The Graphics Plateau: Where do we go next?

[dyre]

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?

I think graphics whores will die out eventually. I mean, stuff looked pretty damn bad ten years ago. I remember playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault as a kid and noticing how blocky the soldiers' hands were. Nowadays, high-graphics games look really good, and the change over the years has been quite noticeable.

Five years from now, unless they develop 3D that isn't garbage, fitting a few more pixels into a screen won't have the same return that it did in the past, so people will at least move onto other gimmicks.

 

[Toar]

We are at a plateau, but we were also at a plateau when the PS2 came out. Remember that? Yeah... we are about to have another B-I-G leap in technology game wise and the hardware avalible will be hard pressed to run the new stuff. We are coming into the crystal/diamond age of gaming. The gold age was with the arcades, the crystal age comes when the hardware we use is good enough to handle molecular detail. Yup, we are coming to a big leap...


Just hope developers and artists are able to meticulously work around the new stuff... The old stuff took them long enough, now we have... woot...

 

[Toar]

We are at a plateau, but we were also at a plateau when the PS2 came out. Remember that? Yeah... we are about to have another B-I-G leap in technology game wise and the hardware avalible will be hard pressed to run the new stuff. We are coming into the crystal/diamond age of gaming. The gold age was with the arcades, the crystal age comes when the hardware we use is good enough to handle molecular detail. Yup, we are coming to a big leap...


Just hope developers and artists are able to meticulously work around the new stuff... The old stuff took them long enough, now we have... woot...

 

[AlexNora]

i don't want anymore Graphics i want bigger games with better physics im tired of seeing weapons go throw the characters body.

 

[meow]

wheres the game where the ai make quests by them selves and they arent scripted random encounters oh wait GRAPHICS ARE TOO IMPORTANT

 

[octafish]

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.

Much in the same way Invisible War plays superior to Deus Ex?

I just had more fun playing Buck Rogers-Countdown To Doomsday than any of my ps3 games.

On the Sega Mega Drive? I loved that game and wouldn't let my brother play his own game system for months when he got that.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

yeah because taking next gen graphics advice from somebody who made the least graphically appealing game in the last 10 years sounds like a sensible move.

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.

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.

Maybe you should look more into the other side of the argument too.

http://vimeo.com/27522131

IT IS COMING, I just don't think it will be how people think it is going to be. But you never know, that is an impressive jump for a year, I will wait another and see how it goes.

 

[Snowblindblitz]

My only problem with this current era of graphics driven games is the only ones I remember fondly are Bastion, and the stories of DA:O and ME. That should kinda point out something wrong.

PS2/x-box and PS1 era games had a much more lasting impact on me. One of my favorite "new" games was Chronicles of Riddick, and that was a re-release, that managed to stand-up to new, "AAA" titles.

Deus Ex: HR is good, but not as deep as the first.

Games were in a sweet spot before the current cycle where they hit that graphics plateau fairly early, and pushed content over everything else. There are fucking SNES games that have more content in them then current "AAA" titles.

 

[skywolfblue]

We are nowhere near a "graphics plateau".

Sure crysis looks pretty, but it's still a very long way from a photorealistic render.

Raytracing will be more then game engines will be able to handle for decades to come. So we wont reach that stage for a long time.

 

[Sexy Devil]

I don't get it, Why people think focusing on graphics makes the game play instantly bad?

You have your 100% of design budget, what do you spend the percentiles for recruiting and hiring on?

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.

Stop blaming emphasis on visual design for bad games. Dragon Age 2 objectively looked like crap and it's still crap in general. Uncharted 2 looked fantastic (2 years ago anyway; some developers are overtaking it now) and it delivered a generally fulfilling experience.

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.

Play the PS3 Ratchet & Clank games.

 

[ph0b0s123]

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?

"The current generation of Consoles has been the DELAYING force IN bringing lifelike visuals to gaming,"
Fixed it for you... And I think you meant crysis 2 as crysis 1 was not released on consoles yet.

Look at a person in your latest AAA graphics feast and then look at the real person standing next to you. Still think graphics can't get much better? Until you look at a game and are not sure if the visuals are for a game or a movie, we are nowhere close to a graphics plataeu. And this idea that people being graphics whores is a new thing is bull. People have been looking for better graphics from their games since the 70's.

Also people say that better graphics being easier to produce will mean better other things like AI and physics. They fail to realise that even if better graphics are easier to program it does not mean they are easier to run. Better AI and physics etc need processing power. At the moment all that power on consoles is being used for graphics and until the next gen comes along you will not have the extra needed to be able to do those things.

So until the next gen comes along there won't be any changes to this. The only way it could be done is by decreasing the graphics in a game to allow you to have better AI or physics.

Now there is a platform out there where there is this extra processing power, so you could try to make games with better AI or physics, but unfortunately those game would not run on consoles so it is not done. Which goes back to my original point that rather than driving invocation consoles are stifling it.

This console generation has been an epic success in getting huge numbers interested in gaming. But that huge market has now acted like a black hole by sucking resources away for places where innovation would be easier due to more processing power being available.

 

[Azza1988]

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.

Yeah, I'd much rather play a game with a great story to it and good gameplay than something that looks amazing but doesnt offer nearly as much in the entertainment deparment. Hell to this day i still play on the original Deus Ex and we all remember them graphics =P.

 

[teqrevisited]

More expansive environments with the same levels of graphical fidelity. This wont happen with current gen consoles holding everything back, though. Lazy developers don't help either.

 

[sean360h]

AI is going to get massive upgrade next get along with some nice graphics tech like tessellation hdr and good anti aliasing
Graphics can always be improved its just that its getting harder and harder to notice the difference
Top it off with better render distances and better physics