drasglaf
@drasglaf@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Checking in 1 week ago:
- Comment on Day 172 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots 2 weeks ago:
I keep seeing this game recommended, might have to try it at some point. By the time this was released I had already lost interest in the franchise.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 2 weeks ago:
What a strange way to wish someone a happy new year back. At least I know what I can gift you for next Christmas. Labels!
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 2 weeks ago:
It’s ok, you’ll get over it. Happy new year!
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 3 weeks ago:
I can totally understand a small dev team who self-publish their games taking Epic’s exclusivity deal, even publishing on the EGS instead of Steam, every cent counts if they want to survive. But that’s not the whole story.
- Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve 3 weeks ago:
What a strange way to look at it. Does Valve charge double than other store fronts, or did those other store fronts start charging half in an attempt to undercut Valve?
Also I find it strange how you mention like publishing fees and people not liking games being released on other store fronts instead of Steam while you fail to write a single mention to Steam’s main competitor in those fronts: the Epic Games Store.
Is there a reason for these 2 points, or are they just a coincidence?
- Comment on Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good 3 weeks ago:
With due respect, dear mod: AI spam my ass.
- Comment on Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good 3 weeks ago:
One way to understand the video game industry’s current crisis is by looking closely at Spider-Man’s spandex.
For decades, companies like Sony and Microsoft have bet that realistic graphics were the key to attracting bigger audiences. By investing in technology, they have elevated flat pixelated worlds into experiences that often feel like stepping into a movie.
Designers of last year’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 used the processing power of the PlayStation 5 so Peter Parker’s outfits would be rendered with realistic textures and skyscraper windows could reflect rays of sunlight.
That level of detail did not come cheap.
Insomniac Games, which is owned by Sony, spent about $300 million to develop Spider-Man 2, according to leaked documents, more than triple the budget of the first game in the series, which was released five years earlier. Chasing Hollywood realism requires Hollywood budgets, and even though Spider-Man 2 sold more than 11 million copies, several members of Insomniac lost their jobs when Sony announced 900 layoffs in February.
Cinematic games are getting so expensive and time-consuming to make that the video game industry has started to acknowledge that investing in graphics is providing diminished financial returns.
“It’s very clear that high-fidelity visuals are only moving the needle for a vocal class of gamers in their 40s and 50s,” said Jacob Navok, a former executive at Square Enix who left that studio, known for the Final Fantasy series, in 2016 to start his own media company. “But what does my 7-year-old son play? Minecraft. Roblox. Fortnite.”
Joost van Dreunen, a market analyst and professor at New York University, said it was clear what younger generations value in their video games: “Playing is an excuse for hanging out with other people.”
When millions are happy to play old games with outdated graphics — including Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2009) and Fortnite (2017) — it creates challenges for studios that make blockbuster single-player titles. The industry’s audience has slightly shrunk for the first time in decades. Studios are rapidly closing and sweeping layoffs have affected more than 20,000 employees in the past two years, including more than 2,500 Microsoft workers.
Many video game developers built their careers during an era that glorified graphical fidelity. They marveled at a scene from The Last of Us: Part II in which Ellie, the protagonist, removes a shirt over her head to reveal bruises and scrapes on her back without any technical glitches.
But a few years later, costly graphical upgrades are often barely noticeable.
When the studio Naughty Dog released a remastered version of The Last of Us: Part II this year, light bounced off lakes and puddles with a more realistic shimmer. In a November ad for the PlayStation 5 Pro, an enhanced version of the Sony console that retails for almost $700, the billboards in Spider-Man 2’s Manhattan featured crisper letters.
Optimizing cinematic games for a narrow group of consumers who have spent hundreds of dollars on a console or computer may no longer make financial sense. Studios are increasingly prioritizing games with basic graphics that can be played on the smartphones already in everyone’s pocket.
