I Want Shorter Games With Worse Graphics

I want shorter games with worse Graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding this is a fairly popular statement that's been floating around the internet the past couple years you may have seen it in the form of this smug looking Sonic Image maybe this pixel art rendition maybe this promotional still for Spy Kids 3 that reminds me of what my nightmares look like in any case pretty much all of these memes have been spread around on social media usually to a decent amount of virality after all the tweet that originated the phrase has tens of thousands of likes and different variations of it still pop up here and there to start some discourse the whole movement I guess you could say has sort of grown a mind of its own in fact ichio a well-known indie game Marketplace even had a shorter games with worse Graphics bundle made in 2021 by one cannibal interactive which raised over eight thousand dollars for 25 independent game creators meaning that some people didn't just like and share this statement but actively put their money where their mouth is and that's pretty interesting to me because on the face of it this meme is quite contrarian the point being made is very sarcastic even going so far as to say Games should be worse in some way which seems like a controversial stance for someone to have and yet even looking at the posts I made asking people's opinion on it many people agree with that stance but I think it's that contrarian nature that made me so fascinated with this statement in the first place because it's not just something people post in a vacuum agreeing with it doesn't just mean you don't like long games or good graphics I mean I'm sure some of you feel that way but it's not what I see as the purpose of the statement or the reason for its popularity what I see is a criticism an expression of frustration one pointed directly at the current state of the gaming industry I mean just flip the statement around and you get a much clearer message games right now are too long too focused on graphics and made by people who aren't paid enough for how hard they work and I'm not kidding that to me is what people are agreeing with when they like and share this meme that to me is why it is taken off so much and it's what sparked my interest in making this video because debates around video game length video game graphics and the well-being of developers have been going on since the dawn of time they are topics that have individually been analyzed and argued to death on basically every platform you've probably seen countless videos online discussing each one hell I wanted to make some myself but instead of just doing that I thought it might be a little bit better to cover them in combination since doing so should reveal a lot more about what's going on [Music] video game length is a widely discussed topic that has had a huge amount of different arguments thrown at it especially when you factor price into the equation there are many people that want games to be as large as humanly possible 100 hour RPGs and thousand hour MMOs with infinite depth and replay value after all they do cost money so you should be able to get as much content as possible from them this has created a sort of measuring stick certain people use for a game's quality where they compare the amount of hours of content to the price tag and only consider it worth it to play if the hour per dollar ratio is high enough for example Cult of the Lamb a rather quaint Base building Dungeon Crawler that looks like Animal Crossing went to hell famously had negative reviews from these people complaining that the game was less than 20 hours to beat while carrying a 20 price tag the review that gained traction on Twitter notably compared it to Binding of Isaac which they said was longer and therefore better and yeah that first part is true Cult of the Lamb is about 20 hours whereas Binding of Isaac with every expansion just barely beats it with over 500 because you know it's a roguelike game that's main gameplay Loop involves playing it over and over and over again with slightly different abilities and upgrades and bosses and characters each time does that make it better though I would say not at all because you might have a much better experience with 20 hours of cult of the Lamb than you would with hundreds of hours of Isaac and that argument I just made firmly puts me into the second camp that being the people that prefer shorter games with more meaningful content usually people fall into this Camp because they don't have as much time to play longer games or just don't enjoy spending hours grinding honestly I think a lot of my thoughts on video game length are the same as my thoughts on open worlds that being that I typically don't enjoy long games or large open worlds because the massive amount of content they boast is meaningless it's reused and repeated side quests or filler that you're expected to do over and over again is simply run up the number of hours you're in the game and sure if the reason you play games is to just waste time or spend as much of it as possible doing pointless tasks then these types of games can be very fun I put over a hundred hours each into Lost Ark in Black Desert online because they were easy to grind while listening to a podcast but none of those hours were meaningful to me give me the option to take them back and I wouldn't a heartbeat whereas two of my favorite games of all time are Hotline Miami and Dishonored both games that you can beat in a dozen or so hours but every one of those hours for each game were well worth it to me they had purpose and reason they actively felt fun and worthwhile they even got me to think and feel and engage with the game rather than just mindlessly consuming content the whole time I wouldn't trade the time I spent playing them for anything and I replayed Hotline Miami for over 7 70 hours and that's sort of my point to put it simply I consider a five hour game that I can put 70 hours into infinitely better than a 70 hour game that I barely cared enough to finish Anyway video game Graphics is then the next most controversial issue and almost definitely the most hotly debated online should games focus on better and more realistic Graphics or should they be worse and to clear things up I don't think anyone is really advocating for literally worse Graphics as in the game looks like but more so stylized Graphics that might not be as technically impressive I mean if you are someone who prefers their games to look terrible more power to you but I don't think that's what most people mean and this argument like the last one is pretty subjective I mean hyper realism is just another art style anyway so what you prefer is up to you and people have different reasons for liking different things but where a lot of the debate comes from is the people fighting to get games to be made in their preferred Style or much more commonly complaining that a game that does attempt to be technically impressive isn't impressive enough there is a fairly substantial portion of the gaming community that seems to completely dismiss every game that isn't the most beautiful looking piece of software ever created if a game doesn't push the graphical boundaries like Red Dead Redemption 2 did well it's basically useless to them Spider-Man PS4 got pretty notoriously attacked on social media for quote unquote puddle gate where people were upset that the puddles from one of the early gameplay trailers looked better than the ones in the final release this is if I may be so bold really stupid it's a dumb controversy propagated by people online whose opinions I don't really respect but the controversy continues with games like God of War Ragnarok being ripped on for not letting you cut down the trees and Legend of Zelda tears of the Kingdom