Next-Gen Graphics and the Death of Creativity

The dangers of advanced graphics and it means for game creativity.

[xKugo]

Does anybody else find it comical that anytime next-gen console graphics are discussed, that Killzone: Shadow Fall is ALWAYS shown and not the "graphically superior with 150k polygons" game Ryse or Forza?

[TheKiller9745]

Maybe because this site is biased for Sony?

[majiebeast]

How would you know, you just joined.

01 Sep 2013 (10d ago )

Is there something you arent telling us?

[Twignberries]

The site is biased towards Sony because it's a better company. Fact.

[M-M]

It's biased towards Sony because the tides have turned. There used to be very good discussion between Microsoft and Sony supporters, but a lot of people that were pro Xbox shifted to the PS4 after the One reveal. The Xbox fans lingering around here now are the equivalent of Apple fanboys.

[thorstein]

If you want an Xbone site go see IGN or Gamefaqs. Here SONY rules. So what?

And Killzone Shadowfall is certainly a wonderfully realized title. It should stand out for next gen right along with Watch Dogs, Infamous, and Titanfall.

[Ezz2013]

@thorstein

i go to ign alot and ppl there seem to like sony alot and praise it games alot like most sites do

but Gamefaqs is by far have the worst fanboys from every system ...that place is incredibly bad

[warewolfSS]

It's comical that's the first place your mind went. Defend your beloved company.

[xReDeMpTiOnx]

Forza is a racing game so there's not as much to it technically like a fps or action adventure game etc.

And ryse pre e3 looked better than killzone but now killzone shadowfall does look better than ryse and def is getting way way better impressions than ryse.

[CrimsonStar]

Way better impressions from who?

[Rimeskeem]

@CrimsonStar

ask the pre orders because it looks like Killzone SF is beating Ryse on a ratio of at least 3:1

[abusador]

Maybe its because it isnt graphically superior and only certain models have 150k polygons and not most of the npcs :)

Killzone definitely infamous look better visually than any other next gen game.

[HammadTheBeast]

Not even that RYSE has 150 million TRIANGLES NOT POLYGONS.

Anyone with even the lowest knowledge of technology knows the difference. It's common sense.

LATA.

[Tei777]

Have you seen the actual footage of Ryse running on the Xbox One?

[user7402931]

yeah its choppy, laggy full of glitches ect.

[negative]

I wasn't buying it anyway so I can't wait for Killzone to fail.

[M-M]

Yeah, looks great but it's full of glitches and bad gameplay mechanics.

[DigitalRaptor]

Ryse only looks truly impressive in the slowed down parts where control is taken from you and they can spend time animations and polishing those parts.

Look at the general combat gameplay, when there isn't a QTE finisher (not much of it) or cutscene, or a set-piece, and it looks worse than those specific slowed down parts. Crytek have never been at one with gameplay. So yeah, it looks incredible during those parts i mentioned where you don't really have control, but not so great otherwise. See here for what I'm referring to: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

@ negative

You can't wait for Killzone to fail? You mean the same Killzone that's pre-orders are more than all of Xbox One's exclusives combined? Now that is fail.

https://copy.com/vx8N7u3MG4...

[ZBlacktt]

What I notice more is people turn into a fanboy argument instead of just talking about the games in general.

[GodGinrai]

its always the same BS. lol.

On topic: I think the general mood of gamers and the devs as a whole are shifting to more creatively concieved games. The only military shooters on the radar are BF4 and COD. The indie boom that has been going on these last few years. I love 2D games so I am glad so many idie titles are 2D. But I love things like journey, insanly twisted shadow planet and limbo. If it looks and plays good, thats all that matters. I want to see more games like el shaddai. I want a new shadow of collosus. I want more metroid-vania style games like shadow complex and outland. aswell as the forzas, infamouses and BFs of this world. Nest gen will be about variety and unique, fun games along with epic "hollywood" type stuff like watchdogs and bioshock infinite. and open worlds and galxies. Good times ahead no matter what you own.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Only thing I find funny, and depressing, is that some people ALWAYS troll and go off topic, for whatever their reasons may be. It's funny that despite all the politicians, lobbyists, and bad parents, gamers hate games more than anyone else.

