How Video Game Graphics Lost Their Magic.

Summary

In this insightful discussion, The Forest Grumbler examines how video game graphics, once a key driver of gaming excitement and innovation, have lost their allure. The video explores the progression from awe-inspiring technological advances to a state where graphics no longer significantly enhance the gaming experience. This change is attributed to the industry's shift towards marketing-driven approaches, focusing on graphical fidelity over gameplay and style. The transcript emphasizes that graphics have become less impactful due to their minimal returns and the industry's inclination towards less risky, procedural design over creative, stylistic choices.

Highlights

• Graphics used to drive hype and innovation in gaming but are now sidelined for many gamers 🎮.
• With powerful tech, modern graphics should shine, yet they often don't due to design inefficiencies and commercialization 📉.
• Three core graphics functions: conveying function, narrative, and aesthetics 🌟.
• Pursuing realism over style can result in clunky, less engaging games 😕.
• The most beloved games often excel in style and readability rather than pure graphical detail 🏆.

Key Takeaways

• Graphics were once the backbone of gaming excitement but now feel less magical due to a focus on marketing rather than innovation ✨.
• Three pillars of gaming graphics: Functional, Narrative, and Aesthetic information 👾.
• The industry's shift towards marketing-driven graphics has led to less optimized and more commercially driven games 🚀.
• Industry giants face a breaking point, as gamers seek style and gameplay over flashy graphics 🎮.
• Graphics require more technical effort, but style demands creativity and risk-taking 🖌️. The gaming world is shifting back to valuing style again.

Overview

Video games have long been driven by graphical improvements, with every new advancement exciting gamers and pushing the industry forward. However, The Forest Grumbler argues that today, graphics have lost their magic. Despite technological advancements, current gaming graphics are often less satisfying because they prioritize sheer graphical fidelity over enriching gameplay and coherent style.

The video outlines why this shift has occurred, pointing to marketing strategies that have overtaken creative expression in graphics. While realism and high-definition visuals dominate, they result in games that often feel clunky and lacking in individual style. This focus on impressive visuals often sacrifices functional design, confusing players rather than engaging them.

But there's hope on the horizon. With a resurgence in indie games and smaller studios prioritizing gameplay and artistic style over visual overload, gaming is tapping back into its creative roots. This signals a potential return to form where graphics serve the game's function and narrative, rather than overshadowing them.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and the Decline of Graphics The chapter 'Introduction and the Decline of Graphics' discusses the pivotal role graphics have historically played in gaming, being sources of hype and change. However, the current trend suggests graphics have become less central, despite advancements in technology that allow for unprecedented quality and performance. The narrator reflects on past experiences of pushing computers to their limits to improve gaming visuals, highlighting this shift in focus as difficult to comprehend.
• 01:30 - 04:00: The Three Pillars of Graphics In this chapter titled "The Three Pillars of Graphics," the discussion revolves around the advancement of graphics technology in gaming. It highlights issues such as the need for better resolution and more frames per second, contrasted with the exorbitant costs and power consumption of modern GPUs. Despite these advancements, the narrative suggests that the new technologies often don't translate to better game experiences and that some of the most resource-intensive games lack essence and innovation. It suggests a critique of the gaming industry's focus on high-powered technology rather than substantive content.
• 04:00 - 07:00: History and Marketing of Graphics In this chapter titled 'History and Marketing of Graphics,' the discussion focuses on the current state of gaming graphics. It highlights how modern gaming graphics often fall short when compared to classic games from previous decades, even in aspects like visual appeal. The chapter explores the reasons behind this trend, noting that companies like Nintendo are deliberately moving away from the hardware race, and platforms like Valve are investing in lower-tech solutions. This shift indicates a broader change in the industry's approach to graphics, driven by both commercial and psychological factors. Despite these challenges, the chapter suggests there is reason for optimism regarding the future of gaming graphics.
• 07:00 - 10:00: The Shift in the Gaming Industry The chapter discusses the evolving role of graphics in the gaming industry. It argues that while graphics are important, they should not overshadow other aspects of gaming such as gameplay, narrative, and user engagement. The chapter introduces the concept of the 'three pillars of graphics,' with the first pillar being functional information, which is crucial as it provides essential information to the player. The industry is critiqued for potentially losing sight of the primary function of graphics in the pursuit of advanced visual effects.
• 10:00 - 15:30: The Problem with Modern Graphics The chapter discusses the principles of good and bad design in modern graphics, emphasizing that good design clearly shows the player their location, interaction possibilities, threats, and additional details like health and lives. Bad design frustrates with elements like invisible walls and unreliable visuals. It highlights that effective graphical design doesn't necessarily require detailed visuals, citing examples like 2D simple shapes or basic 3D polygons, as demonstrated by games such as Fortress. Mastering such games is likened to academic achievement.
• 15:30 - 24:00: Conclusion and Optimism for the Future The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Optimism for the Future' discusses the significant role of narrative information in design. It emphasizes the 'show don't tell' approach, highlighting how visuals can convey emotions, settings, and character dispositions effectively without words. The transcript reminisces about the advancements in design, particularly in pixel art and 3D, tracing back to the 90s when these approaches gained momentum. This narrative power enables audiences to instantly understand the nuances of characters and worlds, signaling a hopeful outlook for continued innovation and creativity in the future.

