I think I'm just describing mobile game studios pre-gachafication
I don't know what the answer is, but there just seems to be unavoidable bloat all around. Staff, cost, complexity, system requirements, etc.
Doom came out in 1993, all teams were "small" by 2026 standards.
Good gameplay requires taste, nuance, experience. Things that are hard to quantify if you're an MBA.
All while getting cheaper in the process. Thanks capitalism!
The same problem exists in the airline market. Airline ticket prices are historically very low, but people complain about seats, fees, and so on. But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket.
What consumers say they care about, and what they actually care about, are not the same. Otherwise they'd pay more for the less irritating product.
I would love to shop around and find seats that give me the things that I want without having to spend more on extra fees, but the model they have now is to basically show me the nickle and dining seat, and then pay to upgrade it to the fee free version.
All while getting worse; advertisements, terrible interfaces, privacy invasions, frame gen, weird color options, etc. I don't hate capitalism or anything, but new TVs are dumb as heck.
I think that's true, and it's actually a very interesting topic. Just imagine the prospect that technology has effectively stalled out, and our civilization is stuck perpetuating the perception of forward progress.
In parallel with this, we've seen the massive consolidation of all industries, but especially the tech industry, and what does a giant behemoth monopolist/oligarch want? It's not to move science and technology forward; that would be much too risky, and could even lead to an upstart disrupting them! No; it's to make tiny incremental improvements to keep people happy, while raking in money just for being on top of the heap.
This is true for every entertainment medium. Time filters out all the crap made so your left with a few timeless hits. Especially 30 years ago and in gaming?
Though to pick on 1996 , I just looked it up, that was a pretty crazy year of games in hindsight.
1996: Mario 64, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem 3D, NiGHTS, Crash Bandicoot, Quake, DOA/Soul Edge, Pokémon Red/Blue, Civ II
1998: Zelda OOT, Marvel vs Capcom, Castlevania SOTN, Metal Gear Solid, StarCraft, Half-Life, DDR, Baldue’s Gate, Mario Party, Grim Fandango
> Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing
Is unrelated. AAA Gaming companies relied so heavily on technical improvements when things were new and genuine leaps in ability that when we hit the graphics are good enough instead of just making great games that are fun, they had to do stupid graphics tricks.
Did every strand of hair need to be individually rendered to act as real as possible so the one guy who is dissecting ever frame would be happy? Did that horses scrotum need to be animated at all, let alone react to the environment? Did that thing that basically no one will ever see need to be created over the course of 9 months?
These stupid, pointless things to try and chase the same technical breakthrough selling points they had 25+ years ago are one of the major things driving the development costs.
Then of course there's the, 'ya whatever, you'll still pay for it, fuck you'[1] that publishers are latching on to.
As an engineer, I worry so much about writing perfect code even when I know it is temporary script for one off job. In my home, I painted top of the doors that no one will see. But I know it is painted.
It is nice that people care about these small things.
Lots of technically advanced simulations are going on in that game to build the most advanced simulation. But people don't play a game became its simulating a city accurately right down to individual teeth in every citizen. They play a game because it's fun.
How much money did it cost?
Because I'm willing to bet it wasn't 9 months and millions of dollars.
I understand that maybe pixel graphics games can be really mindful and charming, but sometimes the AAA games have not only tech, but all the rest too.
Not that it's a sure thing. I also recall roger ebert reviewing transformers: revenge of the fallen
"Of course there will be many more CGI-based action epics, but never again one this bloated, excessive, incomprehensible, long (149 minutes) or expensive (more than $200 million)."
https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/the-fall-of-the-reven...
but the funny part is about climax.
Obviously this is subjective, but try some of that $5-10 stuff on Steam or GoG and you might be surprised how much there is to play out there. I'm playing Dread Delusion right now and it is amazing (estimate I'm 50% done but playing blind), Wicked Seed before that, Deformed before that, etc.
I play a lot less than I used to thanks to cost, game quality and time - and the PS5 will be my last Sony console, regardless of the newest happenings. It’ll be PC and maybe a Nintendo console here and there unless prices go up even higher next gen, at which point I’d be done with consoles entirely and just use Steam and probably play indie and older games only. The industry just isn’t what it used to be.
I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today. Things have hardly moved on at all. As an example to illustrate the point: GTA:V is 13 years old.
