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[01011001]

So I recently played the demo of the game Turbo Overkill on Steam (fucking amazing shooter btw. go play it!) and I was once again thinking how great it would be if developers stopped pushing to photo realism and instead focused on a less demanding (both in dev time and hardware power) but still appealing style for their games.

Imagine the amount of development time could be saved optimizing for performance with a way more limited polygon count, way less shader permutations and lower res textures.

imagine how much more complexity in level design would be possible due to the saved hardware resources this would bring with it.

imagine a Cyberpunk 2077 like game, with a retro artstyle, that had a strong focus on immersion by having way more fully traverseable buildings with more things to do in them.
less demanding assets and style would mean level designers wouldn't be limited as much and faster iteration times would be possible...
there is a reason many indy devs choose art styles like these, and now imagine that time and budget saving measures applied to a full on AAA dev team with a AAA budget.

a game looking like this but open world and with the budget of a modern blockbuster title

 

[00_Zer0]

I don't think a budget of current gen AAA games would be necessary for a retro styled open world game. Btw, Nintendo already does what you are talking about with their AAA franchises. Yet they don't have to spend nearly the amount of money that Sony, MS, EA or Rockstar pay to get a game out there. The reason is they try to focus on innovation first and graphichs last.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

What is up with all of these development needs to change threads?

 

[STARSBarry]

What is up with all of these development needs to change threads?

I think people are finally realising just how good the indie scene is these days. They want more of the new gameplay experiences that the big publishers are afraid to make these days because their instead too busy chasing the GAAS dragon in the hopes of being the next Fortnite or Apex.

 

[Wildebeest]

Minecraft wasn't exactly a photorealistic game when it was made, and seems to be doing decently in terms of popularity.

 

[01011001]

I don't think a budget of current gen AAA games would be necessary for a retro styled open world game. Btw, Nintendo already does what you are talking about with their AAA franchises. Yet they don't have to spend nearly the amount of money that Sony, MS, EA or Rockstar pay to get a game out there. The reason is they try to focus on innovation first and graphichs last.

yes but what I am saying is, imaging a AAA budget with a deliberately limited art style. that is what I think would have the potential to result in some amazing titles since there would be more and easier ways to make the world feel more complex and alive than with photo realistic graphics that will quickly bring you to GPU, Memory and CPU limits and also make it harder and slower for developers to design that world

 

[TintoConCasera]

Honestly, I'm starting to get kinda sick of realistic looking games, they all end up looking more or less the same to me.

I think I prefer games that look more videogamey. Just started Okami today and I prefer the looks of that game to those of Cyberpunk, for example. They have more identity, more charm and, while technically "dated" are still pleasant to look at.

I wish devs could backpedal on the graphics craze and focus more on the actual visual and art design.

 

[Shifty]

imagine how much more complexity in level design would be possible due to the saved hardware resources this would bring with it.

On some level that's not a hardware issue - From's world design being an example case for expansive high-quality spaces that also look real nice.

But closer to the topic, I think Civvie put it best in his Pro Nukem 3D series (timestamped):


Made by level designers - real level designers, not a team of people working on set dressing, and another team working on layout, and another one working on the lighting. That personal touch; one level designer provoking the player in very specific ways.

That's what makes good level design - when the problem space isn't so ambitious that you need tons of manpower to create even one map, and the designer actually has room to establish a gameplay dialogue with the player.

Also relevant, the Quake mapping scene is utterly killing it these days thanks to the simplicity of the format and the emergence of polished, easy-to-use editors like TrenchBroom. Check out Tears of the False God by Bal:



Absolutely gorgeous, and it took one person to make. Granted, he worked at Ubisoft as an artist, but doesn't that just go to show what could be done if AAA started dialing back the relentless obsession with fidelity?

(Also, what are we voting on? All the options are blank )

 

[Dr_Salt]

What is up with all of these development needs to change threads?