How Video Game Graphics Lost Their Magic. Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hey there Graphics have always been at the center of gaming a source of hype of technological advance of change but that seems to be over today they have lost their Edge to the point that they are getting pushed aside this makes no sense because Tech today is amazing I mean I grew up making computers play video games they didn't have any business playing only able to imagine how they would look at Max settings with frame rates that didn't feel like a PowerPoint but those days are over as today we can get a GPU that will PR tend to have
• 00:30 - 01:00 better resolution and more frames to Gaslight us into thinking games run great but you have to wonder what's happening when the new topof the-line GPU costing double my entire computer eating three times the power and being an excellent room heater until it melts has to fake it to make a last gen game run smooth and yes The Cutting Edge always had absor requirements which made sense when new games were mind-blowing but today when so many of the most power hungry rum devouring hard drive crushing triaa Gam are so soulless that you can
• 01:00 - 01:30 compare them with Classics from decades ago and they lose in everything sometimes even in looks eh modern gaming has a problem with graphics and when Nintendo quadruples down on ditching the hardware race and valve starts betting on low and Tech you know things are getting weird so let's talk about why this is happening and how Graphics are failing from both a commercial and the psychological standpoint and why this is something to be a bit optimistic about but don't worry this is not a graphics
• 01:30 - 02:00 don't matter video that's [ __ ] unless you truly believe text Adventures to be the peak of gaming Graphics do matter a lot until they start getting in their own way and this can only happen because the industry seems to be forgetting what they are even supposed to do plain and simple Graphics are just visual information and in gaming that comes in three types the three pillars of Graphics if you're feeling fancy the first pillar is functional information this is the most important one as it tells us everything we need to know
• 02:00 - 02:30 where we are where we can go what we can interact with what might kill us and all the extra detail like Health lives and so on good design will show you all these at first glance while bad design will piss you off with invisible walls trash hit boxes and unreliable visuals this is also the pillar that needs the least amount of detail to work you can do with simple shapes for 2D basic polygons with minimal textures for 3D just look at w Fortress mastering this game should count as a degree in Mass
• 02:30 - 03:00 and the main branch looks like this the second pillar is narrative information it's the show don't tell pure and simple it's what conveys the mood the background of a place what's happening and how characters feel about it without a single word good design will show you in a fraction of a second that this guy is an [ __ ] and this one's pretty pissed that this world is [ __ ] up that this guy is poor that this is not a serious game and so on this takes more power but we got there in the '90s for pixel art 200 for 3D and between there
• 03:00 - 03:30 and the early 2010s for lifelike human expression the third pillar is aesthetic information The Bling the looks the jiggle anything that's there to make a game look in a certain way be it beautiful or beautifully ugly here's where the sky is the limit but in truth Graphics only need to be as good as the style chosen requires which outside of photo realistic games or simulators the bar is not that high besides pushing this pillar to to hard can hurt the
• 03:30 - 04:00 other two which is never worth it with this in mind when we talk about more Graphics it just means more detail Fidelity and Tech behind that visual information and no matter the complexity the goal is always the same communicating those three types of information but today the fancy people will tell you Graphics don't matter what matters is gameplay and style which yes video games are interactive art in other words a combination of gameplay and style but with graphics you wouldn't
• 04:00 - 04:30 even have those and I don't mean it in the silly way of you wouldn't see them on the screen let me unpack this gameplay is how the game plays what du and for style well if you don't know what it is you don't have it style is just the result of the conscious effort of making something feel in a certain way the way doesn't matter you can create something consistent where everything matches like in a classical painting you can mix hand drawings with pixel characters on classic 3D environments and modern effects there
