
The tech arms race in AAA games and why I'm abandoning it - jsnell
http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-tech-arms-race-in-aaa-and-why-im.html
======
fsloth
Tech to games is equivalent to the medium an artist uses. Crappy tools and
materials can ruin the experience (i.e. if Michelangelo's David was made out
of, say mashed potatoes it would have not survived and it would have looked
silly after a while), but good materials do not make an artist (i.e. give a
non-visual person marble and give Michelangelo mashed potatoes and what
Michelangelo produces will probably be better than what the other bloke
produces).

~~~
nosideeffects
I agree. It uses the term "tech" in the article and fails to mention
everything that isn't graphics related. Even if you decide as a game maker to
forgo 3D for whatever reason, you still have REAL technical limitations when
it comes to the game mechanics. Physics, AI, and Feature X can cost just as
much processing power as some fancy 3D graphics, regardless of whether it is
realtime or not. Major game makers already know this fact, and that is why
optimization of the tech isn't optional: not doing so means there is a lot
less you can actually do.

~~~
pgeorgi
The author tells a story about being a graphic developer, so that's probably
the reason for focussing on graphics.

Telling the AI people that their efforts are wasted on an arms race with
little effect on the game play is a much weaker argument than 'hey, I need to
revisit what _I_ am working on'.

~~~
lloeki
Re AI I was just recently thinking about Half-Life 1 marines AI (low tech,
required hint nodes) against which I definitely had memorable experience,
compared to the slew of titles that followed, with "improved" AI that looks
like a game of whack a mole alternating with scripted sequences.

Guess what? I booted HL1, and that wasn't just nostalgia tinted memory.
Smartly applied low tech produces fantastic results in the proper hands.

~~~
Crito
Something that kills me today is many modern games _still_ have worse facial
animations than Half-Life 2.

------
ghshephard
One of the sadder things I read today:

"What I was blindly ignoring back in my teen years was games like Elite,
Ultima IV, Zork, MUD - games that fit just fine on the tiny possibility space
my original PC enabled."

I had a (slap back of hand) cracked copy of Ultima IV. No User Manual. No Map.
No Potions Guide. I had to create my own maps of the world, and permute
ingredients to figure out all the potions. I spent three of the most glorious
weeks of my life completing that game, and, _to this day_ (close to 30 years
later) I recall the level, (you couldn't restore health in the midst of a
dungeon) in which I ran into the mirror image of my party and had to battle
myself. And riding the balloon over pirate bay. Oh my, ...

~~~
newobj
What I remember most about Ultima IV was the blind shop keep who determined if
you paid her the correct amount by hearing the clink of coins. So you could
buy anything for 2 coins so they clinked against each other. I thought I was
so smart, but my 9 year old self didn't realize that the game was about
building virtue...

~~~
jerf
What's particularly fun if you read some of the modern guides, now that the
game is thoroughly understood, is how to game the system. Buy stacks of
reagents from the blind women, crashing your honesty to the bottom, then boost
it back up in the most expedient way possible later. Steal everything not
nailed down in the early part of your run-through (if you play honestly the
whole way through, resources are actually sorta hard to come by), _then_ use
the stolen money to give to the poor for Sacrifice, then later on fix your
honesty (or whatever stealing counts against, I forget) in some expedient
manner.

I find something quite hilarious about the idea of a MinMaxing Avatar of
Virtue. Minmaxing often breaks the mechanics of a game, but it's rare to see
it break the _morality_ of a game the way it breaks Ultima IV.

Brilliant game.

------
sageabilly
At some point it comes down to what gamers want, and that's _always_ going to
be "different things to different people." Papathanasis illustrates it himself
when he shares the reasons his wife prefers Sims Social over Sims 3.

Also a great game with less than cutting edge graphics will probably always
win over an average game with amazing graphics- think Minecraft as the most
obvious example. I see games like The Long Dark or Don't Starve or even
something like Fez, all coming from smaller studios and all about 180 degrees
away from an AAA game being more embraced by gamers in the long run than
whatever the latest Call of Duty is. Of course if we break it down that far
then we start getting into arguments between "serious gamers" and "casuals"
and "console vs PC" and on and on and on...