Because people are tired of playing the same AAA games with the same mechanics for the past 10 years.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Btw, Nintendo already does what you are talking about with their AAA franchises. Yet they don't have to spend nearly the amount of money that Sony, MS, EA or Rockstar pay to get a game out there. The reason is they try to focus on innovation first and graphichs last.

Shifty - Solid videos, thanks. So true on that personal touch, which to me also equates to their vision not being skewed or tainted through design by committee or too many designers pushing what they want. I like the old school way of doing things, smaller teams razor focused on what they want. It's what gave rise to games like Halo CE or Halo multiplayer maps of old being driven by a vision and small teams for each with specificity to that brief.

01011001 Wholeheartedly agree more devs/studios should rein in the graphics workload of the development pipeline and runtime game engine to free up resources for other endeavours, innovation and content.

 

[bender]

Made by level designers - real level designers, not a team of people working on set dressing, and another team working on layout, and another one working on the lighting. That personal touch; one level designer provoking the player in very specific ways.

That's what makes good level design - when the problem space isn't so ambitious that you need tons of manpower to create even one map, and the designer actually has room to establish a gameplay dialogue with the player.

Yahtzee talks about this a lot. Design by committee and the death of the auteur. It's why we need to appreciate the Lucas Popes of the world. That's not to say you can't have a combination of both as From tends to straddle that line pretty well. It's also why I gravitate towards Nintendo as they tend to care about place space first and foremost, at least in some of their titles. Thanks for those Quake links.

 

[StateofMajora]

I would be ok with Wii graphics if it meant better and more unique games. I mean, high resolution would be nice, but the assets could literally be Wii level and I'm cool.

Budgets have long gone out of control and another thing, there's way too many dang people on dev teams. That means more messing about, and more people who get to influence a design i.e. design by committee.

You cannot convince me Ubisoft needs 500 people to make a damn assassin's Creed.

 

[Gandih42]

I would really like to see a high-budget low-fidelity game with emphasis on gameplay and level design. I think you'll hit a point of diminishing returns with a AAA budget, but certainly there's a lot more space left unexplored. I feel like it's especially level design which has taken the backseat in bigger games.

Adding to the examples aside from FromSoftware, Arkane has also had really great level design (haven't played Deathloop yet). Prey and Dishonored have great levels.

I do think that designing great gameplay, levels, game design etc. is a lot harder than pushing visuals, and is probably harder to sell than visually impressive games. So I don't think it's a very scalable design paradigm, which is why we don't see it much aside from indie games.

 

[Soltype]

I would really like to see a high-budget low-fidelity game with emphasis on gameplay and level design.

 

[Whitecrow]

I hate it when people just doesnt give a fuck about artists and designers vision.

You know, devs are in their right to not cut out their ambitions because some randoms on internet think that gameplay is all that matters.

It isnt.

Go touch some grass.

 

[acm2000]

why not both

 

[The Cockatrice]

Or you can have both, amazing graphics and amazing gameplay like Doom Eternal/2016. In bigger games, development is split into groups, the team handling art-style and level design and what not are not the same as the ones handling gameplay stuff. While your games in the OP are great, your topic discussion is pointless.

 

[Three]

Gameplay and graphics are not mutually exclusive. If you like a particular art style then say so but "low budget" isn't an art style.

 

[Neff]

Budgets have long gone out of control

True. When you're making a big budget, aggressively-marketed game you can't not design by committee. You simply don't have the luxury of being self-indulgent or experimenting. All those hundreds of people making your game have to be paid, and the more specialised roles you take on (engineers, motion capture staff, top end voice talent etc), the more you have to pay them. Which means an absolute fuck ton of money, and more often than not chasing the popular open world/stealth/action formula. Add a ton of repetition and grinding/crafting to guarantee that '100 hours of gameplay' quote on the box and you've got a product which stands the healthiest chance of digging itself out of the giant money pit you've just excavated.