• 04:30 - 05:00 are no rules but to pull it off requires a [ __ ] ton of thought visuals music gameplay and storytelling everything has to be in sync to make us go wow as we realize that every scene is there to tell us something in other words style is what gives a piece of art its identity or if you want to be cheesy it's Soul so yeah it's easy to say Graphics don't matter while you enjoy a retro looking in the survival horror but those wouldn't even exist if some fellas from the 90s weren't pushing Graphics to
• 05:00 - 05:30 the Limit with alone in the dark in the same way nothing inspired by Silent Hill would be the same if the foggy Town wasn't foggy to deal with the limitations of the PS1 the truth is that most Styles and game plays are the result of a team from the past trying to make some new graphical Tech play and look great graphics are also one of the things that Force the development of better tools to design games as they became more complex more fancy tools means more toys for creating stuff with less for in the hands of creative people
• 05:30 - 06:00 to the point where a single person can create a whole game which is what made the Indie world explode so of course they matter but then the question is how did we go from that into Graphics hurting both gameplay and style while more and more Gamers don't give a [ __ ] about them anymore in other words how did we get to the breaking point well this becomes clear with a quick peek at the history of Home gaming the beginnings were dark with consoles that didn't know what the hell they were
• 06:00 - 06:30 trying to be NPCs loading cassettes that play this beautiful noise for half an hour while you prayed they didn't crash which was a quick way to become an atheist quality control was so awful that video game magazines advertised vodka in case you needed to EAS your suffering and even on those tender days they were flexing graphics on an Atari home video game system you'll see amazing Graphics like this but then a shoe box called Nintendo Entertainment system single-handedly
• 06:30 - 07:00 brought home gaming into a golden era a very very long one after that is when the obsession with Graphics truly started think about it if I tell you that my game has a lot of style your brain just put me in the box of people who really like the smell of their own farts if I tell you that the gam play is great you don't have any reason to believe me but Graphics hit you in the face which was especially true at that time when a couple of magazine Pages were all you had to Showcase a game so yes the reason why Graphics have always
• 07:00 - 07:30 been at the center is pure and simple marketing they are visual you can show how your game is the new big thing and use them to trigger emotion in a couple of pictures so every new device was flexing them I mean there was a time where every console had super mega or turbo in the name bragging about the number of bits they had 16 bit Sports Action you can't do this on Nintendo genisis genis
• 07:30 - 08:00 what Nintendo did we know what bits were hell no just that we were playing with power super power graphics sold games and consoles but we kept buying because that wasn't the only thing that evolved gaml became tighter faster more fluid and vared animations went from nothing to competing with movies music from Chip Tunes to full-blown orchestral Arrangements 3D became a thing physics evolved like crazy same with narrative
• 08:00 - 08:30 enemy AI cinematics style even controllers online multiplayer exploded and deps were trying to make games more and more optimized pushing systems to the point where an early game and a late game from the same console were worlds apart and the PC World was no different they were trying to push everything to the extreme even efficiency this demo might not look impressive but what if I tell you that taking a screenshot creates a file that seven times bigger
• 08:30 - 09:00 than the whole demo gaming was erased to do more more and even more with less every year blew the previous one and take limitations for Studios to nail style or look like crap so they did let's just say if you were into gaming back then you were hyped period but this era peaked in the mid 2000s and after that it slowed down into 20 years of small graphical improvements while the rest stayed the same which you agree is not as exciting this was also the point
• 09:00 - 09:30 where gaming finally went from passionate Geeks doing cool stuff into becoming the biggest entertainment industry in the world here's where game studios became corporations and feel free to tell me which one of the legendary Studios of the past hasn't become a greedy shadow of what it once was the hobby for nerds turned into the ultimate business so they slow down Innovation on everything not related to selling more games this meant more graphics for marketing plus making games more casual Plus betting on what worked
• 09:30 - 10:00 before so we got the Remake Hera here is where consoles also stopped feeling special and became dump PCS with the same games all across still corporations are quite good at refining the things that work so we still got a silver Age full of polished gems but this changed mainstream gaming forever as we basically crossed from selling interactive pieces of art into just purely games as products the biggest example being mobile games but I already talked about that in another video the key thing here is that development
