Retro video games and aesthetics are having a moment, but it’s not just gen X and older millennials reliving their heyday: younger millennials and gen Z are getting in on the nostalgia too
The problem the industry has is that even when the games are good, they have to use questionable monetization practices to justify their gigantic teams and gigantic budgets. Customers may not support that forever, and that time may have already come.
Games also don’t need gigantic teams to be good, and the existence of retro games proves it. It doesn’t actually matter if it’s a curated list of the best games. There were still games that we all agree were good, and to pull it off, they didn’t need three types of in game currency to buy a hat.
I’m not sure what I said is incongruent with this. These are all very real issues. But the point I’m making is the only retro games available to play to newly interested parties are the good ones, more or less. The bad and mediocre ones have been left behind. The bar for how good any given game available to them at a space dedicated to retro gaming is just way higher because it’s had decades of curation in the broader world and now it’s been filtered further to only the best of the best from what has survived, because an arcade or whatever is going to have limited space.
Basically, I’m hoping this trend leads to the death of AAA development as we know it. Games will be smaller, with worse graphics, by people who are paid more to work less. I will be fine with that, because many retro games already did it that way, and there’s not a noticeable increase in games actually being good or bad because of it. Whole industry can revert to where it was in the PS2 or PS3 era, and that would probably be better.
I think the scale/size of games is a far bigger issue than the quality of graphics. For instance, why is TLOU2 like 4x bigger than the first one? That was completely unnecessary. There’s a quantity issue in the AAA space that needs to be reined in badly. The games are simply too big. It puts a bunch of burden on devs, it can overwhelm players, and you often just get a bunch of stuff people simply don’t care about.
Ray tracing scenes that have been converted automatically from the old methods often don’t look right. Too bright or too dark, depending on which cranny you’re looking at. You can maybe get away with it, but if you want to do it right, you have to do twice as much work in each scene. If your game is also 4X bigger, you now have 8X the work. Someday, maybe everyone has ray tracing hardware and you don’t need to do both anymore, but that’s where we are in the transition period.
Not every game needs or employs RTX and as it becomes easier/cheaper to do so,there’s no reason they should be discouraged from doing so. We can’t hinge the entire visual argument on RTX.
The problem the industry has is that even when the games are good, they have to use questionable monetization practices to justify their gigantic teams and gigantic budgets. Customers may not support that forever, and that time may have already come.
Games also don’t need gigantic teams to be good, and the existence of retro games proves it. It doesn’t actually matter if it’s a curated list of the best games. There were still games that we all agree were good, and to pull it off, they didn’t need three types of in game currency to buy a hat.
I’m not sure what I said is incongruent with this. These are all very real issues. But the point I’m making is the only retro games available to play to newly interested parties are the good ones, more or less. The bad and mediocre ones have been left behind. The bar for how good any given game available to them at a space dedicated to retro gaming is just way higher because it’s had decades of curation in the broader world and now it’s been filtered further to only the best of the best from what has survived, because an arcade or whatever is going to have limited space.
Basically, I’m hoping this trend leads to the death of AAA development as we know it. Games will be smaller, with worse graphics, by people who are paid more to work less. I will be fine with that, because many retro games already did it that way, and there’s not a noticeable increase in games actually being good or bad because of it. Whole industry can revert to where it was in the PS2 or PS3 era, and that would probably be better.
I think the scale/size of games is a far bigger issue than the quality of graphics. For instance, why is TLOU2 like 4x bigger than the first one? That was completely unnecessary. There’s a quantity issue in the AAA space that needs to be reined in badly. The games are simply too big. It puts a bunch of burden on devs, it can overwhelm players, and you often just get a bunch of stuff people simply don’t care about.
Sometimes, maybe, it depends.
Ray tracing scenes that have been converted automatically from the old methods often don’t look right. Too bright or too dark, depending on which cranny you’re looking at. You can maybe get away with it, but if you want to do it right, you have to do twice as much work in each scene. If your game is also 4X bigger, you now have 8X the work. Someday, maybe everyone has ray tracing hardware and you don’t need to do both anymore, but that’s where we are in the transition period.
Not every game needs or employs RTX and as it becomes easier/cheaper to do so,there’s no reason they should be discouraged from doing so. We can’t hinge the entire visual argument on RTX.
It’s an example. Some things you can just turn on with minimal effort, like anti aliasing. Other things affect how you create models and levels.