“They essentially run on toasters,” said Matthew Ball, an entrepreneur and video game analyst, talking about games like Roblox and League of Legends. “The developers aren’t chasing graphics but the social connections that players have built over time.” Going Hollywood
Developers had long taught players to equate realism with excellence, but this new toaster generation of gamers is upsetting industry orthodoxies. The developer behind Animal Well, which received extensive praise this year, said the game’s file size was smaller than many of the screenshots used to promote it.
A company like Nintendo was once the exception that proved the rule, telling its audiences over the past 40 years that graphics were not a priority.
That strategy had shown weaknesses through the 1990s and 2000s, when the Nintendo 64 and GameCube had weaker visuals and sold fewer copies than Sony consoles. But now the tables have turned. Industry figures joke about how a cartoony game like Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch considerably outsells gorgeous cinematic narratives on the PlayStation 5 like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
There are a number of theories why gamers have turned their backs on realism. One hypothesis is that players got tired of seeing the same artistic style in major releases. Others speculate that cinematic graphics require so much time and money to develop that gameplay suffers, leaving customers with a hollow experience.
Another theory is that major studios have spent recent years reshaping themselves in Hollywood’s image, pursuing crossover deals that have given audiences “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “The Last of Us” on HBO. Not only have companies like Ubisoft opened divisions to produce films, but their games include an astonishing amount of scenes where players watch the story unfold.
In 2007, the first Assassin’s Creed provided more than 2.5 hours of footage for a fan edit of the game’s narrative. As the series progressed, so did Ubisoft’s taste for cinema. Like many studios, it increasingly leaned on motion-capture animators who could create scenes using human actors on soundstages. A fan edit of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which was released in 2020, lasted about 23 hours — longer than two seasons of “Game of Thrones.”
Gamers and journalists began talking about how the franchise’s entries had gotten too bloated and expensive. Ubisoft developers advertised last year’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which had about five hours of cut scenes, as “more intimate.”
The immersive graphics of virtual reality can also be prohibitive for gamers; the Meta Quest Pro sells for $1,000 and the Apple Vision Pro for $3,500. This year, the chief executive of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, told the company’s investors that because the virtual reality version of Assassin’s Creed did not meet sales expectations, the company was not increasing its investment in the technology. ImageA person plays a video game on a tablet. Live service games that are playable on mobile devices, like Genshin Impact, can generate large amounts of revenue. Credit…Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Many studios have instead turned to the live service model, where graphics are less important than a regular drip of new content that keeps players engaged. Genshin Impact, by the studio Hoyoverse, makes roughly $2 billion every year on mobile platforms alone, according to the data tracker Sensor Tower. Going Broke?
It was clear this year, however, that the live service strategy carries its own risks. Warner Bros. Discovery took a $200 million loss on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, according to Bloomberg. Sony closed the studio behind Concord, its attempt to compete with team-based shooters like Overwatch and Apex Legends, one month after the game released to a minuscule player base.
“We have a market that has been in growth mode for decades,” Ball said. “Now we are in a mature market where instead of making bets on growth, companies need to try and steal shares from each other.”
Some industry professionals believe there is a path for superb-looking games to survive the cost crunch.
“I used to be a high-fidelity guy; I would log into games and if it didn’t look hyperrealistic, then it was not so interesting,” said David Reitman, a managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he leads the consulting firm’s games division. “There was a race to hyperrealism, and it’s tough to pivot away. You have set expectations.”
Reitman sees a future where most of the heavy costs associated with cutting-edge graphics are handled by artificial intelligence. He said that manufacturers were working on creating A.I. chips for consoles that would facilitate those changes, and that some game studios were already using smart algorithms to improve graphics further than anything previously seen.
He expects that sports games will be the first genre to see considerable improvements because developers have access to hundreds of hours of game footage. “They can take feeds from leagues and transpose them into graphical renderings,” Reitman said, “leveraging language models to generate the incremental movements and facial expressions of players.”
