FTL, Valheim, Muck, Brawlhala, Amongus, Lethal Company, Loop Hero, Papers Please, Balatro, Slay the Spire, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Ion Fury … are all under 1 gig.
Selaco, Prodeus, Ultrakill, Project Warlock, Cultic, DUSK… all between about 2 and 5 gigs.
This is far from an exhaustive list.
You can ship games like these.
People have done it, and made a good chunk of change, with dev teams of between … what, a single person to a max of maybe 10? Less?
You need to wish to work at a different studio, with different management, maybe a different engine, not wish its possible to make a successful game without stupendously huge asset libraries.
Hell, even Alien Isolation, SOMA and No Man’s Sky are just above 20 gigs, MGS V is just under 30 gigs of on disk size.
It is totally possible to do pretty darn good graphics without breaking over 100 gigs of disk space.
None of these have anything even remotely close to 4k textures. We can argue all day about whether or not those are required for “good graphics” (I don’t think so either). But there’s no amount of optimization that compresses those textures without losing the fidelity you’re using them for.
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the engine or optimization.
A game does not need to have 4K textures, does not need to have super high fidelity, super realistic graphics, to be successful.
…that is the point.
There is absolutely no unbreakable law of gaming that says a game’s success is directly proportional to or reliant on stupendously high res, high fidelity graphics.
Fortnite. Roblox. Minecraft.
Every goddamned Anime Waifu gacha game.
Stupendously successful and popular games.
Cartoony or low fidelity graphics.
…
For MGS V, Alien Isolation, No Mans Sky, SOMA…
those are games that have pretty darn high fidelity graphics (No Mans Sky somewhat recently got a 4k texture including, major graphical overhaul update) … not quite as high fidelity as more recent, ‘cutting edge realism graphics’… but their on disk file sizes are in the ballpark of an order of magnitude less.
So uh… that would lend creedence to the idea that yes actually, there are a great number of optimizations and design paradigms that can and have been employed in the past to keep overall disk size of a game down… and those concepts are no longer being utilized by many big name game dev studios.
The majority of disc space on a game like CoD is textures, audio and FMV. There’s no compressing 4k textures to get them to a reasonable footprint without losing quality. Same for 4k FMV.
It’s not management that drives the desire for high-res textures and diverse asset libraries, it’s generally the art team. Once they’re allowed to care about what kinds of shrubbery exist in Borneo and which exist in Minneapolis, you end up with 30 kinds of plants. Multiply that out for rocks, cars, rugs, etc and add in the expectation for 4k or 8k screens and individual assets get huge and the library gets huge.
You’re right that it’s possible to do “pretty good” graphics for less, but it’s telling that your examples are from a decade ago and/or heavily stylized.
Yep, 4k textures, very high quality audio files and FMVs are very big and essentially impossible to meaningfully compress.
If you are saying its the art teams that are to blame… uh, they get their budget, headcount, marching orders… from managment, their team leads… right?
You could always have managment hire other artists with different skillsets… make different decisions about what level of resolution, fidelity, overall number of distinct textures, etc, is actually needed…
A video game is the sum of its parts… and there are teamleads in charge of each of those parts departments, who then hire for those departments, and then you have management and/or some kind of overall creative director(s) in charge of the… entire recipe of exactly what is going to be baked into the proverbial cake.
It is these people’s jobs to come up with an overall vision, and then ensure it is implemented on time, within the budget.
You know, ‘manage’ the game’s development.
Their overall ‘recipes’ including stupid huge texture sizes and what not… thats a choice, not some kind of God given or fundamentally unbreakable scientific, natural law of gaming.
…
As of the latest Steam Hardware Survey, about 7% of PC gamers have a 4K monitor.
Far more console players have a 4K capable TV, but it doesn’t really matter because no currently existing, or announced, upcoming console… none of them can actually, truly render anything with detailed, super realistic graphics at 4k 60 fps… to hit that, they have to use checkerboard rendering + frame upscaling tech… which makes the actual render resolution at 2K or less… often even 4K30fps is often still reliant on checkerboard / frame upscaling.
‘4K’ on a gaming console isn’t actually 4K, all that extra detail usually just gets wasted anyway, blurred out or otherwise lost by the checkerboard rendering or frame upscaling.
