Recently I heard someone put it like this: "Companies mistake fidelity for quality."
Endlessly upping the polygon count doesn't mean anything when you have bad design or art direction. I'd say crappy animations also fall into that same vein.
In fact, I think that this is contributing to an observation I've had for a while now: Much of the games industry is trying to focus itself on presentability over other things to justify large budgets.
It may be an outgrowth of the growth vs profit mindset that plagues most of the corporate world. They think if they just pour more and more money into it then it'll get bigger and bigger returns on investment. Perhaps we've just hit the point where the industry is mature and needs to accept being profitable rather than endless expansion that isn't remotely realistic. This is just that reality finally catching up with them.
Turns out a modest budget to make a good game gets better returns, but that's not what business types want to hear because it requires them to invest in quality and accept that there's an upper bound on how much money they can make.
Recently I heard someone put it like this: "Companies mistake fidelity for quality."
Endlessly upping the polygon count doesn't mean anything when you have bad design or art direction. I'd say crappy animations also fall into that same vein.
I've been saying this since the early '00s about the 4th gen consoles: the hardware is capable of putting your vision on the screen.
If what appears on the screen sucks, it's because either your art direction sucks or your technical direction sucks.
In fact, I think that this is contributing to an observation I've had for a while now: Much of the games industry is trying to focus itself on presentability over other things to justify large budgets.
It may be an outgrowth of the growth vs profit mindset that plagues most of the corporate world. They think if they just pour more and more money into it then it'll get bigger and bigger returns on investment. Perhaps we've just hit the point where the industry is mature and needs to accept being profitable rather than endless expansion that isn't remotely realistic. This is just that reality finally catching up with them.
Turns out a modest budget to make a good game gets better returns, but that's not what business types want to hear because it requires them to invest in quality and accept that there's an upper bound on how much money they can make.
Not viable, inflation is ever growing so your revenues need to be explosive in their expanding or somewhere someone got to pay for the party, haha
If infinite growth is required then the business isn't viable to begin with.