Only Bad Games are “Harder to Make These Days” - GUI 136

Developers out of 343 Industries have recently offered insight into why they believe “games are harder to make these days”. Amongst the items on their list of reasons are enhanced technical expectations and the intricacies of running, updating or maintaining online games. Not one of these things is integral to a good game; this serves as a list of features proper to many games precisely as bad.

[Christopher]

Holy Armchair Developers. People who don't know the software development cycle and all the technologies involved and the management involved really need to be quiet. It's like people just hear "so and so makes something easier" and people don't realize "because of this, this is way harder than before but this thing we said makes it easier and alleviates some of that but definitely not most of it." Let alone "oh, now we do 100 things we didn't do before because it's an expectation of the public that we do it and if we don't they'll complain a ton and this definitely impacts our development cycle and makes testing harder and results in us delaying and cutting content to implement."

[Christopher]

Relevant tweet chain and what I see so often from designers and developers: https://twitter.com/xavierc...

[xander31]

Perhaps if you listened to our argument before stroking out above with that heap of vomitous nonsense we would have bothered with yours!

But if you insist: you are supporting our argument by citing this. Our argument, which you didn't bother to listen to before having a conniption all over the comment section, was "none of the things 343 cites are necessary to a good game", including 8k graphics. We explicitly cite pixel graphics made by one or two person teams as ways to develop in support of this point. The guy who thinks moving beyond PS2 era graphics was a mistake no doubt agrees.

Nice argument there Christopher! I'd ask which company was paying you to shill for them (by defending inane modern "game developers" and the preposterous notion that games are "HaRdEr To MaKe NoW!)... but if money were involved, they'd hire someone better at it.

[Christopher]

*points to every single post complaining about the quality of graphics in games*

I'm sorry, did you miss the part where I said "...now we do 100 things we didn't do before because it's an expectation of the public that we do it and if we don't they'll complain a ton"?

Saints Row reboot looks like Fortnite complaints up the wazoo.

Gotham Knights graphics look worse than Batman: Arkham Knight graphics comments.

So on and so on.

Perhaps if expectations were as simple as gameplay you'd have a point. But you don't. AAA development people want AAA graphics 99% of the time.

The fact is, what you ignore from my tweet is that game development isn't decided by the guy making the graphics but by the people who understand the expectations of the mass market. And you saying it's just as simple as ignoring mass market desires for graphics (on a site that spends an inordinate amount of time bitching over pixels between two different consoles no less) is myopic in view on what is involved in making games since the PS3/360 were released.

Also, I'll remind you of your title, which is part of your argument "Only Bad Games are “Harder to Make These Days” - GUI 136" No. They're all harder. But people want good games with good graphics. Otherwise, there wouldn't be good graphics, because it costs companies more to do it. A lot more.

And, btw, no excuse for just insulting me. You should have led with this argument. I don't agree with it, but at least it's on topic.

[xander31]

Christopher, to repeat, this laundry list of nonsense you are bothering us with confirms our point: the trappings of AAA game development are utterly contrary to the making of a good game.

Especially meeting mass market expectations! We didn't miss this, we thought it was too useless to respond to. No one is so deluded to defend the high literary quality of mass market airport novels or contend their format doesn't impact their quality. Similarly, the ongoing popularity of heroin, and the value of the global heroin market at 50+ billion in 2021, proves nothing about the merit of heroin. If anything the most popular & desired things are the most poisonous & sh*tty in every case. Here the point is simple: if you choose the expectation$ of the unwashed masses over the integrity of your game, your game is not good. Thus an 8k online halo-themed social club & casino is no less sh*t cuz everyone wanted it.

YOU ignore the fact that innumerable developers are working "outside the mass market" and spend their careers "ignoring mass market desires". Is there even a point in listing the games developed by one or two people which are infinitely better than anything the AAA space has squatted to excrete in recent years?

"It isn't decided by the guy making graphics"? Why doesn't he, you know, leave? The subordination of game development to market whimsy which you describe here accounts for how utterly trash games like 343's Halo turned out to be. We can safely say that developers who compromise the integrity of their work to participate in the mass market are prostitutes. Their work is not undertaken for its own intrinsic merit but to satiate consumer appetites. They don't make games, they make digital amusement parks extant for the sole purpose of extracting money from you.

