Any of you feel like we’ve become so fixated on graphics and perfomance to the point where the actual game part of a video game is often overlooked, or at least underemphasized? I don’t know about the rest of you, but all I come across on social media regarding gaming is about resolution, ray tracing, DLSS/FSR, frame rates, frame time, CPU and GPU untilization, and all of that stuff, and I’m honestly sick of it! I mean performance markers have always been discussed when it comes to PC gaming, but now even console gaming is getting this treatment! Don’t you miss the days when you just installed the game and just played it? I know I do. What do you think?
To me it sounds more like the social media algorithms put you into the “gaming tech” corner so that’s all you see. Indie gaming is huge and not at all about graphics. Look at the currently popular games on Steam and a ton of them are technologically very basic.
Also don’t forget retro games.
Even new games can be run on midrange hardware if you don’t crank up the settings.
People want big numbers and companies watch to sell the latest stuff. No one gives a platform for advocating low budgets, cheaper hardware and patient gaming.
Exactly. My feeling is more the opposite of what OP is saying. Gameplay and innovation is king. Just not in AAA games.
This is the answer. Lots of great stuff going in games right now.
I definitely think you’re in a bubble of AAA games. This is literally the middle of an indie game renaissance.
Get off of consoles, and get a midrange gaming PC.
That’s just triple A games, I think. Indie games are varied and don’t necessarily focus on graphics
Valheim was one of the best selling games and is still a huge success. Indies are getting better and more popular to the point that even big companies like Nexon are indiewashing their studio and pretending that Dave the Diver is an indie game with pixel art instead of a work of one of the biggest publishers there is. In my experience most of the gamers nowadays are people that grew up on minecraft, terraria or probably more likely today - roblox.
So basically no, I don’t think so. Maybe big studios want you to believe that and it might be true for a casual FIFA or CoD gamer but for anyone else, there are more options than ever and the supply of good smaller simpler games is just overwhelming, the days are too short to even keep track of them anymore.
I didn’t actually know about Dave the Driver being a big publisher until just now. I felt that game was kinda under-developed for how hyper it was and now I’m even more disappointed.
It only has like 6 major areas and the levels didn’t have that much variety. Plus the side content is fairly under polished. I enjoyed it for the first 60ish percent but was kinda forcing myself to finish it by the end.
That’s pretty telling when a big company can’t even make a convincing imitation of a low budget game.
Nothing happened. It is the same as always. There was no time, when graphics (and audio) weren’t the hottest shit to talk about. We did that in the 90s in ads, game magazines and in the schoolyard. And the people before us did the same. The buzzwords back then were different but that’s all.
Maybe stop watching youtubers, if that annoys you? Idk.
There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn’t what it used to mean. In fact I’d be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an “AAAA quality” game with Skulls & Bones or how it’s called and it’s a total flop.
The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it’s kind of safe at this point to just assume by default that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don’t trust them to produce a good game).
Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren’t found so easily. But they exist. There’s no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.
The rabbit hole of looking harder and being amazed by what exists will probably never end if persons keep looking (till they become proficient enough to be the ones making those things).
You may as well have typed this in 2009 or 2015.
It used to be that people argued that it’s worth getting the new game console because “better graphics”. The console wars hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just expanded.
In any case, in regards to just installing a game and playing it, no, not really. When I was playing games in college in 2012 it was still a time when you would open a game and go to the settings menu to adjust settings.
Sometimes it was just turning off motion blur, but there was always settings to change to try to reach a stable 60FPS.
Nothing changed, it just expanded. Now instead of 60FPS it’s a variable 60-240FPS. Instead of just 720p-1080p resolution, unless it’s portable, it’s 1080p minimum otherwise variable up to 4k. Instead of “maxing out” we now have raytracing which pushes software further than our hardware is capable.
These aren’t bad things, they’re just now 1) slightly marketed, 2) more well known in the social sphere. There isn’t anything stopping you from opening up the game and going right away, and there’s nothing stopping other people from wondering about frame timings and other technical details.
Sure, focusing on the little things like that can take away from the wider experience, but people pursue things for different reasons. When I got Cyberpunk 2077 I knew that there were issues under the hood, but my experience with the game at launch was also pretty much perfect because I was focused on different things. I personally don’t think a dip here and there is worth fretting over, but some people it ruins the game for them. Other people just like knowing that they’re taking full advantage of their hardware, hence figuring out the utilization of their components.