Generally speaking, the only games on consoles that can actually run at actual 4K are the not hyper realistic graphics games, they are the ones with simplified or stylized art.
…
Acting as if 4k and 8k textures are some kind of mandatory minimum that must be included in all releases of all games is ludicrous.
As Felix points out… just make these high end textures an optional, free DLC.
The AAA gaming industry has largely done the same thing the car and housing industries have done in the last decade: Everything for sale is now a high end luxury item, there are no more economy class cars, no more new, modest apartments.
This is insane and is fundamentally mismatched with the consumer base, especially right now as the US in particular, and broader world economy looks set for a serious downturn, which will obviously see less spending on emtertainment.
…
Also sure, I’ll give you that No Mans Sky is rather stylized, but they also recently released a massive graphical overhaul update that adds in those super high quality textures… and its still just a bit over 20 gigs of on disk space on my system.
If you think MGS V and SOMA and Alien Isolation have ‘highly stylized graphics’, not graphics which basically aim at being very realistic and true to life… with a bit of stylization thrown into character design / world design / etc … I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how you can say those games are ‘highly stylized’ in the way that like… Windwaker or Valheim or Selaco are.
The majority of disc space on a game like CoD is textures, audio and FMV. There’s no compressing 4k textures to get them to a reasonable footprint without losing quality
I hear you, but I will say that there’s a lot of indy games out that are great but mimic the graphics (and requirements) of old. Crow Country is a good one top of mind.
Point being it’s more about what people want to make, IMO.
I don’t see it that way. You can compare it to movies.
Low storage space, cartoon-ish games are comparable to animated movies and japanese anime. While successful, not everybody watches them. There are people who prefer live action movies, which have photo-realistic high-fidelity graphics (after all, they are photos).
Game Dev here.I WISH we could still ship with N64 quality textures and audio. We’d use so much less disc space and probably finish sooner and cleaner.
FTL, Valheim, Muck, Brawlhala, Amongus, Lethal Company, Loop Hero, Papers Please, Balatro, Slay the Spire, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Ion Fury … are all under 1 gig.
Selaco, Prodeus, Ultrakill, Project Warlock, Cultic, DUSK… all between about 2 and 5 gigs.
This is far from an exhaustive list.
You can ship games like these.
People have done it, and made a good chunk of change, with dev teams of between … what, a single person to a max of maybe 10? Less?
You need to wish to work at a different studio, with different management, maybe a different engine, not wish its possible to make a successful game without stupendously huge asset libraries.
Hell, even Alien Isolation, SOMA and No Man’s Sky are just above 20 gigs, MGS V is just under 30 gigs of on disk size.
It is totally possible to do pretty darn good graphics without breaking over 100 gigs of disk space.
None of these have anything even remotely close to 4k textures. We can argue all day about whether or not those are required for “good graphics” (I don’t think so either). But there’s no amount of optimization that compresses those textures without losing the fidelity you’re using them for.
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the engine or optimization.
Uh, for the larger lists at the top of my post:
Yes, that is the point.
A game does not need to have 4K textures, does not need to have super high fidelity, super realistic graphics, to be successful.
…that is the point.
There is absolutely no unbreakable law of gaming that says a game’s success is directly proportional to or reliant on stupendously high res, high fidelity graphics.
Fortnite. Roblox. Minecraft.
Every goddamned Anime Waifu gacha game.
Stupendously successful and popular games.
Cartoony or low fidelity graphics.
…
For MGS V, Alien Isolation, No Mans Sky, SOMA… those are games that have pretty darn high fidelity graphics (No Mans Sky somewhat recently got a 4k texture including, major graphical overhaul update) … not quite as high fidelity as more recent, ‘cutting edge realism graphics’… but their on disk file sizes are in the ballpark of an order of magnitude less.
So uh… that would lend creedence to the idea that yes actually, there are a great number of optimizations and design paradigms that can and have been employed in the past to keep overall disk size of a game down… and those concepts are no longer being utilized by many big name game dev studios.
