We must demand worse graphics to save the video games industry – Reader’s Feature

As the price of making, and paying for, video games continues to increase, a reader argues that publishers need to roll the clock back a decade.

A couple of weeks ago it was revealed that $300 million is now a normal sized budget for triple-A video games, which is an absolutely crazy amount. To put that in context, that is more than all but 18 of all movies ever made. That’s right, there are just 18 movies that have ever cost more and even the most expensive, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is only $536 million, which is bound to be way less than GTA 6 and maybe others.

If $300 million is becoming the standard that means some games will already be more than that. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was already over it back in 2023. So just imagine what Marvel’s Wolverine, or the new Fable, or Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet must be costing.

I don’t think you need me to say that these price are outrageous and unsustainable, especially because they’re constantly going up, and will have a major bump when the (completely unnecessary) next generation starts. Budgets are rising all the time and yet the total number of people playing console games hasn’t increased since the PlayStation 2 days.

These numbers do not make any sense. The fact that they can only get worse makes even less sense. And the fact that not one single publisher is doing anything about it (even Nintendo’s games are getting bigger budget, more expensive, and taking longer to make) is absolutely crazy. Especially as this problem has been obvious all generation.

I don’t know why publishers won’t do anything about it, but I assume it’s the all or nothing logic that has had so many of them wasting all their time and money trying to make the next Fortnite. I think I can guarantee that they will learn nothing from the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and other indie games.

Just to remind you, Expedition 33 was made by a core team of just 30 people on a budget of less than $10 million and yet has sold well over 5 million copies (I could only find numbers that go back to last October). And that’s for a game that was almost universally named the best game of last year, had great graphics, and lasts over 40 hours.

Whether you like the game or not is not the point, the point is if some random team of ex-Ubisoft developers can do that then so could any reasonably talented, and motivated, team.

The graphics in Intergalactic and Wolverine, and whatever else, are going to be great, I’m sure, but there is absolutely no way any video game should be costing over $300 million. Is Wolverine going to look 30 times better than Expedition 33? That’s literally impossible.

We need to tell publishers that we are fine with good graphics. We do not need them to be amazing graphics, if that means the budget increases by 3,000% and the game becomes more expensive to buy.

I’m not against big budgets just because it’s gross and a waste of money but because it limits what games can be. If you’re spending $300+ million on a game you’re not going to want it to be some wildly experiment thing that you don’t know is going to be a hit. You’re going to want it to be as safe and predictable as purpose, to try and attract as many people as possible.

Expedition 33 isn’t just a good game it’s a pretty weird one, while also paying homage to old school turn-based role-players that even Square Enix doesn’t give a big budget to nowadays.

I didn’t really mean to make this about Expedition 33 so much but it’s such a good example of what should be happening with games right now and yet big publishers aren’t paying it any attention.

I’ll break it down, as to what needs to happen:

• Lower budgets – if you’re not GTA than anything even close to $100 million is madness
• PlayStation 4 level graphics – we didn’t need this generation let along the next one, the improvement is tiny and the cost (in every sense of the word) is ridiculous
• Shorter run times – simply making shorter games would instantly cut your budget, especially as people are sick of every other game being a 60 hour epic; how much free time do you think we get?!
• Cheaper prices – the other benefit of Expedition 33 is that it’s below average price, but if you make your game shorter and with lower-tech graphics that’s not a problem.

Look at the most successful games – everything from Fortnite to Among Us to Minecraft – and you won’t see high-tech graphics anywhere. Ordinary people don’t care about graphics, they care about having fun and we should all take that attitude.

Publishers think that hardcore fans demand better graphics and I say we tell them otherwise. There needs to be a campaign to make graphics worse. I know how that sounds but what it really means is to make games cheaper, because the actual decrease in graphics will be so minimal no sensible person will care anyway.

By reader Togi

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