[Bigpappy]

It looks like the author is highlighting Killzone as the poster child for making his point.
That is NOT faltering !

As for the article itself? I disagree. I think that creativity is alive and well. In fact the new technologies make it easier for developers to be creative. For example, I look forward to the new consoles and have no interest in booting up the old NES and Sega. Not even the old Xbox for that matter.

[iceman06]

The question really becomes that with the new technology comes new costs. Will publishers be more or less willing to allow developers to be creative in the next gen? At this point, it's fairly clear that there was a slide in general creativity as publishers chased after CoD glory. There are still some creative devs out there. It's just a matter of whether or not publishers will allow them to create what they want or if they will be forced into games that do nothing more than fill some demographic pothole in the catalog.

[syanara]

or the graphically superior Deep Down or inFamous Second Son...

[christrules0041]

We know a lot about Killzone: Shadow Fall from there demo post mortem. Even to the point on the first demo's CPU load was 60 AI characters
940 Entities, 300 Active
8200 Physics objects (1500 keyframed, 6700 static)
500 Particle systems
120 Sound voices
110 Ray casts
1000 Jobs per frame
Here is a link to it if you wish to see it. http://www.guerrilla-games....

The only other details like that we have is on the Dark Sorcerer demo. http://www.dualshockers.com...

We just don't have these details from Microsoft though unfortunately. It's really impressive what Guerilla showed in there demo post mortem. The 1 thing it did show is that they don't know how to use the extra bus inbetween the CPU and GPU yet though. I say that because only 128MB/s was used for the CPU/GPU and they can use a maximum of 20GB/s

[HammadTheBeast]

Killzone Characters use more poly's than Ryse's 150 million TRIANGLES.

[Rimeskeem]

just because a game has 150k triangles(not polygons) and a few characters doesnt mean the the graphics are better because well you can have better textures and have less polygons and people would think that the textures look better.

[Tapioca Cold]

The real question is why do good graphics equal poor gameplay? It's ridiculous. Since when do games with great graphics lack creativity?

the world is not black and white.

I like games that look spectacular and play spectacular. The list is endless. Do I need to list ALL the games that had great graphics for thier time and also had awesome gameplay? remember GTA 3 for PS2? Looks like ass now but it was awesome for its time. mario, pitfall, pong, MK, battlefield 3, halo, COD modern warfare, etc. etc.

it's just an uneducated premise and is used by fools.

[xKugo]

Wow you guys really blew this comment out of proportion. I was being sarcastic and proving that Killzone is the most graphically impressive game of next gen because most sites put up a picture of Killzone when they talk next-gen.

[clrlite]

The issue of putting graphics first has been around for a while.
A large enough, talented team can create technically supurb visuals and still make a great all around game.
But, it's true that the emphasis on graphics has taken away from gameplay in many cases, and this could be avoided.

When all the games are near "photo realism" and this technical aspect is achieved easily by many, there will be nothing to compete about (in this area) and we might see even more devs go for stylized creative aesthetics as they begin to focus more on other important aspects of games.

Of course hardware, engine, comparison, fanboy wars and more are still almost an inevitability though.

[syanara]

agreed, graphics have been seen as a more important aspect next to gameplay and creativity however I believe this generation the strong inclusion of indie developers will balance this out in a manner that can be profitable for the gamers this generation. Indie devs have taken a lot of the spotlight and more often than not will we see the best creativity and new ideas because indie devs aren't risking multi-million dollar budgets.

[WorldGamer]

Very good article. I believe we are getting to a point where graphics are going to be great, with little improvements here and their. This indeed should allow for more focus on content, control innovations and other improvements to AI behavior, etc.

Great times ahead.