Again, circling us back around to "different people like different things and
that's OK".

~~~
ZenoArrow
> Again, circling us back around to "different people like different things
> and that's OK".

Sure, there's always that. However, just commenting on game graphics for a
moment, many people have a clear bias towards graphics that are strong
aesthetically vs. those which are only technically impressive.

Consider, Sonic the Hedgehog was released in 1991. In my eyes, that game still
looks good today, and I don't think that's purely nostalgia, I believe it has
a striking, cohesive aesthetic style. Compare that with something like Doom 3,
which was released about 10 years ago. Graphically, it's not awful, but it
doesn't quite have the same timeless appeal.

Gameplay matters above everything else, but in terms of presentation the
aesthetics are IMO more important than the strength of the graphics engine.

~~~
mercurial
Just look at Hotline Miami or Gunpoint for other examples. I'll note that it's
partly a question of genre, IMHO. While Eldritch got some success, I think FPS
are a genre where it's a lot more difficult to go for a minimalistic look.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Thanks for the examples, I agree Hotline Miami and Gunpoint have strong visual
styles, never knew about them before today. Gunpoint in particular looks like
a great game too, would happily play that. Hotline Miami visually looks like a
trippy neon Alien Breed to me, I like trippy visuals, Rez is a good example of
that IMO.

I agree FPSes traditionally have been hard to make stylish, but that's not to
say it can't be done. Whilst it's not a shooter, Mirror's Edge is a decent
example. Eldritch isn't to my taste but I agree it's an attempt to craft
something memorable. I also think the makers of Timesplitters were onto
something, perhaps it could do with some cleaner lines (easily achievable
now), but it could have become something iconic. There was also a FPS game (I
forget the name) where bullets only moved fast when you moved, you can
probably still find it somewhere, I thought that was stylish too.

~~~
benaiah
The last example you cite is called Superhot, fyi

~~~
ZenoArrow
Yeah, that's the one.

------
dikaiosune
I agree with the author that quality gameplay should be more of a focus for
teams, and that their choices in graphics technologies should enable their
gameplay choices, not the other way around.

 _But_ , gameplay isn't the only way to enjoy a game. Sometimes I enjoy
something just because it's the visual and auditory equivalent of a summer
blockbuster where I'm in control. And perversely, I'm willing to pay a lot of
money to have the hardware necessary for that. Sometimes the gameplay is
objectively worse than other, less graphically accomplished games, but that
doesn't make it less aesthetically pleasing.

I think it's perfectly valid to enjoy a game for aesthetic vs. gameplay
reasons, although it can sometimes be sad when gamers have no concept of the
latter.

~~~
corysama
Even though people are giving "The Order: 1886" a hard time for it's linear,
QTE-heavy gameplay, I really want to play through it simply because it is so
technically impressive. (It might help that I make 3D engines for a living.)

[http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-rendering-in-
order-...](http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-rendering-in-
order-1886-rocks.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOHTJiRQB9o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOHTJiRQB9o)

[http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2013-shading-
course...](http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2013-shading-
course/rad/s2013_pbs_rad_slides.pdf)

~~~
Too
Wow, are those cut scenes rendered in real time? It looks as though when he's
actually playing the graphic is slightly worse and that they use a lot of blur
to cover it up, still very good but not nearly as good as the cut scenes.

~~~
kristofferR
"Since The Order: 1886 is completely rendered in real-time with no pre-
rendered frames..."
[http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/04/13/order-1886-gets-
po...](http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/04/13/order-1886-gets-powerful-
photo-mode-new-update/)

------
tormeh
>Some AAA studios subscribe to the idea that games can deliver the maximum
emotional impact in a similar way Hollywood does: By using actors in heavily
scripted sequences to tell the story of someone else that the player/viewer
relates to. Instead of playing to their medium's strengths, these studios go
through great pains to emulate what Hollywood gets naturally: emotive
characters, good looking lighting, spectacular locations. It's a very literal
attempt to imitate another established, successful medium, and because it gets
some results, it's popular, despite the fact it's very expensive and brushes
aside many of the benefits that games get naturally.

Games can be much more immersive than movies can. You can much more easily
pretend to be the protagonist. By going down this route games lose some of the
advantages of, say, arcade games, but they gain others and are generally _not_
at a disadvantage compared to movies.

