So, beyond nostalgia as a driving factor, and don’t get me wrong, it is a major one…
The other big factor is affordability of both game development and game uh, consumption, gameplay.
Yep, sure, you can develop games the AAA way with absurd levels of staff, funding, (mis)management, get those movie grade graphics on your $3000 Nvidia fucking whatever.
But less and less people can actually afford that level of hardware, the game’s price, will put up with its broken buggy bullshit and MTX.
If you’re an indie dev (team)?
Its way, way, waaay more easy and affordable to make a graphically simpler game, that is either highly stylized, intentionally emulates an old retro style, or even aims for graphical realism, but just does so to the standards of roughly a decade ago.
Good enough is in fact good enough for a huge supermajority of people, in terms of graphics.
Especially so if you take this dev time and money that would have been thrown at asset fidelity and and debugging/learning how to properly use a fancy pants engine with all the bleeding edge shit…
… and instead, i don’t know, maybe make a more interesting and fully fleshed out core game loop, or have more content, more levels, more narrative.
Also that and just uh, fuck publishers, fuck marketing, this is a video game, not an investment strategy for millionaires snd billionaires.
Now, you can charge $20 - $40 bucks for what is basically a decent game by 10 years ago standards, and yep, it ain’t guaranteed to make you into a millionaire yourself, but as long as you’re breaking even, able to pay yourself (and the rest of the dev team), you did it, you won.
…
How often do we see seemingly very basic in concept and very simple in graphics games break out and become a massive indie hit game?
How often do we see that having near infinite money to throw at a AAA super game for a fucking decade is more likely to result in a giant disappointment that gets tossed aside when the next version comes out?
My point here is, in addition to the nostalgia/style factor, there are also very grounded, practical, material reasons why just generally lower fidelity graphics are coming back.
…
Also obligatory Godot plug.
Its basically Unity, but free, and open source, at this point.
So, beyond nostalgia as a driving factor, and don’t get me wrong, it is a major one…
The other big factor is affordability of both game development and game uh, consumption, gameplay.
Yep, sure, you can develop games the AAA way with absurd levels of staff, funding, (mis)management, get those movie grade graphics on your $3000 Nvidia fucking whatever.
But less and less people can actually afford that level of hardware, the game’s price, will put up with its broken buggy bullshit and MTX.
If you’re an indie dev (team)?
Its way, way, waaay more easy and affordable to make a graphically simpler game, that is either highly stylized, intentionally emulates an old retro style, or even aims for graphical realism, but just does so to the standards of roughly a decade ago.
Good enough is in fact good enough for a huge supermajority of people, in terms of graphics.
Especially so if you take this dev time and money that would have been thrown at asset fidelity and and debugging/learning how to properly use a fancy pants engine with all the bleeding edge shit…
… and instead, i don’t know, maybe make a more interesting and fully fleshed out core game loop, or have more content, more levels, more narrative.
Also that and just uh, fuck publishers, fuck marketing, this is a video game, not an investment strategy for millionaires snd billionaires.
Now, you can charge $20 - $40 bucks for what is basically a decent game by 10 years ago standards, and yep, it ain’t guaranteed to make you into a millionaire yourself, but as long as you’re breaking even, able to pay yourself (and the rest of the dev team), you did it, you won.
…
How often do we see seemingly very basic in concept and very simple in graphics games break out and become a massive indie hit game?
How often do we see that having near infinite money to throw at a AAA super game for a fucking decade is more likely to result in a giant disappointment that gets tossed aside when the next version comes out?
My point here is, in addition to the nostalgia/style factor, there are also very grounded, practical, material reasons why just generally lower fidelity graphics are coming back.
…
Also obligatory Godot plug.
Its basically Unity, but free, and open source, at this point.