We are on the third-generation of GTA V with the enhanced edition that only came out on PC last year, and Xbox/PS5 4 years ago. The latest version has 18x the pixels per second (9x resolution, 2x frame rate), and far more detailed models and textures than the Xbox 360/PS3 version.
It has been profitable for Rockstar to keep remaking the game with better and better visuals specifically because consumers are demanding it.
The big problem with AAA studios is that they are basically just investment vehicles, and they are big investment vehicles. So, only big successes matter, and they can only get big successes by trying to go all out and pray to become the next big thing. Moderate success is not enough. Huge returns on investment on small investment is not enough. They have to spend tens/hundreds of millions and return billions. Once they get a success, they have to milk it.
They are getting eaten by Roblox and dozens of indie developers eating up customer time and accepting more moderate success (Huge success for a small studio, negligible for a large one).
And more accurately, the average gamer (by market spend) is only playing mobile games.
My half blind aunt could probably tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 2016 and 2026 if you put them side by side.
Were video game graphics "good enough" for a while now? I’d say yes, with the exception of vr. But to say there has been no noticeable improvement over the last 10 years is silly.
GTA 6 is coming out soon. I’d invite you to actually compare the visuals of gta 6 vs the original gta 5 from 2014 that was released for ps4 (rather than the 2022 enhanced version for consoles or 2015 version for pc which shouldn’t be compared to non-pc gta 6, since 6 for pc will also get a significant facelift).
Gaming is so much cheaper than when I was growing up that I'm kind of blown away.
SNES games went for $60-70. That's like $130-150 in today's money. And they usually had less content than today's games, even if you never do microtransactions today!
In contrast, major AAA titles today are half the price, and you can find indie games packed with content for a paltry $20. Hell, with Steam sales, you can find them even cheaper than that! Some free to play games like Dota 2 make all of their core gameplay content free!
If you check when games like Quake were released, their minimum requirements were absolutely INSANE compared to today. We're talking about mid to high-end CPUs released within the last two or three years, none of this "oh yeah something lower-middle from 5 years ago is fine". Average prices for computers were much higher too (well, maybe the current RAM/SSD crisis has equalized that a bit, but other than that).
Controllers? 8bitdo and the like make highly competent gamepads for $30, which would've been $15 in the 90's. You couldn't even get terrible third-party shitpads for that little back then! It's disgustingly cheap.
If you want to game these days, you can spend a very reasonable amount of money on a mid-range gaming PC* and have it last at least a good 5-6 years. You can then buy games for a steal on Steam, and get surprisingly decent peripherals like gaming monitors and mechanical keyboards for almost no money. The idea that gaming is "too expensive now" is itself laughable.
* Well, other than the memory crisis fucking things up, but before AI companies ate all the RAM, things were very reasonable
A $60 game in 2006 is also roughly $100 in 2026 dollars. I think what happened is that around then, people generally decided that "$60 is the price of a AAA game, and anything more is a sham". If I had to bet, I'd guess that that was around when a lot of the public got into gaming as something that wasn't just "for nerds".
I think that if people were willing to drop $100 up front, base price for a game, you would not find the microtransaction, ultimate edition, day 1 DLC shenanigans that you see. Companies would find it easy to say "But of course all skins are unlockable in game!"
I don’t believe you were intending to paint with a broad brush, but for others I’d like to explain where SNES game pricing was in more detail, as there was quite the range of prices depending on the game and when it was released.
———-
The plain Jane SNES game was $50 at US launch in late 1991. Normal-ish ROM size (4Mbit). This included later released first-party titles like Super Mario Kart (1992).
Prices went up with ROM size, and as there were higher supply costs starting in late 1993 and into 1994. So something like even LOZ: A Link to the Past was $60 (8Mbit ROM used, game a bit smaller). Mega Man X was $60 for the same reason. Final Fantasy II (IV) in the US was $65 at launch (again, 8Mbit ROM). Street Fighter II (16Mbit) was $70 in 1992.
Then there’s larger games still, with ROM prices going down then up. I believe Final Fantasy III (VI) was $75 USD at launch, but that was a 24Mbit ROM. Secret of Mana (16MBit) and Chrono Trigger (32MBit) were $80 at launch. Then you had Ogre Battle which I believe was $90, despite fitting within 12Mbit (8Mbit + 4Mbit).