I like AAA games a lot but it'd be nice to have a mid-budget alternative. Indies are generally too cheap and undercooked for me and I rarely bother with them. Something like the kind of expenditure we saw during the PS2/Gamecube/Dreamcast era would be welcome. If nothing else it would be nice to see professional games from respected publishers which didn't take close to half a decade to make once more.

 

[SmokedMeat]

This thread is more of a show of how indies are kicking AAA game’s asses.

Sure there’s a few gems in the AAA space, but the majority are shallow, and upstaged tenfold by the indies.

The big studios would be wise to realize that not every game has to be ultra detailed, and realistic looking. Simple art styles can look amazing, but then who knows if the plebs would buy them?

 

[Matt_Fox]

Video games are a combination of cutting edge technology and creativity. The sum total of both. This is why COds and FIFA's can produce yearly sequels as even if the creativity doesn't improve then the technology does, which ups the sum total.

Turbo Overkill may rate highly compared to its 2022 peers on creativity but low when it comes to the technology. When similar exploitation shooters like Sin or Painkiller already exist within the gaming library it makes Turbo Overkill somewhat inessential (I'm not saying it doesnt look fun - it does - but it's unlikely to sell millions of copies).

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

What is up with all of these development needs to change threads?

Do you even Halo bro?

 

[Gandih42]

I'm thinking more of a AAA budget applied to the creativity and risk-taking seen in indie games (like these) without the constraint of cutting-edge visuals (on a technical level). I don't really believe an almost infinity budget could realistically be applied efficiently to these kinds of games, but it would be fun to see what they could produce. So for instance, these two games but produced by a AAA first party developer at Microsoft or Sony.

I hate it when people just doesnt give a fuck about artists and designers vision.

You know, devs are in their right to not cut out their ambitions because some randoms on internet think that gameplay is all that matters.

It isnt.

Go touch some grass.

I think it's more a matter of also wanting to see what could be done in terms of gameplay with the resources generally spent on visuals. I'm sure there are also devs who have ambitious gameplay ideas that don't get executed, because realistically big budget games probably won't sell well without big budget visuals (which is why you're obviously also correct that they should not listen to randoms on the internet).

But it'd still be nice to see AAA "gameplay", maybe it could also be successful.

 

[Whitecrow]

I think it's more a matter of also wanting to see what could be done in terms of gameplay with the resources generally spent on visuals. I'm sure there are also devs who have ambitious gameplay ideas that don't get executed, because realistically big budget games probably won't sell well without big budget visuals (which is why you're obviously also correct that they should not listen to randoms on the internet).

But it'd still be nice to see AAA "gameplay", maybe it could also be successful.

I would say that 'next gen gameplay' is still kind of an utopia. Its hard to visualize what it is, beyond just better AI.

While in the graphics department theres no ending to what can be added or improved, gameplay is different. You cant just 'add things'. Attention spans, iq, learning curves, time required, are things, important things in fact.

Also, coding skills play a big role there too.
Devs would need to find the way to code those new gameplay ideas, and coding new things is always difficult and time consuming.

I mean, gameplay is a looot more constrained by the human factor than visuals, so thats why one thing have been evolving since forever, and the other got "stuck".

 

[Three]

True. When you're making a big budget, aggressively-marketed game you can't not design by committee. You simply don't have the luxury of being self-indulgent or experimenting. All those hundreds of people making your game have to be paid, and the more specialised roles you take on (engineers, motion capture staff, top end voice talent etc), the more you have to pay them. Which means an absolute fuck ton of money, and more often than not chasing the popular open world/stealth/action formula. Add a ton of repetition and grinding/crafting to guarantee that '100 hours of gameplay' quote on the box and you've got a product which stands the healthiest chance of digging itself out of the giant money pit you've just excavated.

I like AAA games a lot but it'd be nice to have a mid-budget alternative. Indies are generally too cheap and undercooked for me and I rarely bother with them. Something like the kind of expenditure we saw during the PS2/Gamecube/Dreamcast era would be welcome. If nothing else it would be nice to see professional games from respected publishers which didn't take close to half a decade to make once more.

