Crytek CEO says Graphics are "60% of the game"
 

http://www.x360magazine.com/general/...0-of-the-game/

You wonder why the PSP and the DS outsold consoles in Japan (it's portable, hassle-free, can communicate with others, and the games are more engaging), and that Minecraft is very widespread than a FPS shooter (perhaps even more than the CoD series). I'd say that content, especially storytelling, matters more than trying to push the limits of graphical hardware.

A very good and memorable game need not to possess much eye-candy, and personally, I hate upgrade hell.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012...all-of-gaming/

Crytek's CEO is part of the problem--the huge, huge problem that may end up killing the gaming industry.

Polygons are emotions.

/snicker.

This is why I appreciated the direction Nintendo was taking. The power route can get you so far, and the rising cost of game production is further limiting gaming industry as whole. Towards the end of this generation we been getting tons of sequels after sequels. At this point the creativity in gaming industry is going to be like Hollywood.

I bet my left lung that handhelds and smartphones will be more profitable and cost-effective to develop games for them than consoles.

I think most people will want to play games that are genuinely entertaining than to play a game of "keeping up with the Joneses" by measuring how much graphical penor one has.

Also, I've seen some games that demanded so much high-end hardware, played once and then uninstalled. (In one forum, there was this guy who was said to have bought a US$5000 gaming PC for the sake of playing Crysis at maximum settings, and now he uses it to browse Facebook.)

^^ I've done that plenty, hell half those I never finished.

I think the 'latest and greatest' mentality is spearheading this, which is a damn shame.

Games are meant to be played. Visuals are meant to be seen. While one may complement the other, you don't PLAY graphics. I've replayed Sonic 3 a million times. I've played Crysis 1-2 once ever.

With an FPS shooter, you actually pay more attention to killing a tango than gawk at the scenery (which is why I lower down the resolution); the truth is that they're played once or twice then uninstalled.

About the only large game that's installed in my PC is Skyrim, but I need not to push my system to the graphical limit just to enjoy it because what mattered more was gameplay and customizable/user-generated content.

Oh, just to note, the Crytek guy seem to have forgotten that the gaming industry is on a very hard downturn -- it's almost 1983 again -- with companies shutting down, merging, or reallocating resources, and in turn, the PC industry is also facing some losses over the years as the popularity of smartphones and tablets are outselling desktops and laptops, so they're forced to concentrate on gaming hardware, which they still think as most profitable.

The issue is that "video game" encompasses a far larger spectrum than it used to. Most hugely successful "indie" games with shoestring budgets might be pushing the industry, but personally, I don't find those types of games remotely compelling (Minecraft, etc).

So, the argument that because "games" like those are what's "popular", that's where the industry should be headed, isn't one I particularly share.

I've never held the opinion that popularity necessarily correlates to quality/enjoyment/whatever metric one wants to use, because popularity-as a metric-without secondary variables (price, for instance), seems far too ambiguous to base any conclusions off of.

So, while graphics alone certainly aren't going to sell me on a video game, I think the greater spirit of what he's saying, which is essentially a dis on indie/small house games, I tend to agree with, even as I personally also dislike Crysis. :heh:

Isn't this the same guy who wants to abolish single player campagins and make them require internet connection?

There never seems to be a shortage of colossal dickbags in the gaming industry.

somewhat related: Success vs Sales

I know Jim can be pretty polarizing, but he does have a good point this time I think. I'm sure the whole situation could be summed up with an apt analogy involving quicksand, and trying to force things to hard. :eyebrow:

Oh boy, some of these types seem to be more concerned about asking the gullible to throw money at them. Looks like greed has taken hold.

I work at a Gamestop, I can't pitch an RPG to anyone because the first thing they say is ''Wow the graphics are shit, I'm not playing that''. ''I just wanna kill shit you know? I hate it when games just talk to me and talk to me''. Ect.


To this day I have never once been able to talk about an RPG or other ''non mainstream brainwash game'' whatever you want to say to a customer, with the exception of Dark Souls and Persona and Persona is already popular and speaks for itself, Dark Souls hides it's story and doesn't talk to you that much so you don't NEED to worry about the story if you don't want, ect.


I know my Gamestop isn't the center of the world, but it's pretty heartwrenching to have a little less than 10 people reserve Tales of Graces F, and then have so many Call of Duty black ops II reserves that the line exceeds throughout the entire store into the streets on the midnight release and is even worse the next day.