• 10:00 - 10:30 stopped focusing on Innovation and went all in into making games with less effort and time Graphics are still the main marketing Point as they are the only thing that changes even if just a little but the question around them stop being how do we make this look amazing and became what software can we create so even underpaid interns can make something that looks nice just take a look at the three most hyp graphical Technologies of today upscaling which is playing at lower resolutions and making
• 10:30 - 11:00 your graphics card pretend you are not frame gen which is making your graphics card pretend your game run smooth and rate tracing SL paath tracing which allow developers to implement light with a fraction of the effort none of this new tech is to make games better in any way it's only there to compensate for bad or lazy design and the more they are able to compensate the less optimized games will get which will sell more gpus it's kind of brilliant if you think about it the whole phenomenon of games
• 11:00 - 11:30 that look worse but eat more is just a result of all this just unoptimized bloated games that are so rushed they relas half broken they are basically producing turds and making Tech polish them but this is not only about Bad Games even great games are now developed in Stupid Ways look at the remake of Silent Hill 2 it's stunning but a bit of a HW why well if you remove the fog you'll see how the game renders huge areas all the time which makes zero sense just compare it with how the
• 11:30 - 12:00 original used fog as a way to only render what was necessary and you'll see how lazy they have become but you know gaming is not like social media or big tag where they can Piss On Their audience and tell them it's raining without consequence we buy games to have a good time so all this [ __ ] doesn't fly this is what brought us to the breaking point a complete lack of understanding between an industry that seems to hate its audience and Gamers not willing to pay stupid prices to play stupid games and it's not only us almost
• 12:00 - 12:30 all the talented developers have run away from the big gaming companies as a result we are seeing the small Studios they are creating and the Indie World betting on gameplay and Style again oh and Nintendo who learned from the y64 on the GameCube I mean they might be [ __ ] but they know what they are doing and today they have the only console that feels special and now valve the biggest Name Behind PC gaming has put their bet on Linux and lowend devices they care about selling games
• 12:30 - 13:00 and if I can even turn this 13-year-old fire hazard into a pretty decent Indie machine this puts gaming into the hands of almost anybody making the market even bigger for Less graphical demanding games but all this only shows how most of the companies that can produ top tier Graphics have gone to [ __ ] not that Graphics don't or can't work so let's talk about why Graphics will never work as they did before even if the gaming industry wasn't a mess let's talk about the problem with gra traffics for starters they hit a point
• 13:00 - 13:30 of minimal return you need years and bold loads of money which usually means depending on those sley investors who love to push politics to make things look slightly better than 10 years ago which turns the issue from something technical into something psychological because what's Skilling the power of Graphics is that they depend on novelty and with novelty slightly better will never cut it I mean novelty is just neuromarketing slang for tickling the circuit of our brains wired to give us a
• 13:30 - 14:00 dopamine heit when we spot and investigate anything new in the environment it's basically the reason most ads Scream It's new and improved but novelty in media is a double-edged sword it works great but Fades quick and not only for that new thing but also for anything that's too similar do you remember how animated films hype realism until movies like Spirits within and Avatar came out and then the whole industry pivoted to sty that's novelty scurs realistic animation was mind-blowing the first time then it becomes normal boring even but gaming
• 14:00 - 14:30 was amazing for this type of marketing Graphics Evol fast enough to feel new all the time but slowly enough not to reach their peak in decades let's say you were a horror fan in the Golden Era you had sweet home 5 years later Clock Tower five more cold Veronica and another five brought you Resident Evil 4 but today we are playing Resident Evil 4 remake so not only we are playing the same game but the difference isn't that impressive especially if you keep in mind that the time gap between sweet
