Graphical fidelity is ruining video games | Hacker News Reader

Graphical fidelity is ruining video games

eev.ee

44 pointsdavezatch38 comments

"I just don’t understand the game industry (and game culture)’s fanatical obsession with realistic graphics. They make games worse."

I just don't understand talkies. They make movies worse.

I just don't understand TV. It's worse than radio shows.

I just don't understand 60fps filming. It just makes the props look fake.

Every entertainment form has its visionaries, master craftsmen, and then the other 95% made up of crap (not to mention the industry learning curve as people discover what works and what doesn't).

This has nothing to do with graphical fidelity. There were shit games on the Atari 2600, and there are shit games on the PS4.

Good entertainment immerses you in the environment, such that you don't even think to question how things work. If it fails in that, the designers are doing something wrong.

I can't help but feel you didn't read past the headline. You've just about entirely missed eevee's point as elaborated in that essay: that earlier generations of games with a lot less graphical and detail oomph achieved your stated goal better:

Good entertainment immerses you in the environment [...]

Most of the article is spent in trying to explain this observation and get underneath it in a nuanced way. There's a lot of good observations in there.

It's worth noting that major figures in the gaming world are making big stakes on this very premise[1]:

"The biggest reason why we haven’t done a remake until now is because it’s a massive undertaking to reconstruct Final Fantasy 7 from the ground up with the current technology," Kitase wrote. "Producing a proper HD remake of Final Fantasy 7 that maintains the same feeling of density of the original would result in a volume of content that couldn’t possibly fit into one installment."

That's exactly what Square Enix is doing with the forthcoming FF7 remake, installments.

A big part of eevee's criticism might be summed as "graphical density is a poor substitute for environmental, interactive density". I've played too many recent-era games whose gameplay felt straightjacketed and linear, their gorgeous eye-candy environments managing to be disappointingly boring. In the worst cases, the gameplay worked hard against ever looking at and appreciating the highly detailed environment. What an enormous waste!

[1] http://www.gamesradar.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-too-big-one...

While I more or less agree with you, and there's nothing wrong with graphical fidelity in itself, I think the argument is more one of priorities.

If you have 6 months to build a game, do you spend 3 on graphics and 3 on gameplay or do you spend 5 on graphics and 1 on gameplay.

Personally, I have no insight into the game industry, so it's very possible that it's not a zero sum tradeoff, and crappy games would just be crappy games with crappy graphics if they focused on graphics less, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if gameplay was at least somewhat scarified for graphics.

The argument is NOT one of priorities. It is that if you go for too much realism, then you have have to start making things real instead of fun.

Example from the article: Run speed in Doom is stupid high which is fun and seems normal, but would look silly and off-putting in a photorealist game.

One of the reasons why Minecraft is so revolutionary is that because it was an indy game, it could peg its graphical fidelity to same crude level as the simulation. The whole world is WYSIWYG in a way that high graphical fidelity FPS games aren't. High res games are showing you all sorts of details that can't be simulated in any detail.

A commercial game would never have been made with such blocky graphics and low resolution textures, because they would be scared to market such a clunky looking game. But the clunky-ness of the graphics enables the fidelity between the look and the simulation. The irony is it is so successful it made low res graphics a style.

What the author really misses is the ingenuity he had when he started playing video games. Playing an old videogame now is not nearly as fun as it was when I was a kid so it can't be only a graphics issue. Without ingenuity a videogame will never be fun.

How I wish I could play Dwarf Fortress when I was a kid. Now is too late for me. Ingenuity (and free time) had gone.

Yes! I have the theory that everybody likes the kind of games they grew up with. I started playing video games around ~2000 and I can't really enjoy these 2D platformers or simple 3D games like Doom. They just look too … ridiculous and unrealistic to me. Current games on the other hand are just needlessly shiny and … realistic to me.

Very interesting article. A few nitpicks however:

I’m sure there were other true-3D games before it, but I challenge you to name one off the top of your head

Descent was published in 1995, one year before Quake. And it was fully 3D, even moreso than Quake since you could rotate around all three axes.

Before Quake, games couldn’t even simulate a two-story building, which ruled out most realistic architecture.

The Build engine (used e.g. in Duke Nukem 3D) was capable of faking multi-story buildings with the creative use of teleporters.

I believe one of the earliest 3D games is Elite, from 1984. (Example of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmCaNwBwXoQ)

But I too didn’t know of it until very recently, when Elite: Dangerous came out. In my social environment, the Quake series was however very well known. I have the impression that Elite was more restricted to the British market.

And my personal favorite - System Shock. You could actually look up/down on that, and it had .... drum roll....sloping surfaces! Come to think of it, Ultima Underworld was also pretty impressive

There were 3D games with full environments even in the 8 bit era. Novagen Mercenary, released in 1985. Freescape games, beginning with Driller, from 1987.

