(okay I don't remember what prompted this but I guess I'm cleaning out my drafts and this is the only one I can see?)

I guess the discourse is rolling about graphics in games again. I don't think I've ever been a proponent of the graphical arms race or photorealism. Granted, it has been extremely good to have a competent PC the last couple years. I still don't play many games that have a focus on complex detail or realism. (most of the high-fidelity ones being FromSoft games, and even that's an outlier in the AAA realm) I also don't know shit about the labor, energy, or expertise that goes into creating technologically demanding visuals. I tend to feel that a lot of these visual "enhancements" are, for the most part, pointless? Raw fidelity is almost never what makes a game compelling to me. Yes, improving hardware probably enables more diverse and experimental aesthetics, but it also means that high-end/AAA games are going to push the limits of what is possible with each new generation of graphics cards, effectively necessitating new games in that realm look even more "real" or detailed. Smaller game projects don't exist in a vacuum, so this in turn pushes the average fidelity (or at least perceived average fidelity) of smaller games higher as well. I worry about what this does or may do with regards to the audience for non-AAA games, especially as socioeconomic disparities worsen (I'm in the US).

"You're telling me a shrimp fried this rice?" The old man started laughing, "My boy, a shrimp hasn't fried rice in this town in 50 years." He turned and looked out over the horizon as a breeze rolled past. "The shrimp are gone, child. They left and they're never coming back."

As the old man began to walk away an air of sadness hung in his wake. He was a man who had lost his faith in the shrimp, completely and utterly. You knew better though. You knew the shrimp were still out there. You were going to prove it.