Video Games Can't Afford To Look This Good (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0175773505
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/12/27/1044226/video-games-cant-afford-to-look-this-good
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/arts/video-games-graphics-budgets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kk4.qxlk.MgAaPo-RbcLM&smid=url-share
Sony's Insomniac Games spent $300 million developing Marvel's Spider-Man 2, triple the budget of its predecessor, before laying off staff amid Sony's 900-person reduction in February. The industry has cut more than 20,000 jobs in the past two years. Meanwhile, games with basic graphics like Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite continue to dominate, particularly among younger players.
Genshin Impact, a mobile game by Hoyoverse, generates approximately $2 billion annually through frequent content updates rather than cutting-edge visuals. The shift has forced studios to reevaluate their strategies. Warner Bros. Discovery lost $200 million on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, while Sony shuttered its Concord studio shortly after launch. Some industry figures see AI as a potential solution to reduce graphics development costs, the report adds, particularly in sports games.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/arts/video-games-graphics-budgets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kk4.qxlk.MgAaPo-RbcLM&smid=url-share
a good game does not need realistic graphics (Score:3)
... and sometimes it even reduces the playability, e.g. when they changed the easily recognizable symbols for units and on the map in Civilization to more realistic but difficult to recognize pictures.
The same goes for Jump&Run games. Why make the characters look like people or real animals?
But yes, some games need graphics as realistic as possible.
can't polish a turd (Score:4, Insightful)
shit game + shit graphics = shit game
shit game + costly graphics = shit game
spend more time on the game instead of figuring out how to bleed kids dry with subscriptions and microtransactions, or encouraging addictive and gambling-like behavior with loot crates and card packs, or leaking out incomplete games and then asking for more cash for DLC. Oh and maybe for once when you have to backpedal on dumbass plans because of overwhelming outrage from your fanbase, actually use the word SORRY in your white-text-on-black-background non-apology apology.
Re: (Score:2)
> shit game + shit graphics = shit game
> shit game + costly graphics = shit game
Exactly. There is a reason retrogaming is popular; the games are actually fun and can be played without having to master a bunch of moves, while still requiring some skill to get to higher levels. Plus, as you point out, they don't keep asking for quarters to keep playing.
Bad examples (Score:3)
While their were multiple reasons why both Suicide Squad and Concord failed, ultra-realistic graphics was not one of them.
Several people unfavorably compared the graphics of Suicide Squad with earlier Batman games from the same developer.
Concord was widely lambasted for having some of the most hideous character designs in the history of video games. In particular, color composition and proportions showed a large lack of knowledge of the artistic theory behind.
Re: (Score:1)
But they had DEI jaws on women, so that should've compensated for it.
Jokes aside, there's a real problem with graphics being downgraded significantly in last half a decade or so. Mainly on the back of moving of resources from graphics to DEI fields like woke artists who produce little and of low quality, storytellers and so on. This resulted in a lot of shortcuts being taken in graphics, making them look hideous. The solution has been to add temporal anti-aliasing of some sort to smooth everything out, hidi
Re: (Score:3)
> While their were multiple reasons why both Suicide Squad and Concord failed, ultra-realistic graphics was not one of them
The point of the article is that inflated budgets due to the graphics is an extra and unnecessary burden to these projects. While I agree that if the graphical design budget was a lot smaller the games would still have been failures, they might not have been catastrophic failures.
This is true regardless if the visual aspects of the game are actually good or not. (Re: Concord)
On the f
Re: (Score:2)
A budget is a budget. The problems which led to mass layoffs is making crap games, not the budget which was assigned to them. There's also a bit of ignorance in TFS. The games listed as failures weren't killed by high costs due to bad graphics, they were stuck in development hell for years, not just poorly made games, but poorly remade over and over again games which have fundamental game style changed mid development.