Question Why do games look the same/worse. But require insane setups these days?

[Zengara]

From games like Avowed to Monst er Hunter Wilds. They all look barely better if even better than Ps4 games (maybe even Ps3 games with Last Guardian etc). Like there are a ton of games 10 years ago, that looks better than these games. a 1 to 1 comparison, would be the very famous 14m video of Batman Arkham Knight released in 2015 compared to Gotham Knights released in 2022. Here the older Batman simply looks better, or arguably/at best the exact same. But the requirements are obviously 7 years apart.

My question is simply, why would any game developer want their games to not run on older machines, if they are not doing some next level of graphic design, like Indiana Jones (honestly, personally I have seen better.....10 years ago). it is like throwing costumers away....A lot of costumers? Is there some deals going on behind the theater, that we should know about? And obviously the overall question, as in. Why any of this? Like why require a newer computer for games that do honestly not look that good, where everyone (besides maybe the hardware enthusiast and companies making these new hardware) would be happy?

-I mean I get the good old "everything gets corrupted, just give it time". But this seems a biiiiiit "on your face", without anyone really responding to this. Even though I see a lot of people making it clear gaming is just getting nothing new, and on top of that, requiring more money from people, for no reason?

 

[rgd1101]

bad programmer. and ceo want $ not wasting time on anything else

 

[TerryLaze]

a 1 to 1 comparison, would be the very famous 14m video of Batman Arkham Knight released in 2015 compared to Gotham Knights released in 2022. Here the older Batman simply looks better, or arguably/at best the exact same. But the requirements are obviously 7 years apart.

Yeah but what most people forget is that arkham knight didn't run on any system of that time, they had to recall it from steam for pretty long.
Games look like crap now to guarantee that they will run on anything and they have huge requirements because they just dump truckloads of filters on top of it for people with high end GPUs.

My question is simply, why would any game developer want their games to not run on older machines,

What do you mean, with dlss/fsr/framegeneration and all of that stuff you can play anything on a potato these days.

 

[CelicaGT]

The entire AAA industry is only there to make money, it's not about games anymore, in fact it never really was. It's about driving net revenue. Put as little in, and get as much out of it as they can. With a few exceptions I've just walked away from anything resembling AAA gaming, not only is the value gone, but the overall experience is quite wanting. Besides, there's loads of small developers putting out games that blow away most of the AAA offerings and I'd rather give my money to them as they are offering a product with good value. No, they don't all look or run great, but they are often run by responsive developers who seem to take community feedback to heart and make improvements. Bonus that they aren't asking for firstborn offspring as payment. Poke around Steam and/or Epic, there's some real gems there for those willing to dig.

 

[Zengara]

So your claim is that newer games looks good/the setup requirements are justified?

There has been a lot of games that looks good just to look good, but there are also games that are games. But also looks good, some of them are, the Alien Isolations, Witcher 3, Assasins Creed Valhallah. All of these games can run on potatoes and in my opinion and looks better than Avowed/more on the screen?

Or maybe I have not understood your response?

 

[punkncat]

You have surely seen the way that devs are closing shop left and right. There has been a lot of discussion about games being released for retail when they should have been a beta. I know it is almost cliche at this point but Cyberpunk is a glaring example of just how unready a game could be on launch.

The aspect that I do like is in reference not specific to the gameplay or graphics, but AI/NPC involvement in the surroundings and atmosphere of games is FAR superior to game of even a decade ago.

 

[CelicaGT]

You have surely seen the way that devs are closing shop left and right. There has been a lot of discussion about games being released for retail when they should have been a beta. I know it is almost cliche at this point but Cyberpunk is a glaring example of just how unready a game could be on launch.

The aspect that I do like is in reference not specific to the gameplay or graphics, but AI/NPC involvement in the surroundings and atmosphere of games is FAR superior to game of even a decade ago.

On your second point, personally I miss how interactive the worlds could be (notable Skyrim vs. Avowed video making the rounds) but the NPC's were always so wooden, often repeating statements ad nauseam if you stood nearby. Graphically I feel we have reached a point where close is close enough, at least for the environments. But I would love to see a more interactive world, with enhanced NPC's (Local LLM perhaps? I am no expert here). This I think would be a massive improvement in regards to immersion. I would pay money for this, assuming all else was in order.

 

[punkncat]

IMO this is going to be an aspect we see a lot of growth in for gaming within the near future. The downside being that it will be very hardware dependent.

 

[Zengara]

Why is that? It seems like most games are getting a surplus based on income? Could there be a connection between those 2 and how companies operate? Basically asking what I don't know, or if games are not doing as good as they claim to be doing?

 

[CelicaGT]

Why is that? It seems like most games are getting a surplus based on income? Could there be a connection between those 2 and how companies operate? Basically asking what I don't know, or if games are not doing as good as they claim to be doing?

Desired net profit margins are typically set at 20%. More is always better. It's also worth noting these are typically public companies. Shareholders expect a return on their investment. More is always better here as well. It's just money, and will always be money. There is no deeper mystery here to be unraveled, it's just business. As a consumer, you have to decide if a product is of good value to you. If it is, purchase it. If it is not, do not purchase it. It's also a really good idea to ignore much of the marketing and judge the thing simply on its merits and its value to you, personally. Good marketing can spend your money for you, by convincing you that you need a thing far more than you do. Thats why there is so, so much money spent there. FOMO makes big bucks.

