Self destructive graphics arms race is wiping out game devs.

[Ljink96]

DonFerrari said:

Ljink96 said:

Agreed. I guess 3D 'techniques' wasn't the best way to word it. They do improve speed but HD development in general is still rather costly, if you're going for a realistic look. I guess realism was the concept that I am wanting to avoid in game development. 

I actually wasn't expecting people to catch on to photogrammetry here but I'm glad you know your stuff. I am aware that it isn't the be all end all for 3D realists but it is doing a lot of work that would take a single guy a week to do, withing a couple of days from start to finish. Cleanup, etc needs to be done of course but it's still some damn good tech. FFXV Kingsglaive used it a lot and though cleanup is extensive, it's amazing what it can do at such an early stage.

Programmers, like you said also need to be able to code for animation techniques, etc, which is also starting to look appealing as 3D modelers lose their worth. Unless you focus on toon graphics or highly stylized graphics. But I digress.

PC is of course something I will also focus on as Steam is pretty huge. Making games with minimum input, with great quality, and getting a return of some sort is the plan for me. 

Man, avoid to be "ludist" with the fear of machines and automation taking out human jobs... that only means jobs will evolve. Most of the jobs you have today weren't possible at the start of industrial revolution (when the ludist born when the machines came), actually several of them didn't exist a decade ago. There will always be a place for good professionals, and if everything becames very easy the most that can happen is that any dev can be a one man dev company and do his game solo and sell.

Greed is greater than the need to make more jobs. If a company can spend as little as possible and make as much as possible, they will. That's what's really is destroying America as we speak. I know it's optimistic to think that new jobs will come of machines taking over jobs that others used to do, but often times that never happens. The retort is usually, "well the machines will create jobs for those who repair the machines" when reparing in this case is increasing RAM, GPU and software updates. So I guess there would be more jobs for software engineers but not for 3D modelers or not as many 3D modelers. Programmers, animators, those guys are still in high demand and those jobs are still there. I'm referring mostly to 3D artists who want to focus on realism. 

But as you said, it all comes down to the fact that there is always room for well seasoned professionals. I don't consider myself a Luddite necessarily, I just tend to be hard on myself so that I might be good enough to get into the market and know what the hell I'm doing. I'm seriously also considering going indie. I can do 3D art, I can do simple programming and there's helpful programs like unity and unreal that streamlines simple node based programming so that's the road I'm thinking of taking. Becoming a simple 1 man team or a team of no less than 5. Again, I'm just re evaluating my options as bigger companies are biting the bullet on costly HD development.