6 ms·

Realism is not the goal. Freedom is the goal. The hero movies hollywood keeps churning out make no sense in a meatspace world where you can build, own and be g

by bullen 5y ago

Realism is not the goal. Freedom is the goal. The hero movies hollywood keeps churning out make no sense in a meatspace world where you can build, own and be god; in your own virtual world. The goal is to build the real matrix (or oasis, the name hardly matters), and you cannot build it with high polycount or large textures. The future looks more like Minecraft or Roblox, like it or not.

gambiting 5y ago
>>Realism is not the goal. Freedom is the goal. Says who? There is place out there for both Minecraft and for extremely high detail one-off experiences, we aren't destined to all move into the Oasis. >>The goal is to build the real matrix Again - says who? Who has that goal?
- bullen 5y ago
  It's the natural evolution of the internet as a medium. Technology is always born without content and leeches off older technologies content. Theater -> Books Music -> Radio Books + Radio -> Movies Movies + Books -> TV Movies + TV -> Games So far we have used books and movies as content, but the internets native content is an open action 3D MMO, it just takes time for new mediums to develop their own content type. Why have a linear hardcoded storyline when the users can live out their own stories in the game? I know it might be hard to see now, but we don't have the energy to not build it. Also kids lead the way, and TV does not exist in their world, they call that YouTube and Twitch. And while movies might be fun for them, the time spent in Movies vs. Minecraft + Roblox is an approximation error.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >>Why have a linear hardcoded storyline when the users can live out their own stories in the game? Because a lot of people seem to enjoy exactly this - 10-30 hours of a very linear, hand crafted experience, not sandbox "you can do anything" kind of experience. >>I know it might be hard to see now, but we don't have the energy to not build it. I don't even understand what that sentence means, to be honest with you. I work for one of the largest video games companies in the world and we somehow still build both sandbox as well as single-player focused games. >>Also kids lead the way, and TV does not exist in their world, they call that YouTube and Twitch. Kids have zero purchasing power, and it's the money which decides what to make. Your "average" gamer, by industry's own stats, is a 20-30 year old male, who owns a console, and buys exactly 3 games a year - latest Fifa, latest CoD, and one other game(and companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing to occupy that 3rd spot). Minecraft and Roblox are as big as they are not only because they are good games, but also because they are fantastic at extracting money from parents through children. Trying to figure out the future of gaming by looking at those two is like saying that future of movie making and holywood is animated cartoon short stories, since Peppa The Pig is unbelivably popular with kids.
    - bullen 5y ago
      The PS5 is basically a paper weight with these electricity prices. So what happens when these kids grow up and don't have to nag their parents?
      - gambiting 5y ago
        >>The PS5 is basically a paper weight with these electricity prices. Again, not sure what you mean - PS5 uses very very little power compared to a gaming PC, about 200W under load - my own GPU uses about 300W and that's without the rest of the system. An hour of gameplay on the PS5 costs about £0.05, and that's if you hit the electricity cap and are not on a fixed tariff. At my prices it's more like a two pence per hour. If these expenses turn your PS5 into a paperweight, I have to question how were you able to afford one in the first place. And in addition - not sure what PS5 has to do with this? >>So what happens when these kids grow up and don't have to nag their parents? They buy whatever they like, not sure what you are trying to suggest here.
    - throwaway17_17 5y ago
      I have seen the ‘gamers buy 3 games’ stated by various people before. Do you happen to know off hand what percentage of gamers that applies too. I am trying to figure out if I am just a rounding error when publishers and devs are trying to pitch and develop new games.
      - gambiting 5y ago
        Well, so few extra things: 1) it's an industry average, so some people will only buy a console to play Fifa with their mates and literally never buy anything else, some people buy loads of games, but the average across the the industry is 3 games per year, and those games are extremely likely to be the ones listed above(in fact the 3rd one is usually, more often than not, a copy of GTA 5, as crazy as this is) 2) It only applies to people spending money. So if you just play WoW and nothing else, and never buy any new games, you aren't even counted. 3) Not all gamers are equally interested in all games. So of course a developer of a small indie game probably isn't aiming for the same crowd of Fifa/CoD buyers. Just like a small film director isn't making a decision on whether to make a movie based on whether they can compete with Marvel - they usually have different crowds. So yes, if you are predominantly interested in short, single player experiences in the £20 range, then probably no one at EA or Activision is pitching games for your crowd - but there will be other developers who do, and for whom you are the #1 target audience.
