Currently enjoying a several weeks-long run in Rimworld. Potato graphics go really far is the gameplay design is solid.
Ironically that can be a very hardware demanding game
Rimworld and AI gen are why I need to upgrade my Tower again
Honestly, I have to agree with the article - while you could say graphics have improved in the last decade, it’s nowhere near as much as the difference as the decade before that.
I’d easily argue that the average AAA game from a decade ago looks just as good on a 1080/1440p display as the average AAA game today - and I’d still bet the difference wouldn’t be that noticeable for 4K either.
And what do we gain for that diminishing return on graphics?
Singleplayer games are being made smaller, or vapid “open worlds”, and cost more due to more resources going to design teams rather than the rest of the game.
Meanwhile multiplayer games get less frequent and smaller updates, and that gets padded out with aggressive micro-transactions.I hate that “realistic” graphics has become such an over-hyped selling point in games that it’s consuming AAA gaming in its entirety.
I would love for AAA games to go back to being reasonably priced with plainer looking graphics, so that resources can actually be put into making them more than just glorified tech demos.
I don’t have a 1080p monitor, but most games look like shit on 4K. Bumping texture resolution is not enough for 4K, you also need better geometry and much longer drawing distances. If it’s not an Unreal 5 game with their virtually infinite geometry detailing, then it mostly likely looks like shit.
I’d easily argue that the average AAA game from a decade ago looks just as good on a 1080/1440p display as the average AAA game today - and I’d still bet the difference wouldn’t be that noticeable for 4K either.
If you just count pixels, yes. But what really made a big step forward in this decade was the realistic animation. And it does require a lot of effort and time to make it right.
Honestly I’d still argue there’s diminishing returns on this front as well.
I play plenty of older titles, and I wouldn’t say I notice that much of a difference - though that is my very subjective opinion
There’s hundreds of great games on pc to play without all the focus on graphics. You just can’t focus on industry giant game devs. Go play Stardew Valley, or Hades, or Subnautica.
Halo 4 at 1440p looks very good, and it’s 12 years old. Fully agree. I’d rather see more entities on screen, more particles, and draw distance. Polygon count and textures don’t really impress me anymore.
I’d rather see highly stylized games with a lot going on in the world, rather than wasting half of my frame render time on a character’s face.
Exactly. If my graphics card is going to be chugging, I’d rather it be because of the sheer amount of stuff to interact with in an area, rather than a beautiful but vapid landscape
Well it’s a scaling effect and diminishing returns
To the human eye 480p vs 1080p is significant but 4k vs 8k is hard to tell
I think focusing on new technologies such as AI upscaling/world generation or VR is a better use of developers time and pushes the industry back into the innovative space it’s supposed to be
VR will always stay a niche technology just because of the limited circumstances where people can use it (e.g. not on the move, not while watching kids,…).
I agree
I should’ve clarified VR/ AR. I do think AR will be a large part of daily life and apply much further than video games in the not too distant future
Depends a bit on screen size and placement, too. I play on 27", 1440p, about 3 feet from my face, and my eyeballs are definitely the lowest resolution link in the chain. 32" screen on my desk, 60" screen in front of the couch, and 1080-1440 will start showing their pixels. I’m not anxious to upgrade my screen, because 1440p gives me great framerates with a cheaper video card. Also a 32" screen at a viewing distance of 3’ is hard to actually see everything.
I’d much rather have a good game that runs fast at 1080p than have to get a $700 card for OK framerate and style-over-substance gameplay just to get 4k.
Agree that using VR to get immersive, wide-field graphics from fewer pixels is a great alternative.
!patientgamers would agree and so do I
Yup, most of the games I play are either indies or older games. I don’t care much about graphics, I care about gameplay and story, and modern AAA games often lack in both.
As a game dev who’s making a better game with worse graphics - i think people who say this are in the minority, unfortunately.
I mean this with the greatest respect, I’m not making a judgement on the gameplay.
But there’s a whole spectrum between Roblox and the latest Quadruple A™ that all consist of “worse graphics”
White letters on light brown wood texture (trailer on steam at 0:07). Also, the big “Press E to talk” looks heinous. Plus you don’t have full control over where it appears, at one point in the trailer (0:42), it’s on white background. Going by the trailer, you’re trying to make the game look like the product of a inexperienced amateur, while the game itself is actually a subversive masterpiece, similar to the doom mod “MyHouse.wad”. Hats off to you if you manage to pull it off, but if not, you’ll have fallen flat on your face. Metaphorically, of course.
