Video games still look like video games. They haven't improved much since the end of the Xbox 360.
Gaming studios need to focus on better fundamentals, not more "ooh shiny". Bug prevention, efficient code, gameplay and story design, and better AI are needed. Studios are trying to compensate for lack of qualified programmers by spending too much money on graphics. In an era of graphics cards not improving much. Raising color saturation and adding more assets does not improve the game.
Ultimately the problem is a systematic one. The whole industry is unwilling to train programmers. Instead they pay way too much for "ninjas" and "gurus", try to farm out work to India, and then wonder why it costs so much and why they can't find good people. If the gaming industry had started paying enough interns enough money 15 years ago there would be plenty of qualified programmers. Game quality would be much better and costs would be lower.
It's especially frustrating to watch the big studios keep making these mistakes and at the same time pushing diversity for an even lower quality staff. If even one AAA studio had focused on training programmers and building a really solid engine we would be seeing some incredible games right now and that studio would be making out like bandits.
I'm actually a based aspiring game dev working on a FPS and I'm going back to basics :)
Wow good work, my dude. Has the feel of Doom about it.
All the devs know better than to work for a gaming company. Believe me we would love to write cool shit and not bank software or what have you but games companies pay like ass and work you like a dog. You have to be young, hungry and especially stupid (for a developer) to go work for a gaming company... and now with cancerous woke corporate culture there is no passion or creativity left to justify the pay cut and the workload.
I'd quit and go work for ID circa 1992 but that's not what gaming is anymore. It's just animating a feminist lecture from the corpo writers room and adding some watered down RPG mechanics to please the focus group. Dev's don't get to be creative anymore, they get to stress over implementing other people's shit. So why make a game when you can just make bank software?
I imagine the best stuff will always be at the indie level or crowd funded.
Eventually tools will progress to the point where those projects will have the same polish is today's AAA titles.
Also I haven't really been following Star Citizen the last few years but imagine it will be finished at some point.
Star Citizen is just a cult at this point. The game will never be finished.
It's the same MBA mentality that infects all corporations these days. It's one of the primary reasons everything is getting worse in quality.
And they do.
Apart from the popular titles, there are tons of indie studios making games that focus on the gameplay and the fun aspect.
5 years ago.. There were no sides rollers. There haf been no side scrollers in ages.
What some call "Metroidvanias".
Now.. You got tons of options.
Celeste, Hollow Knight, Bloodstained, broforce, Little nightmares 1, 2, limbo, inside, blasphemous...
As someone who is a lot into Metroidvanias, I am no longer complaining.
And then, you got occasional good typical popular titles.
I am pretty sure GTA and Red dead redemption are great franchises
They haven't improved much since the end of the Xbox 360.
Depends on what you consider improvement. Try looking up PS3 vs PS5 graphics (I got lost in all them XBOX this and that edition bullshit) and you'll see the vast improvements over the years. IMO we're 75% the way to photo realism compared to Pong and the likes.
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