Every year, advances in modern technology open up new opportunities for us. for a good amount. Judge for yourself: every year new games are focused on newer hardware. And it encourages people to upgrade their PCs. Why exactly??
This whole topic (and probably subsequent ones) is simply my reasoning, supported by both facts and my subjective opinion and mine misconceptions.
The following problems arise from High End:
Environmental problem
The idea for the topic came to me after watching this video from the channel LowSpecGamer, I highly recommend checking it out.
I borrowed this problem from there.
For consoles this problem is not very relevant.This mainly applies to video cards. This trend is new, since previously the power consumption of video cards of the same architecture either decreased or increased slightly (1-2 W), while performance increased.
For those who are not in the know, electricity is primarily obtained by burning fuel. After combustion, impurities and non-combustible fuel components remain, which enter the environment, poisoning it and changing the climate.
Optimization problem
This and the next problem, in my opinion, are the answer to my first question.
Previously, in order to bring a game project to life, many developers squeezed all the juice out of the systems. Although negligent cases have occurred. Nowadays, cases of poor optimization have become more common (or so it seems to me). There are many cases of poor optimization, even (and sometimes even more so) on consoles. Some are struggling with this, while others are simply increasing system requirements.
Although they are promoted not only because of this.
Graphics problem
Yes, graphics are important. Even a game with an excellent process, if you put a potato mod on it, can become painful to play. New graphical and technical capabilities have opened up cinematic, realistic and simply beautiful games for us. Some games just can’t do without great graphics, otherwise they feel fake.
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This problem is a matter of taste. After all, there are people who condemn games with excellent gameplay for "bad graphics". Here you need to decide for yourself whose side you are on.
Economic problem
Again subjective, but still a pressing problem. As I wrote above, new power gives us new opportunities, but quality and graphics problems leave “low-budget” gamers deprived.
How to fix it?
Stop taking “top-end hardware” as the standard. If developers focus primarily on average machines, or better yet, lower ones, then games will become more accessible. And then leave all the top-end hardware to professionals and miners.
Afterword
I have ideas for 1-2 more topics in a similar format, please leave your opinion about it in the comments.
If you disagree or want to add topic, please comment. If you can convince me, I will I’ll contribute your comment on the topic.
Thank you for your attention!
Best comments
Well, about the fact that “it was better before”, in this case, game optimization is not entirely accurate. In general, roughly speaking, before the era of Xbox 360/Playstation 3 (later it also happened, but less often), many back-and-forth ports suffered from crookedness.
Well, in general, yes, there have been plenty of examples of poor optimization before, but ports are a special case. Here everything depends on the engine on which the game runs, and on the architectural features of the platforms.
Well, I generally agree that quality control has dropped noticeably now.
I think there is no need to explain exactly how this affects the environment.
Well, actually it’s advisable. Because there are a lot of pseudo-ecological ideas in the world now and this looks like one of those. How does the ridiculous consumption of video cards in games have such a terrible impact on the environment??
Previously, in order to bring a game project to life, developers squeezed all the juice out of the systems. Negligence cases were rare.
This is not true. Quality projects simply remain in memory. There was always enough crooked and unoptimized trash.
Stop taking “top-end hardware” as the standard. If developers focus primarily on medium-sized machines (and below), then games will become more accessible.
That’s what the developers do. Since games are, for the most part, commercial products, manufacturers are not interested in allowing only a select few to play them. But there are certain lower limits beyond which it may not be commercially profitable to step. There is little point in spending resources on squeezing the minimum requirements to fit the lowest segment, if only because people from this segment clearly have money problems. Although the requirements of modern games are quite liberal. It is still quite possible to play new games on average video cards from five years ago and average stones from ten years ago. Much more modest. It’s not the developers’ fault that certain categories of the population play with the exchange rate of crypto and conventional currencies.
Well, about the fact that “it was better before”, in this case, game optimization is not entirely accurate. In general, roughly speaking, before the era of Xbox 360/Playstation 3 (later it also happened, but less often), many back-and-forth ports suffered from crookedness. Examples that come to mind are: CoD: Black Ops (the game worked poorly on two cores), Rage (well, there was a great fak-up here, Carmack then put a lot of effort into optimization in general, and even more on Radeon video cards), and so on.
Thanks, I made some changes.
Since you’ve completed the part about energy consumption, read how much electricity the devices in one apartment consume on average per day and calculate how much the video card consumes under load. And how much energy do small and large enterprises powered by the same networks consume?. Electricity is not produced exactly penny to penny with consumption. There is always a supply of it. If we assume that all gamers in a large city suddenly stop playing games, this will not affect emissions from thermal power plants and thermal power plants at all.
As for Russia, the generated reserve is not large, since all power plants are united in a network that focuses on consumption and tries not to produce more than will be spent. That is, if consumption decreases, production will decrease.
So that’s why I wrote about the ratio. Calculate how much other electrical appliances in the apartment consume per day. Estimate the ratio of electricity costs to one LED panel, of which there are dozens of them in different supermarkets, schools, hospitals, etc. Please note that expensive and powerful video cards with a consumption of over 200W are quite expensive things that not every computer game player has. And that people don’t play games all day long. Etc etc. There are a lot of nuances. That is, estimate by eye what share of total consumption this is.
This is a typical trick of pseudo-ecologists. When it is already clear that in absolute terms consumption would be less, but in relative terms this is not even an error. And where the general principle of the system’s operation is not taken into account. Like “Earth Hour” and other similar populist initiatives.