As inflation continues to outpace wages, surely more people will start preferring this. $1000 for a gpu is a joke. If I ever develop an indie game my target system is going to be like, a 1.6ghz core i3 and garden variety basic opengl capable graphics card.
There are constant high end GPU shortages, $1,000 is too cheap.
idk, maybe we need to figure out how to get by with basic laptop opengl graphics. An Intel HD 4000 would have been a groundbreaking graphics card in 2005 but today you can barely run a unity project with one. More serious effort needs to go into optimization and efficiency I think and if that means everything has to have 2005 era graphics (which aren’t even that bad) then that’s what has to be done.
Making your own game engine an using open source 3d engine then filling in the rest is too much work for most indie devs but as enshitification continues this will eventually stop being the case. Tux kart was made this way and it can run on a potato.
this is such a
messamazing collection of ideas!I advertised it in a group of kids I know that love this kind of shit, hope it helps :)
Northern Journey and Crystal Project are the games you want then.
Obligatory: Starsector
Also Rimworld, Project Zomboid, Prison Architect, Factorio… basically if you like sandbox games, there’s a ton out there.
When thinking of space games with limited graphics, the first thing that comes to mind is ASCII Sector.
But the Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters (or whatever it’s name is now) gets my strongest recommendation. And Starsector looks inspired by it, so I’ll have a look!
Kerbal Space Program, Derail Valley, Nucleares, …
starsector deserves so much more popularity. 10/10 would cause the collapse of civilization using hyperillegal ai cores that accelerated the collapse in the first place while getting blackmailed by those self same ai cores again
I mean Abiotic Factor just released to early access and that one looks like a GoldSRC game.
I want shorter games, on average. 10-20 hour completion times would be right up my alley.
I blame Far Cry 3 for this proliferation of open world bobbins. So much shit to do and almost none of it is worth doing.
Halo: Infinite was fun the first time around, but on replays, I just want to get to the story events.
I also can’t play the open world parts on my PC. Somehow looks worst any of the retro or retro revival titles I play with single digit frame rates.
lol, replays of any Halo game past Reach? You’re funny. I could barely get through Infinite the first time. At least it was better than 5, but so is a turd sandwich.
My scalding hot take is that 5 is a more fun game than Infinite. 5 looked like shit and had an awful story, but at least the big cinematic moments still felt like Halo. Infinite just bored me and felt hollow.
The gameplay is 5 is actually really good. The set piece battles are very replayable. The biggest issue for me the the creeping Live Service shit, the “Cortana bad” story and the flat out false advertisement. The game only fans seem to think you need to read the books for it to make sense, but I’ve read the books and it wasn’t any better. Wish they made a spinoff game Sangheili “Blooding Wars” game. Those were the peak levels.
Halo 4 has a solid story and the campaign played fine, but the multi player at launch was bad. The MCC version actually fixed a lot of the issues I had though.
By Halo Infinite, including Halo Wars 2, we’ve had three games in a row that ditched the Big Bad from the previous game because the devs had a knee jerk response to loud fans and that AAA studios have a revolving door for upper staff. I’ve bailed on the franchise because I don’t think I’ll ever get a satisfying conclusion to The Endless story. Or any conclusion even.
We share the same opinion exactly. I completely agree with your point about the books. I’ve read every book, comic, etc and that game still made no sense.
I also agree about the gameplay. Warzone was probably some of the most fun I’ve had in a Halo. I never got good enough for regular slayer ranked though so I can’t comment there.
4 is my second favorite campaign for story, but I am a book fan so I may be biased.
Infinite lacking the set pieces is what really killed it for me. Where’s boarding a scarab? Where’s giving the covenant back their bomb? Where’s tank beats everything? Where’s the death star trench run while the best song ever blasts in your ears and the Earth hangs over you to show you what happens if you fail? Where’s jumping down an unfolding Guardian?
The open world is why we couldn’t have those set pieces in Infinite because approaching from any angle makes them basically impossible to choreograph well.
