Today's Hardware on Tomorrow's Games

GweeDo writes: "Anandtech has gotten their hands on a recent build of the Unreal Engine to give today's hardware (Geforce 3 ti's and upper-class Radeons) a run for the money to see how they will do on tomorrows games. The article is here and quite a good read ..."

Comments

Fast, Hard-core 3D GFX != Good game

[Masem]

I've got a very bad feeling that the gaming industry is heading towards a black hole of development. Sure, the GF3 and other graphics boards are truely amazing in terms of HW, with all the new pluggable rendering devices, hardware T&L, etc. And I'm certainly not going to complain about the graphics in a game that take advantage of such graphics.

However, you can put all the greatest graphics in the world, but if you don't add something interesting in terms of the game itself (plot, gameplay (both single and multiplayer), etc), then all you've got is a pretty looking game that no one is going to buy. And too many of today's games are just that; there hasn't been anything 'different' in the FPS arena since Half-Life, Deus Ex and No One Lives Forever, Diablo 2 in terms of RPGs, and so forth. There's only two interesting areas of games that I've seem them take great steps above their predecesors as to make them different; first is the X4/real-time strategy games such as Black & White and the recent Dune title, which are now combining good 3d engines with good gameplay (though Myth would be the first real entry in this catagory). The other is the simulation area: recent entries of games like Startopia combine the graphics and a rather detailed but playable ruleset to make a good game.

So while the hardware makers keep pushing out better cards capable of running all the graphics effects today, the game makers seem to be too tied up in taking advantage of that and not of improving the underlying game itself. I'm hoping that we hit a plateau in the graphics card ability, as once that is hit, then the game makers will turn back to the game since they can no longer optimize the pretty-ness of the game itself.

Re:Fast, Hard-core 3D GFX != Good game

[NutscrapeSucks]

I'm hoping that we hit a plateau in the graphics card ability, as once that is hit, then the game makers will turn back to the game since they can no longer optimize the pretty-ness of the game itself.

There's also the real problem that game companies are outpacing the market penetration for top end hardware. While you can do wonderful things with a GeForce 4 or whatever, it's a real question if there will be enough GF4 users to profitably sell games to.

Gone are the days when you could slap Doom or Quake on pretty much any old computer in your office and have a network shootemup. Requiring recent 3D hardware eliminates the vast majority of PCs in the real world.

Another example -- it sounds like Unreal Tournament greatly outsold Quake III. UT can be played unaccelerated (don't laugh, I know people who do this and have fun), and it played fine on the shitty i810 PC I had at an old job. QIII barely played on the hardware that was out at the time of it's release (PII, TNT2, for example). Half-Life is another game friendly to low-end boxes. Not to mention SimCity, RR Tycoon, Sims, and other big sellers that didn't require much hardware-wise.

Not to mention that the average user probably finds the whole world of 3D card to be a mess of confusing brandnames, limited retail outlets, driver woes, hardware upgrades, and so on. It starts to become real work for something that's supposed to be fun.

I guess I'm being presumptuous in telling game companies how to run their businesses. Just that from what I've heard, it sounds like the PC game sales are in the dumps, and only half the problem is unoriginal game concepts. Maybe they should consider quitting chasing the l33t gamer crowd or techies like myself that find it fun to keep up with the gear, and get back to the broader market of people who just want to blow off some steam after work.

Re:Fast, Hard-core 3D GFX != Good game

[uebernewby]

game makers will continue to put out good games. Top of my head, Black and White

Hmm... I'd say you just named the one title most of my friends (and myself) consider to be a prime example of "looks good but sucks". No one I know played it for more than a few hours, because in the end it turned out to be Populous With Extras That Take Away The Fun. I'm really glad I was smart enough to try the warez version instead of coughing up the full USD 50 for it like most of my buddies.

Re:Fast, Hard-core 3D GFX != Good game

[ergo98]

Doom blew everyone away with its revolutionary 3D engine, but the game was pointless. Fun, but pointless, and got old fast

Nice job with revisionist history there. The reality, of course, is that for the overwhelming majority of people Doom was extremely engrossing (the classic is jumping out of your seat when one of those red bull things appeared) and was directly responsible for billions of hours of slack time. Duke Nukem 3D was very similar in that it's a simple concept, but I played that game multiplayer for hours upon hours upon hours.

including everything id has done since

Now this is just dumb. While I haven't ever really gotten into Q3, Q2 gave me thousands of fun hours, especially with the mods. The Quake series, and this is something that many pundits fail to realize, is more of a sport than a RPG : You excel and because exemplary in it just like you would perfecting the perfect dive or running the 10s 100m, and it's the same sort of quest for perfection that draws people to excel. When I see complaints about the Quake series I often wonder if these people expect some RPGing to break out in the middle of the Olympics : Maybe the downhill skiers can have a pseudo hill economy. I mean otherwise they're just falling with gravity right?

The whole point of this? Don't discount a game just because it's not a genre that you prefer, and don't presume that if an element works in one game (i.e realism, or RPG factors, etc.) that therefore it should be in all games.