Well, games with high graphics and realism have cars that you cannot use and other things to give the sense of immersion. If your playing let's say GTA and the buildings where you cannot enter were simply gone it would be very weird. What i think take from the article is that game development moved away from it's roots. Every game is for the eye candy instead of being fun, the only company that comes to my mind at the moment is nintendo. Yeah, things don't look too good for them at the moment, but one of the most popular games of all time has simple graphics and simple gameplay and it's fun. It's called Super Mario Bros.

I think it's more that the intent of games has been diverging for a long time, to the point where they are really several different art forms all getting lumped together under the category "games." The most obvious that come to mind:

- interactive fiction, both movies (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls) and novels (To The Moon, MUDs)

- simulators of various kinds (most FPSes are basically war simulators, or at least laser tag simulators, but also stuff like racing and flight sims)

- pure gameplay (platformers, 4X games)

- puzzles (Tetris, Bejeweled, The Witness)

- others...

Then those get combined in every imaginable way by the developers, yielding a huge spectrum of games so that it's very difficult to put most of them into a single category. At the edges they're still fundamentally different things. They're never going to evolve into a single Platonic ideal that can be called "games" (that was closest to being true back in the Atari days, where everything was fairly similar to Pitfall or Donkey Kong) - just keep diverging into different experiences (especially with VR coming around now), while still maintaining a continuous spectrum of different types that borrow from the best (and worst) parts of the purest genre forms.

The extreme focus on high-end graphics and realism is mostly due to the influence of a few of those genres - simulators and interactive fiction. That's a huge portion of the market, so it seems like all games are just about graphics now, when that really isn't true.

> If your playing let's say GTA and the buildings where you cannot enter were simply gone it would be very weird.

I think that's one point of the article: Instead of creating a game not set in the real world where for some arbitrary, unexplained reason there are huge blocks everywhere, developers create games ostensibly set in reality where those same blocks look like buildings. Except that you expect to be able to enter these buildings (like in reality), so when you can't that breaks your immersion.

So keep the blocks, but don't make them look like something that exists in reality, because then players will expect them to behave like the real thing.

Doom was the last video game I played regularly. Obviously, I am not a gamer. Strange, but I have spent more time with If (interactive fiction) these past few years, and any games that have more 'artsy' or abstract visuals. Hell, I even like the demo Breakout clone on the Pythonista app more than realistic games. I was into viewing Machinima at one time, and I think there the realism works better than in games, although there were some really cool Machinima works done in a zany forced-perspective, or cartoon style that were fantastic.

I think the point is that we have focused too much on high frame rates and realism, and drifted away from the creative, storytelling side. I think that's why the animated movies, like The Incredibles, or Despicable Me and Zootopia do well. They use the old animation tricks that don't actually mimic real physics, but our cultured sense of movement. I don't have much interest in the second wave of VR either; I am trying to continue to find awe in the real world around me, and would prefer to be in an immersive world of crazy Bugs Bunny and Jessica Rabbit!

>Doom was the last video game I played regularly. Obviously, I am not a gamer.

This comment is great since I don't think you're aware a major studio game called "DOOM" was just released in the last few weeks. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQpxDFExwhU (it was renamed from Doom 4 to just DOOM since this demo was shown)

I don't think high frame rates are the problem. Quite a few old console games ran at 60 FPS, and a lot of newer games don't because the "realistic" graphics take too much time. Higher FPS are useful because they cut down on latency, so if a game requires quick reactions (e.g. a fighting game) high FPS are a must.

I remember reading that a lot of Counterstrike players turn down the visual details in favor of higher frame rate, since the visual details do nothing for gameplay whereas the higher FPS does.

Much to my chagrin, modern games don't focus on high frame rates. 30 fps is the new standard, 60 fps if you're lucky, most PC ports of console games are locked to 30/60hz and require physics-borking hacks to lift the limit, and even the games that do support arbitrary framerates tend to have a target FPS designed into them, such that even a monster PC with all of the graphics settings turned down will frequently choke.

The problem is not the fanatical obsession with realistic graphics. It's the lack of fanatical obsession with unrealistic graphics or whatever else you care about. Everyone is free to do whatever you want nobody stopping anyone to do anything. Build your game and let gamers vote with their money.

Would still recommend Halo. It has diversity in enemy types in a similar way to DOOM.

Graphical fidelity prevents experimentation by making things too expensive to try. That's why we have indie games! Go play some! It's like Sundance, there is a bunch of crap and a bunch of incredible creativity.

Game Maker's Toolkit had a really good video on DOOM and enemy types not long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuOObGjCA7Q

The entire channel is golden, especially for those interested in game design or criticism.

