I read an article years ago, maybe like a decade ago, of some game industry person saying it was a cycle:
Incredible new graphics come out and people will buy the shiny regardless of anything else, then slowly they have to start making actually good games with those graphics to sell, then incredible new graphics come out and you don’t need to bother with story for a while.
This sounds like a shower thought I would have but when someone else says it, it just seems reductive and incorrect. The Germans probably have a word for this phenomenon.
I was just having a discussion with my family about recent union wins in the US, and when something good is a sign of how bad things must be. I suggested that there must be a german word for it, and my sister suggested maybe a chinese saying.
If you like the category of ‘things that sound like german has a word for it’, look into the 4-character chinese sayings called chengyu. One of my favourites is ‘Melon Patch, Under Plum’, meaning something that is completely innocent but should be avoided because it looks really sketchy. Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or fix your hat under a plum tree.
If I had to guess, each graphics cycle is a little less dominant than the last. The iterations on graphics are becoming lesser and lesser. A game from 10 years ago is far improved from a game 20 years ago, but not that much worse than a game from last month.
There are moments of awe (imo, especially in VR when a game “nails it”), but we’re pretty desensitized to high-graphics video games of late.
I read an article years ago, maybe like a decade ago, of some game industry person saying it was a cycle:
Incredible new graphics come out and people will buy the shiny regardless of anything else, then slowly they have to start making actually good games with those graphics to sell, then incredible new graphics come out and you don’t need to bother with story for a while.
This sounds like a shower thought I would have but when someone else says it, it just seems reductive and incorrect. The Germans probably have a word for this phenomenon.
I was just having a discussion with my family about recent union wins in the US, and when something good is a sign of how bad things must be. I suggested that there must be a german word for it, and my sister suggested maybe a chinese saying.
If you like the category of ‘things that sound like german has a word for it’, look into the 4-character chinese sayings called chengyu. One of my favourites is ‘Melon Patch, Under Plum’, meaning something that is completely innocent but should be avoided because it looks really sketchy. Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or fix your hat under a plum tree.
If I had to guess, each graphics cycle is a little less dominant than the last. The iterations on graphics are becoming lesser and lesser. A game from 10 years ago is far improved from a game 20 years ago, but not that much worse than a game from last month.
There are moments of awe (imo, especially in VR when a game “nails it”), but we’re pretty desensitized to high-graphics video games of late.