~~~
mattmanser
It's not immersive the moment your character does or says something you don't
want to do.

It's the antithesis of immersive. Seconds ago I could strut where I wanted,
chop who I wanted and tea bag who I wanted.

And then suddenly I am forced to watch a cut scene with some super slow
speaking voice over artist, because no-one gets to the fucking point in
computer games.

Sometimes it works. More often, it does not.

That is the point he is trying to make.

I do like getting into the role of the good guy, there are greaat cut scenes,
but it's ultimately a cheap gimmick with the game author stealing agency from
the player. Every now and then something happens and you're all like, you
what?

~~~
mreiland
That's the biggest difference between WRPG and JRPG.

JRPG's don't tend to try and put you into the shoes of any characters, and
instead you just learn to care about the characters the way you would reading
a book or watching a movie.

------
rconti
"In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification
term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of
promotion.[1][2][3][4] A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to
be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_\(video_game_industry\))

~~~
meesterdude
I KINDA knew what AAA meant, but not really. Now I do! Thanks for posting
this.

~~~
bitwize
I still don't know what it means because the term is massively overloaded.
Does it mean:

* a game with a huge development and production budget

* a good game

* a challenging game

* a game intended to be played competitively online

* a game that features adult themes like sex and violence

My guess is that it actually means the first, but game industry marketroids
speak as if all these criteria were coterminous with one another.

~~~
Narishma
It means only the first. I've never seen it used to mean the other ones.

~~~
bitwize
The term AAA implies a sort of rating of quality, which is why it seems
duplicitous to me.

It's a bit like the term "blockbuster" in film. Originally it meant a movie so
good, lines to see it would go around the block. These days what it actually
means is a huge-budget film filled with CG and spectacle, and studios labor
under the belief that throwing that much money at a production will lead to
blockbuster-scale ticket sales. Then they wonder why their "blockbusters" flop
catastrophically at the actual box office.

~~~
mreiland
It only implies a rating of quality because a large budget tends to imply high
quality.

To give an example, no one calls Pillars of Eternity a AAA game despite it
being raved over by gamers. The reason is simple. It didn't have an overly
large budget, it had just a single artist.

People _expect_ high quality to come from a big budget and that's completely
reasonable (not duplicitous in any way). But the term still means a large
budget. No one with much familiarity with the industry would argue otherwise.

I think the misunderstanding comes about from those who don't pay too much
attention to the gaming industry as a whole misunderstanding the meaning
because they guess at it via context and get it wrong. There is absolutely an
implication of quality, but it is not a part of the definition of the term.

------
Wintamute
I think sometimes people conflate mid-career personal attitude changes with
some sort of profound pan-industry insight. There's obviously money to be made
from high tech AAA games pushing hardware limits, and money to be made from
prioritising gameplay over polish and visuals.

~~~
FrankenPC
Indie vs AAA. I thoroughly enjoy both.

------
anonmeow
I hope the GPU arms race continues for as long as possible. Without it there
would be no GPGPU and modern deep learning wouldn't be feasible.

~~~
vardump
Last I checked, the arms race seemed to be almost over. GPUs are only 20%
faster per year, and the progress seems to be getting even slower.

Gone are the days when performance doubled every year.

I think we're soon at the point upgrades make only sense every 5-10 years.
Same is happening to consoles, 7 years from PS3 to PS4 or Xbox 360 to Xbox
One. I guess PS5 and next Xbox are at least 10 years away. Maybe they'll even
be the last consoles.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Last I checked, the arms race seemed to be almost over. GPUs are only 20%
> faster per year, and the progress seems to be getting even slower.

This is what happens when you try to make too much inferences of a trend in a
short time within a step function.

The primary ingredient that fuels continued performance growth in
semiconductors, including GPUs, is process shrinks. They are fundamentally
what gives AMD and nVidia the additional transistors that they can use to
increase performance. The foundry 20nm processes were a bust, meaning that
GPUs effectively skipped a shrink. This means that the last 3 years, after
28nm became available, the only way they have had to increase performance was
slight efficiency increases and growing the chips bigger.