The bro gamers and publishers are going to cause a repeat of Atari in the 80s.

That probably comes down to one part marketing (BlOps2 probably had at least 10x the amount of Tales), and one part... demographic? People want instant satisfaction these days, it's why RPG's have become more... action-y over the years. People born the last 15-ish years, don't have the patience (or imagination) to pick away at stuff like older gamers. Pretty good reason for that would be a comparison to how we live these days and how abundant things are compared to days of yore. Another part would be how guns and military 'pr0n' are quite mainstream and are generally hero worshiped in some places.

The trend for RPGs becoming more actiony is more a case of technology marching on. Back in the 80s and 90s, MMOs tended to be turn-based and lots and lots of dice rolls because that's all the tech could handle.

Now we've got physics engines and nice graphics engines, so we can do more action-oriented RPGs where the player feels much more immersed and invested into the game when they can physically dodge an attack rather than watching a dice roll come up.

Welcome to the Idiocracy? I'd smilie here except that most days it just depresses me to deal with Average Public, even Average Gamer Public.

Well, that is true, and I'm not one to begrudge something immersive like Skyrim. But some of these 'action' RPGs are just woeful. I'd provide some examples but all I can think of is DA2 which isn't really an action RPG (but still a lazily put together game).

To an extent, part of the reason RPGs aren't so hot is because there's much less time to invest in them.

When I first started getting back into RPG gaming with my PSP in 2008 and my PS2 in 2009 (yes, yes, extremely late to the party, and yes, I did grow up in a goddamned jungle in the literal geographic middle of nowhere), I was able to invest tons of time into RPGs and Ace Combat and the like. Now?

Now I don't play many RPGs anymore because I don't have the time. I've played close to over two hundred hours of Mass Effect 3, but that's pretty easy to do because it's essentially a shooter and I play in increments of 45 minutes or so a day. I can't really do that with RPGs, especially when there are no handy save points.

So I'm on a limited amount of time and I want to be entertained. I'll fire up an entertaining shooter - Battlefield 3 is my current guilty pleasure - and be entertained quickly and faster than an RPG.

...I actually use PSP RPGs to help me relax and enter the fugue state that preceeds sleep, lol. :p

I'm still playing GBA game. :)

I wouldn't call DA2's combat "actiony." It's basically Ye Olde Standarde MMO Tab-Target Combat System, ported lazily into a single-player game.

Yeah, I like DA2, but not for its combat, which is only marginally entertaining at best. I like DA2 for the characters and the themes.

Pretty sure Crytek doesn't publish games, not even their own titles. So, of course they would say something like this, considering that they need publisher partners and a way to promote their engine to other developers.

Syn, you have no right to judge PS:T as subpar when you *like* DA2. ;)

The Fable series? Kingdom of Amalur? The Gothic series since 3? Older, but the Dungeon Siege series maybe?

They are often beautiful worlds; some of their game mechanics are really quite fun, far more advanced than AD&D. I haven't found any of these "stories" to be in any way deserving of the term.

Amalur has the special honor of being *just* that kind of game that showcases the problem. Sells quite a lot; judged a massive failure and deep in the red (costs taxpayers money!). Le what.

///

That said, I'm not worried. AAA games are great when developers actually pay attention to content, so I'll miss them dearly if a crash happens -- Skyrim isn't going to get made by a kickstarter project -- but the indie boom will outlive a PC/console crash, cushioned by lower system requirements (older PCs are NOT going away) and tablet/phone accessibility; and Steam and Gamersgate and other digital platforms will keep on selling them and exposing them to the mainstream PC gamers.

And if Electronic Arts doesn't survive a fall, or a bunch of gaming "journalists" and their cries of "entitlements" are put out of business, I...don't care? :heh:

Gonna play the devil's advocate here (seems like i do a lot of times these days). You need developers like crysis to push the what the current hardware can do no matter what kind of artstyle the game possess be it ultra realism 3D games like Crysis or stylized 2D games like Odin Sphere. Crytek are one of the forerunners in setting up the benchmark of what modern hardware can do for the games that pursue the ultra realism style.

Just because the mass consumers prefer games like COD doesn't mean there's no room for other genre like rpg/rts/simulation/etc. Just look at Minecraft, shitty graphics but loads of people enjoy it. There should be a market for all kinds of games and thanks to indies, Kickstarters and most importantly, digital download stores like Steam, Gamersgate & etc, we are seeing previously ignored niche games getting made and finding it's audience. If most people enjoys COD, who are we to tell em not to?