The thing is though the tech budget never goes into prototyping a gameplay loop and even AAA devs experiment. What people seem to want is early access games which don't care about spending money on polish but increasing the possibility of maybe coming up with some new gameplay that catches on. It's the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks strategy. For every low budget game that does something new that people enjoy about a thousand have failed.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

So I recently played the demo of the game Turbo Overkill on Steam (fucking amazing shooter btw. go play it!) and I was once again thinking how great it would be if developers stopped pushing to photo realism and instead focused on a less demanding (both in dev time and hardware power) but still appealing style for their games.

Imagine the amount of development time could be saved optimizing for performance with a way more limited polygon count, way less shader permutations and lower res textures.

imagine how much more complexity in level design would be possible due to the saved hardware resources this would bring with it.

imagine a Cyberpunk 2077 like game, with a retro artstyle, that had a strong focus on immersion by having way more fully traverseable buildings with more things to do in them.
less demanding assets and style would mean level designers wouldn't be limited as much and faster iteration times would be possible...
there is a reason many indy devs choose art styles like these, and now imagine that time and budget saving measures applied to a full on AAA dev team with a AAA budget.

a game looking like this but open world and with the budget of a modern blockbuster title

Sorry. I cannot stand this ugly 90s pixelated look. It's an artistic choice and artistic beauty is subjective.

Fundamentally, your entire thread premise is setting up a false dichotomy. It's not graphics vs gameplay complexity.

Graphics is largely driven by the GPU.

Gameplay complexity is largely driven by the CPU.

However, gameplay complexity is often limited by a drive for accessibility, by the complexity of testing said design and often by a lack of inspiration on the part of most developers.

Gameplay complexity also does not always equal fun. Some of the very best and most successful games of all time are mechanically simple but add layers of depth through game systems, level design and NPC behaviours, rather than having complex user inputs and abilities.

 

[Gandih42]

I would say that 'next gen gameplay' is still kind of an utopia. Its hard to visualize what it is, beyond just better AI.

While in the graphics department theres no ending to what can be added or improved, gameplay is different. You cant just 'add things'. Attention spans, iq, learning curves, time required, are things, important things in fact.

Also, coding skills play a big role there too.
Devs would need to find the way to code those new gameplay ideas, and coding new things is always difficult and time consuming.

I mean, gameplay is a looot more constrained by the human factor than visuals, so thats why one thing have been evolving since forever, and the other got "stuck".

I completely agree - I have no idea what "AAA Gameplay" would or even should look like. And you can't just throw money at a game designer and expect better gameplay (although I'm sure it would help in most cases).

The most obvious areas of improvement to me are AI, physics, interactivity, level design, but even then it quickly becomes subjective and ephemeral. Even just with AI - a game isn't fun just because the enemies are smarter. Often if enemies are too smart the game becomes unplayable, which is why we have things like off-screen enemies doing nothing. Furthermore, adding gameplay complexity doesn't even guarantee a better videogame experience. Two of my favorite games this year are Vampire Survivors and Risk of Rain 2, which are both fairly simple games in terms of mechanics.

I think this is a better case and example of how resources could be prioritised differently in AAA productions for a better gameplay focus.

[...]

Made by level designers - real level designers, not a team of people working on set dressing, and another team working on layout, and another one working on the lighting. That personal touch; one level designer provoking the player in very specific ways.

That's what makes good level design - when the problem space isn't so ambitious that you need tons of manpower to create even one map, and the designer actually has room to establish a gameplay dialogue with the player.

[...]

 

[synchronicity]

I remember feeling when the PS2 came out that if graphics never improved, I'd be happy, and I still feel that way. While I admittedly do enjoy being wowed by cutting edge graphics sometimes, they're in no way a prerequisite to a great game - far from it.

