4 ms·

However, there maybe another darkside of the story. Almost a decades back I talked a game dev, asking him why the game that they released demands such high har

by nirui 5y ago

However, there maybe another darkside of the story. Almost a decades back I talked a game dev, asking him why the game that they released demands such high hardware requirements. The two reasons that he offered was: 1) It costs money to produce & maintain content such as Level of Detail assets to enable support for low end devices, and 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the game. I think it's also somewhat fitting in this case: the industry only focuses on making money out of the people who can or potentially can afford the service, and left out those who can't. The user-end requirement is just an implicit barrier that allows companies to generate rainbow farts. No, I'm not criticizing those companies that actually employed such dark patterns. After all, everyone wants money. However, these kind of practice can be costly as well in the form of 1) bad UX for paying users, and 2) higher cost of bandwidth (for both the user and the company).

urthor 5y ago
I imagine the problem with game development is that, for 99.95% of the game development cycle, you are creating only internal builds for fellow developers on workstations. And this is game development, the industry famous for over-scoping everything because it's a winner take all economy. Followed by death-marches to implement said over-scopes. Doing anything special for quartile 1 of the standard distribution goes out the window. Realistically I just think this pattern is true of every domain. 95% of software is made up of throwaway prototypes, where thoroughly thought out engineering isn't necessary because the business case demands minimum viable product for very good reasons.
meheleventyone 5y ago
Then Roblox and Minecraft came along and showed everyone there was a large audience of kids on crap PCs and Chomebooks who will also play games and have parents who will spend for them.
- littlehugie 5y ago
  This. My kids Play minecraft on the Amazon Kids tablets. They startet with a older Version with only 1.5GB of RAM and the game kind of worked good enough for them to enjoy it. It worked for many years and only had Problems with large Outdoor areas. Now they use the newer 3GB kids Version and it works really well. I am very happy to not needing to buy them 400€ tablets for this game. (Btw, i developed medical dicom viewer for large CT and MRI data, on a 10yrs old dell Laptop. The viewer was always fast on customer machines. If it would not work on my machine, i tunded the Software until it does ;) )
- mike50 5y ago
  There were tons and tons of similar games to mine craft with low system requirements. Also minecraft was originally written in Java ao it has the same issues as above.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    The difference is that Minecraft and Roblox were phenomenally successful and demonstrate the addressable market exists. Making games for a low-spec is one thing. Making games that people with low-spec computers want to play is another.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  There always were, there just wasn't the payment infrastructure to hoover up our parents' money in the 90s. I had to behave at computer shows and talk nicely to the adults about building computers before I was bought a video game (or make my parents drive me to a game store). Also they weren't full of micro-transactions. If there had been ways to buy games online + digital downloads, I would genuinely have feared for my parents' pocketbooks.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    I grew up in the 80s and would regularly get magazines on the weekly grocery shop with the demo cassette on them. The argument isn’t that videogames only just started to exist and that kids only just started to play them. It’s not really comparable because there wasn’t the ubiquity or range of compute power there is now. Modern games tend to nestle at the top of it as the parent comment suggests. There is a whole market of people that want to play games that have bad hardware. And my point is that there was a sea change about a decade ago in that respect that the wider industry is only just catching up to.
Brave-Steak 5y ago
Notably, this is one reason why WoW managed to hit such a wide audience and become so successful. The art design made the game look amazing, but the hardware requirements were so low you could run it on a potato. Its contemporary, Everquest 2, managed to look uglier while being much harder to run.
foxfluff 5y ago
Yea, the way this worked out for me as a kid was that I needed all the money I got to upgrade my PC and wouldn't have any left over for buying games so I just pirated these games. Anyway, without numbers that's just a theory and might not hold. Anecdotally a lot of people are worrying about whether they can play games on their budget build. And they would rather buy games than spend a ton on a faster PC. And I believe consoles sell for a similar reason: they are cheap. It's the actual games that console gamers pay decent money for. (Of course the PC game market is now extremely saturated and there are deep discounts & giveaways constantly somewhere)
c21h30o2 5y ago
Kids who can't afford fancy computers grow up into rich adults who have no nostalgia towards your game franchise
- howdydoo 5y ago
  Like exposure, nostalgia doesn't pay the bills.
vkk8 5y ago
> 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the game. I wonder if they had any kind of proof of this. I would think that there are plenty of kids who could get their parents to pay five bucks for the game, but not 500 bucks to buy a fancy new computer.
- newsclues 5y ago
  If you look at the flip side people who can afford an expensive gaming pc can probably also afford a game which isn’t nearly as expensive
  - Kye 5y ago
    Willingness and ability to pay for one thing doesn't mean willingness to pay for other things. There are plenty of cheapskate rich people and people who consider themselves poor on six figure salaries.

