Gaming

Is it diminishing returns? Yes, of course.

Is it taxing on your GPU? Absolutely.

But, consider Control.

Control is a game made by the people who made Alan Wake. It's a fun AAA title that is better than it has any right to be. Packed with content. No microtransactions. It has it all. The only reason it's as good as it is? Nvidia paid them a shitload of money to put raytracing in their game to advertise the new (at the time) 20 series cards. Control made money before it even released thanks to GPU manufacturers.

Would the game be as good if it didn't have raytracing? Well, technically yes. You can play it without raytracing and it plays the same. But it wouldn't be as good if Nvidia hadn't paid them, and that means raytracing has to be included.

A lot of these big budget AAA "photorealism" games for PC are funded, at least partially, by Nvidia or AMD. They're the games you'll get for free if you buy their new GPU that month. Consoles are the same way. Did Bloodborne need to have shiny blood effects? Did Spiderman need to look better than real life New York? No, but these games are made to sell hardware, and the tradeoff is that the games don't have to make piles of money (even if some choose to include mtx anyway).

Until GPU manufacturers can find something else to strive for, I think we'll be seeing these incremental increases in graphical fidelity, to our benefit.

Shadow can definitely look a lot better than this picture suggests.

The biggest advancements in game graphics have not occurred in characters, except for perhaps in terms of animation and subsurface scattering tech.

The main character always gets a disproportionate graphical resource allocation, and we achieved "really damn good" in that category a while ago.

Adam Jensen didn't look that much better in Mankind Divided, than he did in Human Revolution, but Prague IS SO MUCH MORE DETAILED than Detroit was.

Then there's efficiency improvements in rendering brought by systems like nanite, material shader improvements, more detailed lighting systems and more efficient ambient occlusion.

Improvements in reverse kinematics is something I'm really excited about, as well.

The thought that today's state of technology is enough and we should stop improving sounds pretty Amish to me.

I understand the sentiment, but it seems like you're drawing arbitrary lines in the sand for what is the "correct" amount of power for gaming. Why waste 50 watts of GPU (or more like 150 total system watts) on a game that something like a SteamDeck will draw 15watts to do almost identically. 10 times less power for definitely not 10 times less fidelity. We could all the way back to the original Gameboy for 0.7 watts, the fidelity drops but so does the power. What is the "correct" wattage?

I agree that the top end gpus are shit at efficiency and we should could cut back. But I don't agree that fidelity and realism should stop advancing. Some type of efficiency requirement would be nice, but every year games should get more advanced and every year gpus should get better (and hopefully stay efficient).

Because it impresses people and so it sells. If they didn't do that, all those EAs and Ubisofts would have to find a new selling point like making their games good or something.

Yes, it basically boils down to diminishing returns, it also eats up all the good potential for creative graphic design.

I already wrote another comment on this, but to sum up my thoughts in a top comment:

Most (major) games nowadays don’t look worlds better than the Witcher 3 (2015), but they still play the same as games from 2015 (or older), while requiring much better hardware with high levels of energy consumption. And I think it doesn't help that something like an RTX 4060 card (power consumption of a 1660 with performance slightly above a 3060) gets trashed for not providing a large increase in performance.

I like seeing advances in graphics technology but if the cost is 10 year dev cycle and still comes out s-s-s-stuttering on high end PCs and current gen consoles then scale back some.

I think we hit a point where it's just not feasible enough to do it anymore.

I've been honestly blown away with how newer games look since I upgraded my graphics card.

Remnant 2 is not even a AAA game but does such a good job with light and reflections that it looks better than anything released 5+ years ago.

Then you have games like Kena: Bridge of Spirits, which have a very nice art style but take advantage of current hardware to add particles everywhere.

I think in some cases there's a lot of merit to it, for example Red Dead Redemption, both games are pretty graphically intensive (if not cutting edge) but it's used to further the immersion of the game in a meaningful way. Red Dead Redemption 2 really sells this rich natural environment for you to explore and interact with and it wouldn't quite be the same game without it.

Also that example of Tomb Raider is really disingenuous, the level of fidelity in the environments is night and day between the two as well as the quality of animation. In your example the only real thing you can tell is the skin shaders, which are not even close between the two, SotTR really sells that you are looking at real people, something the 2013 game approached but never really achieved IMO.

if you don't care then good for you! My wallet wishes I didn't but it's a fun hobby nontheless to try and push things to their limits and I am personally fascinated by the technology. I always have some of the fastest hardware every other generation and I enjoy playing with it and doing stuff to make it all work as well as possible.

You are probably correct in thinking for the average person we are approaching a point where they just really don't care, I just wish they would push for more clarity in image presentation at this point, modern games are a bit of a muddy mess sometimes especially with FSR/DLSS

It mattered a lot more early on because doubling the polygon count on screen meant you could do a lot more gameplay wise, larger environments, more stuff on screen etc. these days you can pretty much do what you want if you are happy to drop a little fidelity in individual objects.

Yatzee from The Escapist recently did a video on this exact topic.

Here's the link for those interested.

Everything is ruined by marketing it's capitalist roots, and game development is no exception.

They push for fidelity just because sells well, the fact that this makes for the need of much powerful hardware is not a drawback for them. It's actually good, since it's someone you can profits on.

Games need artistic direction and vision, much more than they need photorealism (which is great for some kind of games, but not a universal standard).

I'm with you. Barely notice the changes in graphics, just the increasing of my gpu fan speeds over the years.

