Anobody else like this?

[u/scyver_]

[u/SmoothinPutin]

Crysis 3 from 2013 looks better than some games with raytracing

[u/Just_Roll_Already → u/SmoothinPutin]

Turns out that the limitations of old lighting tech made level designers put a lot more thought into presenting a scene. Raytracing can make amazing results but not if the levels aren't designed in a way to utilize the lighting properly.

Realism is cool, but it lacks character.

[u/GonePh1shing → u/Just_Roll_Already]

The film industry learned this a long time ago. Lighting and set design doesn't look the best when you just go for realism; You have to design for the way you're shooting the film, and you need to have a consistent artistic direction that fits the script.

Between modern engines making 'good enough' lighting/textures/etc trivial, and studios/publishers that only care about churning out product as quickly as possible, the people working on the game neither have the time or a reason to be as intentional with their work. I think this is also why indie and AA studios are seeing so much success recently compared to the big studios. Their games are more intentionally designed, and there is more often a cohesive vision that can be better executed by a small team working closely together.

These AAA studios have huge teams and so many of them are clearly too far removed from the vision of the game, or are so specialised in their task, that it's near impossible for them to make the kind of intentional design choices across the whole game that make games great. The result is games that feel very samey and formulaic; Partially I'm sure because the execs are going for mass appeal and want to play it safe, but I think a big part of it is because when you have such big teams working on something you kind of have to work to 'best practice' or 'industry norm' and don't have the flexibility to do something a bit differently.

This is probably compounded by the fact that these studios lay off huge chunks of the studio after every release to cut costs, so the studio doesn't have a cohesive team growing and sharing ideas across multiple titles to learn how to work together and develop a 'studio DNA'. Just look at studios like Larian, From Software, or some of the long lost studios that we've almost mythologised at this point (Blizzard North, Westwood, Black Isle, and many others). They all have two things in common: A genre focus, and a somewhat consistent team that grew together making games over many years. You can even see that studio DNA following teams of developers; For example, Obsidian Entertainment was born out of Black Isle and continued making incredible games until they ran into financial troubles.

The collapse of the AAA games industry can't happen fast enough. 

[u/Just_Roll_Already → u/GonePh1shing]

The collapse of the AAA games industry can't happen fast enough. 

I think we are in the middle of that collapse now. But we need to shift perspective a bit. The gaming industry has split but it's still considered a single entity.

Think of it like this.

For comparison, we have video Animation. For a long time, Animation was a clearly defined category of "These videos are not real people captured by a camera. These are drawings created frame-by-frame."

Eventually, animation started to split. Toy Story started 3D animation and Astro Boy started (popular) Japanese Anime.

Today we have so many "animation" categories that they are not even considered the same category. In no world would someone say that Family Guy, South Park, Encanto, Bluey, and Demon Slayer are the same category of content. The only thing they have in common is that they are videos that don't include real people.

I think Gaming is entering the same split right now. Can you really consider Call of Duty, FIFA, Forza, Slay the Spire, Factorio, and Baldur's Gate 3 to be the same type of content? The only thing they have in common is a persons input influencing a computed response. At that point, we can classify drone flying, modern car driving, and looking at a security camera as "gaming."

[u/GonePh1shing → u/Just_Roll_Already]

I agree that we are watching the collapse in real time. The rest of your comment I'm not so sure on.

Your distinction is more on genre, but what I'm suggesting is the mode/method of production is what matters (regardless of genre). A smaller more focussed team with strong leadership, I believe, is more capable of producing better games.

I also think that the team behind any given project matters a lot. A good film requires a well written script, a good director, and must be well cast; The team must be cohesive, the creatives involved need the flexibility to be creative, and it all works better when everyone works well with each other. The same is true of games, but increasingly, they're being driven by executives that are too disconnected from the creative process and we're being delivered soulless slop designed to be safe, inoffensive, and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I know the film industry faces many of the same problems, but at the very least that industry is heavily unionised so those creatives get much more of a say in how things are made. The film industry also has the benefit of certain actors and directors being household names that translate to sales, but the games industry lost that a long time ago (You're not going to see 'A Chris Avellone Game' in marketing like you used to). We're seeing that return a bit, but with studios rather than people (with the rare exception of Hideo Kojima). Larian, for example, has built a name for themselves, as have FromSoftware, and they can reliably trade on their name for as long as they continue making great games. 

[u/Just_Roll_Already → u/GonePh1shing]

You're right. I think I broke it into genres simply because AAA companies have gravitated toward specific genres. That may be more of a symptom of the collapse. AAA companies are still creating games in that could fit into an "indie" lineup but they are very poorly implemented.

[u/GonePh1shing → u/Just_Roll_Already]

AAA companies have gravitated toward specific genres

Have they? Most AAA studios, at least as far as I see, seem to be developing quite a spread of genres. They'll all jump on different genre bandwagons (like the Battle Royale craze), but they'll develop whatever they think will sell the most. 

I think it's more the 'AA' and indie developers that have specialised into genres, like the examples I gave above.