I tried to play borderlands 2 and I was moving happily through the main story when I realized I was way, way under-levelled for the next part. I then realized I needed to go do half a dozen of the 30 or so fetch quests I had ignored up to that point. I did not continue playing Borderlands 2
You were more patient than me. I lasted about an hour of it. I just don’t think FPS gameplay and RPG stats gel at all well. Can’t stand Destiny for the exact same reason.
Call me a traditionalist, but I expect enemies that take bullets to the face to do the decent thing and drop down dead, rather than just take very slightly more damage.
I enjoyed Fallout 3. But I agree with the general point. RPG/FPS’ rarely gel.
Fallout 3 isn’t a FPS. It’s got turn-based combat because of VATS, and that’s what makes it good.
That’s why Shadow Warrior 2 was so disappointing after the first reboot. Reboot was an updated fps thay even managed to make the sword melee relevant through the whole game. 2nd one was a bullet spongy mess
for my own gaming purposes i would agree, but i have seen my son do some very interesting stuff with borderlands 2 and payday 2 builds.
Borderlands is great because you can just break the math. Like these skills and this perk and this gun synergize in such a way that any enemy explodes if you look at them sideways.
Steam says I played that game for 2.5 hours. Conversely, I’ve put over 150 hours into Nightmare Reaper.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think graphics capped out around the 8th generation of consoles with the Xbox One (Sunset Overdrive holds up insanely well) and now everything that isn’t VR is just overkill
I think raytracing can improve graphics (especially lighting) without needing insane development resources to be thrown at it.
In terms of simple pixel pushing though, I struggle to see much difference between last gen and this gen. The models and textures look almost identical. Only real difference is framerate.
without needing insane development resources to be thrown at it.
Just graphical resources, bumping everything back to 30fps again (for console peasants, anyway).
Yeah graphics are nice to have, but sometimes I want to game on a small and light laptop like I don’t need revolutionary HD high quality all the time
Art Style > Graphics. Kingdom Hearts (2002) looks wildly better GTA: San Andreas (2004) and Fallout 3 (2008).
San Andreas is my favourite GTA but man that game wasn’t good looking at all even at launch on PC
Fallout 3 looks like dog shit man. It has since day 1. It’s one of my favorite games and I have 100% on it, but it has never looked good.
Every bethesda game looks like dogshit.
Fo76 looks amazing on max settings and nvidia upscaling. It still has ugly elements but overall I made so many screenshots the only other game I made this many screenshots is modded Skyrim.
I will link one later actually to demonstrate it
Idk, I’m playing FO76 on ultra on 4K right now and it looks like shit. Not much different than Skyrim. Compare it to something like Forza Horizon 5 and it’s not even funny how bad FO76 looks like.
I guess I compare it more with games like Elder Scrolls Online that are so ugly and without physics that they are unplayable to me. Valheim also barely makes it fidelity wise so fo76 looking this good and having physics and stuff and everything from a singleplayer game was a shock.
It is genius level of game dev. You don’t even feel it is online most of the time, no lags and such. There are some bugs it is Bethesda after all but overall wow. Why can’t all online games be like this?
Not to mention it has the best open map since frikin elder scrolls morrowind. It feels like the same person designed the map with ash region and stuff.
Now, if they improved it with some sandbox type economy a la eve online that would be shared between all instances and some kind of control territory map also shared between instances connected to camps… there is huge potential here. I want a fallout game with elements from Star Wars Galaxies while still preserving fidelity on the level of a single player game.
There is another project that tries to achieve something in that direction since 12 years and 700 milion dollars called Star Citizen but it’s been a real mess with few redeeming qualities if any.
No it doesnt. It looks like an upscaled 2003 game. Hell, Starfield also looks like its from 2010. Plays like it too
It’s just like your opinion man
not skyrim. or fallout 4. beautiful landscapes everywhere
Because you’re playing the game wrong You’re supposed to install at least 300 mods first /s
I mean we could have both, but most Studios nowadays just buy the entire prop store and put everything into graphics because they can sell with that…
I’ve got pretty similar thoughts. I wasn’t into gaming all that much up until relatively recently when I built my first gaming PC at the beginning of pandemic. Thanks to that, I’m not only on market for bleeding edge AAA titles, but also discovering 3 dacades worth of PC games. My observation is that games got worse over time. They’re also a lot more expensive to make because it all must be visually impressive, which usually ends up with poor performance and bugs, requiring high-end hardware for the game to run somehow. Quite often games are broken and unoptimized on launch, they have that generic formula, watch cinematic, hold a button, watch some more, here’s your little tutorial fight, now more cutscene and a crappy puzzle. It really makes me feel, if game developers were more limited by hardware constraint and unable to feed legions of normie players to flashy graphics, they wouldn’t have other way to makes games attractive other than with better mechanics and level design.