[jmc8888]

We're not anywhere close to what you state about graphics.

But I do agree it's always nice if they could increase focus on content, control innovations, and other improvements to AI behavior, etc.

It's just that's not the Wall Street way, and wall street forces what it wants.

Labor costs are an enemy to wall street, and everything lacking can be put in by various devs, but wall street says push out the game.

Remember accounts aren't creative, except in their ways to scam.

[aksmashh]

Last of us?? The story made that game not the graphics

Hes got a point about realistic FPS's tho!!!!!!

[xReDeMpTiOnx]

The death of creativity was when they decided to annually pump out cod games and over use the copy paste function of the keyboard.

Cod has destroyed original creativity by the success it's had by drawing in other devs to try and mimick what call of duty does to attract sales.

[ShaunCameron]

Um. No. If anything, the "death" of creativity was when hardcore gamers didn't put the money where their mouths were by supporting the games they swore were more deserving of support in favor of (insert popular game of the day).

Call Of Duty didn't destroy anything. It's yet another case of gamers being the hypocritical, fickle sheep they always been.

[iceman06]

Kind of. There were some hardcore gamers that didn't back up the talk. But, there was also an expansion of the market by the casual sports/CoD gamers that gave the illusion of a larger market to publishers. So, their predictions were off when it came to potential sales. Look at all of these games that publishers claim need to sell more than 5 million copies to be a "success". That type of pressure didn't exist before games started smashing those expectations. (like CoD) I'm not so much blaming CoD as I am the publishers for not realizing this or not taking it into consideration as they pour millions upon millions into franchises that are somehow meant to compete. They need to stop competing and allow the creativity of developers to come up with something new. Who knows? They might just catch lightning in a bottle like CoD.

[abusador]

Creativity is not dead thanks to Sony. You still have games like lbp, puppeteer, tear away, etc... coming from none other than Sony!!!!!

[WorldGamer]

Not to mention Rime, I can't wait for Rime.

[abusador]

Very true!!! Im def. interested in Rime and itll probably be better than most AAA games.

[Rimeskeem]

dont forget Deep Down looks quite different then most games

[jmc8888]

The death of creativity has a name, it's called Wall Street, not better graphics. (and it's squid sucking influence extends far beyond gaming).

But even if I just take at face value that better graphics kills creativity I have to LMAO because the author obviously doesn't pay attention to reality.

Video game graphics are nowhere near reality. Next thing you know the guy will say you can't see more than 30 or 60 FPS and the human eye can't see 1080 at under 40 inches or 4k under 80. All of which is so far from the truth it's like saying a nickel is a million dollars. Games will continue to get better graphics far beyond 16ktv is out, not to mention what holographic tv and gaming will do and it of course won't have perfect graphics out of the gate.

Also the better graphics get, the more creative you can get with them because the artists vision can be better realized. At least the author noted that. But we're far from finishing our open world games, let alone open solar system, open galaxy, open universe games. A few scales down in fact. There's further to go from here in gaming then from whence we came. (in other words Oddyssey 1/Pong to GTX Titan difference in graphics is smaller then where we are going)

But hey, how about the idiot notion that if all games have great looking open worlds then everything becomes common place, and nothing is different and thus 'creativity' is harmed. Well last I checked the last 5 years or so as we've watched the consoles mature and PC games go massively beyond them, what has happened in the gaming world?

Indies. That's what happened. In an era where supposedly we are supposed to believe the meme that creativity is stunted we are ACTUALLY LIVING IN a world where indies have created a massive amount of new games going in CREATIVE directions. So how is it that some morons say creativity is being stunted when before their eyes we've seen the greatest increase in game creativity because of indies. Remember Wall Street's much smaller influence on indies, because again, Wall Street is the real anti-creative force on this planet.

So are indies not going to be pushing things in creative ways, many of which have nothing to do with graphics? Of course not.

At one time people thought adding color to movies was the last step and everything would stagnate from there. Oops.