GPUs will move to next gen foundry processes, the Samsung/GlobalFoundries 14nm
and TSMC 16nm late this year or early next year. This will provide the most
dramatic single change in the underlying manufacturing process of the history
of making GPUs. Assuming no major architectural advances, expect twice the
performance.

~~~
amaranth
Process shrinks are giving diminishing returns as well, due to dark silicon
[1]. We can fit more transistors in the same area which gives the possibility
for more functionality but if we power them all at the same time we'll just
melt the chip.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon)

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Despite this general trend, the next process shrink will be the largest single
step in GPU history.

------
malkia
Heh, I've got the opposite - a very fast machine for it's day - 386DX 40Mhz
but with Hercules (mono graphics chip). What I did was a resident application
that has internal 320x200x256 colors buffer, and I would hack each game
(looking for 0xA0000 or debugging a bit to use my buffer rather than using the
graphics card directly). Then every few milliseconds I would transfer the
buffer as monochrome - there was no palette transformation, just use the
highest bit or something like this.

It worked fine for Star Control 2, Trolls, and few other games - yes it was
very weird, slow, etc. - but I got my excitement just for doing it. And some
games were not playable - I was taking 10% of the available memory back then,
and others were just too damn hard to crack (taking over interrupts, etc.)

------
emirozer
Well its rather surprising and terrifying to see a game developer even having
the idea "graphics makes games" for even a minute... Ask anyone about their
favorite games who are passionate about them and i can bet they will list
games that didn't had 3D graphics...

~~~
omegafail
I think it is a great selling point. No matter how crappy the final product
is, claiming new or better graphics automatically give more sold units.

It is easy to critique a game after you played it. But before you do, the only
thing you can do is look. Since you can't interact with the game in any way,
what is left is the visuals. And that impression sells the game. Therefore,
graphics matter.

~~~
bitwize
There's a thing I call Amiga Game Disease. It's a thing on many platforms,
especially now, but it was prevalent on the Amiga way back when. It's when a
game is pretty much a tech demo with a thin game wrapped around it. Take
something like Shadow of the Beast. Beautiful to look at, and really showcased
the Amiga's power. Nothing looked or sounded quite like the Amiga version of
Shadow of the Beast, and the various ports to lesser systems certainly
couldn't keep up.

But it was pure, frustrating, junk from a gameplay perspective. The controls
were clunky and shit was always popping out of nowhere and killing you. I kept
dying at the first "boss", a skeleton thing on a throne that looked like it
was made of some bigger creature's jaw. What I didn't know at the time was
that there was a gryphon I had to defeat by punching the crystal orb it was
bouncing; defeating the gryphon would temporarily grant me the power to shoot
hadoukens, and the skeleton thing was only vulnerable to the hadoukens. (If
you used up your hadoukens before defeating the skeleton thing, well, sucks to
be you.)

And it's just full of stuff like this. The game doesn't tell you ANYTHING
about how to play it or what its goals are. Plus it was a pioneer in
unskippable cutscenes: moving from one place to another -- like going in a
door or something -- entailed staring at a still image while adventure-game-
style flavor text scrolled by and no key or button press could dismiss it. And
once you die, that's it. You have to start all the way from the beginning. The
game could be cleared in half an hour -- IF you knew where everything was. I
guess it got replay value by surprising you with deadly enemies and obstacles
you couldn't see coming and making you start over each time a new thing bit
you in the ass.

But we all remember Shadow of the Beast -- indeed Amiga users look back fondly
at it -- SIMPLY BECAUSE OF ITS GRAPHICS AND SOUND.

Sword of Sodan was the same thing: clunky and repetitive, but WOW LOOK AT
THOSE HUGE SPRITES.

So yes, "good graphics = good game" is a thing, and it's because of the
market, not because of the execs.

~~~
babuskov
Strange. I played a lot of games on Amiga and do not count SotB in the great
ones. My list of great Amiga games is:

    
    
      - Perihelion
      - P.P. Hammer
      - Blues Brothers
      - Sensible Soccer
      - Lemmings
      - Alien Breed
      - Another World
    

Most of those had average graphics.