There’s one last aspect not mentioned. Architectures. 10 years ago games would just boot up and run… But what about games from 10 years before then? Most players not on consoles were having to do weird CPU timing shenanigans to be able to boot up a game from (now 20) years ago. We’re in the same boat now with emulation, which while emulation is faring better, X360/PS3 generation games that had PC ports are starting to have issues on modern Windows. Even just 5 or 6 years ago games like Sleeping Dogs wouldn’t play nice on modern PC’s, so there’s a whole extra aspect of tinkering on PC that hasn’t even been touched on.
All this to say, we are in the same boat we’ve always been in. The only difference is that social media now has more knowledge about these aspects of gaming so it’s being focused on more.
The one thing I do agree with though is that this is all part of software development. Making users need better hardware, intentional or not, is pretty crazy. The fact that consoles themselves now have Quality vs Performance modes is also crazy. But, I will never say no to more options. I actually think it’s wrong that the console version of games often are missing settings adjustments, when the PC counterpart has full control. I understand when it’s to keep performance at an acceptable level, but it can be annoying.
Always turn off motion blur and DoF if you can.
Balatro is nominated for game of the year. Some other games from the past year you could check out: animal well, nine sols.
I’ve never had Balatro crash or do anything weird on me, either.
Don’t you miss the days when you just installed the game and just played it?
I don’t miss them because they’re still here!
I don’t miss them because they’re still here!
Exactly
Everything you said is just telling us what You’ve been focusing on. If you don’t want to focus on resolution, frame rates, etc, then don’t.
There are hundreds and hundreds of great games easily available. Play them. Ive been living the days of just installing a game and playing it for decades. And I’ll continue to do so with no problem.
Ignore all the that, it’s marketing. A lot of cool indies that have better story and mechanics than AAA games, you just have to look beyond your usual places
this makes me nostalgic… people were saying this about fallout 3.
To be faaaaaaaaaaaiiiiir, a lot of that was tied up in the switch from overhead isometric view to first-person view.
Fallout 1/2 didn’t focus on graphics, they were in many ways point-and-click adventures. A lot of things you had to hover over for “flavor text” and every once in a while something only four pixels wide exists that you need to notice.
So the gameplay actually actively eschewed graphics in favor of things like flavor text and reading.
Further, the switch to first person broke the SPECIAL system, because how to you even manage a gun skill in a first person shooter without it feeling absurd? It made sense in isometric, even if it was often frustrating to miss an enemy when you had a 79% chance to shoot them in the balls. Putting that in a first person when you mag dump into someone standing right in front of you and half your shots feels a lot less realistic, and can quickly become frustrating in a more fast-paced first-person-shooter environment. The SPECIAL system feels absolutely slapped on as an afterthought in Fallout 3.
Also, the writing in Fallout 3 was that shitty Bethesda writing. The writing was just subpar compared to the prior two installments. Especially the fucking stupid ass end of the game.
I’d say a lot of those complaints were driven more by the perspective switch than anything else.
it was just an example :P
Calm down.
People were saying this about the first goddamn Playstation
The bubble of AAA gaming and reviews/benchmarks definitely has that kind of thing going on. But you can really just ignore that subset entirely and have so many good games to play from smaller studios and devs.
It’s not really a new thing, I remember when Crysis came out and it was all about the graphics and hardware to run it the fastest.
It’s hype for marketing. Our society is based on consumption and over spending. The GPU and CPU manufactures want us to keep spending money to have the latest and greatest.
Nope, because I don’t give one shit about those kinds of games. Nintendo and indie games have never cared about graphics and performance. I haven’t owned a PlayStation since the PS2, and I’ve never owned an Xbox. Crazy how if your only console is a Nintendo then you never really care about that stuff. I do have a gaming pc but still play mostly indie games.
Nintendo is a proper shout out.
A Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom aren’t the prettiest games but they have two very big deals about them.
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Stylization. Games with a specific art style tend to age better than ones with ultra realistic art styles. Team Fortress 2 aged better than a lot of things because it leaned into the Pixar-cartoony style. ABotW and TotK both have their own unique style that will age incredibly well.
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Instead of the focus being graphics, the gameplay is the core loop. Tears of the Kingdom especially deserves accolades for how well the entire system of combining weapons and items just works. Who cares about the graphics, the crazy shit you do in the game isn’t causing the game to crash or fall to pieces. The game expected this, it was built to handle this, and this is proof that it was way more important to the developers than the graphics.
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Tbh… no, i don’t feel like we did. Those things have always been discussed on the mainstream ever since gaming became a thing. It mostly sounds like you have an algorithm/internet bubble problem, maybe it’s time to curate your feeds more to cater to your tastes? If you’re interested in a nice gaming podcast that doesn’t focus on graphics i can very much recommend “Gaming in the Wild”, it’s very chill and covers a variety of games, i like the way he describes things.