Some independent developers are less convinced. “The idea that there will be content from A.I. before we figure out how it works and where it will source data from is really hard,” said Rami Ismail, a game developer in the Netherlands.
Ismail is worried that major studios are in a tight spot where traditional games have become too expensive but live service games have become too risky. He pointed to recent games that had both jaw-dropping realism — Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (individual pebbles of gravel cast shadows) and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (rays of sunlight flicker through the trees) — and lackluster sales.
He recalled a question that emerged early in the coronavirus pandemic and has become something of an unofficial motto in the video game industry.
“How can we as an industry make sho
- Comment on The four horsemen of unmet financial expectations 4 weeks ago:
A couple of weeks ago the Mass Effect Trilogy was so cheap on Steam that it was hard to resist, so I pirated it. I’m already on Mass Effect 3, it’s been a while since I played the trilogy.
- Comment on Exodus, the new game being led by BioWare veteran James Ohlen, finally reveals some gameplay, and boy it sure looks like Mass Effect 4 weeks ago:
Maybe you’ll be able to have sex with a space bear!
- Comment on Slay the Spire 2 - Official Gameplay Trailer 5 weeks ago:
They removed Defect?? My favourite one :(
- Comment on Anon holds her bf 1 month ago:
I like my liver solid as it is, thank you very much.
- Comment on Anon holds her bf 1 month ago:
First one, Amanita Phalloides if I’m not mistaken.
- Comment on What video game company/developer/publisher loves shitting on it's fans? 1 month ago:
If it’s as easy to hack as the Switch, I’ll buy it. But I’ll buy it used.
- Comment on 🫘 🟰 ❤️ 1 month ago:
- Comment on Day 135 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots 1 month ago:
Since the remake released I have a new hobby: I’ve been watching people play it for the first time on Twitch. There are lots of (usually younger) people who know nothing of this game.
They all come expecting
spoiler
a cool, scary game (which it is, of course) and end up leaving with their hearts broken.
Quite entertaining to share those moments with them.
- Comment on Anon needs cooking advice 1 month ago:
Yes, pasta is one exception, I always cook it with more salt and no one has complained. I’m usually the one who wants less salty meals.
- Comment on Anon needs cooking advice 1 month ago:
I usually cook without much salt because you can always add more, but you can never remove it. This way everyone can eat each meal to their liking.
- Comment on Come to the Deep Sea!! 2 months ago:
One of the best games of the past decade for me.
- Comment on Death Stranding gets surprise Xbox Series X release 2 months ago:
I bought it some time ago but I abandoned it after only a few hours. I have to give it a other chance.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #37 - Call of Cthulhu 2 months ago:
I played it when it released and quite enjoyed it. I don’t remember much of it though, it might be time to give it another go.
- Comment on Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Review Thread 2 months ago:
That’s exactly what came to my mind when I saw the image haha
- Comment on Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Review Thread 2 months ago:
I’ve found this in the wild, it’s quite worrying, but not surprising, unfortunately.
- Comment on The official Nintendo Museum appears to be emulating SNES games on a Windows PC, which is slightly embarrassing 3 months ago:
They’ve been caught using ROMs downloaded from some ROMs download website, so it wouldn’t be that surprising.
- Comment on Redirect to prevent back button 4 months ago:
On Firefox you can also hold your left click on the back arrow for the same effect.
- Comment on Risk of Rain creators Hopoo Games join Valve 4 months ago:
Next game: Hazard Of Precipitation.
- Comment on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been delayed again, this time until the first half of 2025 4 months ago:
I cancelled my preorder years ago and don’t regret it one bit. The last 4 games I ever preordered: Shenmue 3, No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Never again.
- Comment on Actors demand action over 'disgusting' video game sex scenes 5 months ago:
If I’m not mistaken the Hot Coffee mod restores content made by Rockstar that was cut last minute.
- Comment on Anon's gf is up to something 5 months ago:
Do it!
- Comment on Anon's gf is up to something 5 months ago:
Heels were invented for a reason, you know.
