Yakuzaice said:
1) It's not like the graphics race is new to this generation. If anything now is the easiest time for people to take risks on creative games. Development was much cheaper 20-30 years ago, but you also had to manufacture expensive cartridges and be able to distribute them across the world. Between platforms like Steam, the app store, PSN/XBLA, XLIG, and even your own site, pretty much anyone who has an interest is able to make and distribute their own game.
2) Also Tetris is an odd thing to mention, considering the complete mess of its licensing in the 80's. There were companies that didn't even have the rights to Tetris licensing it to others who then sub-licensed it to even more companies. Plus the actual creator didn't profit off the game for more than a decade.
3) Speaking of Pac-man as well, the 2600 version was criticized for having much worse visuals (among other reasons) than the arcade version. It's failure was a pretty big factor in both the destruction of Atari and the video game market overall.
4) Also Epic's suggestion to add more RAM was great. 256MB of RAM would have been a major bottleneck. Hell, 512 isn't all that great either.
5) I have to wonder, did you feel the same way with every new generation? What makes the current predicament any different from Blast Processing, or 3D graphics, or FMVs?
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1) Indeed some things over the years have gotten better. It's not like everything in the industry is going backwards. Digital distribution, better development tools, more platforms available and so on are examples of this. But alot of the progress made in one area is offset by "dead weight" being added to another... To me it seems that far too often companies aren't honestly interested in pushing games forward by solving actual problems with the medium and would much rather pile on additional problems for no apparent reason. You know what I'd love to see from a middleware developer? How about figuring out how to have ubiquitous cameras that work like they should, or how about setting a hard standard in image quality? (take a look at Wii games running on Dolphin emulator to see what a huge difference that makes, much more than more polygons and shaders IMO). Hell, dare I say how about investing in tools that research into the concept of "what makes a design fun to begin with?"...
Now don't get me wrong, I think some of the stuff Epic has done as far as tools are concerned is fantastic! and will only improve (UDK, mod support, etc.) But the range of games these tools are being used for at the end of the day is far narrower than I think is healthy, not to mention there's a lot you can't do easily with Unreal tech too. As far as what I think about Epic's games, that's my own opinion, and doesn't matter much anyway - like I said, I don't object to their existence, just to their level of dominance.
2) I didn't mention Tetris as an example of good licensing or good publishing. The business history around that game is indeed long, convoluted, and at times tragic. But all that has nothing to do with the fact it was a brilliant original design that has held up wonderfully for decades! It's more of an actual game in the abstract sense than a lot of other games being released this gen who still wish they were interactive action movies and nothing else. The industry is far too obsessed in pushing games in a pipe-dream direction they want them to go (and won't be able to in the foreseeable future) than actually exploring what is possible in the present! The fact that Gears is at the end of the day a very pretty version of Doom goes a long way towards showing how far we've come in the gameplay department in the last 20 years.
3) Obviously, it is still possible to make games with bad graphics on low end hardware, be it because they lack style or do not match up well with the game's design and ideas. Just because you can always mess something up doesn't mean there isn't a better way of doing it.
4) Again, this depends on what you want to achieve. If you think higher resolution textures are what games are essentially about, than by all means invest hundreds of millions into that area. I for one think there are better ways to spend that money. How about hiring decent story writers for all of your game studios? How about collecting visual data from Kinect to try and pin-point during what moments of a game players are enjoying themselves the most, and then analyzing that data in order to make games more fun?
5) I have felt this way for roughly ten years now, ever since I realized the number of gaming genres was diminishing while games were getting more expensive and more about eye-candy than brain-candy. Personally I was quite happy with the likes of NOLF2 (2002) from a visual point of view. Others may have differing opinions on this obviously. But the point is we are in a race to pile on expensive features that in the end of the day offer little to games as a medium, and are sucking publishers dry! How would you feel if the film industry were investing heavily in tastier beverages and better candy to snack on while you're at the cinema!? Sure, you'd have a better time at first, but pretty quickly you'd start to think: "Is this why I go to the movies in the first place?... If I care so much about the snacks wouldn't I rather spend my money at the ice-cream parlor?" If the answer is yes, then you're in luck! Go to the ice-cream parlor! I can assure you their candy is tastier and less expensive. If the answer is no, you're essentially stuck...
Bottom line: I am in no way against evolving hardware and improving tech, but doing so in such a one-sided manner and at such a ridiculous pace only guarantees that most developers get left behind, and with them most ideas too.
