The Graphics Plateau: Where do we go next?
- Thread starter Soviet Heavy
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Yup. You beat me to it. The graphics are going to become cheaper and easier to make, which SHOULD not only drive down the budget of games (which will mean game devs can devout more and more of the budget to other things), but will make it easier for indies to make games with stunning graphics. Once we reach a graphical plateau, then hopefully games will start becoming more creative, cheaper, and easier to make.Tharwen said:
No it's not. Notch wrote a piece about it in his blog, where he pretty well outright dismisses it. I don't mean to imply this as an appeal to authority, but rather simply because the points he raises in his blog are legitimate, and he states them in a forward way.IzisviAziria said:
One would hope the game-play would see the next set of focus, but i doubt it. right now, they are trying to switch from graphic prowess to 3-D. either they will succeed or fail with that and move to AR, motion controls, or just normal controller design, an eternal favorite.
personally i would love to see more focus on storage(especially for handhelds, which average 1-3 save files usually.), battery life, saving/loading times, length of games, story, removal of dlc/expansion costs, smarter AI, faster connection speeds. maybe im too optimistic for even mentioning any of that.
im kinda against them branching into stuff like smell/taste/touch. i don't know who suggested that, but it just seems like a bad idea for many reasons i wont go into.
personally i would love to see more focus on storage(especially for handhelds, which average 1-3 save files usually.), battery life, saving/loading times, length of games, story, removal of dlc/expansion costs, smarter AI, faster connection speeds. maybe im too optimistic for even mentioning any of that.
im kinda against them branching into stuff like smell/taste/touch. i don't know who suggested that, but it just seems like a bad idea for many reasons i wont go into.
I say we get true 3D. Although I'm a little underwhelmed by my 3DS overall, the 3D effect is pretty good. It won't revolutionise games, but it is an improvement. The best part is that it doesn't add much development cost. 3D modelling is done the same way as today, it just looks a bit more convincing.
Yes, I am aware that it has to work without glasses and be fairly cheap before it's worth buying. But I believe this is possible.
Yes, I am aware that it has to work without glasses and be fairly cheap before it's worth buying. But I believe this is possible.
I don't get it, Why people think focusing on graphics makes the game play instantly bad?
Graphic designers do their jobs, level designers theirs, game play designers do game play related stuff... If graphics are focused and game play ends up shitty, don't blame the company for focusing on graphics... blame em for hiring horrible game play designers and publishers for rushing games!
Other than that: the peak isn't close at all... You can't shoot leaves off a tree, just for fun rearrange every little dust particle into a small pile, shoot a guys nose off, dig a hole with grenades without a supercomputer...
Graphic designers do their jobs, level designers theirs, game play designers do game play related stuff... If graphics are focused and game play ends up shitty, don't blame the company for focusing on graphics... blame em for hiring horrible game play designers and publishers for rushing games!
Other than that: the peak isn't close at all... You can't shoot leaves off a tree, just for fun rearrange every little dust particle into a small pile, shoot a guys nose off, dig a hole with grenades without a supercomputer...
None of that stuff has to do with the quality of the graphics. That's gameplay options. The polygons, or atoms or w/e can already be taken apart as the designer wants (See: Red Faction). But more importantly, who cares about that stuff? Which is probably why most games don't do it.YokuG said:
Quite agree. While I'm not a gigantic COD fan, the graphics are good, easy example of being quite sufficient for visual immersion. BF3 is gorgeous, and a big chunk of it's sales(yes I'm getting it) will be for just that, but I don't really need that high a scale to enjoy the game.AlternatePFG said:
I thought he meant something like in 'Gamer'.Soviet Heavy said:
OT: I think graphics will have peaked when the games going for realism look no different from what you see in front of you.
The graphics need to staymore or less the same, but use more power to fill in the blanks in the physics, lighting,effects.
It gets to be too much of a strain on graphics to be pretty and do stuff like fighting in a burning house flowing down a river in a nonscripted event. You've got so much shit going on, you won't be looking at the textures as much as the reactivity of the game.
