "oomph" in that regard which could make them regain some favourability and good word of mouth in the public even if it might sound counter-intuitive to AAA developers out there. I honestly get the feeling some of the younger peeps are aching for something more "raw" from AAA these days. Maybe its just me.

AAA just needs to take more creative risks in the gameplay department.

That's why I love and will always support endeavours like Kojima's Death Stranding. That game was a full AAA but fully unable to neatly fit into any pre-existing genre mould. It was actually closer to a survival game in terms of the sheer breadth of tools at your disposal specifically for traversal; e.g. the endgame zip lines were so much fun and reminded me of the trains in Astroneer.

Stuff that allows for creative traversal, problem solving and thus emergent gameplay is really what makes survival games shine. And so AAA needs to start reading from the same playbook to push the boat out in terms of gameplay possibilities.

So much of AAA gameplay has stagnated to the point of absurdity. And I suspect it's come as a result of simplifying for the sake of casual gamers to increase accessibility; i.e. the dumbing down that was much maligned in the PS360 gen never really ended.

 

[JohnnyTropics]

Try telling a story like TLOU with PS1 era graphics or "stylized anime girl from gasha number 19584" visuals

Yeah, we can tell TLOU story on the PS3. But how about the budget?

Hence why we dont see games reaching TLOU Part II in terms of presentation despite it being 4 years and 1 gen old.

There may be indies focused on storytelling, but they sure as hell dont sell nearly as many copies as a Naughty Dog game

Deus Ex.
And it had soul.

State of the art when it was released, in 2000, not 2024

Please remember: the key with astroturfing aritificial support is that you must do it sparingly across multiple threads, so as to appear organic. Obviously it feels good to make your quota before you sit down for breakfast, but you're just going to burn yourself out.

 

[MSduderino]

We are reaching a breaking point with graphical fidelity focus for AAA games. With better art design, more can be achieved with less resources so it is/was just a matter of time before studios adjust.