This is spot on. I recently played through Doom again in OpenGL mode with the Project Brutality mod, and it was better than any FPS I've played in years.

So the author is discovering this about the video game industry right now? This has been apparent for anyone to see, if you cared to, for the last 10 years at least.

It seems like every time there's a new game I need a new goddamned computer. And then the game is like 90 bucks!? Where's the fun in that? They are games, not god damned niche specialty hobbies. Imagine if films, or music, or books were like that? It's ludicrous. I guess it's a different thing, but damn. Computing has managed to become affordable, while gaming has become a hobby for the middle-classes, like skiing, or yacht racing, or formula one. It's like a vomitorium of the senses, and a lot of it is not particularly inspiring.

> a new goddamned computer

I haven't touched a single component in ~4 years and AAA games still work great on medium-high settings. Heck, despite tons of warnings from Oculus, the hardware also adequately drives a DK2 in less intensive apps. Are you referring to laptops?

> not particularly inspiring

I've almost given up on AAA games. I get almost everything off GoG these days because I've found that the price of a game is generally inversely proportional to the quality of the game. Get off the hype train, there are tons of very inspired titles out there (The Witness, Modded Minecraft, Undertale, Factorio, Dungeons 2, etc.).

I only consider AAA tiles after they've lived up to critical and fan scrutiny for a least a month or two, additionally, I have to be specifically looking for a title that offers the "same shit, different day." CoD barely changes year-to-year but yet it sells like hotcakes. That's the market that AAA developers service, don't limit yourself to that market if you are finding that it's inadequate.

> It seems like every time there's a new game I need a new goddamned computer.

Shiny new games come out about every other week. A nice computer should play every one of them well for many years.

> And then the game is like 90 bucks!? Where's the fun in that?

90 bucks? Do you live in Australia? (fair enough) Do you feel compelled to buy the collector's/deluxe edition of every game? (don't)

Ever heard of Steam sales? Or indie games? Or Humble Bundles? Like zamalek said, ignore the hype and marketing. Get games after a year or so when the prices have come down. If said game is actually good, people will still be talking about it.

> Imagine if films, or music, or books were like that? It's ludicrous.

A good game is enjoyed for over 10 hours. A great one might be at least 50. Imagine listening or watching any other media for that long of a time. You'd likely be bored or insane. You can get ludicrous value per hour gaming very easily.

> It's like a vomitorium of the senses, and a lot of it is not particularly inspiring.

Indie games are maybe $20 each, and tend not to be your copy-paste $90 shooty-fest.

I have to reinforce something you said:

> A good game _is enjoyed_ for over 10 hours. A great one might be at least 50.

This is not about the game length/duration. It's its lasting appeal. The game I most consistently replay (and that I consider the best game ever) is the original Portal, a 4 hour game.

Yes, indeed. Portal is great. But when I wrote that, I was thinking more about open worlds and multiplayer games where game length is entirely irrelevant, and you can easily play hundreds of hours without realizing it.

Open world is a mixed bag. Some of my favourite games are open world and I love exploring game worlds. But the current trend of making every single game open-world usually backfires.

I'd reather have a carefully designed closed spaced with backtracking (Metal Gear Solid, Metroidvanias) that an open world with a dozen of hand-designed places.

The biggest contrast I found was between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. In the former you are contantly traversing the old places and trying out stuff with your new abilities. On the latter, you just fly in a straight line to your objective. AA is better at gauging your curiosity while in AC, you must actively explore stuff.

For ten hours I could read a Song of Ice and Fire, which the author took a shit-ton of years to write, and which is still being written. One of those books will cost me 7.45 on a kindle. I could easily get ten hours for the fraction of the price of say -- the new Doom, which costs 86 dollars on top of the hardware I don't have to play it.

The best gaming experiences always had effort put in to story and character, which doesn't cost anything compared to cutting edge fidelity. High fidelity is not required AT ALL to convey either emotion or story. Fidelity is... Do you remember reel to reel music Albums? No? Because they were a waste of money, and time, and completely unnecessary. How about 60fps film? DV? Shit. All awful awful shit anti-art.

Here's the thing. The best ,most engaging content is always simulacrum. It is not simulation. It is supposed to tell a story and evoke a feeling. Over production kills character in just about every sense the human mind can pick up. I always prefer impressionism over realism, because -- what's the point? I could just go outside and live my life, or go paint-balling. Art is supposed to be hyper-real, which means a simulation of life will always end up second best to a great simulacrum -- something which is only required to represent with style and evocation of feelings. Like a book, it forces our minds to invest in the process of suspension of disbelief. All fidelity gives is resolution. Above a certain threshold fidelity is completely irrelevant.