I'm more interested in games that graphics that look good enough, but do more interesting things with the extra horsepower we have these days.

Games don’t need better, more complex graphics. They need adequate time and resources during the development process. They need to actually be completed by their release date, not just barely playable. They need to be held to a higher standard of quality when publishers judge if they’re ready to sell.

Pushing for even more realistic graphics will make the cost of making even higher with no significant change in enjoyment of players.

Players enjoyed games when we had Supernintendos and DOS games. They actually gave players more room for imagination.

Realistic graphics are fuxking sucks, not only it requires remotely high end PC to get a somewhat playable fps but it also eat so much storage space which is unnecessary if you play on medium or low graphics which defeated the purpose of "realism"

Art style will always be more important than graphic fidelity, imo. Having a less realistic-looking game with a strong art style allows the game to age better with time.

Take a look at the first Borderlands - it’s from like 2006 or 2008, but it still looks good today because of the cel-shaded art style it went with. Meanwhile the first Uncharted looks goofy as hell today because it was trying to look realistic during that same timeframe that Borderlands was released.

That's why I almost exclusively play indie games. They don't invest massively in graphics, microtransactions or dumb features not related to the game (like the chess/darts/drinking simulators in Watchdogs). Instead, they focus on making games that do one thing and to that one thing great.

I prefer good gameplay over great graphics. The brain knows how to fill in the gaps and allow for immersion. Thats why most recently Battlebit Remastered has left such a big impression. It's gameplay is really good and it is a much better game than the last Battlefield, although the Battlefield has much better graphics.

The same goes for some of my other all time favourites. Deep Rock Galactic, Terraria, Minecraft all do well without amazing graphics and take up much less drive space as a nice side effect.

Play something like The Quarry and you'll want them to be a tad more realistic, cuz it's not quite there and triggers the uncanny valley effect. Seeing the likeness of a real person in a video game even with the best graphics available is still very easily seen to be a video game. Some stuff in the works right now yet to be released built on UE5 is even closer. Some things have been shown to look almost photorealistic, such as Unrecord or The Matrix tech demo. Like so much so, people thought they were fake at first.

Mostly I just want games with good stories that are really, really fun to play. And games where I can play with 1-8 of my friends. Games like Sons of the Forest or Raft are perfect for this.

I'm a big proponent of going with a distinct art style over "realism", because the latter tends to kind of fall apart over time as technology improves. The former, will always look good though.

I care about the story of the game and general enjoyment. As long as I can see and understand what is going on my screen, i do not care that much about the graphics. I am fine with playing old games with potato graphics. Also, I know we could have both, but if studios had the choice between more accesibility options for more different demographics, or better graphics, i wishthey would always choose to put the resources in accessibility.

I feel that sometimes realistic graphics are what a game needs- like some simulators or horror titles going for that form in immersion. We're not quite over the uncanny valley in AAA titles, and pushing the boundaries of real-time rendering technology can lead to improvements in efficiency of existing processes.

Other times, pushing the boundaries of realism can lead to new game mechanics. Take Counter-Strike 2 and their smoke grenades: they look more realistic and shooting through them disturbs only a portion of the cloud.

I do miss working mirrors in games, though.

Honestly, I agree to an extent. I like watching at a well-designed scenery but I think it hurts games if it takes the priority. I'm not playing games for that, but for cool gamedesign ideas and my own experiences with mechanics. That's tl;dr, next is my rant, for I had a long bus ride.

Graphics are very marketable and ad-friendly, easier to implement\control rather than changes to engine or scripts (you need to understand first) and they may cover up the lack in other departments. Effective managers love that. CGI guys at Disney are on strike because this sentiment held as true in movie industry too, and they are overloaded, filming the whole movie over chromakey. Computer graphics almost replaced everything else.

In my perspective, this trend in AAA lowers the quality of the end product, makes it safer to develop (formulaic reiteration) but just ok to play, mostly unremarkable. Indie and small gamestudios can't compete with them in visuals, so they risk and try to experiment, bring novelty, and sometimes win a jackpot.

Like, obviously, Minecraft, that was initially coded by Notch alone. It invented indie scene as we know it now. It put tech and mechanics over looks, and the whole world was playing it. No one cared for how abstract it is being addicted to the gameplay.

Playing older games, I see, that they were in this race too, like how (recently remastered) Quake 2 was a great visual upgrade over Quake 1. People sold an arm and a leg to play them on HIGH at that time. And how they nodded like yeah, now it's just like a real life watching at a 640x320 screenshot, or how marketologists sold it. But somehow they were made completely different in many ways, not gfx alone, and that's for a braindead shooter. I feel it with my fingers. I see it in how the game logic works. This sensation was greater for me than anything I see on the screen.

Not being able to recall what happened in what CoD game, I become more amused with how gamedesign, presented via code, affects the feeling of a game. How in Disco Elysium all these mental features made it stand out. How Hotline: Miami did extreme violence so stylish. How Dwarf Fortress taught me to care about ASCII symbols on my screen but accepting the fun of loosing them. How the first MGS's Psycho Mantis read my savefiles from other games and vibrated my controller on the floor with his psychic power.

These moments and feelings can't be planned and managed like creation of visual assets. And they are why I like games, as outdated as NES ones or as ugly as competitive Quake config looks. They, like making love with a loving partner, hits different than a polished act of a fit and thin sex-worker. They bring unique experience instead of selling you a horse-painted donkey.

And that's why I don't really care about graphics and dislike their unending progress.