Our title was perfectly adequate, which (again) your flaccid attempt to list counter-examples of confirms. *Games designed to "meet the expectations of the mass market", or "saitsfy what most people want", not games in any general sense, are harder to make*. And these latter kinds of games are steaming crap.

We insulted you because we don't like you & because what we said (about you shilling, poorly,) is true. You bubbled up in our comment section mere seconds after the post to white knight for capitalists playing game dev: to defend the prostitution of games to "mass market desire". You did the same a week or so ago in the original N4G story on 343's comments. I'm sure we aren't alone in noticing.

Now if you're done defending publicly traded companies with a fervor proper to religious apologism, leave us alone.

[Christopher]

***Christopher, to repeat, this laundry list of nonsense you are bothering us with confirms our point: the trappings of AAA game development are utterly contrary to the making of a good game.***

You saying that doesn't make it so. The market does. Guess what the market says? It says it wants good graphics. It says it wants this stuff.

Furthermore, while I recognize your podcast/site may not promote it, take a gander at the most visited gaming sites out there and you will definitely find not only the promotion and comparison of such things daily, but the community arguing over the quality and desire for better.

Call my comments nonsense. I think it's just as nonsensical to live in an imaginary world where you can ignore things that specifically exist and are an element of concern because the market desires it in their games and those who write about it make it a major factor in the "quality of games".

Game development companies can't afford to live in your ideal world where graphics don't matter.

[Jin_Sakai]

When I see people defending 343i I immediately know they have no gaming standards.

Aside from solid gunplay, nothing about Halo Infinite is great. And 343i have failed at making a solid Halo title…

Halo 4 multiplayer was awful
Halo 5 campaign was awful
Halo Infinite is extremely lacking content

It’s time to disband 343i. No more excuses!

[xander31]

Nah we aren't calling your comments nonsense (though obviously they are); we are calling you a witless collaborator in the whoredom of the medium you profess enthusiasm for. In the end your argument reduces to "if they want to profit off the mass market, they must prostitute their games to do so, deforming them into the shape of 'other people's expectations'". 8k graphics, constant updates, privacy laws? What laughable trash we would thank God to never see again. This is literally our entire argument and we thank you for agreeing with us over and over.

And it must be said: just because YOU, like many confused & unread geriatrics in this hemisphere who have ruined everything from entertainment to food and healthcare, suffer from the delusion that the universe itself is reducible to the whims of "the market", doesn't make it so! Read a book bro, not only do innumerable developers but whole swathes of mankind itself detest the logic you purport here. At the very least the naive sense you put it forth as some indisputable first principle is pitiable and child-like.

And moreover, the market has no final causality: it is a description of material conditions, not an entity with a leash on anyone's neck. The "market" didn't create soulslike games or fortnite, it responded to them. Developers who refer to "market conditions" as either a) measurable indicators of how to design a game or b) causally active in any sense are, almost invariably, just apologizing for the utter poverty of their ideas. Dumb people with no imagination, eh?

Lastly, "guess what [else] the market says", Christopher? That people want heroin, all manner of deranged pornography, illegal weapons etc. I have no idea what you think this proves, but if living in a decade of broad cultural decline hasn't conveyed it to you, I'll quote our last comment: "the most popular and desired things tend to be the most sh*tty".

Now we like you WAY LESS than before. Leave us alone.

[Christopher]

***Nah we aren't calling your comments nonsense (though obviously they are); we are calling you a witless collaborator in the whoredom of the medium you profess enthusiasm for. In the end your argument reduces to "if they want to profit off the mass market, they must prostitute their games to do so, deforming them into the shape of 'other people's expectations'". 8k graphics, constant updates, privacy laws? What laughable trash we would thank God to never see again. This is literally our entire argument and we thank you for agreeing with us over and over.***

As I said, you want the world to match your ideal concept of what should be. Ideally, you think it should work the way you say it should.

We live in the real world. It doesn't match what you want. It matches what it is. You don't like that? Cool. Doesn't change squat. And arguing as if saying "this is what it should be" doesn't make it so.

Furthermore, and again to the argument of your title, you are also ignoring that all games are harder to make and some great games are the hardest to make.

I respect what you think it should be, but I'm not arguing fantasy thoughts but the reality we live in here. You can disagree with what reality is, but it doesn't change that how games are made and what the market considers important in games doesn't match with what you are saying.

