Real gamers just want a good game not prettified slop. There’s a reason why the classics are classic and still played today. A game taking 4 years and 400 people to make is no longer impressive when there are 10-year-old games that look and play better than this DEI designed, unoptimized, vapid slop companies are keen to shove out the door nowadays

But I will also agree with the other comments in stating that sometimes bigger is not always better, sometimes having larger maps, or more highly detailed textures, and a million characters is not as important as compactness of the Gameplay Density and Game Design itself. In fact I would argue focusing on that, releasing the game, and then adding DLC as Expansion Packs would be a better and more healthier move overall. The only time this should ever be attempted is when Technology is available to do it, and hardware alongside software is advanced enough to handle it. Right now the industries ambitions are beyond hardware and software causing long delays and massive bottlenecks.

Hopefully the next generation of Video Games, with Agentic AI, and Software improvements on the API level with Vulkan and Unreal Engine 6 etc can try to smoothen the process out so it comes out 4 years instead of 8 or 12. Because I think there comes a point when we have hit diminishing returns in the AAA sphere where everyone would rather play Indies or AA games that can make things on a consistent schedule and get things out than wait until they are elderly to purchase a game.

A game doesn’t have to look like real life to look good. We got that Kena game like 7 years ago now that looked like a Pixar game and still looks great. Persona 5 still looks great and has some of the darkest themes in any game, ffs the first one is a teacher SA’ing students. Schedule 1 looks like an acid trip, yet was one of the biggest games last year.

The Crysis games were a meme bc of how good they looked and how demanding they were, but no one was talking about how good of a game it was. Cyberpunk might still be the best looking game around, but its launch was a complete disaster. At this point, the more work a dev puts into the game, the worse the game is going to be. Especially since most games never fully get fixed. We can’t even trust that a game will be playable 2yrs after launch.

No, what we ask for is a quality game, the graphics don’t have to be the best, pick a style and stick with it. The industry itself made this huge drive forward for higher and higher fidelity at the cost of all else, and the current market is one of their own making

Why do comments like this always come from Japanese developers??? Do they have no confidence to fight anymore??? It only shows their weakness.Always complaining anything, making excuse of everything, while doing nothing. I have never found any single Western or Chinese developers complain a thing. They are too busy to make great games to their customers. If all of Japanese developers can do are just complaining, better they need to stop their career forever. We dont want to hear any pollution of pesimism anymore

but also, why doesn’t anyone take a page from GTA vice city/san andreas, splinter cell blacklist, fallout new vegas, or saints row 4? make a game in which may be light on features but has a really good gameplay loop, then in the sequels use what you already have instead of starting over and just expand upon it. keep the same textures, models, engine, physics, code, etc and just give it a new story and a bunch more stuff to do in the game, a co-op mode, etc. most gamers won’t care if the graphics are a bit dated so long as the gameplay is dope.

Modern development cycles are the consequence of games being BIGGER than ever, not better. More textures, higher detail, bigger levels, etc. Small games are still great without all of that, and the market keeps pricing my point every time a new indie darling comes along. There is more than one route to making a good/successful game.