4 ms·

> We don’t necessarily need faster, better hardware. We need more thoughtful, and more creative humans. Money line, but I strenuously disagree. We need both,

by SllX 6y ago

> We don’t necessarily need faster, better hardware. We need more thoughtful, and more creative humans. Money line, but I strenuously disagree. We need both, but thankfully, we have that. Games like Breath of the Wild, Death Stranding, and Kingdom Hearts III; and services like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Stadia and Steam wouldn't exist without both. You would have games, you would have services, but you wouldn't have these games and these services without both massive computational power and massive creativity. There's a lot more incentive to get more out of a piece of equipment that will likely never be serviceable by humans again but is still serving a valuable role than there is to get more out of a piece of equipment only ten years old, taking up space and easily replaceable by something that is a capabilities upgrade and quality of life improvement in every measurable way. There's sentimental value to be had in old hardware and a lot of great games that are 30 or 40 years old; and it's entirely possible there's a fair amount of hardware we never exploited to its full potential before replacing it with something much more capable, but that's life, tech and economics.

mewse 6y ago
I can't speak to the services side of your comment, but my professional experience is in games. I worked as part of a team that once backported a game from the Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 2 (512 to 24 megabytes of RAM, much slower CPU, much more limited 'shaders' if you can call VU code 'shaders', etc). The PS2 had 32 megabytes of RAM, but by Sony submission requirements you weren't allowed to touch the bottom 8mb of that. And a lot of the remaining 24mb would be taken up by your program itself, leaving little space in memory for model data, sound, etc. But we did it. From that perspective, it seems to me like there's really very little in Breath of the Wild that couldn't have been done back on the GameCube, if somebody had really wanted to. You just use lower detail models and textures, and maybe adjust the way you stream the world into memory from disk. Similarly, Death Stranding could probably have been made on the original PlayStation (if you didn't care about network features; you'd have to wait for the later PS2 models if you wanted those). And similar for Kingdom Hearts 3. Sure you would have had lower numbers of triangles and less fancy shaders and lower-resolution textures. But the games themselves? The stories and logic and mechanics and experiences? I feel like they'd all be pretty doable on lower-spec hardware, if an experienced team had a mind to try. I guess my point is just that if computers stopped getting faster, you'd still have newer and better and more intricate games being released. Faster computers are absolutely not required for that. They're really only required if you want ray tracing and higher polygon counts and physically based lighting and similar.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  I largely agree, with the exception that there are some aesthetic details that just weren't possible to capture the same way. A good example to me is the difference between wind waker and Breath of the wild. Wind waker is a beautiful game, and shows that there is absolutely enough power in the gamecube to make cell shaded art games. But when you pull the bow back for the first time in breath of the wild, and the corners of the screen go out of focus, and you peer between the cell shaded blades of grass at the beautifully animated boar you are trying to hit, it is a much different subjective experience.
- SllX 6y ago
  The reason I chose those games as examples is because those are all games in which the core gameplay is doable on lesser hardware, but an important aspect of what made them enjoyable to me were the technical improvements over Wind Waker/Twilight Princess, MGS3 and Kingdom Hearts I & II. Breath of the Wild would not be Breath of the Wild as we know it without the subtle details, more objects in memory, more intelligent AI, graphical details, increased draw distance, made possible by the beefier hardware. The Switch isn't exactly the beefiest hardware to begin with, but there is a noticeable improvement in the gameplay compared to even just the Wii U version. My favorite game of all time is Chrono Trigger, released in 1995 on the SNES, but part of what made Chrono Trigger special was that many of the game scenarios were hand tuned, down to the placement of enemies on screen and the ways they interacted with you. It is a fun and immersive game, and I still play it every now and then, but you can see the limitations of the original hardware in the game and how much more the all-star crew (seriously, think the Dream Team but for JRPGs, never to be replicated again) could have done with the game with just one generation more of improvements in the hardware.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    Chrono trigger is interesting to me too because I know some rpg fans who just can't get past the simpler turn based battle system and hand drawn pixel graphics to unlock the story. If it had a FFVII style remake I would be vastly more enjoyable to lots of people.
easytiger 6y ago
> You would have games, you would have services, but you wouldn't have these games and these services without both massive computational power and massive creativity. And market competition engendering innovation

by SllX 6y ago

mewse 6y ago

I can't speak to the services side of your comment, but my professional experience is in games. I worked as part of a team that once backported a game from the Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 2 (512 to 24 megabytes of RAM, much slower CPU, much more limited 'shaders' if you can call VU code 'shaders', etc). The PS2 had 32 megabytes of RAM, but by Sony submission requirements you weren't allowed to touch the bottom 8mb of that. And a lot of the remaining 24mb would be taken up by your program itself, leaving little space in memory for model data, sound, etc. But we did it. From that perspective, it seems to me like there's really very little in Breath of the Wild that couldn't have been done back on the GameCube, if somebody had really wanted to. You just use lower detail models and textures, and maybe adjust the way you stream the world into memory from disk. Similarly, Death Stranding could probably have been made on the original PlayStation (if you didn't care about network features; you'd have to wait for the later PS2 models if you wanted those). And similar for Kingdom Hearts 3. Sure you would have had lower numbers of triangles and less fancy shaders and lower-resolution textures. But the games themselves? The stories and logic and mechanics and experiences? I feel like they'd all be pretty doable on lower-spec hardware, if an experienced team had a mind to try. I guess my point is just that if computers stopped getting faster, you'd still have newer and better and more intricate games being released. Faster computers are absolutely not required for that. They're really only required if you want ray tracing and higher polygon counts and physically based lighting and similar.

mattnewton 6y ago
I largely agree, with the exception that there are some aesthetic details that just weren't possible to capture the same way. A good example to me is the difference between wind waker and Breath of the wild. Wind waker is a beautiful game, and shows that there is absolutely enough power in the gamecube to make cell shaded art games. But when you pull the bow back for the first time in breath of the wild, and the corners of the screen go out of focus, and you peer between the cell shaded blades of grass at the beautifully animated boar you are trying to hit, it is a much different subjective experience.
SllX 6y ago
The reason I chose those games as examples is because those are all games in which the core gameplay is doable on lesser hardware, but an important aspect of what made them enjoyable to me were the technical improvements over Wind Waker/Twilight Princess, MGS3 and Kingdom Hearts I & II. Breath of the Wild would not be Breath of the Wild as we know it without the subtle details, more objects in memory, more intelligent AI, graphical details, increased draw distance, made possible by the beefier hardware. The Switch isn't exactly the beefiest hardware to begin with, but there is a noticeable improvement in the gameplay compared to even just the Wii U version. My favorite game of all time is Chrono Trigger, released in 1995 on the SNES, but part of what made Chrono Trigger special was that many of the game scenarios were hand tuned, down to the placement of enemies on screen and the ways they interacted with you. It is a fun and immersive game, and I still play it every now and then, but you can see the limitations of the original hardware in the game and how much more the all-star crew (seriously, think the Dream Team but for JRPGs, never to be replicated again) could have done with the game with just one generation more of improvements in the hardware.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  Chrono trigger is interesting to me too because I know some rpg fans who just can't get past the simpler turn based battle system and hand drawn pixel graphics to unlock the story. If it had a FFVII style remake I would be vastly more enjoyable to lots of people.

easytiger 6y ago

> You would have games, you would have services, but you wouldn't have these games and these services without both massive computational power and massive creativity. And market competition engendering innovation