Understanding the reality of game development and the mainstream desires and thereby the prioritization of it in the development lifecycle doesn't make me some sort of witless collaborator. I'm actually saying that you are choosing to ignore what it is to make a point that only exists in your view of the ideal industry. Me saying how the industry operates doesn't mean I like it, that I praise it, or that I want more of it. But, no matter what I say or you say, the industry is how it is. That's my whole point. You can't just try to rewrite the importance of things in the industry by saying it as if it's that easy. It is what it is until some major change affects it, but, honestly, I don't think graphics or the marketing of them will ever change in our lifetime.

Drug costs shouldn't be what they are. But they aren't. I'm saying how they are and you are trying to say I'm sitting here praising their prices. That's not how witless collaboration or whoring myself out works. The argument you made is how the industry works, so that's what I'm arguing. You want to make it about something it isn't, an ideal personification of the industry. That's hypothetical at best, and not arguable.

[xander31]

Is there even a point in responding further? You keep agreeing with us. Yes, we realize there are conditions that prevail contemporarily. We definitely made a point about the industry: that it ruins games & should be shunned by developers, who should reject its expectations & work outside it as much as possible.

It is exactly the conditions you are defining as "realistic" & prevailing *which we are saying make games both sh*t & 'hard' to make*. You are over & again agreeing with us that only making games to meet the expectations of the mass market is harder. Many people make games without these trappings. They are great & often more successful than their AAA or "industry-expected" counterparts. Even within AAA, industry expectations are shunned to the explosive rage of western journalists & people like yourself, as when souls games exclude an easy mode. Shuhei Yoshida said "we often work hard to make thinks no customers are asking for".

So your description of "how the industry is" is factually false & contrived to excuse horsesh*t games... Games made according to faith-based expectations in the market, which are routine steaming turds: from anthem to fallout 76 to lawbreakers and even the politically-correct purple haired edition of saints row, currently reviewing poorly.

"Rewriting the importance of things to the industry?" Once more, we are saying this "industry" is the problem and that development is absolutely possible outside of it, its audience & resources. There are an abundance of examples that attest to this. The "industry" is not what games reduce to. You are apparently a fan of business & marketing, not video games.

What's more you absolutely are a witless collaborator. You aren't whoring yourself out, nor "understanding the development lifecycle". *You are defending the prostitution of the medium to mass market expectations as though this prostitution is inevitable. You actually said people with no knowledge of the business & marketing conditions surrounding game development are "arm-chair developers" who should stop having an opinion on what is good or beautiful in a game. You have a pitiable and naive belief in the universality & necessity of prevailing "industry" conditions.* They are neither universal nor necessary, any more than the idea of a "market" generally. A multitude of developers and whole swathes of mankind make games outside the industry or expectations you are referring to.

We are saying heroin is available & profitable due exactly to a society that subscribes to your witless, inconsiderate realism about "market realities". We are saying AAA games are, like heroin, both sh*t & popular. An unfortunate reality that proves nothing.

But you don't have to take heroin, nor play or develop AAA games. People have made games alone in Microsoft paint better than the recent ubi-turd or foul sport-shaped excretion.

Whereas (to restate) you are putting forth prevailing & terrible AAA trappings & market expectations as inevitable. As though no one has ever made a game outside "thu industry"; as though the fact something is prevalent shows it is the only way, even now, which it isn't. Go write apologetics for heroin dealers & purveyors of deranged pornographies ("guys they are just meeting market expectations, I'm only being realistic!") & by God leave us alone already.

[Christopher]

***You are over & again agreeing with us that only making games to meet the expectations of the mass market is harder.***

Literally don't agree with you and say you live in a fantasy world. Do you think that me saying that "your ideal concept of the industry" means it's my ideal concept of the industry? That's not what that means. I'm expressing how your hypothetical of how things should work doesn't matter. I'm not praising your hypothetical or "ideal concept" at all. The fact is that the way the industry is with regard to the mass market is one of the only reasons it still exists at the level it does and has grown to the levels it has. Perhaps you don't care about that, but the mass market does. The whole industry isn't for everyone. I don't like racing games, so I don't play them. If you don't like mass market focused games, don't play them. But let's not act like they're the hardest games to make or that harder to make games aren't extremely successful.,

And that list of games that suck is up against tons of mass market games that don't but are also hard to develop and are aimed at a mass market appeal: Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War, Spider-Man, Flight Simulator, Forza Horizon 5, Death Loop, Resident Evil Village, Returnal, Hitman 3, and so on.