• 14:30 - 15:00 home and Resident Evil 4 is smaller than between 4 and its remake see the problem it was never Graphics that tickled your brain it was the massive change but we've reached a point where they can't improve enough to create the same level of impact even if they create true to life Graphics we'd be amazed for a while and then shrug after all you wake up every day to the best graphics in existance do you go wow such Shadows wow such definition he even farts in 8K of
• 15:00 - 15:30 course not this is why most visual Industries Now understand that for novelty you need to bet on Style again to feel different but there's that tiny little detail Graphics only need tech while style needs talent and taking risks and in the words of a great composer so if you don't love it you're not going to take the risks but it's more than that let me make it worse pushing Graphics has always been about adding more detail but we've gotten to a point where you can
• 15:30 - 16:00 add so much that instead of improving the experience it only adds an extra layer of [ __ ] just think about how our attention works the more we focus on a task the more our brains ignores information not tied to it a famous study showed that half of us won't even see a bloody gorilla in front of the screen if we are focused counting passes and gaming demands way more Focus than that so your brain is literally wasting energy to throw away almost all those fancy Graphics during your game playay all that extra detail becomes noise in
• 16:00 - 16:30 other words the more details you add the more you screw the functional aspect of Graphics so most games pushing them will end up with the same problems the amount of detail makes it hard to know where to go or what can we interact with so they must use cheap tricks to go around this like making them extremely lineal so the player can get lost ending up with games that are basically pretty rooms and corridors with lots of closed doors or extremely limited Outdoors and if they can tie you to a small
• 16:30 - 17:00 environment they'll slap compasses mini maps and pointers everywhere making your cowboy or your Witcher have better geolocation than a nuclear submarine which means that for hours the beautiful Graphics your attention will be focused on are this while you try to find your way they also need to highlight or put the infamous yellow paint on everything you can interact with or they'll say screw it and won't let you interact with almost anything even if it feels stupid did your knife break there is an a there
• 17:00 - 17:30 tough luck that's the environments so not touching but I hope you appreciate how realistic it looks making games more detailed always gets to a point where they need to sacrifice gameplay ending up with games that feel clunky confusing and artificial good design understands how our attention works and makes use of it while prioritizing readability over visual Fidelity Arcane is a great example of this almost every scene is made of a focal point and then some contextual information the rest is just negative space everything on screen is
• 17:30 - 18:00 there to tell you something this type of design creates cognitive ease which means that our brains love it as the job is done for them so they can focus on enjoying and you can see it in video games too look at the Glimpse we got for the new Mario Kart characters on the road are the focal point so they are more detailed then we have a secondary area that gives the feel of the track and the rest is as simple as it gets even to the point of looking quite bad if you pay attention to it but that's the thing you won't this is what I call
• 18:00 - 18:30 pushing readability and you'll see it on every single game that tries to maximize all three pillars to tell us something while making gamep playay as smooth as possible just think about the games that you consider the most stylish or even better write them down as I'd love to play them now how many of those are graphic Hogs I can't think of any the most beautiful games are usually some of the most efficient readable and enjoyable all around and they are usually very basic for good reason pushing Graphics forces you to add a lot
• 18:30 - 19:00 of detail and being almost limited to photo realism I mean you ain't selling many gpus with pixel art on the other hand pushing readability means trying to remove all the detail that doesn't matter while having complete Freedom when choosing Styles which also means that pushing Graphics today not only screws the functional pillar it also Limits The Narrative and the aesthetic ones as photo realism is the least flexible least memorable least sexy style of them all and this is not me bashing it it is brilliant and some
• 19:00 - 19:30 games need it but our brains have a lot of bias towards anything that looks real so what looks wrong looks twice as wrong creating cognitive dissonance or The Uncanny valy effect this limits a lot how you can express things while on other styles we don't have those biases just look at how much more this scene tells you in the original Lion King and you probably didn't notice it's recorded at a resolution of 480p since this is easier to show than to tell let's pick three masterpieces of design and put
