Looka

As a burnt out artist working in games, I'm literally too tired to give this the proper response it deserves so I'll just say I echo many of the feelings espoused here.

1. I've thought about how hard it is to actually be a fan of any given video game franchise in 2024. Some games see more than 5 years between releases. That's long enough for someone to enroll in and then graduate high school or college. You might be an entirely different person by the time a sequel comes out. I can't imagine trying to keep an audience engaged through such a long gap without a concerted effort to engage fans or you luck into a fanbase that can organically keep itself occupied like an Undertale.

2. I loved the illustrations that came with games growing up. I thought about this to some degree when working on some of my recent Lancer art when I was trying to find inspiration. I love a pretty video game but I do feel something has been lost in the absence of bespoke artwork that can inspire its viewers. I think there's a real undeniable power to a really good piece of supplemental game art. One look at Toriyama's Chrono Trigger illustrations and you feel the electrifying aura they radiate. I think even modern games with modern fidelity could still benefit hugely from this.

3. I remember feeling pessimistic about what the Switch would mean for the handheld sized game and it feels bad to be largely proven right.

You made a good point about indies picking up the space. Sometimes when people talk about this kind of thing they forget that there are a lot of people making games that aren't "ps4" graphics. But what you said put things in a new perspective for me.

It's less that "oh no AAA doesn't make low fidelity games anymore" it's that most gamers only play AAA games (afaik stats people back me up). When AAA stops making these games, it means that they don't exist for a lot of people. And i figure most of the money goes to AAA as well...

Yes when my friends asked my 2018ish if they should get a switch I always told them hey there is this great handheld called the 3DS with wonderful games on it that fit neatly into your pocket. If you want to play the latest and greatest the switch will not be your „handheld“.

Anyways I get it to assimilate the consoles. Begone be the times be where the 007 game would be complete different on every device it came out because the coding langue’s, graphics handelnd etc. were so complete different that it was easier to make a entire new game. When todays scope that would kill every publisher. But I agree that we lost something. Something that was trying its best knowing full well that it didn’t need to compete with the latest 3D Hypebeast which the real gamers(tm) would play.

I remember fondly the time grow home, child of light and valiant hearts were made by Ubisoft to test the waters but somehow it didn’t seem enough. And now in the time of we would make more money in a different industry on the stock market it seems all just so sad and driven down to scope creep until every loose bolt flys around in the cockpit of these market forces.

I agree with a lot of what's said and wanted to add a couple of things:

• More / any restrictions means there's less fluff that you are allowed to have in your game that takes away from the end experience. That's what made a lot of games of that time very fun was that they would be simple concepts taken as far as they could possibly be taken. More time could be put into what makes for the best game instead of makes for the best optics. You're basically funneled into working like that if you want to get the most out of what you're making.

• Larger / ginormous dev teams means you're getting a much more diluted experience compared to one person or a small team's vision for what they wanted the game to be. This is in both a "too many cooks" sense but also with games having super big teams means astronomical productions costs and with so much money on the line, studios will absolutely refuse to take any risks at all and will water down the final product so much to make it as marketable as possible to as many people as possible to get maximum return on their "investment".

• This last one mostly just appeals to me and a smaller subset of people, but one thing we've completely lost in all of this is that there are basically 0 good development stories where programmers have had to come up with some incredibly creative and clever solutions to make xyz possible in a version of a game. The last noteworthy thing I can even think of was the port of The Witcher on the Switch, but outside of that, there's nothing that comes to mind. From the 80s into the early 00s, there have been countless stories of individual programmers using their skills and wit to accomplish some truly awe-inspiring shit to get games running on systems that they have no right to be on. Good examples of this would be most any video on the YouTube channel GameHut (run by Jon Burton, ex-programmer for Traveller's Tales) and a lot of the Modern Vintage Gamer's "Impossible Port" series. As someone who both loves older games and who also does a lot of programming (including on old systems), these stories are the shit I live for! They're honestly really inspiring and the shit that makes you want to strive to be a better programmer. This last part may have some bias, but there used to be a time when more programmers used to tackle problems with their abilities instead of just throwing more resources at them. A little pessimistic? Perhaps, but I can't help but feel it deep in my bones lol

i remember hearing this as an argument for why the ps vita flopped. more hardware power than handheld developers at the time were used to at the late DS/early smartphone era.

withered technology

You can find a very knowledgable counterpoint to most of what I said over on this post: https://cohost.org/joewintergreen/post/6957938-if-you-want-shorter

Very much worth the read!

EDIT: Original blog post now archived on my personal site: https://blueberrylemonade.pika.page/posts/maybe-we-need-weaker-game-consoles

I think these are all great points and totally true! My mind also jumps to Prince of Persia when I think of positive examples.

I also cringe sometimes when people say a game "looks just like Fortnite and Overwatch" bc sometimes to me thats just a publisher who's at least moving in a good visual direction.

Another reason to push for stylization is, if you develop a recognizable enough visual style, it's a way to differentiate your game in the market. Unreal Engine 5, and specifically Nanite + Lumen, has made it easier than ever to use top-quality assets with huge poly counts and light them in ways that are mathematically "real." A few big-budget games have come out that take advantage of this ability. And to be honest? They all look samey. The look already feels like the AAA parallel to when people say a game "looks like a Unity game (derogatory)." Something has to give in the art department to counteract this.