I've expressed my opinion here, I just don't think you understand that it is a stance of "what is reality" as opposed to "what you wish reality was" and not support for you idea of "what reality should be." And, furthermore, as I've stated many times, that your thoughts that only bad games are hard to develop is just laughably ludicrous.

I'll leave it at that. We're just going in circles because you're not arguing against me, just repeating your idealistic concepts, which, btw, I don't agree with. But, they are still your idealistic concepts, just not mine.

[Yppupdam]

A company can make a good game (product) and be profitable, or they can make a bad game (product) and lose money. The consumer has the right to say they think a game sucks. and they have a right not to buy it. I don't know how to make a car from raw materials but, I can objectively see why the Yugo was a garbage car and a failure. Why do you think you have the right to be the self appointed arbiter of who can and cannot have opinion on any given subject?

[Christopher]

***Why do you think you have the right to be the self appointed arbiter of who can and cannot have opinion on any given subject?***

Please quote me where I said anything of this sort. My opinion is mine. Their opinion is their's. I am here to represent my opinion.

[Yppupdam]

"Please quote me where I said anything of this sort. My opinion is mine. Their opinion is their's. I am here to represent my opinion."

"Holy Armchair Developers. People who don't know the software development cycle and all the technologies involved and the management involved really need to be quiet."
Yeah, this right here.

[Germaximus]

"Christopher, to repeat, this laundry list of nonsense you are bothering us with confirms our point: the trappings of AAA game development are utterly contrary to the making of a good game.

Especially meeting mass market expectations! We didn't miss this, we thought it was too useless to respond to. No one is so deluded to defend the high literary quality of mass market airport novels or contend their format doesn't impact their quality. Similarly, the ongoing popularity of heroin, and the value of the global heroin market at 50+ billion in 2021, proves nothing about the merit of heroin. If anything the most popular & desired things are the most poisonous & sh*tty in every case. Here the point is simple: if you choose the expectation$ of the unwashed masses over the integrity of your game, your game is not good. Thus an 8k online halo-themed social club & casino is no less sh*t cuz everyone wanted it.

YOU ignore the fact that innumerable developers are working "outside the mass market" and spend their careers "ignoring mass market desires". Is there even a point in listing the games developed by one or two people which are infinitely better than anything the AAA space has squatted to excrete in recent years?

"It isn't decided by the guy making graphics"? Why doesn't he, you know, leave? The subordination of game development to market whimsy which you describe here accounts for how utterly trash games like 343's Halo turned out to be. We can safely say that developers who compromise the integrity of their work to participate in the mass market are prostitutes. Their work is not undertaken for its own intrinsic merit but to satiate consumer appetites. They don't make games, they make digital amusement parks extant for the sole purpose of extracting money from you.

Our title was perfectly adequate, which (again) your flaccid attempt to list counter-examples of confirms. *Games designed to "meet the expectations of the mass market", or "saitsfy what most people want", not games in any general sense, are harder to make*. And these latter kinds of games are steaming crap.

We insulted you because we don't like you & because what we said (about you shilling, poorly,) is true. You bubbled up in our comment section mere seconds after the post to white knight for capitalists playing game dev: to defend the prostitution of games to "mass market desire". You did the same a week or so ago in the original N4G story on 343's comments. I'm sure we aren't alone in noticing.

Now if you're done defending publicly traded companies with a fervor proper to religious apologism, leave us alone."

Wow. Perfectly said.

[Palitera]

Pretty much on spot.
Yes, it’s WAY easier to do a quick game nowadays… It just won’t pay itself if you don’t do the fancy stuff, specially in the AAA, AA or III field.

