| Shadow1980 said: Well, here's what Google Trends reveals using the search terms "60 fps" (blue line) and "60fps" (red line):
It seems that interest in the subject was relatively low and flat until around 2010, then it started to grow slowly from 2010 to 2013, then started to spike in 2014. That's right near the beginning of this generation of consoles. So, if I had to guess, most gamers didn't care about frame rates until it became part of the current round of the Console Wars and there were back and forths over frame rates and resolution of the PS4 and XBO ports of various third-party games. Now 60fps is considered the Holy Grail of Gaming by many, the singular goal all developers must strive for, and the most important feature of any game, even though most of them probably had no opinion on the subject up until around four years ago. I mean, many if not most commercially-successful games last gen ran at 30 fps and nobody seemed to mind. Nowadays a game running at 30fps is considered an unforgivable sin to many. This isn't to say 60fps doesn't benefit certain types of games (e.g., fighting games, fast-paced multiplayer shooters and racing games, maybe certain platformers), but a lot of the "debate" over framerates is molehill mountaineering. |
This is an excellent post, and I expect "4k textures" to soon become a trend that gamers suddenly care about because of Digital Foundry. To be fair, however, I notice that I am more aware of fluctuating fps in games nowadays since most run quite smoothly. I do not mind 30fps games, generally, but I am much more sensitive towards framerate hitches in modern games than I ever was in past generations.