krastanov 5y ago
Single player cinematic games (without much freedom, not open world) are lovely experiences. Sure, I enjoy unwinding in Minecraft, but you seem weirdly dismissive of single player games with good writing. Some such games are cartoonist and wonderful, some are photorealistic and wonderful, and some are going beyond realism into something completely new (also wonderful). As long as we still enjoy reading good books, we probably will continue enjoying watching good movies and playing good single player games.
beepbooptheory 5y ago
Listen it doesn't work out great in either Snow Crash or the Matrix; I don't think I want that goal.
svantana 5y ago
You can have low-bandwidth realism with a heavy client, for example you can enumerate all people on earth with 33 bits. But to me, video games with fancy CGI is like a chessboard with ornate gold pieces. Impressive, but in the end it's still just chess.
- bullen 5y ago
  My 3D MMO engine can now have 2000 non-instanced animated characters each with an interchangeable item equipped at 60 FPS without a world on a 1050Ti (80W GPU). My target is to keep that number above 1000 when the world + physics is in. On Jetson Nano (1/2 Nintendo Switch at 5W GPU) that number is 300 and I hope 150 on release! The server can handle 10.000 action players (no spraying/headshot but mario/zelda mechanics/physics) at an avererage of 50 players in view on a large AWS machine. Nobody has ever played an action MMO (with fun gameplay and physics) that plays like mario but scales to 10.000 players yet. When they do, they won't play anything else ever again (or do anything else in meatspace) is my prediction. You are spot on; gameplay is more important than surface.
  - ikrenji 5y ago
    you can have a good game that plays well and you can have a good game that looks pretty. but the truly great games both play well and look pretty...
    - bullen 5y ago
      Yes, but my game will have real modeled characters with silky smooth AAA animations, and still scale! Roblox and Minecraft could only build the future by spending less time on fidelity, hence the awkward animations and "ugly" characters.
  - arminiusreturns 5y ago
    Are you doing your own engine or what scaffolding are you using? I'm assuming something that is pretty close to end vulkan? This is a topic close to my heart, lots of questions about how to scale, where to put the seams (node based loading has issues, have to be careful about loading screens, etc), how to keep player state backend access super fast once attributes bloat, how to keep low-lag player interaction when you want to force as close to a pure server-dominant state decision layer. I think the tech itself is there just about, but there are some real technical limitations to why it hasn't been done (well) before. I'd love to hear how you are addressing these things. As for the conversation about the matrix and the metaverse, my conclusion a long time ago was that the real matrix/metaverse will be FOSS. Thats why all these big companies (Meta, Epic, etc) dipping their toe into this admittedly juicy arena are going to fail in their vision. (also one of the reasons why I still have hope for a hacker culture of freedom in the future) be warned though: with all this censorship they are coming for your game worlds next
shakow 5y ago
I disagree: video games do not have to converge on a single genre. Sometimes I feel energetic and ready for a brain challenge and I fire up Factorio, sometimes I want to play super-chess and I launch a Gary Grigsby game; sometimes I want to just immerse myself in another world and/or culture and I play Blackbook/Witcher/ACS, sometimes I'm ready for some fun with friends and it's CS:GO or R6, or Il-2 when I want the flying version of it; finally, when I want to just enjoy a good story, then it's time for Witcher or Metro. I don't see why this diversity should disappear.
- bullen 5y ago
  Diversity will still exist, but the internets native content will be open action 3D MMO. Apply that to all the examples you mentioned and imagine what that means! And you can still make a fire and send smoke signals if you wish! Lots of (old) people enjoy old pass times.
  - dgritsko 5y ago
    > the internets native content will be open action 3D MMO Citation needed. What do you think will make this an inevitability?
    - bullen 5y ago
      Because that's what we see evolve? From Everquest to PUBG which are the two only adult evolvers. You can tell by looking at what they changed by how copied they became. And Minecraft and Roblox which are the young evolvers. Nobody has managed to copy Minecraft and Roblox successfully yet and the AAA studios are stuck in a grind making meaningless sequels. But then if you look at the technology, you see that theres an obvious combination that is missing: Everquest - RPG + physical action gameplay like mario/zelda + modability of Roblox/Minecraft. The final game (engine).

