The Graphics Plateau: Where do we go next?

[Soviet Heavy]

Gaming visuals are reaching their peak, slowly but surely. What will happen once we finally reach it? The current generation of Consoles has been the driving force for bringing lifelike visuals to gaming, with games like Killzone 3, Crysis, and such.

Where do we go next? The Playstation 2 era hit its graphics threshold rather quickly, and so games instead expanded outwards. Instead of trying to push the limits further, the PS2 era began to focus more on gameplay and style over realism, with solid platformers like Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank.

But while all this was happening, and the older consoles gaining massive catalogs of games, the companies were still working on the NextGen consoles, which we have now. Of course the biggest focus of the new hardware was the shinier graphics engines, which pushed the boundries of graphical fidelity. We are reaching the end of that push for realism.

What is going to happen next? I'm really not sure. Thoughts?

 

[MinimanZombie]

What happens next eh? Hmm. Of course! We shall use people, and make them act out the video games!

 

[Soviet Heavy]

What happens next eh? Hmm. Of course! We shall use people, and make them act out the video games!

You mean like the I-Human?

 

[vrbtny]

However much people hate consoles for their throttling effect on graphical development, the one good thing which has come from it is the effect it has on engine optimization. Take Crysis 2 for example. Crysis 2 looks nearly as good as Crysis 1, yet plays far, far superior.

 

[ankensam]

how bout instead of focusin on graphics more work on increasing what is going on in gameplay like more advanced AI or more detailed gameworlds

 

[MinimanZombie]

What happens next eh? Hmm. Of course! We shall use people, and make them act out the video games!

You mean like the I-Human?

I forgot I had that in my basement. They really should inform that it needs to eat to. I just have a rotting corpse down there now.

 

[Something Amyss]

how bout instead of focusin on graphics more work on increasing what is going on in gameplay like more advanced AI or more detailed gameworlds

As long as we have graphics whores who will sell their soul for the latest shiny turd, that's not happening.

But wouldn't it be nice?

 

[Tharwen]

Graphics get easier to make.

Tools like the UDK and CryEditor become simpler and cheaper, and good graphics become more accessible to indie developers. In the meantime, those of us who still use a first-gen MacBook a lot of the time don't even get to play Portal... /obviouslynotcomplainingabouthowshithismacbookis

 

[omicron1]

What happens next is MS and Sony roll out their new platforms at this E3 - slightly underbaked, slightly overpromising, with fancy new features, graphics that rival that Unreal demo from mid-spring, and a price tag of at least $500. PC users will sniff and say "Been there, done that," game prices will rise (I'm predicting $80 as the new standard, personally), more producers will go out of business, and the whole cycle will begin again.

Optimistic futures almost never happen. The games industry won't stop chasing the "big market", no matter where that big market lies - while there's a market for "graphics," "graphics" is what we'll get, and when the market completely shifts to "angry birds," "angry birds" is what we'll get, like it or not. There will be no deep revolution, because the group of gamers who value "deep" are like the group of movie watchers who go to Sundance - a small fraction of the public audience. And while our little island of social elites may value quality, the vast sea of unwashed plebians buying the new Call of Duty values only two things: Explosions, and whatever's being advertised on TV these days.

 

[Aircross]

The next step after super realistic graphics is real life graphics. You know, what's outside your window.

 

[2733]

ease of use and reduced cost should be the next step, dropping the production price of what we now call AAA games will cause a chain reaction of wonderful things in the industry.

 

[Erana]

ease of use and reduced cost should be the next step, dropping the production price of what we now call AAA games will cause a chain reaction of wonderful things in the industry.

This.

I mean, with a tasteful visual design and a decent engine, do we really need to go anywhere any time soon in terms of sheer graphical capabilities? Unless we're talking really down the line, all this is doing is asking for more formulaic, safer titles because they have to gurantee a moderate success, at the least.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Graphics power hasn't got much more to go, however overall presentation is still pretty much horse shite.

Even with the best of attempts the animations look wooden, transitions are meaningless or none, worlds and stories are full of unexplained jumps / holes and the voice acting only shines for minor glimpses at a time, there are some nice lines recorded but nothing in between that would make a person feel like a person.
Ofcourse our brain pulls out the book trick and fills in all gaps with imagination, but the experiences are noticeably lacking.

On presentation the games of today feel like 1950's movies, lots of shit going on but noone knows how to make it feel like a genuine world.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Graphics is just one element of games.

Look at the most advanced games we have, now compare it to reality.

Notice anything?

I do.

Games are very limited in what you're capable of doing. AI is frequently still awfully stupid as a competitor or partner, and completely atrocious if you expect to be able to hold any kind of semi-meaningful social interaction with it.

The sense of touch (A very significant sense without which a lot of experiences that are fun in the real world become rather hollow and boring, such as, say, swimming, or anything even vaguely resembling intimacy... Or just the feel of stuff in general) is next to non-existent.

That's to say nothing of the sense of smell or taste - though both of those are far less significant overall than the sense of touch when it comes to missing elements.

Then there's... Well, consider what kinect allows. - This suddenly means you can do motions that are much more flexible and freeform. But... It also suddenly means you need to be quite skilled to pull of certain kinds of things.
Also, the way it works has several issues - the lack of feedback (ie. touch), the need to physically perform the actions (Which has issues both in needing the physical space to be able to perform the actions, and the implications of your physical orientation relative both to the screen you're playing on, and how your avatar is oriented compared to how you are.)

The massive increase in freedom of movement it allows is good, but the way the technology makes this possible... Not so much.

Basically, once graphics have peaked, we'll be left with the progress in the level and degree of interactivity possible from a game environment, advances in game design principles. (eg. better interactive storytelling techniques, new gameplay concepts, and so on).
Interface improvements to make it easier to control far more complex and nuanced games, and... Well, implementation of the senses that are almost entirely missing from games so far.

 

[VladG]

We are still FAR from graphical realism. I agree that we've come a long way since the last console gen, but there's still a ways to go. Probably the best thing to do now however is not really improve on the fidelity of graphics, but rather the ease of creating such graphics. We've all seen the effects of the current gen demands: Shorter, weaker games. The last console gen had far less demanding graphics, so they made up with gameplay. Now it's the other way around, and that's crap.

 

[Echo136]

Well hopefully when graphics reach their peak then gameplay will get better. One can only hope

 

[Silenttalker22]

I see the graphic race leveling off in, at most, one more generation. Looking at Battlefield 3 shows that completely realistic graphics are just a step away from becoming the standard. What I'm curious about is what the console creators are gonna have to focus on.
The main attracting feature of every new generation is their graphical upgrade. Very soon that won't be logistically feasible. So it'll have to be hardware change of some kind, or the market will have to change.
After all, as much as we want the focus to shift to gameplay, they can't make cool commercials about their deep gameplay. Something has to be the hook.