320
"Triple-A is in crisis" and games "don't have staying power because they're bad," says ex Gears of War director and Painkiller creator (www.pcgamesn.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
146 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 9 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Losing the hardware constraints made devs less innovative too. The Crash Bandicoot devs had to hack the PlayStation's system memory allocation to squeeze a bit more out of the machine so their game could be better.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I don't know if this is the best applicatioon of their genius tbh. If you're not spending time fighting with tools, you spend it making stuff you want to make.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] 0 points 10 months ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    I work in embedded my whole life so I'm no stranger of fighting over scraps of resources and spending days trying to squeeze in something that doesn't fit. It made me better at fighting this specific hardware limitations, and now instead of spending 10 times more time on making something that takes no time at all on a capable hardware, I spend only 5 times more.
    I don't know if for creative work it does something, but for programming it's like chopping wood with one hand behind your back. Sure you can do it, sure you can get better at it, sure it forces you to adjust your ways, but it doesn't make the wood better chopped, it just makes you slower and more prone to mistakes for no reason

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Thats why I love the ps1 and og consoles in general. For one. Yes, they had to work their asses off. For two, THE GAMES WERE (usually) FINISHED BY THE TIME YOU PLAYED IT.

    The model of make game-test game-release game-DONE was tried and true, and something rarely experienced today.

    There are amazing games today of course. But still, we have definitely shifted and I dont prefer it for the most part.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Part of that is due to the sheer complexity of games now compared to then. It's hard to test everything.

    Of course, there's also the problems of games getting released in noticeably buggy states, which seems a lot more common now than it used to be (there were definitely buggy games released for the PS1, but they were rare).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent