• _sideffect@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    6 months ago

    Lmao, you mean how games used to be before everyone started chasing realism in graphics?

    • alcoholicorn
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      6 months ago

      When was this? Even in the 90s, realism chasing was a thing. It’s easier to market graphical fidelity than good writing.

      • CrypticCoffee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Isn’t Minecraft one of the biggest games on the planet? RimWorld simply awesome. Stardew selling millions…

        Chasing top graphics hasn’t always been the route to success.

        • alcoholicorn
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          6 months ago

          Of course, but you try justifying an increased budget for writing or a bunch of smaller titles to a publisher whose only qualification is that they have a lot of money.

          Or you can go the Todd Howard route and promise endless proc-generated gameplay, so that they barely even have to pay writers, the game will write itself!

          Or you can just show them a pretty picture, describe an action sequence that a 13 year old boy would love.

          Or even better, you can point to another successful release and just go “Yeah, we’re gonna do that again. It’s 99% done already so we can do it really cheaply”

      • _sideffect@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        They were chasing realistic graphics at the time, but not graphical realism, such as puddles that react when stepped in, and so forth.

        Of course it was due to the limitations back then, so they had to focus on polished gameplay.

        Which maybe was a good thing after all…