We can finally make games the way we want to

[Queen Michael]

Remember how NES games couldn't have that many characters on-screen at the same time? Remember how Nintendo 64 games always had that fog because the console couldn't show that much at the same time? Remember how incredibly ugly and blocky characters were in PS1 games?

Today, it struck me that game developers can finally make games that are pretty much what they imagined. Sure, technical limitations are still a thing, but people can finally look like people, there's no need for "kryptonite fog," and the game can show lots of characters at once.

Isn't this great?

Also, did I miss some other progress that's been made?

 

[Barbas]

Yeah, it really is when you sit back and think about it. Kinds like this place. The men's room here is like a palace, it's fu

It is, though. Tessellation, for one thing, amazed me when I first started seeing it, as did Anti-Aliasing. PhysX does so as well, but to a lesser extent.

Spoiler: All three.

 

[Racecarlock]

Budgets and businessmen say no they totally can't.

Think about it. If you spent millions of dollars on one game, let alone billions, would you let people have total creative freedom?

Basically, until indie games get up to this level of graphics, we're still going to get the same shit just prettier. The only chance we ever get is when a large publisher just takes a chance on something creative and sees what happens. And with so much money in the mix, that's getting more rare with each failure.

Although unreal engine 4 might give some indie devs a chance.

 

[Malbourne]

Yeah, it is great!

Of course, the evolution of creative tools means we'll still need to sort through the humus, but development will continue to improve. And I'm still of the mind that some people stumble over their design before they even begin modeling scenery. The style of the game is much more important to me.

But yeah, it is great! If people keep being creative, we'll keep getting gratifying titles. As always, it's up to the people who back the games.

 

[StriderShinryu]

While I would say there's still definitely some room to improve technologically, especially when it comes to the little details, I do agree that it's a great thing that game developers have all of the tools they do now. What I like about it most is that it really does mean more freedom to use those tools however a developer wants to in order to provide their intended experience.

 

[dyre]

On the one hand, it's certainly great that we can make people in video games look almost exactly like people in real life. No more blocks of flesh for hands! No more static images for faces! Rejoice!

HOWEVER, I feel that this places an unspoken on developers to spend large amounts of time/money to achieve these technological ideals, even if they really want to concentrate on other things like the storytelling. As much as I like Bioware, I wonder if, with the time and budget they've put into the Dragon Age series, they could have instead made a dozen great fantasy epics with older, perhaps isometric graphics, and written dialogue instead of voice acting. I do appreciate the work and detail they put into designing, animating, and voice acting Morrigan, but it's still a relatively low personal priority compared to having greater dialogue, more branching options, more epic settings (Dragon Age might be epic, but how many sweeping, army on army battles do you actually get to see? Total War it is not).

Of course that would also require them hiring some better writers than the ones responsible for the Dragon Age series, but you understand the point.

 

[krazykidd]

Budgets and businessmen say no they totally can't.

Think about it. If you spent millions of dollars on one game, let alone billions, would you let people have total creative freedom?

Basically, until indie games get up to this level of graphics, we're still going to get the same shit just prettier. The only chance we ever get is when a large publisher just takes a chance on something creative and sees what happens. And with so much money in the mix, that's getting more rare with each failure.

Although unreal engine 4 might give some indie devs a chance.

You bring up a good point. What exactly costs so much? Do you think there is a way to make games less costly?

 

[Racecarlock]

Budgets and businessmen say no they totally can't.

Think about it. If you spent millions of dollars on one game, let alone billions, would you let people have total creative freedom?

Basically, until indie games get up to this level of graphics, we're still going to get the same shit just prettier. The only chance we ever get is when a large publisher just takes a chance on something creative and sees what happens. And with so much money in the mix, that's getting more rare with each failure.

Although unreal engine 4 might give some indie devs a chance.

You bring up a good point. What exactly costs so much? Do you think there is a way to make games less costly?

Graphics and marketing. If they would just let some guy record, I don't know, ten minutes of the game without commentary on his own without any developer intervention and then submit that footage to youtube, the game could just generate hype without pre-rendered expensive trailers.

As for graphics, they're pretty. Very pretty at this stage. I'd dare even say, expensively pretty. Really, do we need to spend that much on graphics and take up so much power with just graphics and put so much effort into just graphics? They're nice, but do we really need all of the fancy dingles and dangles and anti aliasing and shaders and stuff? Can't a game just get by on it's gameplay alone? Look at tetris and most games made by popcap and basically every game on the NES and every 1980s arcade game, which all got by on simple mechanics made simply fun.

