Let Me Explain
In the past several years, the game industry has been solely focused on improving the visual aspect of games—a bold statement, perhaps, but a true one. If you go back to 15 years ago, you can see that the graphical capabilities of games have improved significantly. If you go back even further--say 5 years ago, the games look like they have been washed in a cloth that uses the bloom effect way too often. And if you go back even further than that, the games look almost unrecognizable.
However, the gap between technological advancements seems to get smaller and smaller. Tighter and tighter. That's mainly because we have reached the limit or close to the limit of what our current machines can do. How can you possibly get better than realistic? Intergalactic?
Despite that, AAA game companies seem like they don't get the memo. They keep trying to push ray tracing, realistic shadows, or shinier-looking boots onto an audience that clearly doesn't care. And while these technologies are fairly impressive in their own right and they do present amazing results, they ignore a very crucial part of what makes a game fun in the first place... the gameplay. It's in the name. You can't have a game without gameplay. If games were judged solely on their graphics, then the little red plumber we all know and love would have never made it past the beginning. The visuals are never the end all be all of any game. Instead, it is only a mask that is made by these larger companies to hide the fact that their games are a shallow, lifeless, cash grab that never had a chance to compete with others in the market were it not for their "extra crispy and realistic-looking sandwiches".
Now there's no arguing that the visual aspect of a game is a selling point to some people. Yet, these game companies believe that it is the only reason why people buy games in the first place. In fact, I would argue the "realism" of a game's graphics is always an afterthought. An extra plus people talk about after the gameplay, the story, the art, and/or the musical score. For example, take a look at this very happy and definitely real reviewer after buying the very famous game People With Guns Fight Other People With Guns 2.
"What a great game. Fantastic story and I have a crush on the main character. How can I get in contact with her? Do you guys have like a number I can perhaps call? "
> "Some Weird Guy on Metacritic"
Well, that's not a real review but you get the point.
There are several examples of games (both modern and old) that break this mantra of "realistic games are better." Games that have sold millions and continue to do so. So, let's take a look then, shall we?
Stylistic VS. Realistic
In the past few years, there was a series of games that you might have heard of called Call Of Duty. It is a massive series and genre that has spanned two decades of games. Billions (yes billions) of copies were sold across many of the games in the series. Some people started their careers and companies because of Call Of Duty. And when you look at the graphical capabilities of these games (even at the time), it was always subpar at best. Sure, they didn't have the worst visual aspect ever, but they didn't use the most "bleeding-edge" technology either. Still, people didn't care.
Even though not as big as Call Of Duty, Minecraft was another monumental game from that same era. A game constructed from only cube meshes. The whole design and aesthetic of Minecraft is the cube. Despite that, Minecraft sold millions of copies and completely changed the course of the gaming market.
If you still don't believe me (come on, man), let's take a look at a recent example. That's right, Fortnite. Even though I can't say that I enjoy Fortnite as much as the masses seem to do, there is no denying that it was a monumental phenomenon that hit the gaming market with force. Does Fortnite have advanced ray tracing algorithms that make everything look realistic and human-like? Well, no. That would take away from the stylistic look of the game. While Fortnite does perhaps use ray tracing in some capacity, the game has a cartoony visual representation of its characters and world. Unrealistic as it can get. And, yet, it's a game that sold and still sells millions of copies.
I haven't even talked about the indie games yet. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Lethal Company, and, of course, Palworld. These games are inherently made with a unique stylistic look that gives the game identity. No one really talks about how realistic Balatro looks or how cool it is to see the realistic gory details of Palworld. Instead, people talk about the gameplay, the art style, the music, the story, the uniqueness. Realism has nothing to do with the success of these games. They didn't need it either. That's because they had something that many of the modern AAA games sadly lack: fun gameplay.
The Tech Grind
Games are really hard to make. Everyone knows that as a fact of game development. This is true now more than before. In the days of Quake and Doom, a 1-year development cycle was looked upon as a long period of time to develop a game. Nowadays, games can easily be in a 6, 8, or even 10-year development cycle. It's normal to have such a long development time. That's in part because the demand for larger games has gotten... well, larger. Not only that, trying to make a game look "realistic" might take more time and effort than you might think.
Some game studios might have a team whose only purpose is to handle the lighting in the game. Yes, that's it. That might seem like a useless job, but, annoyingly, it is not.
