Watch rantoni
If you ask me, a game has to be tied or close when it comes to fun, story (if applicable), and music (if applicable) in order for me to even care about a game.
You could throw a text based terminal game using ASCII art at me and I’d love it just as much as a game such as Hitman Blood Money so long as it’s fun enough.
Indeed.
Graphics will always be less important
The popularity of various “ugly” games is proof of that
undertale
Rimworld
Dwarf fortress
Minecraft
Diablo 2 (not resurrected)
Probably many many more
My dad is one of those people who seems to think minecraft is lame because of the graphics yet says Mario on the NES looks just fine.
Minecraft is a strange one for me, because it has never caused me that reaction of “this game looks bad/ugly”. I think something like Infiniminer looks ugly, Unturned looks ugly, most Minecraft clones look ugly, a lot of more “realistic” games look ugly, but somehow not Minecraft. I can’t quite put my finger on why I see it as different somehow.
Games aren’t meant to be fun, they are meant to make money.
Unless you’re an Indie studio, then games aren’t meant to make money until the bills start piling up.
Notice how Sound Design isnt even mentioned on the meme. That’s how far down that is in everyone’s minds.
But it should because we’ve been suffering for over a decade of flat non surround or abysmal volume mixing. Dialog that is just too quiet while everything else is loud. But I guess as long as we have separate volume sliders in game that’ll fix it. If only every game came with em.
Also we’ve been pushing graphics all the time but Sound has basically tanked since the invention of the Sound Blaster AWE64 or something. What’s a sound blaster? Well kids we used to buy sound Cards for our computers much like you do GPU cards. That’s how much sound tech has stagnated. We had 5/7.1 setups in the late 90s had games with EAX support now everything is just whatever, play sound.wav. I guess Dolby Atmos is a thing but it’s a thing with a subscription fee.
TLDR: what about sound
As a professional generalist/gameplay programmer, imo sound isn’t far off from 3D graphics in terms of complexity, perfs issues and hardware fuckery. That is, if you want to do anything “fancy” with it, of course. As you said, the “play sound.wav” approach is way overused…
I do care about shipping the best SFX I can, and obviously so does our sound guy (who also deeply cares about mixing btw) but unfortunately, as opposed to graphics it doesn’t translate into better reviews/more sales in the execs’ mind so any substantial programming work in that area usually goes on the backlogged pile.
Ironically, I think that situation used to be better because there was a time where you basically had to have a dedicated sound programmer on the team since the software side was also a giant mess.
5.1 and 7.1 systems aren’t all that widespread, even in the music industry. Surround kinda sits in the same place vr does for me. It’s immensely cool, but it’ll never become standard due to hassle and lack of support.
Most of the recent innovation in sound has been trickled down from the music and film industries. Just a general increase in the capabilities of soft synths and a better understanding of foley, alongside dedicated in house recording studios have raised the bar of audio.
To be honest I agree with you that sound is overlooked, sound engineers truly are unsung heroes. I mean even when people point out the sound in a game, it’s usually directed at the composer.
“It’s a technical wonder, never seen before in the industry. Completely unique dialog trees and interactions with NPCs. Elaborate upgrade system. Crafting mechanics. Full open world sandbox experience. Planned DLC for the next 2 years. BattlePass”
Holy fuck I’m tired of this shit
I hate how every AAA game has to be an open world sandbox with loads of extra features. I just want a good story and strong core gameplay.
It’s just schlock that every AAA developer pads their ad campaigns with. You see those accolade trailers with cherry picked reviews toting it’s game of the year, claiming it “reimagines everything” or “sets a new standard” , when it’s a game built on a 12 year old engine that is showing its age.