Thing is, they push that envelope to make the prettiest chest high walls they can, but complain when they "fail" to sell anything. Failure being completely relative of course.

One thing : Skyrim IS boring. It doesn't give me the feel Oblivion gave.

That being said, I find myself tiring out of Western RPGs that I wish it was the days of those with interesting but socially unacceptable storylines like Megami Tensei. I redefined FF as "Final Fantashit" and Biohazard/Resident Evil as "Buttonhazard", the latter of which I still play because I want to see Carlos Olivera and Billy Coen again.

Unlike MGS which actually made a great transition into action RPG with MGS:R (minus the retards giving Sunny boobs; the story is still ridiculously corny), Resident Evil made a mess of it by remaking RE4 (the original build is beautifully scary) into an action game, then adding another nail to the coffin by turning Sherry into a bishoujo. The graphics have improved, and I must say the burning streets of a pseudo-HongKong are pretty lifelike in 6, but the scary feel of the game isn't there anymore.

The next thing I hope is that Atlus doesn't screw up Persona 5 with great graphics but crap gameplay; though what I am asking for is a reboot of the original Megami Tensei.

Skyrim is boring when it's vanilla -- that's why we mod it. Morrowind and Oblivion are still around thanks to mods.

But then it depends on the modder who wants his/her game look like: ultrarealistic or fully-functional? I'll leave the ultrarealism to those who can afford the hardware.

EDIT: I will want a game that has substance and character within, regardless of whether it's 8-bit or uses the latest video card.

People need to stop listening to Yerli when he makes comments like that, he frequently generalises the decisions and steps his company makes to be the current or upcoming standard for the whole industry. Ofc as the CEO of Crytek he is going elevate the significance of graphic fidelity - they're mostly selling their engine and less their games.

Well, at least one thing's for sure; the visual novel/eroge market is ridiculously future proof :p there's not been much increase in hardware specs for eroge. :p

The Japanese PC market (which is mostly VNs or adventure) seems to operate on a completely different plane of existence from the Japanese console market.

Game engine developer saying something like that: conflict of interest?
A lot of the best games with good review does not always contain the best graphics. Dark souls for example. WoW also has terrible graphics (esp since its an MMO where you want as many to play it as possible) but yet is prob still the most played game in the world.

IMO these days its not about how pretty you can draw things and make things look amazing. It is about how to make very efficient use of hardware.

Ofc, gameplay is usually what people remember a game by.

is this the reason why Crysis 3 6/10?

Graphics make the game for a lot of people. But that's for people who don't have time to invest in a game.

I for one never could understand the joys of playing EO. I was used to final fantasy which was pretty much the standard of RPG back in FF6-8 era. But EO was just... like a kick to the nuts. It woke me up from the handholding every other RPG was dragging me through and put me in the shoes of a nameless adventurer, hiring nameless people fighting in an epic dungeon where it seems hopelessly unending to prove myself as the person who conquered the impossible. Impossible because this first few hours are composed of seeing the game over screen unless you take your time to train. O.o

Graphics are all still 32-bit anime style portrait. Music is 8-bit. First person turn based combat. First person dungeon crawling and map drawing. The immersion is pretty deep, despite those hallmarks that take you out of it.

That is right and to add something more about this subject:
The eroge market is heavily oversaturated (over 20 titles every month) and it even has become slightly stale because most of them play it "safe"

Graphics have an acceptable minimum; veteran RPG gamers can make do with onimusha tactics, but the people who embarked on their gaming journey in the 00's would like to see at least...iunno, God of War graphics? Even so, there is no max graphic limit (unless your PC can't handle it, in which case it becomes a hardware issue), so gaming companies can always strive for something more advanced in this department.

Still, imo once your game has reached a decent level of graphics, it's time to shift the focus to gameplay, plot, sound, etc. (particularly sound, since its evolution is also limitless). Imagine FFXIII versus being on the brink of release and SQUEE postponing it because "the graphics need moar trimming!" :uhoh:

Honestly I could live with the PS3 graphics for a another decade. I'm just wondering why people want to keep pushing it more.

No, merely marketing.

Agreed. The only graphical boost after PS3 that I'd really care for is realistic virtual reality, ala Sword Art Online/Accel World. Until then, I'm content.

The thing that i want to see upgraded are the (enemy) AI of games, not the graphics.