Semantics: Did Digital Foundry create the "Fidelity Conscious Gamers" or was it inevitable gamers would want to know more about how games function?

Snl GIF by Saturday Night Live
 
I think a ton of people aged into it. If you look at hifi audio and stuff like that back when only kids played nes, there were dudes all over splitting hairs over one system vs another.
 
Crayon said:
Which one, John? I figure they would pick up a lot. John and Alex were regulars here and while Alex was spicy, neither were dumb. Richard was back on beyond3d, I think. Also sharp. They must have picked up a lot over the years, even if only from being corrected. They still don't come off as real experts, though. We have people here who have at least as much insight on graphics. Probably because some ARE profesionals.
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Just to clarify I was talking about nxgamer.
 
I don't think they've had much influence on that at all tbh, they just realized there was an existing market and took advantage.

People have been caring and arguing about this stuff for as long as I can remember.
 
Everyone I know IRL who games even the more "serious" gamers don't even know who Digital Foundry are and have probably watched clips randomly on youtube but never a full episode.


Caring about internal resolutions, minor differences on AA solutions, some dropped frames here and there, texture resolutions.......mate unless you need to be doing some console warring this is borderline useless information.


But PAL gamers have always known to select PAL 60 but if you happen to have a NTSC/UC or NTSC/J console and a step down/up converter you could show off to your friends how much smoother certain games looked.
 
Lol no!

All DF did is give fanboys more fodder for their platform wars, and muddy up any tech discussion with their shitty biased coverage.

PC gamers were obsessing over frame rates, resolution, anti-aliasing and texture filtering for decades before DF even existed.

It was the Xbox that brought those PC gamers over to console with the launch of many PC-focused dev games coming to consoles for the first time with the Xbox 360.

DF just saw the chance to capitalize on the demand for detailed tech. comparisons because that's what the PC-gamer-turned-console-gamer was previously used to.
 
christ we were arguing graphics back on the playground over Spectrum & C64 games ffs, Spectrum i think could show more sprites but there was colour leakage and C64 has better defined colours or something.. forgive me it was a long fucking time ago, so no Digital Foundry are doing nothing new whatsoever, they make videos for enthusiasts, think Vincent Teoh harping on about colour space/accuracy in new Tellys
 
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DF is a business. Clickbaiting and somewhat riling people up is partly how they make their money. Sometimes they're a good source, sometimes they're a shit source.

Edit: I will say though, they are known among _some_ developers, and thus sort of valuable as a watchdog there.

But especially in the PC space all of this has been covered in different mediums and formats for ages.

But anyway, I'm not convinced people will like their games more because they know more.. I often see my own decades of accumulated knowledge as a curse..
 
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Up to a certain point, but only in regards to consoles.
On the PC side, plenty of sites and forums, were people have been talking about these kind of stuff.
 
Black_Stride said:
Caring about internal resolutions, minor differences on AA solutions, some dropped frames here and there, texture resolutions.......mate unless you need to be doing some console warring this is borderline useless information.
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Is it useless for people with multiple platforms to know which version is better?

During PS360 era some games were borderline unplayable on PS3, even if someone had only PS3 at least with DF or lens of truth they had knowledge how "bad" PS3 port was, decision to buy or not was much easier.

Now differences are rather small but it's still useful to know. For people that don't care about it there is no obligation to go into one of DF threads and say: "why you care about this stuff?".
 
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I'm coming from PC, and you've addressed that the PC space has always been more fidelity-conscious, but I'd also like to add that TotalBiscuit probably helped disseminate a lot of the language we use when understanding game fidelity and performance. Back then a lot of games had problems with muddy textures, so I remember texture quality coming up often. I also want to add that TotalBiscuit's still the best gaming YouTuber we've ever had.
 
If they didn't do it, someone else would have....

Hell, I'm a following a YouTube channel where people argue about which version was better for games released 35 years ago....

 
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There's been comparisons since the Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision days.

But the deeper, more technical comparisons started with Lens of Truth, where they compared Xbox 360 and PS3.
 