Give me engaging mechanics, systems, atmosphere and you can look like this:

One of my all-time favorites. (That still looks good to me.)

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

We would all be much happier playing Fighters Megamix on Sega Saturn. Just sayin’.

 

[lughnasadh123]

Why would triple A games chance when they're being wildly successful just because some disgrunted gamers who prefer indies and AA games complain about them? People just want one common artstyle to be replaced by another with no assurance it'll come with the gameplay changes they want. No thanks. I rather enjoy the variety we have now.

And whatever happened to letting Devs chase their own vision of what their game should be? Funny how quickly that gets tossed out only with games people don't like.

 

[Clear]

You can't reinvent the wheel over and over. Once you have a thing that fundamentally works, all that's left is finessing it.

Games are a pretty mature artform at this point; Meaning that the territory is all mapped out, same as with film or books or whatever. Expecting radical change without significant alteration to the fundamental form is a fool's wish. Its not happening outside of scenarios where the interface and technology driving interaction are revolutionized.

I'm just saying, enjoy things for what they are and understand that variation is only likely within certain parameters; like theme, or presentation, or how its derived from pre-existing genre's and styles.

 

[jaysius]

Turbo Overkill is fun, it's mindless, it's trying to add new things to "old school"™ gameplay, it's fun but Prodeus is more like an evolution of old school Doom without changing too much.

Is more like Doom with the sheer fun insanity, it's currently in Early Access and included with GamePass PC.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

You can't reinvent the wheel over and over. Once you have a thing that fundamentally works, all that's left is finessing it.

Games are a pretty mature artform at this point; Meaning that the territory is all mapped out, same as with film or books or whatever. Expecting radical change without significant alteration to the fundamental form is a fool's wish. Its not happening outside of scenarios where the interface and technology driving interaction are revolutionized.

I'm just saying, enjoy things for what they are and understand that variation is only likely within certain parameters; like theme, or presentation, or how its derived from pre-existing genre's and styles.

I do agree, but only within the broad set of defined game genres that exist in the industry today.

Is there scope to explore mechanical and systems gameplay innovations that would represent whole new genres of gaming? Absolutely, but I think the commercial impetus is largely not there in most cases.

And that doesn't even have much to do with the ballooned budgets of AAA gaming. Even in the indie space, you have a homogenisation of indie game genres falling into a small selection of popular and clearly well-defined genres. Indie devs need to keep the lights on too, and so it's often too much of a risk for them to do something truly original because they don't have the luxury of being able to communicate an unfamiliar gameplay design concept with a AAA marketing budget.

 

[KXVXII9X]

I wanted to write an entire post about this, but I will add to this one.

For me, it all comes down to overall presentation and consistency. Everything from art direction/sound design, level design, HUD/UI, animations, physics (if applicable), consistency and polish, game feel, and attention to detail are some things I look at.

My ideal game is one that is stylized with some realistic rendering and massive attention to detail and polish. The last Devolver Digital showcase nicely presented two games that fit that description: Skate Story and The Plucky Squire. Both are heavily stylized but seem to have great lighting and such. Stray is another upcoming game that comes to mind. It looks to have a really nice atmosphere.

Stylization alone isn't enough if it looks like a ton of corners are cut and you are trying to be overambitious while lacking visuals with worse animation, detail, and polish. Example being Biomutant and many AA games that are trying to mimic AAA games.

I wish developers played around more with different styles though. There is this game called Harold Halibut which uses actual stop motion in such a creative way. Games like Okami, Jetset Radio, and Zelda Windwaker brought us some great examples of cel-shaded games. Some games make great use of minimalism or monochromatic color schemes. Some Devs can bring you authentic looking pixel art, while some will make pixel art that feels cheap, and nothing like from back then.

I think the best-looking games are those who know how to work within their budget and make the most out of it.

 

[Clear]

I do agree, but only within the broad set of defined game genres that exist in the industry today.