• 19:30 - 20:00 them side to side which of three where they went all in with Graphics tears of the Kingdom which have bottom of the barrel Graphics but went all in with style and delen ring or any of the souls games which have mediocre Graphics but went high in style in Zelda just a glance gives you the mood the magical Vive the hopeful feel and Nostalgia of an interactive fairy tale Elden ring tells you as much though this time you get a world that's broken affected by beings that are beyond the under understanding it's sad hopeless and dark
• 20:00 - 20:30 but oddly beautiful is it a wonder that the soul series style has inspired a whole genre no is it strange that so many games are trying to look like the sweeta zeldas not really but what is the environment of Witcher telling you aid from basic beats early Renaissance Europe not much and this is not a critique it is exactly what it had to be but notice how much the style has to be carried by The Narrative the tragic story of a man who just wanted to play cards but was constantly distracted by
• 20:30 - 21:00 the apocalypse still if I ask you which one of the three worlds do you think is the most beautiful I wonder how many of you will choose the realistic one and here's the thing you cannot make Zelda or elen ring graphic Hawks because you'd break their Essence as both are focused on creating spectacular environments that are easy to read to inspire exploration so they need to feel a bit empty a bit surreal not being tied to photo realism allows for more expression more vibrancy more radical animation to
• 21:00 - 21:30 convey movement in more spectacular ways it's better at communicating space and what you can do it's the best at creating emotional impact and there is more it's not only the lazy part of your brain which prefers less detail the one related to your identity does too as when they put all the detail for us they break imaginative immersion the more realistic and detail something is the less we put from our imagination into it the less we put the less special it feels feel as time goes by it's why book
• 21:30 - 22:00 people are always ranting about how the book is better than the movie because we create our own movie as we read it and we also do this with less defined visual information we look for shapes in clouds we are terrified of what we can see and we rebuild those less defined video games in our minds while we are playing I mean have you ever played a game from your childhood and got surprised at how bad it actually looked that's reality smashing against the memories of the version you created while playing it plus brains are tickled by things they
• 22:00 - 22:30 cannot completely see or understand the linal the Ethereal the strange RAW graphics can make something look good but they can't make it look special you make it special and the more you put of yourself into it the more special it is and I'm not saying they can't do this with amazing Graphics it's just going to take a lot more effort they are way more limited in the choices they can make and most of the time they'll have to hide those Graphics under a layer of style but this rarely happens for what I
• 22:30 - 23:00 consider to be the biggest problem with pushing Graphics how it forces creators to give away control if every stone tree and strand of grass has to be perfect they must use software to model and create more stuff in procedural ways as it's impossible to have humans doing all the work so we are ending up with games where environments lighting and most stuff is created with little human input and the procedural systems aren't just placing trees and rocks but also fog cars s bugs birds everything that's
• 23:00 - 23:30 needed to bring this environment to life and now with the AI push this is only going to get worse as you can bet most big companies are drooling while thinking about an era of games where the music writing models and almost everything is designed by a machine which is Bloody Disgusting on the course of our time so yes all this is what made Graphics lose their magic but you know what I'm optimistic I believe we are still going to get the best looking games ever and I want companies to keep pushing Graphics even further because it
• 23:30 - 24:00 always trickles down yes I think the way they use them sucks but who knows maybe in the future someone will create a game that expresses everything through light and Shadow using path tracing and have you seen what they are doing with retro games with it that's what makes me excited besides it's the best time to be a gamer you can have all the great titles of the past for pennies and play them on a potato while the Indie world is mindblowing so let them cook we'll see see where it goes meanwhile I'll
• 24:00 - 24:30 keep recommending weird stuff but what do you think about all this I want to know