by nirui 5y ago

urthor 5y ago

I imagine the problem with game development is that, for 99.95% of the game development cycle, you are creating only internal builds for fellow developers on workstations. And this is game development, the industry famous for over-scoping everything because it's a winner take all economy. Followed by death-marches to implement said over-scopes. Doing anything special for quartile 1 of the standard distribution goes out the window. Realistically I just think this pattern is true of every domain. 95% of software is made up of throwaway prototypes, where thoroughly thought out engineering isn't necessary because the business case demands minimum viable product for very good reasons.

meheleventyone 5y ago

Then Roblox and Minecraft came along and showed everyone there was a large audience of kids on crap PCs and Chomebooks who will also play games and have parents who will spend for them.

littlehugie 5y ago
This. My kids Play minecraft on the Amazon Kids tablets. They startet with a older Version with only 1.5GB of RAM and the game kind of worked good enough for them to enjoy it. It worked for many years and only had Problems with large Outdoor areas. Now they use the newer 3GB kids Version and it works really well. I am very happy to not needing to buy them 400€ tablets for this game. (Btw, i developed medical dicom viewer for large CT and MRI data, on a 10yrs old dell Laptop. The viewer was always fast on customer machines. If it would not work on my machine, i tunded the Software until it does ;) )
mike50 5y ago
There were tons and tons of similar games to mine craft with low system requirements. Also minecraft was originally written in Java ao it has the same issues as above.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  The difference is that Minecraft and Roblox were phenomenally successful and demonstrate the addressable market exists. Making games for a low-spec is one thing. Making games that people with low-spec computers want to play is another.
Mezzie 5y ago
There always were, there just wasn't the payment infrastructure to hoover up our parents' money in the 90s. I had to behave at computer shows and talk nicely to the adults about building computers before I was bought a video game (or make my parents drive me to a game store). Also they weren't full of micro-transactions. If there had been ways to buy games online + digital downloads, I would genuinely have feared for my parents' pocketbooks.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  I grew up in the 80s and would regularly get magazines on the weekly grocery shop with the demo cassette on them. The argument isn’t that videogames only just started to exist and that kids only just started to play them. It’s not really comparable because there wasn’t the ubiquity or range of compute power there is now. Modern games tend to nestle at the top of it as the parent comment suggests. There is a whole market of people that want to play games that have bad hardware. And my point is that there was a sea change about a decade ago in that respect that the wider industry is only just catching up to.

Brave-Steak 5y ago

Notably, this is one reason why WoW managed to hit such a wide audience and become so successful. The art design made the game look amazing, but the hardware requirements were so low you could run it on a potato. Its contemporary, Everquest 2, managed to look uglier while being much harder to run.

foxfluff 5y ago

Yea, the way this worked out for me as a kid was that I needed all the money I got to upgrade my PC and wouldn't have any left over for buying games so I just pirated these games. Anyway, without numbers that's just a theory and might not hold. Anecdotally a lot of people are worrying about whether they can play games on their budget build. And they would rather buy games than spend a ton on a faster PC. And I believe consoles sell for a similar reason: they are cheap. It's the actual games that console gamers pay decent money for. (Of course the PC game market is now extremely saturated and there are deep discounts & giveaways constantly somewhere)

c21h30o2 5y ago

Kids who can't afford fancy computers grow up into rich adults who have no nostalgia towards your game franchise

howdydoo 5y ago
Like exposure, nostalgia doesn't pay the bills.

vkk8 5y ago

> 2) People cannot afford good computer usually also cannot afford to pay for the game. I wonder if they had any kind of proof of this. I would think that there are plenty of kids who could get their parents to pay five bucks for the game, but not 500 bucks to buy a fancy new computer.

newsclues 5y ago
If you look at the flip side people who can afford an expensive gaming pc can probably also afford a game which isn’t nearly as expensive
- Kye 5y ago
  Willingness and ability to pay for one thing doesn't mean willingness to pay for other things. There are plenty of cheapskate rich people and people who consider themselves poor on six figure salaries.