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I think most people are ok with frame gen because it doesn’t touch the actual content. It just moves things around a bit with motion vectors which actually was kind of a thing even before AI although not very good. It didn’t repaint the game into some different art style.
Naw most people are not ok with fake frames, and like raytracing is getting less and less likely to be left on. Most people however hate fake frames not due to the frames themselves but the motion blur effect that seems to be needed to make things look ok on top of the frame gen (no one likes motion blur).
You are right that this is going to replace game graphics to some degree since its another shortcut game studios can use to cut costs (and the industry is kinda struggling at the moment). Why spend effort, time and money making a model look good when you can use a tool to gloss over the work and while it does not look “good” per say it will look better then it should.
They needed to use two whole ass 5090s to fuck up a game character that already looked great (and even sexualised to a degree). This anti gamer crap is funny since they are a consumer group that gets called out if they want less and also called out if they want more, they get called every silly thing when ever someone (normally by the very people working in the industry that relies on those very consumers) has nothing of value to say.
This move has been almost universally panned by the very people they are trying to sell to. The idea that what any market wants changes is also not at all new or odd. We are in interesting times where most have issues buying food and shelter and yet here we are being pissy about gamers not wanting to spend literal 1000s of dollars on hardware to run things that are seen more and more as greed fueled slop. And this flopping of “new” tech is also not new or odd at all, do we all forget the many many examples of tech that the market just does not embrace?
Oh shit you are right! This is just modern day greebling.
Most PS1 era games are like 500 MB and last I checked things like COD take 300 ish GB. So really we are talking about a 600X change in size.
I think most people would like that, hell most games that seem to do well almost go counter to the massive size and style
looking at the current top 15 games on steam (by player counts) seems to show not a ton of super high fidelity games on the list, and games like helldivers 2 and ark raiders seem almost nice looking as a side effect.
Just imagine this but with 16x the detail and 100x the needed processing, and with sexy makeup!I thought the super glossy look of the unreal 5 demo was off putting and things could not look worse, but here we are. Just hyper stupid everything. Older —> Hag of the ages, Woman ----> Whore makeup, and then what else? Will the men look like the chad meme? will younger characters all be wearing shadow and mascara? Will everything get massive tits? (OK that one might sell).
Its like everything is now passed through a Instagram filter, but somehow even more vapid.
Edit:
Oh dear you where not kidding:
Its a non functioning product at launch, something that should be called out in a review. It is a low quality slop review, whether or not I agree with the conclusion. You can like or dislike a game counter to a review but I expect that at the very least an attempt will be made to point out pitfalls, and that was not done. The Suicide Squad was a bad game, someone liking it does not justify a dishonest or lazy review. You can not toss out one anecdotal view while pushing your own without looking a bit silly.
In this very thread, you can see people who are convinced that reviewers are paid off or playing difficult games on extra easy modes, neither of which are true, because they just can’t reconcile that anyone could possibly enjoy a game that they didn’t enjoy or weren’t interested in.
Neither of which are true is a bold statement that needs more then a “trust me” level of response. Next your going to tell me that redfall was actually good without much issues is more likely then some one was paid to write a fluff piece (a thing that happens in all forms of journalism). You seem to be pushing the idea that its the audience is wrong and desperately assuming that people don’t like the media state due to an inability to reconcile their own preferences with the articles (wild and odd).
Yeah, review have always had a slant and people forget just how bad they where in the past. I would rather watch someone play the game and skip the reviews, however it must be said the old slanted review model has largely died off. We don’t buy magazines with advertorials anymore, and the appetite to pay for such content is at a low point by both consumers and advertisers.
I am not writing for a publication but sure I guess you expect the same level of journalism as VGC so lets cover it a bit.
Lets use their own words About how they 5 years ago where getting 7 million views a month. That great, and the article although a fluff piece about themselves is not nearly as bad as the one linked before. But hey that could just be different writers after all, but nope both done by the editor in chief Andy Robinson. And don’t get me wrong VGC is one of the better ones, but at 7 million views a month they are not competing with video from places like twitch and you tube. In fact the written coverage on games has become a walled garden of insiders writing tone deaf articles and reviews in general.
Take the reviews for example, VGC’s coverage on Borderlands 4 Does not even address the games broken state but gives it 4/5 stars vs VGC’s coverage 6 years ago on Anthem Where they lambaste the game for it’s faults. Hell we can take this further and look at coverage on the same thing under different media in current times, the VGCs review of Borderlands 4 has no view counter on it but also has no comments, where as a smaller creator on youtube using clickbait has over 6000 comments and more views then they have subscribers (425,000).
I am sorry you don’t see the degradation of written games media, and I understand it was never top shelf stuff, but it is not a controversial take that needs extraordinary evidence. People are clearly not happy with the quality and content (hence the constant downsizing due to dropping revenues) leading places to sell out more to cover the bills thereby leading to a death spiral. Just look at coverage of some of the worst most broken releases to get why audiences are turning away:
How would you have cited “declining quality of writing” as an inciting factor? How would you measure it? And why did it just become a problem in the past few years rather than any of the problems that are listed in the article?
The part I am talking about is below the the part you are quoting. It was a critique on the part that goes:
"According to Press Engine’s database of ‘tier 1’ publications that cover games (which is defined as major websites, both specialist and mainstream, with seven-figure-plus audiences), the global pool of game journalists has declined by 25% in just two years. The vast majority of these departures were from specialist games websites like IGN, Polygon, or Gamepot.
If amateur, part-time, or freelance writers are included, the number of departures from the games media swells to more than 4,000 people since October 2023."
I am not sure if you are just a touch upset that everyone does not agree that your writer owned slop factory is of high standards or if you just missed the part where I was trying to point out the weak writing as asked. But if I was to “cite” the declining quality of writing, I could do so by referencing old popular articles compared to current ones, I could show screen shots of the ever mounting assault of ads, or I could do what I am doing here and just assume that my audience is not wilfully ignorant of the current state of the format.
You can not out of one side of your mouth state the industry of writing is dying then say out of the other that the writing has not suffered.
I have old some old magazines that are at least readable with ads that don’t move. This is not a radical take, just like all corporate media the quality has declined in general (not suggesting that there was a lack of bad journalism in the past). Also, they may not have hard quotas there but the writers are paid to make articles and content to fill the site (it is like how best buy did not do commission vs future shop but where both the same company and fired those that did not make sales regardless).
As for how to improve this particular article, I would say a good start is to pick a format, is it a op ed or an interview? Or is it a report on events? I would go the op ed direction myself and rely less on the quotes from other journalists and data from the weird internal marketing source. I would have likely incouraged having a message and then sprinkled in actual employment numbers from major publications throughout the article and not done what this one did that was “this program sends out less free codes” as a data point. The data used is too weak for anything other then an opinion piece but the article is too light on the writer’s input to be one.
There is also a big “citation needed” part that should have set off a editor.
“If amateur, part-time, or freelance writers are included, the number of departures from the games media swells to more than 4,000 people since October 2023.”
“If” indeed! They went from 25% down and then if you include free lancers swelling to more then 4,000 people. That’s just sloppy writing. At least give initial numbers and keep the format consistant.
Do you feel that way about the site reporting the linked article?
Yes, although I am not the first dood, but posting as someone who did read the linked article it is a barely veiled attempt to support the “writer’s” media and looks more like a lazy filler article to meet a quota. I use quotes around writer as the article in question is 2/3s quotes more in the style of an interview with “Veteran games journalist Alex Donaldson” and a few comments from “Press Engine co-founder Gareth Williams” (nothing wrong with that per say). The other 1/3 is “data supplied to VGC by Press Engine…” (again nothing wrong with this on its own). The issue is when we take the article in its whole this seems more like someone talked to a colleague or two then put a header on it using in house data from a “… popular PR tool used by developers and publishers to distribute codes and press releases to a global database of journalists and content creators.” and adding a few other comments from the very founder of the program used in house to round it out making a very thin and kinda lazy article. This reminds me very much of the stuff written I saw many many years ago when I worked at a newspaper watching that media circle the drain.
Also on the point of:
The sites are all completely cluttered with ads, a lot of the articles are just AI slop, and the industry is driven by greed.
This is not AI slop but good old fashioned 4:30 on a Friday human slop covered in ads, for example I got 2 pop ups with ad block reading it. This is what it looks like without ad blocker:
But then again, you get what you pay for and I guess the irony here is that the article (that could be used as a captain obvious joke) pointing out the collapse of games media is in itself an example of a degrading quality of writing leading to the demise of said media. The real joke is that the article does not even touch on the degrading quality of the writing and experience (other then a “…lack of diversification in content…”) but instead putting the blame on every thing else (thanks google, AI, COVID and advertising spending I guess?).
Yeah, we currently have issue with server/client latency right now in games why the ever loving fuck would anyone think adding another link in that chain would be better or even usable.
I have the best internet I can get in my area, its fairly good and above the average but I still have plenty of issues since games are often hosted on the cheapest option often far far away. Hell I was visiting my friend and his son is a big fortnite kid and got to see them rage quit trying to play during update day due to very very bad lag. That is fortnite, the most accessible game I think is currently around.
The whole idea that these game streaming services are even viable more then 100kms from the streaming location is kinda flawed. We have shit infrastructure and if anything it is getting worse as games and telecoms are cutting corners more and more. This is kinda a silly way to try to sell unsellable hardware and unsellable AAA games in a market where more and more consumers don’t care as much about super photo realistic games and can not afford new hardware. 100% this push to serverside streaming of games is just a thing to sell investors on the idea that their business model is not doomed (it is doomed however).