Meanwhile Nintendo continues to release bangers for their ancient potato console.
Chasing photorealism has been unsustainable since before MW2 came out. You could see where that line was headed. The answer has always been procedural artwork - not randomized, just rule-based. Even if an entire desert gets away with four textures for sand, those shouldn’t be hand-drawn and manually-approved bitmaps. They should not be fixed-resolution. Let the machine generate them at whatever level of detail you need. Define what it’s supposed to look like.
This is how that “Doom 3 on a floppy disk” game, .kkreiger, worked. It weighs 96 KB. It doesn’t look like Descent. It has oodles of textures and smooth models. Blowing a few megabytes on that kind of content is a lot easier than cramming things down and a lot cheaper than mastering five hundred compressed six-channel bitmaps. Even if every rivet on a metal panel was drawn by hand with a circle tool, ship that tool, so that no matter how closely the player looks, those rivets stay circular.
You can draw rust and have it be less shiny because that’s how rust is defined - and have that same smear of rust look a little bit different every time it appears, tiled across a whole battleship. Every bullet ding and cement crack can become utterly unremarkable by being completely unique and razor-sharp at macro-lens distances. You don’t hire a thousand artists to manage one tree each, you hire a handful of maniacs who can define: wood. Sapling, tree, log, plank, chair, wood. Hand that to a dozen artists and watch them crank out a whole bespoke forest in an afternoon.
How do you think modern games are made? Procedural generation is used all over the place to create materials and entire landscapes.
But never ships clientside.
These tools have been grudgingly adopted, but only to make ‘let’s hire ten thousand artists for a decade!’ accomplish some ridiculous goal, as measured in archaic compressed textures and static models. The closest we came was “tessellation” as a buzzword for cranking polycount in post. And it somehow fucked up both visuals and performance. Nowadays Unreal 5 brags about its ability to render zillion-polygon Mudbox meshes at sensible framerates, rather than letting artists do pseudo-NURBS shit on models that don’t have a polycount. And no bespoke game seems ready to scale to 32K, or zoom in on a square inch of carpet without seeing texels, even though we’ve had this tech for umpteen years and a texture atlas is not novel.
Budgets keep going up and dev cycles keep getting longer and it’s never because making A Game is getting any harder.
You propose an interesting approach. I just wonder how the individual streaks of different rust interact with typical graphics pipelines. You can certainly ship a generator, but then for rasterizing the image the texture still has to be generated and shipped off to GPU memory to be used in shaders, won’t you blow through VRAM limits or shader cache limits by having no texture reuse anywhere?
Any game with texture pop-in is already handling more data than you have space. “Rage” famously had unique textures across the entire world… and infamously streamed them from DVD, with the dumbest logic for loading and unloading. You could wait for everything to load, turn around, and it would all be blurry again.
Anyway if you’re rendering ten zillion copies of something way out in the distance, those can all be the same. It will not matter whether they’re high-res or unique when they’re eight pixels across. As Nvidia said: if you’re not cheating, you’re just not trying.
I thought this right before I tried to play the really old pokemons again. And very quickly went back to new pokemons.
To be fair those had worse gameplay too
I think everything after Gen 1 holds up pretty well, even if it’s a little rough. And once they figured out the physical/special split in Gen 4 they basically just published the same game over and over again with slightly different gimmicks and stories.
Quality of life has improved pretty significantly, the formula has stayed the same, and now there are more Pokemon with more unique properties. It was linear in just about every direction until the latest switch games.
Basically Gray Zone. Great game, but even on my i9-12900K, 3080Ti, 128GB DDR5 I have to play it on low settings. Like I’d be happy if they just ratcheted down the graphics quality because the gameplay is great.
That’s probably due to optimization rather than graphics alone.