Since games are so large nowadays, many teams are created to handle different tasks. Despite the large number of people and teams working on a game, there might still be ground that can't be covered since there are already a lot of things to do. The 3D modelers might know how to set up lighting in the game, but they are too busy grinding on making the 1000th rock model that the player will trip on in level 36. The animators surely know how to handle lighting, right? Well, yes of course they do. But, they are too busy trying to make the dancing monkey on the main menu dance as realistically as possible. And the programmers, well... they're programmers. They barely know the difference between a circle and a cylinder. Therefore, a "lighting" artist makes sense. We do want the game to be realistic after all.
However, that is not the only problem. "Realistic graphics" is an area of study that can take years to master or even to get partially good at. Graphics are already hard as it is, trying to make it look realistic takes it to the next level. The graphics you see nowadays were thanks to the efforts of brilliant programmers and graphics engineers who spent years pounding their heads against the wall just to try and achieve such a look in an efficient and performant manner. It is no easy task to render thousands of geometric elements on the screen with barely a noticeable frame rate drop. It is a monumental achievement.
Moreover, it is not so simple to just take the algorithms created by other graphics programmers and apply them to your game. The current state of graphics programming is a mess of graphics APIs that are specific to each platform. For example, OpenGL and DirectX (9 through 11) were used to render most of the graphics back in the day. These APIs are, however, not as popular nowadays since they don't support most of the modern features required by most games like ray tracing. Or, rather, they aren't optimized to handle such tasks. That might not be necessary for you, but for AAA games that have massive worlds, every drop of performance that can be milked from the operating system is more than welcomed. To address this problem, newer graphics APIs were created. Vulkan, DirectX12, and Metal. Why are there 3 graphics APIs rather than one? Well, capitalism, my friend. Not really. Each API is specific to a platform. DirectX12, for instance, works only with the Windows operating system and even Xbox. While Metal, the new kid on the block, works best with any new Apple product. And Vulkan, well, Vulkan works with everything... except not really. While you can use Vulkan to render graphics on Linux, the Nintendo Switch, and even Windows, it is usually best to use the API of the specific platform to squeeze every last drop of performance. And, again, for AAA studios, that is a requirement.
Alright so that's the PCs but what about consoles, though? Well, those are a bit more complex. Each console has its own graphics API to communicate with the graphics chip of the console. While the Nintendo Switch did adapt Vulkan, Nintendo still has its own API that would be more efficient to use since it is designed precisely for Nintendo consoles. Sony has its own in-house API as well they use for the PlayStation consoles. And you get the point.
On top of that, GPU vendors like NVIDIA and AMD don't give the programmers the exact implementation of these graphics APIs. In fact, the "APIs" are actually just specifications. Guidelines the programmers are expected to adhere to. This makes it difficult for programmers since some algorithms might work very well on NVIDIA GPUs but not so well on AMD GPUs. Put all of that together and you get a nested web of complexities and unnecessary bloat that plagues the current state of graphics programming.
Not Always Black And White
Listen, I'm not trying to undermine the immense efforts of the genius engineers who worked tirelessly in order to produce such beautiful graphics. The efforts are much appreciated, as they also have contributed to making games faster. However, my problem is with the overuse of these realistic graphics and the weird obsession the industry has with them. In a way, it almost relinquishes the efforts of these engineers since it just became the "norm" to add realistic graphics to every game.
I'm not suggesting completely stopping the advances of the graphics sector and firing all of the graphics programmers from every game studio out there. The opposite, in fact. Any technological advancement is a great achievement. Besides, while games are not strictly a graphics medium, other industries are. The animation industry and the movie industry use graphics for various tasks. And for these industries, graphics matter way more than it does in game development.
Instead, I suggest we shift our attention even for a little bit into other facets of game development that could perhaps largely benefit from the same effort, manpower, and money that is poured into graphics. Physics, audio, AI, procedural generation, or even discovering a new genre for games. Many of these areas have little or no care put into them by the game industry as much as graphics. If anything, I believe many of these areas are barely developed. Even if there were amazing advances in those areas of game development, you and I would have not known about them since no one talks about or even considers them. Even though there are engineers who are as smart and as hard-working as the ones in the graphics field. Sure AI is a growing market, but not game AI. The AI in games has been at a plateau for many years. It's usually the same look, shoot, die, and repeat. Some games do have some nice and advanced AI but they are so far and in between they might as well be invisible.
So many talented people pour hours and even years just to make games more fun. Why? Because they like it! Instead of using these people to move the needle forward, we instruct them to watch very pretty and realistic paint dry with promises that in the next 10 years, it will dry 20% faster.
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