------
fr0styMatt2
A question for those in the know - as a programmer, I've seen a lot of
democratization of the game engine side of game programming over the last few
years. The price of entry to AAA-level technology has fallen so massively that
now anyone can download UDK and start having a go.

I'm interested to hear of what's happened, democratization-wise, on the art
and music side of game development. This is the bit that I find people don't
immediately grasp. While engine technology has gotten cheaper, making assets
for those engines is only getting more expensive.

So I'm interested from those who are in the art field, have asset tools become
more 'democratic'? Or to put another way, are art tools moving to make art
asset creation less expensive in the same way that engine tools have made the
programming side less expensive?

One area I can think of off the top of my head is texturing and shaders -
texture-painting tools and physically-based shaders that allow less-skilled
artists (and programmer-artists) to still get aesthetically good looking
results, without having to become experts in UV mapping or writing shaders.

Is there something similar for model and animation creation, etc? Is this even
possible to do without making games that look 'cookie-cutter'? (My gut feeling
on that last question is that it should be).

~~~
itsybitsycoder
I live on the outskirts of 3d art world and there are definitely a lot of
tools to make asset creation easier. You can buy texturing/shading packs,
which are usually pretty customizable. There are tools like MakeHuman for
humanoids and Marvelous Designer for easy clothing/cloth sim. Maya comes with
built-in hair/cloth sim now which is supposed to be quite easy to use, as well
as autorigging tools. You will probably want to know a little about 3D to make
something decent, but then again you'll want to know a little about
programming to make something decent in UDK.

I'm really curious about the music. I have a really hard time making music
without having a composing background. I've tried a few music generators but
the results have been pretty bad so far.

~~~
fr0styMatt2
I'd heard of MakeHuman but not Marvelous Designer (it looks great). Think I'm
going to submit an Ask HN, would love a list of these kinds of tools....

------
cwyers
For the author's comparison of The Sims to the Facebook Flash game of The Sims
-- one thing he doesn't discuss at all is that by using 3D models The Sims
allows you a crazy amount of customization in creating Sims and their
surroundings, compared to what's possible with the hand-drawn vector graphics
of The Sims Social.

Which kind of undermines his point. The Sims Social isn't a game that made
different choices in graphics, it's a different kind of game with the Sims
brand thrown on it. It's not just about MOAR GRAPHICS, what you're capable of
doing with graphics informs what kind of gameplay experiences you can create
for players.

------
Arzh
AAA games are like F1 cars, they are the extreme that hopefully technology
will trickle down from so that 'consumer' indie games can benefit from.
Without the huge AAA games pushing the limits of tech we wouldn't have as many
game engines for indies to use. I hope it continues because I love TIS-100 and
The Witcher 3.

~~~
fr0styMatt2
OMFG the premise of TIS-100 sounds amazing! Thanks for making me aware of it.

[http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/](http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/)

------
lmm
> What are the games that people play for years that only have pretty
> environments or another form of impressive tech to offer? I can't think of
> any.

Well, Final Fantasy VII frequently tops "greatest game of all time" polls, and
its visuals were driven by 3D tech (and arguably less artisticly interesting
than those of VI).

~~~
xamuel
I think FFVII is much deeper than its graphics and storyline. It was (not
quite, but almost) an early Cookie Clicker. Laughably easy, and yet you had
fun anyway. It was fun to max out your materia and level your characters up
even though you had long, long passed the point where the final boss was a
pushover. The graphics/story/popularity/etc. allowed you to enjoy the "Cookie
Clicker" without admitting it to anyone else or even to yourself.

That's just my subjective opinion of course.

~~~
tormeh
The thing that defines Cookie Clicker is that it _only_ has improve-stat-get-
dopamine mechanics. All games with character progression are partly Cookie
Clicker. The interesting thing about CC is its distillation of a particular
mechanic.

~~~
xamuel
It's not just improve-stat-get-dopamine. It's a very fine-tuned, well-balanced
implementation of improve-stat-get-dopamine. That same fine-tuned well-balance
was seen in FFVII, in my opinion. It's subtle (1), but just think what a fine
line it is between "grinding hits a plateau" (2) on one side and "grinding
makes you grow out of control" (3) on the other.