It gets to be too much of a strain on graphics to be pretty and do stuff like fighting in a burning house flowing down a river in a nonscripted event. You've got so much shit going on, you won't be looking at the textures as much as the reactivity of the game.
You have your 100% of design budget, what do you spend the percentiles for recruiting and hiring on?YokuG said:
Sadly, it seems that supposed "AAA" (God I'm sick of that term) development teams run under the premise of 70+% go to making the game look pretty.
Limited budget and most of it being put to hire hordes of graphics teams and small groups for everything else.
We go backwards.
Honestly, that's where I think we'll go once we hit the plateau.
Once we've hit the highest peak of what photo-realism can offer, we'll go back to being creative and thinking outside of realism.
I'm still yearning for a cartoony AAA title.
The moment we stop focusing on how 'real' everything looks is the moment we see true style and gameplay innovation make a serious comeback.
It's why I think the indie market is making so much headway right now.
Honestly, that's where I think we'll go once we hit the plateau.
Once we've hit the highest peak of what photo-realism can offer, we'll go back to being creative and thinking outside of realism.
I'm still yearning for a cartoony AAA title.
The moment we stop focusing on how 'real' everything looks is the moment we see true style and gameplay innovation make a serious comeback.
It's why I think the indie market is making so much headway right now.
We go to things like virtual reality/augmented reality, maybe. For consoles, we open it up now to having huge branching storylines, basically putting in 2x, 3x the game into one game and needing space to run it. Choose your own adventure becomes actual reality.
Or so I like to think.
Or so I like to think.
In the long run it's heading for VR/augmented reality, though a home console which fully incorporates either is still a push from here. In the short run my money would be on more outlandish approaches, once photo realism is the norm I'll be looking for those games which offer something more amazing with their engines and their aesthetics. There are many beautiful things we see, the world is so dreary compared to our minds, no?
The main thing I want to see (in terms of graphics) is that we can build the graphics we have right now on a larger scale. For example, Modern Warfare 2's human models look great and all, but their environment is lacking. With new updates in how much a GPU and CPU can handle, perhaps we can see that the trees share the same level of detail as the guns. We would also need a significant increase in Draw Distance, so you can have a game like ARMA 2 be played on a much more contemporary system.
TL;DR: Allow for more objects with better detail, and increase draw distance.
TL;DR: Allow for more objects with better detail, and increase draw distance.
In short: THE MOTHERF*CKING GOLDEN AGE OF VIDEO-GAMES.Soviet Heavy said:
Long version: Imagine as video-games hit the graphics plateau and its becomes easier for people to work with super-high graphics, the indie market will be able to create games with sick-ass graphics with no effort AND experimental gameplay/story/everything else.
This means that the indie market (which is the experimental sector of the video-game industry) will fully realize its potential as it would be able to make ANY kind of game that they want, which in turn would give the AAA part of the industry a constant source of inspiration and new ideas to work on AS WELL as being able to devote more time and resources on gameplay/story/everything else.
So yeah, it would be the greatest thing to happen to gaming, ever. Which is why I am not against the graphics-heavy focus of the industry, as I know that once it hits it plateau we will all as gamers be that much more richer.
SO HERE'S TO GRAPHICS, may it drive itself into irrelevance.
Maybe you should read what he wrote before you come decide to be smarmy. Besides, that's an ad hominem argument, since you are dismissing his opinion a game developer and designer because of something he made. It comes down to animation being incredibly difficult with voxel graphics, among other things.bahumat42 said:
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam
There. I found it for you, since you would prefer to act all high and mighty and discount the opinion of someone who knows MUCH more about video games than you instead of doing a google search and maybe learning something. Like I said, read it before you be smarmy next time. Besides, voxel graphics are nothing new.
By "rise", you mean "drop", right? Because $80 is about $30 less than we're spending in Australia.omicron1 said:
Personally, I think (as well as gameplay) we should be focusing on making all the brilliant graphics actually work. Because I hate how PC gamers need to buy new hardware every few months if they want to play the latest games. I'd love to buy Crysis or Crysis 2, but once you add in the cost of buying a new laptop it's just not worth it.