 

[Zengara]

Oh good answer, so they do good, but do not meet the margins that are set that are too high, even though production cost is lower than income. Which forces them to shut down shop, and also this greed pushes games to become badly optimized games and badly run games?
The weird part is that this generation just seem worse. Everything seems to be Copy/Paste from previous games.
-Despite this gaming/coding universe kinda allows for almost unlimited thoughts and ideas, it seems everyone just copies previous titles as well. How to peform abilities, using skills/pressing buttons. Even these cute "otherworldly puzzle games" like Limbo, where you move around in 2D from above or side vision, seem to be copy/paste. The capitalistic ways of pushing games, could explain that

I thought it also could be the UE5, that demands a higher system, but I am more into marketing/sales, not that tech savy

 

[Frag Maniac]

If you watch tech assessment videos done by sites like Digital Foundry, usually the PC versions of games that are ported adequately actually DO have more graphical superiority in the settings you can use and the detail of the environment. But of course that requires hefty hardware. It's always been the case that those whom choose to get the best out of PC graphics pay a premium for it. However now that AMD has chosen not to compete on high end GPUs, especially after we've already seen GPUs blow up in size, tech, and price, it's only all the more polarizing between high end and low end. It's not like consoles haven't gone up quite a bit in price too though. The single worst thing about building a gaming PC lately is the very short availability window of high end GPUs at MSRP. This of course is mostly Nvidia's fault lately because they dominate and control that market now. They really don't care if stock is immediately sold out, with a wasteland of way higher than MSRP product left in it's wake indefinitely.

 

[gamerk316]

Software Engineer (Not a game dev) speaking:

The problem for a while has been that there isn't much more that can be graphically done with current techniques; HABO+ was basically the last graphical feature that could be done at a reasonable performance cost. Additional effects are chasing *very* minimal graphical improvements, but are *very* computationally expensive.

That's why developers want to eventually move to some simplified form of Ray Tracing. You get a much more accurate lighting model, where all those hard to compute lighting effects (light reflection/refraction of water surfaces) are basically free to compute, as they get done as part of the ray tracing algorithm. The obvious downside is the baseline computing cost for Ray Tracing is very high, which is why we currently have minimal implementations that only use Ray Tracing in very limited situations where the cost isn't too bad.

EDIT

Fixed grammar.

 

[TerryLaze]

Additional effects are chasing *very* minimal performance improvements, but are *very* computationally expensive.

*very* minimal performance graphical improvements, but are *very* computationally expensive.
Otherwise it doesn't make sense, gain improvement by adding a lot of compute?

 

[drivinfast247]

To say that all games look worse today than games from a decade ago is ridiculous!

Indiana Jones is a great looking game and that's not arguable. Even with the basic RT settings it's very good. Once you enable all the PT(albeit with an unplayable framerate) it's the closest to photorealism I've seen yet.
These are pics a took with my phone camera.

https://imgur.com/a/cdf0KT8

View: https://imgur.com/a/cdf0KT8


BTW. Batman:Arkham Knight is a good looking game, especially for it's age.

 

[gamerk316]

*very* minimal performance graphical improvements, but are *very* computationally expensive.
Otherwise it doesn't make sense, gain improvement by adding a lot of compute?

Oh, you're right. Good catch.

 

[BFG-9000]

You have surely seen the way that devs are closing shop left and right.

This. Developing a game is insanely expensive, so when nVidia offers you free assistance, free computers with high-end nVidia GPUs, and game development tools + compilers in exchange for following the "The way it's meant to be played" program guidelines, nearly every large company will accept.

That those game development tools just happen to make games only run well on the latest nVidia GPUs to make them look good in reviews is just a coincidence, I'm sure. nVidia just happens to insert some different new special super fast pathway in each generation of cards, where the fallback if this feature is missing on older nVidia or AMD cards runs way slower unless they are the insane setups mentioned. And the tools just happen to make games that use the new pathway a lot. You can't even blame them because it obviously works to help them sell more cards, so it's a marketing expense--like how they send entire high-end computers to GPU reviewers so they won't see any driver overhead issues from pairing the latest GPU with their old CPU.

If the developer has the time and money to make things look great, then modern games can truly look spectacular. But if the developer is just trying to rush a half-baked game out the door before a cash-flow crunch tanks the company, then you get not-very-good-looking games that also perform poorly.

the NPC's were always so wooden, often repeating statements ad nauseam if you stood nearby. Graphically I feel we have reached a point where close is close enough, at least for the environments. But I would love to see a more interactive world, with enhanced NPC's (Local LLM perhaps? I am no expert here). This I think would be a massive improvement in regards to immersion. I would pay money for this, assuming all else was in order.

It's like the high water mark for NPC intelligence was 20 years ago in F.E.A.R. where the bad guys talked to each other and worked cooperatively together tactically against you. After that, the trend was significantly dumbing NPCs down until they started getting stuck or blocking your way, and doing nothing at all until you walk by. Sheesh, that's as dumb AI as the monster closets in DOOM were.

 

[Gururu]

I think most components are reasonably priced. Every component except GPU has been consistent in price for decades. GPUs are flying sky high because of the domination by nVidia. Do you need a $500 GPU to enjoy AAA games. Yes you do if it's pretty but the game quality sucks. If the game is actually fun, you can get by on a $250 just fine.

 

[TerryLaze]

That those game development tools just happen to make games only run well on the latest nVidia GPUs to make them look good in reviews is just a coincidence, I'm sure. nVidia just happens to insert some different new special super fast pathway in each generation of cards, where the fallback if this feature is missing on older nVidia or AMD cards runs way slower unless they are the insane setups mentioned. And the tools just happen to make games that use the new pathway a lot. You can't even blame them because it obviously works to help them sell more cards, so it's a marketing expense--like how they send entire high-end computers to GPU reviewers so they won't see any driver overhead issues from pairing the latest GPU with their old CPU.

Everybody complains about companies being dinosaurs and not innovating enough but then when they do innovate this is the response, they are screwed no matter what...
Companies should innovate but only if they keep everything the same as before so it can work on old stuff as well....just makes sense.