(1) "Good design is obvious; great design is transparent"

(2) E.g., FFIV

(3) E.g., FFVI

------
VLM
"Because of the ongoing pursuit of Hollywood"

A better analogy is obviously the best hollywood movie is the one with the
most and fanciest special effects.

Unfortunately 95% of the population doesn't want to watch a special effects
demo reel, not even for free. And the analogy is the same problem with
graphics, true the demoscene subculture is fascinated with graphics and its
very technologically impressive, but 95% of the population responds with
"meh".

(edited to add, the truly unfortunate part is the 5% of the population who
want special effects reels is financially successful enough to completely
prevent all advancement of the art other than the local maxima of special
effects, so the 95% of the population who can't stand it are stuck, and are
unserved by the monopoly / ogliopoly. The situation with games isn't as bad
and the "casuals" are making huge piles of cash for non-3d developers, and the
goal of the AAA studios and their journalist hangers on is to create and
insert enough blocks in the marketplace to eliminate casual from competition
and keep "gaming" a stereotypical pure 3-d WW2 FPS sequel experience, and the
problem is technology has pretty much topped out eliminating "better graphics"
as a marketing weapon)

~~~
maccard
I think you're dramatically overestimating the number of people who don't want
to see demo reels in the cinema. In our tight technical circles, sure, I agree
that most people don't. But our tech circles are such a small percentage of
the audience of hollywood films. There are plenty of movies that aren't
drowning in VFX released every year, yet the numbers don't lie. Avengers,
Harry Potter, Avatar, Pirates of the carribean (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-
grossing_films](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films)
for more)style films blow others out of the water. It's extrememly clear that
people want films that are knee deep in VFX. If they didn't, then they'd stop
spending 1.5 billion dollars on going to see the avengers, and see something
else instead.

~~~
VLM
I see truth in what you write.

However, given that I can't see a movie for less than $15, that $1.5B
represents only 100M views, and if you theorize that only 1B of the world
population is wealthy enough to occasionally blow $15 to watch a movie, that
implies 90% of the population is uninterested in VFX demo reels, which isn't
all that dramatically different from my engineering estimate, especially given
we could cherry pick examples to "prove" either your claim or mine, or play
games with $ per unit time to reach either conclusion.

I completely agree that $1.5B is important business, yet it makes my point
that appealing to a narrowcasted local maxima of VFX fans also simultaneously
means perhaps 90% of the population will be uninterested. And the point I'm
trying to make isn't that 10% of the population is irrelevant, but if someone
could crack the code and disrupt the industry and instead of narrowcasting,
make something of broad appeal that perhaps half the population would be
interested in, that mysterious idea would be worth about $7.5B which is
actually pretty good revenue for a startup. But it'll never happen if the
entrenched oligopoly isn't disrupted.

I honestly have no idea how to exploit the market, but "obviously" there's a
huge under served market with possibly staggering revenue, for some future
startup that can figure out how to make movies that appeal to more than about
10% of the population. Piles of money are sitting out there, waiting to be
harvested...

There are similar analogies and financials with pop music. Entrenched
industries have pretty much figured out how to sell simple mass produced
formulaic music to each generation's (each years?) teens. There seems no
biological or psychological reason a better industry competitor couldn't sell
3 to 7 times as much if they could appeal to more than young kids. Eventually
someone will crack that startup opportunity and make mid nine figures.

Finally ditto, kind of, with sports. "Everybody is a baseball fan" but only
about 5% of the population actually watches the world series. If you take
existing advertising revenue and multiply it by a fraction representing some
magic startup pixie dust that gets maybe 50% of the population to watch,
that's some serious ad revenue money; in fact its "football" type money, LOL,
which is a whole nother topic.

------
restalis
"The perfect balance of number of units with the amount of things a player's
human brain could possibly track at any given moment was completely lost on
me."

The human brain can actually abstract things away and starts thinking in
groups rather than in individual units, regardless if the game mechanics
allows the player to treat them as such or not. That units-limit was something
I did not particularly enjoyed in those games (and appreciated instead games
like Command & Conquer in this regard). I agree that there is more than
technical features that make or break a game, but the units-limit in RT
tactics games is a flaw and it's not a technical one.