>It seems like every time there's a new game I need a new goddamned computer

That's what consoles are for :-)

Edit: This isn't supposed to be a snarky "console masterrace" comment, but merely the observation that consoles have fixed specs and a life-cycle of five or more years where you can play current games without having to buy new hardware. (I don't even own any consoles, unless you count emulators.)

Or future-proofing your PC by not buying low/mid end parts. Spending an extra $400 when building so you can keep the PC for 4-6+ years instead of 1-2 years. If you don't mind playing games on "low/mid" console-equivalent graphics this isn't even necessary except for the most poorly optimized games. Unless you want to be playing the newest games on max/ultra settings and expect 60+fps at all times you will not need to buy new hardware or even the highest-end hardware at anywhere near that rate.

Unless you're buying a $350 Facebook-browsing machine to game on the lowest settings - you will not need to upgrade every 1-2 years to run games.

You lack the option to play the newest games at max/ultra settings at 60+ fps on consoles. Because the options simply don't exist and you can't update the hardware to allow for it. You get 30fps and med/med-high graphics at best.

waves a regal hand Why don't you simply buy a better machine?

So... Let them eat cake?

This is not an argument, it's obvious. Many of us are living on the edge as it is, and there are plenty of great games we can play, but games that are not fidelity backwards compatible lock out a class.

This is not that big of a deal -- its not like they're uni-text books or anything -- but it's similar territory. It's an excuse to bump up the price with the added insult to injury that you can't even steal the game cause you plebs wouldn't even have the hardware.

Unlike certain aspects of life where certain "necessities" end up costing more because they need to be purchased every so often and people who can afford to purchase in bulk or purchase higher quality end up spending less over time, entertainment is something which can be done on a budget.

Option A:

    Year 1: Buy $400 machine
    Year 2: Buy a new $400 machine
    Year 3: Buy a new $400 machine
    Total Cost: $1,200

Option B:

    Year 1: Buy nothing
    Year 2: Buy nothing
    Year 3: Buy $1,200 machine that will last the next 4-6 years, effectively saving $1,600-$2,400 in the process. 
    Total Cost: $1,200

I did Option B. Except it took four years - and it would have taken five years if I wasn't fortunate enough to get a better paying job during that time. Catch up on backlog of previous 2 years worth of games over time and, very likely, at a cheaper cost since they are now "dated" (saving even more money)

Instant gratification is not necessary - and learning how to avoid it often leads to making better investments.

Wow. If only people knew. Just get a better job and save for four years. Goes back to my original point, doesn't it?

You are essentially agreeing with me, because these are the exact measures most must go through -- only things don't always work out like that. Your computer breaks. You lose a job. You have to pay for other crap. Trade off after trade off for a game that cost the same as a big budget film. It's ludicrous.

They simply cannot afford a $350 computer each year if they cannot afford a $1,200 computer after {3 + n} years. Period. Full stop. There is no way they can spend more money but be incapable of spending less money if they're able to spend that money at all. That isn't how money works. If you don't have enough to spend less - you simply cannot afford to spend more than that. If they can (barely) afford a $350 machine each year, they aren't the level of poor you're trying to talk about. You're talking about people who can't even afford the $350 machine.

We aren't talking about how someone with more money initially has the privilege of spending less money over time (eg: the "better boots" scenario)

Getting a better job did speed things up a year but wasn't necessary. Which doesn't go back to your original point, at all. I had no problem with waiting five years for a decent computer if that had to be the case.

What are you on about? Stop straw manning me. When did I ever say saving will get your hearts desire means being able afford a 350 a year should afford you 1200 after 3 years? If you want to nitpick, you will see that I said one would have to save AND get a better job for the above to make sense.

My point was prices for casual entertainment vs occasional entertainment (computer games/movies,etc/ vs holidays/niche sports/etc) is dissonant when it comes to computer hardware + titles.

Yes, the hardware itself has better value than the holiday, because the results last for 4 years (best case for the games we're talking about), but the hardware is the medium -- it still requires paying extra for the actual game(s), plus all manner of extra circumstantial costs. In fact one may gain for more from holiday -- in terms of life experiences, satisfaction, well being, etc, in the long run.

The price of games is intentionally inflated. An IMAX ticket for many new releases is also a magnitude more expensive than seeing it at matinee or through rental or even cheaper when its on TV or Netflix later on.

Most games go on Steam sale for $5 within 3 years of release. And even that is honestly still really inflated (after all, the real per unit cost of a game is $0, so its all pure profit anyway since people are willing to give away the game for free on torrent sites) but mobile demonstrates the real price floor for video games - the microtransaction whale market where you have to give it away for free and hope you have 1/100 customers actually pay money is fairly "real" in terms of pricing.

Even for paid mobile games, if they have a PC port, it will be a third or less the price on Google Play than it was on Steam, not because of development costs but because the Steam userbase "expects" $15 purchases while mobile users won't pay more than $5.

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