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Video games have come a heck of a long
way over the years. From the days of 2D 8-bit to the days of 3D @ 1080p. Technologically, artistically
and interactively they have increased at exponential rates. Until now.
Don't get me wrong, I still believe in
Moore's law. We will still continue to progress technologically and be able to process more polygons to
gaming shreds, and growth should continue there. However, I think that video games have reached a
plateau now.
We are approaching the point at which
better graphics can only be perceived by people if advertising tells them it is better. Again, don't
get me wrong, I think there are some phenomenal new games with great graphics but it's getting to the
point where there are less quantum leaps at least in the perception of the average person.
There's no more "Holy crap that's awesome" effect like the
progress made in the 80's and 90's. Take the
Halo series, great games, but look at Halo and then look at Halo 3, has much really changed? Maybe, but
it's certainly not enough to justify the huge increase in work hours to make it and the limited
increase of amazement by the average gamer.
I've been seeing it before the
recession. The bad economy just makes it painfully obvious. Current gen titles(PC, 360, PS3) for all but a
few companies are hardly profitable and for everyone too costly. Production teams have become bloated
machines of hundreds of people that serve as cogs rather than the creative ingenuous people that they
are. So much time is spent on detail in art and coding but the experience is often not measuring up to
previous generations of video gaming. We'll call it a bad 'economies of scale.' More effort for
less return cannot continue. I worry that there are really not many companies out there that are truly
doing well with current gen development. Sure there's companies like Epic that are pulling in
great profit, but at what cost? They overwork their employees and burn them out, or might lack the
creativity and community that people (should) want in the work place.
Take a look at the platforms
themselves, Sony is having a hard time with the PS3, which is now
well justified as a quality product (much
more than many would have said at launch). I've read rumors that Nintendo may have started a trend with
the Wii for gaming platforms to not push the technological envelope in the same manner that they
once did. New consoles may have little to no improvement on processing power and such.
The writing is on the wall:
technological growth is slowing for video games. I predict we are
entering a phase where it will plateau out for a
while.
I'm not one to think that this is
either permanent, nor that we won't find another area of technology to push the envelope. I'm just saying,
we don't really need higher polycount budgets now. What I can see is a tangent of technological
advance with hybrid reality, virtual reality, or augmented reality. None of these technologies are really
new, but I think there might be a new interest in them in the coming years. Most of these will
depend more on companies' ability to market them and societies' willingness to accept and embrace them.
So what's the brightside? This is not
all doom and gloom, it actually is a really exciting trend if you ask me. If you know that you are
in a dark room, find the door and step out into the brightside. This silly metaphor goes to say that we
can simply free ourselves of the lack of technological growth by growing in other ways, that many
have said needed to happen sooner. Think of how many great novels have been written since the medium
reached its limits, or how many fantastic films have been made since all the cinematography tricks and
camera tech have been figured out. Not having to prove the technology every time you make a
creative work is a very liberating thing. One that has birthed many great works on older media and will
likely do so with video games as well. Developers will spend more time making a fun gaming experience and
less time fighting the technology. Welcome to the 'New Plateau.'
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I think that's another reason why the indie game scene is blooming... because while AAA titles are great works of visual splendor and often have nice writing and even in some cases some innovation in gameplay, they are titans that must meet a lot criteria in order to be funded.
Indie games are liberated because they have games all this cpu power, but rather than focusing it on vast worlds and hyper realistic 3d models.. they can focus on core game mechanics and produce games that are plenty of fun, orginal and not $60 a pop.
AAA games are not in danger.. there will always be a need for larger games and indie developers will most likely work their way into those projects as they perfect their skills on smaller projects.
It would be great to see people being ok with current graphics and turn attention to things that really need more attention too.. such as AI and greater game interface advancements. not just gimmics. Time will tell.
There is the invariable argument of, "is it worth it?" to make a game that complex. Even if every gamer in the world bought two copies, would that game pay for itself? I think that our industry will sooner be hit by the creative brick wall before we reach the technical one. Not that we can't come up with the ideas, it's just too damn expensive to make them =).
I'm not the least bit concerned about the growth of hardware, they'll do just fine. Creative expression is what we need to worry about. We'll reach the next creative revolution once someone can write a program that programs games and iterates on them until they are beautiful and fun. Chew on that one!
I agree that the casuals/non-gamers who see games as a way to burn some time off the work clock don't care about any of those things I mentioned, but eventually that power will be available. Again, I'm just not sure it will be worth it to take games that far unless we have some serious automation tools to ease that approach.
Look at Dead Rising on the 360, then look at Dead Rising on the Wii. There's a huge graphical difference.
Look at CoD4. Notice how much better it looks than last generation's shooters. Now, consider that it's still a "tight-corridor" game, more or less. You still can't have that level of visual quality with more open levels and tons of enemies the way we could with older games like DOOM or Sam & Max or Duke3D.
And if you want "holy crap that looks real" then look no further than the facial animation in Heavenly Sword. That's something new to this generation, and it's so hard to do that there's really just that one game that does it.
We have a very long way to go. We are not done, and we are not at a plateau. By the way, someone says "this is as good as it ever needs to be, any better than this is unnecessary" in practically every single generation. It's never correct.
What I think is important right now is progress in tools, progress in management and progress in strategy. It is a simple fact that AAA games take many more man-hours now to create than they did several years ago - and that at the same time this delivers much less of a punch, much less of a 'wow' to the player than it used to.
But I think that this plateau is more of a 'breather'. Instead of chasing new technologies, developers are now starting to look around and ask themselves "how can we do this more efficiently?" There has been a vast jump from content-creation in the previous generation to this one, with multiple shader maps, destructablity, physics etc. A lot of effort has gone simply into adapting and developing new development processes and pipelines.
Take, say, Eskeel Steenberg's 'Love', the toolset developed for it: http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/tool_video.html That is the kind of thing we are likely to see in the upcoming future more and more. Improved tools and processes are really the growing trend and I reckon that in the next few years, while the graphical levels will only slightly increase in games, development costs for AAA games shall fall.
The next generation, when it comes, will challenge the programmers - true - but I think the artists' jobs will become easier from here onwards as technology improves further. For instance, the recent introduction of SSAO can now save time where a content artist would have previously faked the effect on textures or with vertex colouring. Technologies like DMM will reduce the work artists have to do to rig simple objects like chairs to be destructible and eventually we might even be able to handle character animation procedurally, when tech like Euphoria becomes more advanced, reducing the need for costly motion-capture and animator man-hours.
So yes, I do think we're at a graphical plateau, but I think that we will see a new generation and, learning our lessons from this one, it could well be that games will become easier to produce than ever.
Mind, we'll need a ton of programmers though.