For those who argue that units-limit encouraged unit-quality over unit-
quantity thinking, I concede. It's a valid point that perhaps contributed to
the *Craft success series. That feature could however have been left as an
over-ridable game parameter (set on by default, if you will).

------
meesterdude
I recently started playing skyrim - i know, I'm late to the party - and I'm
really taken by some of the graphics and gameplay. there aren't too many games
i can really stick with (just cause,bioshock,and portal are it) so it's nice
to find a game I can ACTUALLY play. I tried deus ex; good game, but got too
complicated, and then i tried picking it up months later and simply couldn't
remember anything.

But, I've also been thinking of making a game. I know next to nothing about
games, but bunches about the web. So then it became a question of what could I
build with the tools I know?

which then lead me to realize: you don't need good graphics for a great game.
Some games you want the graphics because it's part of the experience; but
others you don't need any. And still others just need some. A game just needs
to be fun in the end, and there are a surprising number of ways to get there.

~~~
jerf
There's a lot of opportunity to use your web skills to create games. Consider
things like Kingdom of Loathing or something... definitely not "great
graphics" but has a lot of fans.

Monetization opportunities seem more challenging, if you're inclined in that
direction. If not, then, well, don't worry about it.

~~~
crgt
"A Dark Room" on iOS is another one worth looking at for inspiration -
compelling game, and not at all about the graphics..

~~~
omg_ketchup
It's actually available in the browser, not just iOS.

It's one of the best games I've ever played, and I fully consider myself a
games connoisseur.

[http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/](http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/)

------
vlunkr
I thought this was obvious... I've played plenty of great-looking but terrible
games in my life, it's not that hard to put it together.

On another note, it's nice that indie games are starting to break down
barriers by NOT pushing their games to extreme technical limits and focusing
on gameplay. AAA games could learn from them.

------
fapjacks
Heh... I'll take this opportunity to post about my beloved MUME (Multi-Users
in Middle Earth) [0], a MUD that's been running for 25 years, and still the
best place in the universe for intense PvP.

[0] [http://www.mume.org](http://www.mume.org)

------
fr0styMatt2
Lots of interesting stuff in this article.

As a tech guy who went to a game programming school, my personal theory about
why technical people get hung up on engine development (the old "I'm making my
own game and have spent the last year writing my own engine") is quite simple
- it's just an easier problem space.

Writing an engine has a defined, knowable set of steps that you can answer
with if asked "What do I need to do to write a game engine?".

On the other hand, how do you answer the question "How do I make a good
game?".

So people get stuck writing engines because it's interesting and because they
can feel like they're making progress on something.

------
snarfy
Atari.

Atari pretty much spawned the video game industry, and the average game wasn't
more than squares on a screen. Squares. Your game character is one giant
pixel.

It was all about the gameplay, not the graphics, and sold millions.

~~~
Arzh
True, but at the time those squares were the cutting edge, and cost about $450
today for A game. [http://game-consoles.specout.com/q/9/2566/How-much-does-a-
At...](http://game-consoles.specout.com/q/9/2566/How-much-does-a-Atari-Pong-
game-console-cost)
[http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=98...](http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=98&year=1975)

------
rwallace
If what you care about is games for their own sake, that's as valid a
perspective as any other.

My perspective is very different, because I care about games not for their own
sake, but for their spin-off benefits: chips whose R&D was paid for by gamers,
are being used to design aircraft, discover life-saving medicines, unravel the
secrets of the universe.

From that perspective, abandoning the tech arms race in games abandons that
which was valuable about the enterprise in the first place.

------
restalis
"For years the AAA argument for pushing the tech envelope has been that the
bigger, better looking, better sounding, more detailed our worlds are, the
more believable they are. But is this true?"

It is for me! I've enjoyed Far Cry more than the barren speed-oriented
environments of Quake III or Unreal (I know, I know, this one never aimed to
be "real", but it's a good example in anti-thesis). Now seriously, when I read
this:

"In politics-heavy environments, there is nothing more effective in pursuing a
personal agenda than using "facts" and numbers - even when those facts and
numbers are hand-picked to support a certain story."