by bullen 5y ago

gambiting 5y ago

>>Realism is not the goal. Freedom is the goal. Says who? There is place out there for both Minecraft and for extremely high detail one-off experiences, we aren't destined to all move into the Oasis. >>The goal is to build the real matrix Again - says who? Who has that goal?

bullen 5y ago
It's the natural evolution of the internet as a medium. Technology is always born without content and leeches off older technologies content. Theater -> Books Music -> Radio Books + Radio -> Movies Movies + Books -> TV Movies + TV -> Games So far we have used books and movies as content, but the internets native content is an open action 3D MMO, it just takes time for new mediums to develop their own content type. Why have a linear hardcoded storyline when the users can live out their own stories in the game? I know it might be hard to see now, but we don't have the energy to not build it. Also kids lead the way, and TV does not exist in their world, they call that YouTube and Twitch. And while movies might be fun for them, the time spent in Movies vs. Minecraft + Roblox is an approximation error.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>Why have a linear hardcoded storyline when the users can live out their own stories in the game? Because a lot of people seem to enjoy exactly this - 10-30 hours of a very linear, hand crafted experience, not sandbox "you can do anything" kind of experience. >>I know it might be hard to see now, but we don't have the energy to not build it. I don't even understand what that sentence means, to be honest with you. I work for one of the largest video games companies in the world and we somehow still build both sandbox as well as single-player focused games. >>Also kids lead the way, and TV does not exist in their world, they call that YouTube and Twitch. Kids have zero purchasing power, and it's the money which decides what to make. Your "average" gamer, by industry's own stats, is a 20-30 year old male, who owns a console, and buys exactly 3 games a year - latest Fifa, latest CoD, and one other game(and companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing to occupy that 3rd spot). Minecraft and Roblox are as big as they are not only because they are good games, but also because they are fantastic at extracting money from parents through children. Trying to figure out the future of gaming by looking at those two is like saying that future of movie making and holywood is animated cartoon short stories, since Peppa The Pig is unbelivably popular with kids.
  - bullen 5y ago
    The PS5 is basically a paper weight with these electricity prices. So what happens when these kids grow up and don't have to nag their parents?
    - gambiting 5y ago
      >>The PS5 is basically a paper weight with these electricity prices. Again, not sure what you mean - PS5 uses very very little power compared to a gaming PC, about 200W under load - my own GPU uses about 300W and that's without the rest of the system. An hour of gameplay on the PS5 costs about £0.05, and that's if you hit the electricity cap and are not on a fixed tariff. At my prices it's more like a two pence per hour. If these expenses turn your PS5 into a paperweight, I have to question how were you able to afford one in the first place. And in addition - not sure what PS5 has to do with this? >>So what happens when these kids grow up and don't have to nag their parents? They buy whatever they like, not sure what you are trying to suggest here.
  - throwaway17_17 5y ago
    I have seen the ‘gamers buy 3 games’ stated by various people before. Do you happen to know off hand what percentage of gamers that applies too. I am trying to figure out if I am just a rounding error when publishers and devs are trying to pitch and develop new games.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      Well, so few extra things: 1) it's an industry average, so some people will only buy a console to play Fifa with their mates and literally never buy anything else, some people buy loads of games, but the average across the the industry is 3 games per year, and those games are extremely likely to be the ones listed above(in fact the 3rd one is usually, more often than not, a copy of GTA 5, as crazy as this is) 2) It only applies to people spending money. So if you just play WoW and nothing else, and never buy any new games, you aren't even counted. 3) Not all gamers are equally interested in all games. So of course a developer of a small indie game probably isn't aiming for the same crowd of Fifa/CoD buyers. Just like a small film director isn't making a decision on whether to make a movie based on whether they can compete with Marvel - they usually have different crowds. So yes, if you are predominantly interested in short, single player experiences in the £20 range, then probably no one at EA or Activision is pitching games for your crowd - but there will be other developers who do, and for whom you are the #1 target audience.