I mean, it all looks nice, but so does art at the art museum and paintings, but I'm kind of playing something for the interactive bits, you know?

 

[Menageryl]

Racecarlock: This is an argument Yahtzee makes incredibly often, and which I agree with mostly, though aren't nearly as rabid about: So much time, money, effort, (disk space?) is devoted to "shiny" that other aspects of a game which could / would ultimately have a far greater affect on the gameplay / gamer / experience is left behind!

Just think how incredible our games would be if but HALF of the resources expended upon "pretty" over the years were instead put into things like AI, physics, level-design, emergent gameplay, etc.!!!
Hell, I think if just AI was advanced a quarter as much as graphics has been over the years we'd be seeing truly amazing things in-game.

Sadly, I don't see this changing in the near future... We MAY (MAY!) be getting to a point now where graphical fidelity is reaching something of a plateau - and if this fact is recognised, and the people involved realise the kind of reduced returns expected of the future then perhaps they might just start focusing on something else...
Unfortunately it really is all about the money - the marketing. Pretty and shiny is easy to market and show and sell. So it's an area "they" would like to continue to focus on. And there's ALWAYS the next thing to look toward: HD; 4K; tesselation; blah blah blah.
But hopefully the reality of the situation will actually force something of a change here sometime soon... We can hope, no?

 

[Evonisia]

While we can do a bunch of stuff, it still limits the actual content of the game. It's either you're an indie developer who still has limitation due to budget, or you're a AAA developer who has a strict schedule due to your publisher pushing most of the money into marketing, forcing you to have an amazing looking if brief experience.

But there are some exceptions like Rockstar and Valve who can just make a game how they wish without too many limitations.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

I disagree. I still want to see advancements in AI. Yes, game look really pretty now, but I want to be challenged not through bullet sponges, or hordes, but intelligent AI that makes you think and makes you approach cautiously. Imagine, say, Skyrim with some AI that actually adapts to you. If a bandit sees you're an archer, he'll take cover, fire back if he has missiles, hunker down. If he sees you're a spellcaster and has no magic protection, he'll retreat. If he see you're a melee warrior and is confident in his own abilities, he will come to meet you in combat. If he is a weak fighter, he'll flee to nearby allies and fight only in a group. Shit like that would make games a lot better I think, and bring some genuine challenge, not to mention make it feel more alive by not having everyone else be braindead morons.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Unfortunately, AAA developers have been using all that processing power to give us ever-more-realistic stubble on the chin of that white, brown-haired, gruff military guy in the newest sequel to that "realistic" modern-day military shooter.

Though it's hard to blame them, because apparently that's all gamers will buy.

 

[Solo-Wing]

While we can do a bunch of stuff, it still limits the actual content of the game. It's either you're an indie developer who still has limitation due to budget, or you're a AAA developer who has a strict schedule due to your publisher pushing most of the money into marketing, forcing you to have an amazing looking if brief experience.

But there are some exceptions like Rockstar and Valve who can just make a game how they wish without too many limitations.

Yes exactly. In almost all games I play I can find one way or another to abuse the enemy AI to make fighting them much easier. Weather it be enemies that stop chasing after you get far enough from their starting point which lets you get easy potshots on them, Having enemies too big to chase you through a small area allowing for another potshot scenario or even just locking them up or putting them into an infinite loop by making them stagger after every attack or resetting attack patterns. I want to find a AI that adapts to all scenarios and actually screws you over for trying to cheese them.

 

[Jamieson 90]

Graphics are great but as others have said, they only make up one part of the game so it's all well and good advancing the visuals but you still have everything else, and I can't help but think that things like AI have been neglected. It'd be great to see improvements there but in other areas too, I'd like to see a bigger variety in protagonists with realistic women and perhaps even children as well; Among the Sleep in which you play a 2 year old toddler is a great example of how kids could be incorporated into games, with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, being another.

 

[Bad Jim]

The problem is that companies like EA have thousands of employees who are trained to make art assets. They don't have thousands of AI experts, or thousands of writers, or thousands of level designers. It is therefore easier for them to make shiny games than ones with good AI, or to have tons of content at the expense of graphical fidelity. They don't have to fire half their staff and hire a similar number of other staff to make more shiny games.