Bigger numbers have been a part of it all from the beginning. ZX Spectrum 16k vs 48k. PC gaming made me more aware. But if anything its even more acute for me in the console space, due to constrained hardware. We've always been here.

DF just recognised there was already an audience. I'm glad they've done what they've done. Just a shame questionable bias and subjective takes are part of it. Regardless, I'm still glad they've grown the coverage of it all.
 
For me personally, they became a lot more relevant in the later half of the PS3/360 generation because multi-platform games were running really bad on console. I remember playing Borderlands and fighting those spider ants with an SMG. The frame rate felt like it was dipping down into the teens with all the numbers popping off the enemies. I thought to myself "I paid 2K for a TV, $400 for this console, and it looks like a smear of stuttering jelly across the screen..." I think it was a week or two later when I saw a DF vid on performance that compared the consoles and PC.

The combination of Steam maturing into a nice platform, Microsoft making the Xbox controller easily supported on PC, and hardware that could easily run games at 1080/60fps really caught my attention and got me looking at the PC more and more. Once I built a dedicated gaming PC with an SSD in 2011, there was no going back.
 
Bojji said:
Is it useless for people with multiple platforms to know which version is better?

During PS360 era some games were borderline unplayable on PS3, even if someone had only PS3 at least with DF or lens of truth they had knowledge how "bad" PS3 port was, decision to buy or not was much easier.

Now differences are rather small but it's still useful to know. For people that don't care about it there is no obligation to go into one of DF threads and say: "why you care about this stuff?".
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Borderline useless?
Yes.

Most nay the vast majority of gamers will play whatever game on their preferred platform and couldn't care less what DF have to say.
As I said a good portion of the talking points people will gather from DF is used for console warring, not to make purchasing decisions.

Hell, even on a forum of avid gamers people dont even bark at internal resolutions until DF says the res is "low" see Returnal.

You think genpop actually cares?
 
Black_Stride said:
Borderline useless?
Yes.

Most nay the vast majority of gamers will play whatever game on their preferred platform and couldn't care less what DF have to say.
As I said a good portion of the talking points people will gather from DF is used for console warring, not to make purchasing decisions.

Hell, even on a forum of avid gamers people dont even bark at internal resolutions until DF says the res is "low" see Returnal.

You think genpop actually cares?
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General population - of course they don't care, but here number of people that do care is much higher.

I agree that fanboys are using DF as ammo for console wars but for people that are too old/tired for this shit there is ton of useful info to obtain.

I care about graphics tech in games since I got first gaming PC in 2007, so this shit is totally for me and there are many people here that are interested in this stuff, just like there are people that don't care but I don't think they should be active in DF threads in the first place.
 
It's good they exist because it makes it easier for those who care to know more. Now i can spend less time troubleshooting games when most of the work has been done already for me. And their "recommended settings" segments are a breakthrough. Knowing the performance loss/graphical improvement ratio of each setting makes a huge difference. And it's always nice knowing why a game may run terribly and if it's just you or the port itself is bad. Saves you from a lot of needless troubleshooting.

The combination of Digital Foundry and the PCGamingWiki had made PC gaming a breeze for me.
 
Bojji said:
General population - of course they don't care, but here number of people that do care is much higher.

I agree that fanboys are using DF as ammo for console wars but for people that are too old/tired for this shit there is ton of useful info to obtain.

I care about graphics tech in games since I got first gaming PC in 2007, so this shit is totally for me and there are many people here that are interested in this stuff, just like there are people that don't care but I don't think they should be active in DF threads in the first place.
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The optimized settings videos are useful as well, lets you quickly see what different settings look like and how performance is impacted.
 
With the state of games being released in, DF did good in pointing out how rushed games and incomplete most games are, a majority problems come from the director of the games themselves by over budgeting every project and accepting a money tree of funds to create a shite game that barely functions due to time restraints and overestimating every project, thing is publishers get shit for it but in reality its the director themselves thats to blame but you know lets blame EA and every evil publisher out there
 
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