Another reason for $70 prices were the SuperFX chip. Stunt Race FX was $70 in the US at launch because of that chip, even though it fit into an 8Mbit ROM. Yet Star Fox was $60 was the same hardware, but launched at $60 in 1993 whereas Stunt Race FX came out in 1994 where ROM prices are higher.
—-
So $50 - 90, with it more in the $50-60 range at launch, and then $60 being more common through the rest of the console’s lifecycle. Special and larger games were trending towards $70 later in the console lifecycle. Then you had the few crazy games (excluding games with accessories like Lethal Enforcers) in the $75 - 90 range.
I accumulated so many games over that time that my steam library will last for me and my kids and probably more.
I don't know why people focus so much on AAA, this year we got silksong for 20$ and it's a mind blowing game with incredible graphics (2d)
It's also amazing how many f2p games are out there that are actually not too exploitative. I've put in hundreds of hours into Deadlock for zero money, and I couldn't give them any money even if I wanted to (because it's closed beta, but still, the game is already very solid).
You can get controllers pretty cheaply though
Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago. Beyond that, the success of a lot of games recently with non AAA budgets shows that gamers aren’t demanding anything from the industry beyond playable games that don’t treat them as a perpetual revenue stream.
My knee jerk reaction was to disagree with this, but I thought about it a bit
The Witcher 3 came out 10 years ago. So did Red Dead Redemption 2 (edit: not quite, actually 8 years. Still!)
A lot of games still fall short of those in the graphics department
The big AAA studios recycle the same formulas and push graphical quality (mostly downstream of Unreal Engine improvements) because they are risk averse. Similar to big comic-book-hero films. It's not what consumers want and it's increasingly starting to show. AAA is struggling badly while indie has been on an absolute tear the past few years.
I'm currently doing a course (I think it's equivalent to an "Associate degree" in USA) in Game Development. I feel demotivated to take part in this industry, and I think that, at least for me, it should be just on and off gig to do in my spare time, perhaps with other enthusiasts too, but I don't plan to pursue it.
I think this speaks more to the type of games people want in their pocket. Games you can casually pick up, put down.
Counter-Strike 2 (Valve)
DOTA 2 (Valve)
Palworld (Pocketpair)
PUBG: battlegrounds (PUBG corporation/Krafton Inc)
TBH: Task Bar Hero (obviously not AAA)
I guess Valve would half-qualify as AAA? The top played true AAA game would be, imho "Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced", at the 18th place. Perhaps Ubisoft with a Assasin's creed title in the top sellers probably should be higher in the playing list.
But I think it's fair to say AAA doesn't hold the steam store anywhere near as tightly as it holds the consoles.
Lots of PC games have a $100- $200 tier where you get merch or all the DLC. That's probably aimed at people like me. The point is, if your business is games you make games for the people who will buy them. No game is more fun than a compiler, even the free ones.
Back then this was more expensive, adjusted for inflation, than many AAA titles today, and the scale of those games was way smaller
I won’t argue that today’s games are not expensive, but they have always been expensive.
I don’t have time to do much gaming anymore but I can find a ton of good stuff that isn’t bleeding edge if i did. Patient gamers always win.
If you buy a new game every month or every week, sure.
But that is not representative of all gamers. Here's a survey that shows only 15% of American gamers buy one or more games a month. Not only that, half of the gamers buy less two games a year on average.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhqrrxt7yyfpwguioa7rwa7x/po...
I can't find the number of PS5 games sold per console. But I did find the number for Nintendo switch — roughly ten games sold per switch, on a console almost ten years old. Maybe PlayStation gamers are different, but Nintendo gamers are definitely not buying games frequently on average.
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.htm...
I find it hard to believe that a $15 price increase on a purchase you make twice a year is going to be the dealbreaker for most people. If anything it is likely lagging behind price increases in other leisure items like dining out and alcohol.
But then again, internet discourse over gaming is dominated by devoted gamers who are in that 15% so we hear their argument over and over again, instead of the silent majority of gamers who don't buy anything beyond their yearly call of duty or FIFA or battlefield instalment.
The industry and its fans are its own worst enemies. However, if you don't go bonkers over recent AAA games, gaming has never been more accessible or cheaper. I didn't buy a game this steam sale for more than $3, and each game would run on more or less anything.