Why did the grapics race end?
- Thread starter Stevedave00
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One line thread starters are generally looked down upon. And I've never heard that said, anywhere.
Three major reasons:
1) You can't make graphics much more realistic without falling so deep into the Uncanny Valley that nobody wants to play your game anymore. Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have major immersion-breaking issues that Morrowind managed to avoid, due almost entirely to the Uncanny Valley.
2) You may have noticed there's a recession going on. It's hard to sell high-end hardware when a big chunk of your customer base is either unemployed or scared for their jobs.
3) Even if the economy were booming, there's only so much money you can put into a game before it becomes way too much of a risk to spend the money to add more content/higher-end technology. Eventually developers just have to say "look, we can stay out of the Valley and make profit more likely. Two birds, one stone" and say graphics are good enough.
1) You can't make graphics much more realistic without falling so deep into the Uncanny Valley that nobody wants to play your game anymore. Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have major immersion-breaking issues that Morrowind managed to avoid, due almost entirely to the Uncanny Valley.
2) You may have noticed there's a recession going on. It's hard to sell high-end hardware when a big chunk of your customer base is either unemployed or scared for their jobs.
3) Even if the economy were booming, there's only so much money you can put into a game before it becomes way too much of a risk to spend the money to add more content/higher-end technology. Eventually developers just have to say "look, we can stay out of the Valley and make profit more likely. Two birds, one stone" and say graphics are good enough.
Why would they need to get better there already amazing anything more would be pointless. Also Ive never heard this said before either soo.
It hasn't, but we're at the start of a recession, so getting slightly better graphics probably isn't at the top of everyone's to-do list. Also, the changes aren't going to be as dramatic now as they were in the SNES->PSX->Dreamcast->360 leaps. Recently, improvements hve been more about refinement now than adding new tricks. There are promising new developments, but I think we'll need a bigger hardware leap than ever to see dramatically better results - diminishing returns after all.Stevedave00 said:
A lot of PC gamers were pissed that they couldn't play Crysis properly. Developers want people to be able to play their games, not use them as a performance benchmark. As SimuLord said, once the economy improves, companies can create new hardware, consumers can buy it, and developers will create prettier games.
I don't mind the current recess. I think developers are now searching for ways to improve their quality and invest in customer satisfaction, as opposed to creating shit loads of picturesque 3D environments.
I don't mind the current recess. I think developers are now searching for ways to improve their quality and invest in customer satisfaction, as opposed to creating shit loads of picturesque 3D environments.
price and uncanny valley
though mainly it's cause there's no need to
graphics look good as they are
devs can now focus on other graphical features besides looks - ie amount of enemies on screen at once, level of detail, draw distance, animation, destructible environments etc
though mainly it's cause there's no need to
graphics look good as they are
devs can now focus on other graphical features besides looks - ie amount of enemies on screen at once, level of detail, draw distance, animation, destructible environments etc
Call me when you try to run that in any system. Well maybe in a couple of years, I would only hope the technology will be cheap =D...Nimbus said:
IF they get better. We are screwed. we would defenately forget its a game if we are playing something that looks just like a movie. the more real something feels the more impact it has in the way you think.
Also, think of other more importation things. Like the sexy stats. Better more accurate equations for RPGs instaid of this BULLSH!T dice rolling/chance systems.
Also, think of other more importation things. Like the sexy stats. Better more accurate equations for RPGs instaid of this BULLSH!T dice rolling/chance systems.
Although I'm no tech expert, from a PC perspective, part of the reason is that processors in particular are forming a bottleneck. Anything above 4k causes serious overheating problems,and multi cores aren't really that efficent, so improvement of those has stalled. Not much point pushing RAM or the graphics chip that hard if the CPU won't be ableto handle it, I think. Although again,Imay be wrong.
The other problem is that as graphics get more detailed, creating content gets more and more work-intensive. Maybe it would be possible to make a game far prettier than crysis, but it would take you far too long in man hours to be highly profitable (contrast: PopCap).
Another possibility is that piracy and more versatile consoles are making PCs, where the bleeding edge traditionally got pushed on a year to year basis, less attrative to publishers.
The other problem is that as graphics get more detailed, creating content gets more and more work-intensive. Maybe it would be possible to make a game far prettier than crysis, but it would take you far too long in man hours to be highly profitable (contrast: PopCap).
Another possibility is that piracy and more versatile consoles are making PCs, where the bleeding edge traditionally got pushed on a year to year basis, less attrative to publishers.
It hasn't ended, but you look at Crysis on max and tell me where you could gain a worthwhile improvement.Stevedave00 said:
The problem is developers are sinking ever increasing amounts of money into ever smaller graphical improvements, usually at the expense of gameplay. The graphics race will probably never end but it is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