The majority of disc space on a game like CoD is textures, audio and FMV. There’s no compressing 4k textures to get them to a reasonable footprint without losing quality. Same for 4k FMV. It’s not management that drives the desire for high-res textures and diverse asset libraries, it’s generally the art team. Once they’re allowed to care about what kinds of shrubbery exist in Borneo and which exist in Minneapolis, you end up with 30 kinds of plants. Multiply that out for rocks, cars, rugs, etc and add in the expectation for 4k or 8k screens and individual assets get huge and the library gets huge.
You’re right that it’s possible to do “pretty good” graphics for less, but it’s telling that your examples are from a decade ago and/or heavily stylized.
From a decade ago and just as good as modern graphics. We stopped seeing actual return on graphical fidelity about a decade ago.
Yep, 4k textures, very high quality audio files and FMVs are very big and essentially impossible to meaningfully compress.
If you are saying its the art teams that are to blame… uh, they get their budget, headcount, marching orders… from managment, their team leads… right?
You could always have managment hire other artists with different skillsets… make different decisions about what level of resolution, fidelity, overall number of distinct textures, etc, is actually needed…
A video game is the sum of its parts… and there are teamleads in charge of each of those parts departments, who then hire for those departments, and then you have management and/or some kind of overall creative director(s) in charge of the… entire recipe of exactly what is going to be baked into the proverbial cake.
It is these people’s jobs to come up with an overall vision, and then ensure it is implemented on time, within the budget.
You know, ‘manage’ the game’s development.
Their overall ‘recipes’ including stupid huge texture sizes and what not… thats a choice, not some kind of God given or fundamentally unbreakable scientific, natural law of gaming.
…
As of the latest Steam Hardware Survey, about 7% of PC gamers have a 4K monitor.
Far more console players have a 4K capable TV, but it doesn’t really matter because no currently existing, or announced, upcoming console… none of them can actually, truly render anything with detailed, super realistic graphics at 4k 60 fps… to hit that, they have to use checkerboard rendering + frame upscaling tech… which makes the actual render resolution at 2K or less… often even 4K30fps is often still reliant on checkerboard / frame upscaling.
‘4K’ on a gaming console isn’t actually 4K, all that extra detail usually just gets wasted anyway, blurred out or otherwise lost by the checkerboard rendering or frame upscaling.
Generally speaking, the only games on consoles that can actually run at actual 4K are the not hyper realistic graphics games, they are the ones with simplified or stylized art.
…
Acting as if 4k and 8k textures are some kind of mandatory minimum that must be included in all releases of all games is ludicrous.
As Felix points out… just make these high end textures an optional, free DLC.
The AAA gaming industry has largely done the same thing the car and housing industries have done in the last decade: Everything for sale is now a high end luxury item, there are no more economy class cars, no more new, modest apartments.
This is insane and is fundamentally mismatched with the consumer base, especially right now as the US in particular, and broader world economy looks set for a serious downturn, which will obviously see less spending on emtertainment.
…
Also sure, I’ll give you that No Mans Sky is rather stylized, but they also recently released a massive graphical overhaul update that adds in those super high quality textures… and its still just a bit over 20 gigs of on disk space on my system.
If you think MGS V and SOMA and Alien Isolation have ‘highly stylized graphics’, not graphics which basically aim at being very realistic and true to life… with a bit of stylization thrown into character design / world design / etc … I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how you can say those games are ‘highly stylized’ in the way that like… Windwaker or Valheim or Selaco are.
And you can’t make 4k quality optional because…?
I hear you, but I will say that there’s a lot of indy games out that are great but mimic the graphics (and requirements) of old. Crow Country is a good one top of mind.
Point being it’s more about what people want to make, IMO.
It’s also about what people want to buy. If games with that aesthetic reliably sold like gangbusters, AAA would follow.
Rubbish. In this case it is marketing spending which creates the demand, not the other way around.
I don’t see it that way. You can compare it to movies.
Low storage space, cartoon-ish games are comparable to animated movies and japanese anime. While successful, not everybody watches them. There are people who prefer live action movies, which have photo-realistic high-fidelity graphics (after all, they are photos).
Not really, not in the slightest.
*indie
deleted by creator
You’ll have to correct him 500 times for it to stick.
They didn’t even correct it this time, so I’m not keeping my hopes up.