Is there scope to explore mechanical and systems gameplay innovations that would represent whole new genres of gaming? Absolutely, but I think the commercial impetus is largely not there in most cases.

And that doesn't even have much to do with the ballooned budgets of AAA gaming. Even in the indie space, you have a homogenisation of indie game genres falling into a small selection of popular and clearly well-defined genres. Indie devs need to keep the lights on too, and so it's often too much of a risk for them to do something truly original because they don't have the luxury of being able to communicate an unfamiliar gameplay design concept with a AAA marketing budget.

Not to be too downbeat, but truthfully I'd question how much appetite there actually is for stuff that really challenges existing preconceptions of what a game is. The reality is that there's a huge economic element; going against the grain of expectations is unlikely to result in massive sales because a very large contingent of the game-playing public already has their wants satisfied.

Look at something like Death Stranding which basically takes a very familiar sort of overall format, but skews it in a different direction. People got dismissive as soon as it became apparent that it was more about making deliveries and forming connections than shooting enemies. The actual quality and worth of what Kojima did is up for discussion, but to me its undeniable that just the revelation of it being so different was a big turn-off for a lot of people. Its neither what they expected or wanted, so even when backed with a lot of talent, money, and Kojima's savvy as for self-promotion its faced an uphill battle.

It seems to me that people want a format they are familiar with, themed and presented in some sort of novel manner more than something actually new.

 

[KXVXII9X]

Not to be too downbeat, but truthfully I'd question how much appetite there actually is for stuff that really challenges existing preconceptions of what a game is. The reality is that there's a huge economic element; going against the grain of expectations is unlikely to result in massive sales because a very large contingent of the game-playing public already has their wants satisfied.

Look at something like Death Stranding which basically takes a very familiar sort of overall format, but skews it in a different direction. People got dismissive as soon as it became apparent that it was more about making deliveries and forming connections than shooting enemies. The actual quality and worth of what Kojima did is up for discussion, but to me its undeniable that just the revelation of it being so different was a big turn-off for a lot of people. Its neither what they expected or wanted, so even when backed with a lot of talent, money, and Kojima's savvy as for self-promotion its faced an uphill battle.

It seems to me that people want a format they are familiar with, themed and presented in some sort of novel manner more than something actually new.

I fully agree.

I see this with motion controls, VR, touch controls, and other unconventional additions that other gamers wave away as "gimmicks". It makes me sad this is the reception in the general gaming communities, and it is a big reason I feel like the industry has stagnated so much. Most people want more of the same or something familiar. I have some comfort games/genres as well. My favorite console ever still is the DS for all of the unconventional games it introduced me to. Not every unique game is great, but I appreciate them existing.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Not to be too downbeat, but truthfully I'd question how much appetite there actually is for stuff that really challenges existing preconceptions of what a game is. The reality is that there's a huge economic element; going against the grain of expectations is unlikely to result in massive sales because a very large contingent of the game-playing public already has their wants satisfied.

Look at something like Death Stranding which basically takes a very familiar sort of overall format, but skews it in a different direction. People got dismissive as soon as it became apparent that it was more about making deliveries and forming connections than shooting enemies. The actual quality and worth of what Kojima did is up for discussion, but to me its undeniable that just the revelation of it being so different was a big turn-off for a lot of people. Its neither what they expected or wanted, so even when backed with a lot of talent, money, and Kojima's savvy as for self-promotion its faced an uphill battle.

It seems to me that people want a format they are familiar with, themed and presented in some sort of novel manner more than something actually new.

I couldn't agree more.

It's why I find posts like the OP most amusing. Because the people bitching and crying most about the lack of "next-gen gameplay" will oft be the first to outright dismiss some new gameplay concept that falls well outside their sense of familiarity.

 

[NanaMiku]

Battlebit Remastered is much better than BF2042

 

[thatJohann]

This just came out.

It's a blast. Playing on PS5 Pro. Locked 60fps with ray-tracing. Looks awesome and love the art style.