hydrolythe said:
I think you forget one thing:
X) Are not influenced by better graphics engines so that they do not demand a better engine (right now, engines cost in between 8 million and 16 million dollars).
Except a big part of the rising cost of development is tied directly to creating assets that make use of the engine.
What offsets this is Middleware and licensing, but that takes a considerable chunk of time to trickle down into the mid-cards. The Unreal 3 engine was several years old by the time Indie games started using it.
On top of that, eventually, the developer is going to have to produce assets on their own, and with higher fidelity comes a higher burden for detail.
One extra point to add for photo-realism, is the trouble with animation. The more realistic your graphics, the less leeway one has in rendering convincing animations. It's a psychological thing: and why a game that's done with 2D sprites might look fluid, but would look herky-jerky in 3D.
Motion-Capture might actually become required to avoid looking awkward.
FYI, AAA already uses Mo-Cap for many of their games, and it's pretty expensive stuff.
X2) Keep this process running for long enough that you can buy off the engine you already have.
Remove the idea of the AAA paradise once that has happened, since I predict that after it they will let the developer decide what title they want to make, making it like a sort of gaming paradise where the developer can make what he wants (with the game engine limitations taken into account) and a publisher wishing the best for its consumer (pissing off your customers is not giving you any profit in the long term).
I would love for Publishers to take the role you prescribe, where they develop engines and assets to be licensed out to actual developers and just let them do what they do without all of this Hollywood-esque marketing crap.
But sadly, I still find that extremely doubtful.
Why? AAA Publishers are control freaks.
They front the money for production, so in their mind, it's their industry. Period.
Everyone else just gets to participate.
Pissing off your customers not being profitable? That's exactly what they've been trying to do.
Jim Sterling's wouldn't have an audience for his video series if Publishers didn't regularly make the attempt.
I often say the relationship between gamer and publisher is similar to one between drug addict and dealer, because that seems to be how they behave: Are gamers hooked enough to tolerate more concessions? Implement those concessions, STAT.
No? Implement them and withhold what they want. They'll eventually crack and buy it anyway.
It's only when the market outright rejects something by overwhelming majority that they even stop and consider that they screwed up, but even THAT thought has trouble moving through the AAA brass.
For example: Just last month, EA came out and apologized for the travesty that was the Mobile Dungeon Siege...only to amend that apology with a statement that DIRECTLY BLAMED GAMERS for not being "ready" for that kind of model yet.
Everyone was rightly outraged; but it was also beneficial to have a rare glimpse into how they actually think.
And that attitude is what I base my "AAA Paradise" on.