I can not help but think of the cherry-picking that the current article I'm
reading does.

------
macjohnmcc
I don't think that young people today agree that this is a bad thing. I can
see where someone who grew up with the older systems and older games would be
nostalgic towards them (I'm turning 50 this year) and find the new to be
unnecessary and gratuitous.

------
MollyR
I'm not sure how reasonable it is the way the author mixes demographics to
make his point. I don't see the type of person playing sims social, wanting to
buy a AAA game to begin with. I think the tech arms race does matter to
people. It also acts as a signal of minimum floor of quality,but the specifics
I'm not sure myself. I know would definitely prefer HD in movies, tv, and
videogames. I definitely prefer movie special effects to cheap television
special effects.

edit: maybe it also acts a way to signal people in market full of noise
(competitors?)

------
forgottenacc56
What else in his life is he seeing in the wrong way?

~~~
kelvin0
I wonder why the downvotes, it's actually a quite thought provoking question.

~~~
hvs
No it's not, it's an insult.

~~~
to3m
Disagree! It's a brilliant comment. Should really be at the top, in my view :)
- though as food more for thought than discussion.

~~~
to3m
I will try to explain, though I think it's obvious - at least, once you've
read that comment (which is why I like it so much - maybe to others it was
obvious beforehand, in which case I apologise for being dense).

Here is an article about this guy discarding beliefs that he's held for a long
time. These are beliefs that I suppose you might call his doctrine, in that he
held them without really questioning them. Well: great! Unquestioned beliefs,
questioned and revisited, changed in the face of the evidence, or whatever.
And he seems happy with the result.

How many similar beliefs might he hold in total?

If changing one set of beliefs for another is worth doing, what about some
other set?

Would it be worth his adopting this as more active process, rather than simply
waiting for events to demonstrate that some arbitrary set of beliefs are worth
changing?

Is there a wider lesson here?

(Etc., etc.)

~~~
kelvin0
That's exactly how I interpreted the 'insulting' comment. We tend to
compatimentalize ourselves at a rational level, but sometimes fail to see the
'bigger picture' of our mental patterns and the impact they have.

------
alkonaut
This arms race is probably because what I want isn't a new game I just want
the same game as the last game but looking twice as good.

------
karmakaze
One example where tech enables a more engaging (fun) gameplay is Gran Turismo.
It simulates real cars on real tracks and the accuracy of driving physics of
actual cars is a prime source of pleasure. Driving a different car, or
different settings actually makes a difference in the way it feels. I'm still
waiting for GT7 to have a reason to get a PS4.

------
badloginagain
The author points to Sims Social and League of Legends as points of reducing
the technical prowess of games.

While it's true that these games are less technically complex than a hyper-
realistic 3D game, they are extremely complicated in client-server
architecture.

The requirements for technical complexity have changed focuses, not
disappeared.

------
Shivetya
That story about trying to encourage his wife to try the PC version reminds me
very much of most experiences I have with or watching console gamers moving to
the PC.

The complexity at times isn't worth it because it loses sight of what the
purpose was, to have fun

------
z3t4
My thought is that it's more difficult then ever to make high tech games.
There's very little games coming out now that push the limits of what's
possible. It's almost like complaining there is too much water on the moon.

------
anabis
Good games that push the envelope is entertainment and art, It may also be
genre creating.

Katamari-damacy for PS, Dynasty Warriors for PS2, and Quake comes to mind.

------
Garlef
This debate goes back to the late 1990's.

------
ajuc
I'm still excited for more power for games. For a game that uses CPU correctly
see Dwarf Fortress.

~~~
newobj
You mean that game that only runs on one core?

~~~
ajuc
I mean the game that uses CPU for simulation of world, not for pushing ever
more trangles to the GPU.

Didn't knew it's single core only, that's a shame.

------
ojbyrne
I have a stupid question that I felt the author should have addressed. What's
AAA?

~~~
bitwize
Marketroid term for game that has a huge dev team and production/marketing
budget. Marketroids which bandy this term about are often under the delusion
that this makes for a good game.