[smokeydakidd92]

Lies…. There are some good franchises that they have messed up

[staticall]

Games are harder to make, in a sense, that a game nowadays are more feature-rich and complex, than, let's say, in Atari 2600-NES era. But at the same time, how many truly complex AAA games we have in 2021-2022? I can't remember any, to be fair (maybe Crusader Kings III and Baldur's Gate III? But i don't play that many games now). I do know a few indie or AA games (like Kenshi, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, Amazing Cultivation Simulator and so on) that are very complex.
By "complex", i mean games that have systems that you need to learn and master, that are capable of having world, that lives by the games' rules, that have complex quests that have long-lasting consequences, world that can be explored (and, maybe, "shaped"?) in multiple ways and it reacts to your actions and such. Like Halo Infinite, you save marines, but they're pretty much useless on their own and even completing objectives doesn't change anything (at least i didn't notice any changes).
How many games have interesting, engaging stories with interesting twists? Just a few, as far as i see. How many games are both complex and have engaging stories? I don't know any. And like 95% of the game companies don't want to explore those ventures.

What i think the problems are:
1. Management and pursue of revenue. Remember when games were trying to experiment, find their own ideas, instead of just copying what's popular? That's management greed for you. And their incompetence and genius at the same time. If you'll copy other popular game and your become popular (hello, Fartnite), you're good at management. But if you keep copying other ideas and failing further (no, thanks, Battlefield 2042) - you're bad.
2. Sterilization. Game companies and specifically publishers are trying to make the "perfect formula". They're trying to strip as much of "fat" as possible and leave you with "pure" simple cookie-cutter gameplay.
3. Relying on one idea. This one is kind of similar to both sterilization and management, game companies are trying to
4. Budget constaints. This is management and publisher related, but companies are trying to spend as less as possible and get back as much as possible. Which is usually impossible, unless they have gullable fanbase. There's a joke with triangle, consisting of "quick", "quality", "cheap", but you can only pick 2 of those three. Well, companies are trying to take all 3, but when they understand they can't, they pick "quick", "cheap". Battlefield 2042 for instance, they stripped campaing to "help them", but that didn't help.
5. Envy. Publishers and management are envious of mobile games and how much they earn. That's why they try to take as much from them as possible.

There are probably more points, but this ones are the biggest "whales" in my opinion.

In any case, 343i have zero excuses. They had a tremendous budget, huge team of professionals, billion-dollar publisher/owner, access to servers in every major country (thanks to Azure), they aren't «breaking any new grounds», they're copying others. Their management is flat-out bad, they keep soaking the money and stripping essential features (coop, forge, etc), just to bring them "later". But i digress.

[staticall]

Sorry, had to make a few corrections:
«Like Halo Infinite,» - i meant that in a negative light, that game have a possibility for world to react to your actions, but they didn't add that.
«2. Sterilization» - had to have this at the end: "Fat" is all those little details, quirks, that shows that you care about your creation. It's like with the meat - if you have only meat without any fat, you'll get a dry tasteless steak. If you have fat-only steak, it's hard to chew. Hope you see what i'm trying to say, instead of stripping everything or spending a ton of time on adding useless gimmicks.
«3. Relying on one idea» - it's supposed to be like so: This one is kind of similar to both sterilization and management, game companies are trying to explore and develop one idea while completely botchering the other - only story with a passable gameplay, only gameplay with no story, only multiplayer with basic single player (or vice-versa) and so on. Like Dragon Age Inquisition, they spent a lot of time developing singleplayer, but multiplayer was as basic as it can be. Or Resident Evil 3 Remake - good singleplayer, but awful multiplayer. All of that brings the games down.

My bad, sorry.

[Charlieboy333]

You are a PC only player....I can tell by the games you listed There is no question that Horizon Forbidden West fulfills your 'complex' requirements with mindblowing visuals and sound on top of that. Hell, last generation's Ghost of Tsushima would knock your socks off in all the areas you feel are 'lacking' in modern games. I think you're just not looking in the right places...

I agree with your take on 343 though....no excuses. Just keep in mind that there are still developers out there that still make games that are fun, special and which leave an impression.

[moriarty1889]

343 had a huge budget, plenty of time to develop Infinite and yet they still managed to screw it up. The problem imo is the management at 343. Bonnie Ross and her cohorts need to be replaced. Hopefully they can find better people at running a studio that has been tasked with carrying the Xbox’s biggest franchise. It’s really ashamed to see what happened with Infinite from the delays to the half baked product finally released at launch.

[FanboysKiller]

Bigger games requires bigger budget, not time dedication to distancing themselves overseas from their families, I bet devs daughters when they see their parents doing what they do they'll will forget all the things related to this field and think of something totally different to interest themselves when they grow up.