krastanov 5y ago

Single player cinematic games (without much freedom, not open world) are lovely experiences. Sure, I enjoy unwinding in Minecraft, but you seem weirdly dismissive of single player games with good writing. Some such games are cartoonist and wonderful, some are photorealistic and wonderful, and some are going beyond realism into something completely new (also wonderful). As long as we still enjoy reading good books, we probably will continue enjoying watching good movies and playing good single player games.

beepbooptheory 5y ago

Listen it doesn't work out great in either Snow Crash or the Matrix; I don't think I want that goal.

svantana 5y ago

You can have low-bandwidth realism with a heavy client, for example you can enumerate all people on earth with 33 bits. But to me, video games with fancy CGI is like a chessboard with ornate gold pieces. Impressive, but in the end it's still just chess.

bullen 5y ago
My 3D MMO engine can now have 2000 non-instanced animated characters each with an interchangeable item equipped at 60 FPS without a world on a 1050Ti (80W GPU). My target is to keep that number above 1000 when the world + physics is in. On Jetson Nano (1/2 Nintendo Switch at 5W GPU) that number is 300 and I hope 150 on release! The server can handle 10.000 action players (no spraying/headshot but mario/zelda mechanics/physics) at an avererage of 50 players in view on a large AWS machine. Nobody has ever played an action MMO (with fun gameplay and physics) that plays like mario but scales to 10.000 players yet. When they do, they won't play anything else ever again (or do anything else in meatspace) is my prediction. You are spot on; gameplay is more important than surface.
- ikrenji 5y ago
  you can have a good game that plays well and you can have a good game that looks pretty. but the truly great games both play well and look pretty...
  - bullen 5y ago
    Yes, but my game will have real modeled characters with silky smooth AAA animations, and still scale! Roblox and Minecraft could only build the future by spending less time on fidelity, hence the awkward animations and "ugly" characters.
- arminiusreturns 5y ago
  Are you doing your own engine or what scaffolding are you using? I'm assuming something that is pretty close to end vulkan? This is a topic close to my heart, lots of questions about how to scale, where to put the seams (node based loading has issues, have to be careful about loading screens, etc), how to keep player state backend access super fast once attributes bloat, how to keep low-lag player interaction when you want to force as close to a pure server-dominant state decision layer. I think the tech itself is there just about, but there are some real technical limitations to why it hasn't been done (well) before. I'd love to hear how you are addressing these things. As for the conversation about the matrix and the metaverse, my conclusion a long time ago was that the real matrix/metaverse will be FOSS. Thats why all these big companies (Meta, Epic, etc) dipping their toe into this admittedly juicy arena are going to fail in their vision. (also one of the reasons why I still have hope for a hacker culture of freedom in the future) be warned though: with all this censorship they are coming for your game worlds next

shakow 5y ago

I disagree: video games do not have to converge on a single genre. Sometimes I feel energetic and ready for a brain challenge and I fire up Factorio, sometimes I want to play super-chess and I launch a Gary Grigsby game; sometimes I want to just immerse myself in another world and/or culture and I play Blackbook/Witcher/ACS, sometimes I'm ready for some fun with friends and it's CS:GO or R6, or Il-2 when I want the flying version of it; finally, when I want to just enjoy a good story, then it's time for Witcher or Metro. I don't see why this diversity should disappear.

bullen 5y ago
Diversity will still exist, but the internets native content will be open action 3D MMO. Apply that to all the examples you mentioned and imagine what that means! And you can still make a fire and send smoke signals if you wish! Lots of (old) people enjoy old pass times.
- dgritsko 5y ago
  > the internets native content will be open action 3D MMO Citation needed. What do you think will make this an inevitability?
  - bullen 5y ago
    Because that's what we see evolve? From Everquest to PUBG which are the two only adult evolvers. You can tell by looking at what they changed by how copied they became. And Minecraft and Roblox which are the young evolvers. Nobody has managed to copy Minecraft and Roblox successfully yet and the AAA studios are stuck in a grind making meaningless sequels. But then if you look at the technology, you see that theres an obvious combination that is missing: Everquest - RPG + physical action gameplay like mario/zelda + modability of Roblox/Minecraft. The final game (engine).