On the upside, the evaporation of availability for high-end consumer hardware might lead to a renaissance in more reasonable hardware requirements for software. There’s a lot of stuff we managed to do 20 or 30 years ago without anywhere near as much overhead. The indie gaming market already shows there’s plenty of room for companies to work with more modest overhead.
That’s a fair point. I feel that PC gaming was in a peak of consumerism with ridiculous prices and never ending “upgrades” so it’ll be interesting to see if anything changes. I hope it does and some of that knowledge/skill and enthusiasm for optimisation comes back.
A certain amount of this seems to be happening anyway just because the culture at AAA studios is so inimical to gaming in general. Looking at a game like Peak, I don’t see any indication that the devs went out of their way to reduce hardware requirements, but it’s less intensive than major releases anyway. Companies not having the resources to spend years working on super detailed massive environments may end up working in their favor.
Honestly, I think something like Peak ends up feeling more intentional and well executed than something like Cyberpunk 2077. Peak’s jank feels like it’s just part of how the game is supposed to be, whereas Cyberpunk they put so much effort into some aspects that it’s weird and jarring when you run into those things that break verisimilitude. But if Cyberpunk looked like it was designed by an indie dev with good enough but not state of the art graphics? I probably wouldn’t notice some of the issues as much. Also I feel like there wouldn’t be as much corporate involvement leading to the kind of hand-holding that shows up in Phantom Liberty.
This is headed toward devolving into me complaining about feeling like I’m not in half the scenes that revolve around Idris Elba rather than V, but you get the point!
On the upside, the evaporation of availability for high-end consumer hardware might lead to a renaissance in more reasonable hardware requirements for software. There’s a lot of stuff we managed to do 20 or 30 years ago without anywhere near as much overhead. The indie gaming market already shows there’s plenty of room for companies to work with more modest overhead.
That’s a fair point. I feel that PC gaming was in a peak of consumerism with ridiculous prices and never ending “upgrades” so it’ll be interesting to see if anything changes. I hope it does and some of that knowledge/skill and enthusiasm for optimisation comes back.
A certain amount of this seems to be happening anyway just because the culture at AAA studios is so inimical to gaming in general. Looking at a game like Peak, I don’t see any indication that the devs went out of their way to reduce hardware requirements, but it’s less intensive than major releases anyway. Companies not having the resources to spend years working on super detailed massive environments may end up working in their favor.
Honestly, I think something like Peak ends up feeling more intentional and well executed than something like Cyberpunk 2077. Peak’s jank feels like it’s just part of how the game is supposed to be, whereas Cyberpunk they put so much effort into some aspects that it’s weird and jarring when you run into those things that break verisimilitude. But if Cyberpunk looked like it was designed by an indie dev with good enough but not state of the art graphics? I probably wouldn’t notice some of the issues as much. Also I feel like there wouldn’t be as much corporate involvement leading to the kind of hand-holding that shows up in Phantom Liberty.
This is headed toward devolving into me complaining about feeling like I’m not in half the scenes that revolve around Idris Elba rather than V, but you get the point!
I love your comment not only because it makes a lot of sense, but also because it taught me the words “inimical” and “verisimilitude.” Thank you.
Isn’t Microsoft stabbing itself in the foot? 11 is so bad it’s bogging down regular machines available before this nonsense
11 uses barely more resources than end of the run windows 10.
Hell half the reason I upgraded for certain games and programs.
11 runs great on 13 year old hardware, once you debloat it.
You don’t even have to do any serious things, even mobile phones can render any type of game today, no sweat (rare exceptions excluded).
Source: squeezed speed with dark magic for games twenty years ago. Non copying scroller lightspeed ftw!
Fun times.