getting called out for low quality textures by ex-game developer David Jaffe who had a mental breakdown on Twitter over it here's what his last game look like by the way even Spider-Man 2 has had another water-related debate stirred up when some genius pointed out that the water simulations aren't sufficiently realistic to the point that people called for the game to be delayed and for developers to go through more crunch time just so they could make the water look better in like one cutscene again your preference for art Direction and graphical Fidelity are fairly subjective but I think we could all say that your ability to chop down trees in God of War Ragnarok does not affect the quality of the game in any meaningful way a shinier puddle or better water simulation wouldn't make either Spider-Man game noticeably better these small details are appreciated when included and can enhance an already good experience but just like with length I do not play games to stare at textures and Ray Chase Reflections I play them to have fun a factor that is not determined by how the game looks and even the games that I do enjoy the visuals of tend to be those with strong art Direction not higher resolution Hollow Knight cup head dead cells Hades these are all beautiful games and on a technical level their visuals aren't that sophisticated but that obviously doesn't affect how good they look because they're so stylized and even if the graphics of a game are objectively worse if the gameplay is fun or the story is engaging I'll have a much better experience than I would with the shiniest new cinematic Tech demo again good visuals can make a good game better but they can't make a bad game good and now the third argument of this titular statement I'm breaking down is whether game developers should be paid more but honestly I don't even think I have to cover the arguments here I think we all agree gamedevs should be compensated way more than they already are and not be forced into abusive workplace conditions there are countless stories of developers being worked around the clock and crunched into Oblivion usually because they're at risk of losing their jobs if they don't I've talked about this in my horror games video and my cyberpunk 2077 video but there's dozens if not hundreds of cases even just Googling a random game during the research of this video I pulled up LA Noire a game that allegedly according to leaked emails and verified Anonymous sources had people working up to 110 hours a week where most of the developers were unpaid for that overtime and dozens went uncredited on the final game because so many of them left before the final release an investigation was launched into team Bondi to try and uncover these very unethical working conditions and they went bankrupt two months later with the status part being that team Bondi isn't even the worst case of this just one of the few that got caught however ultimately all these arguments within the titular meme are somewhat Common Sense I've just given an explanation as to why they exist and why I agree with them but that seems to be kinda it video game length and Graphics are very subjective at the end of the day even if some sides of the argument are made by complete morons and discussions about developer treatment are always good to have but it's an incredibly uncontroversial opinion plus just having a discussion doesn't really change all that much at least I suspect this video is not the first time many of you are hearing about how bad developers are treated and I'm certain that this video is not going to single-handedly fix it so then why did I make this video why am I talking so much about this statement well this and this and this and this and all of these what just popped up on screen right now might be familiar to you honestly it probably gave some of you video game non-flashbacks these are all developer messages more specifically apologies apologies for games being delayed to focus on finishing development and apologies for games being released in a broken State anyway what should be immediately apparent to you is that there is quite a few of these so many in fact that people have literally begun to turn them into memes it is Darkly humorous to me that developers apologizing for their game launching completely broken have become so common that people have already predicted the format of their apology message that should tell you everything you need to know about the current state of the gaming industry recent AAA games namely ones like Star Wars Jedi Survivor forespoken redfall and The Last of Us PC have been coming out so broken on release that it seems like a joke to even call it a release it's more like an accidental paid beta you could probably count on one hand the number of major game releases this year that didn't have problems and this is why I wanted to talk about this statement because all of these broken games seem to have a few similarities I want to point out you see outlined in the common law of business balance is a certain model for analyzing a project success it follows a basic model predating the theory of constraints which balances out different factors in order to measure quality and it looks something like this it's uh it's a triangle the whole joke here is that it's a triangle more specifically the iron triangle which is a really sick name and on this triangle you've got cost time and scope which combined together make up quality it's very simple it's literally that old phrase good fast cheap you can only have two basically the whole theory around it is that any project you're working on you're constrained by the cost of the project the scope of the project also known as how ambitious it is and the time it takes to finish balancing all three of these gets you a quality product and breaking this balance results in poor quality so if you want something done fast and cheap it can't be ambitious you want to finish an ambitious project in a reasonable amount of time it'll cost a ton of money so on and so forth you should already be able to see how this affects video games and why I'm bringing it up because it basically connects everything I've mentioned so far the scope of a video game project has to do with its graphical Fidelity and how many hours of content it has the cost of a video game is related not only to how much money a studio spends but also how much work the developers have to put into it and the time is obviously tied to the deadline and production cycle most games are on to expand a bit on that last part since I didn't bring it up earlier AAA games nowadays take anywhere from four to six years to make which is up quite a bit from the two to four years that they took only a decade ago meaning even that aspect of the industry has bloated out of control Final Fantasy 16 started development in 2016 after the release of Final Fantasy 50 taking about seven years to finish for comparison Final Fantasy 7 8 9 10 and 11 came out in a span of just five years I don't care if Final Fantasy 16 is the biggest prettiest game ever it's competing with five whole games being made in a shorter time span one of which was in MMO anyway applying the iron and triangle to most modern AAA games the problem is obvious games are taking longer to make with more content and more focus on graphics and they're working the developers to the bone and even with the increased production time in larger Studios it still isn't enough to balance everything out the time can't get much longer without games being developed that Miss entire console Generations the cost can't be pushed any further without inventing some way for game devs to stop sleeping and the scope just keeps growing which breaks the triangle leading to a broken buggy mess the way to stop these broken launches then naturally requires fixing the balance containing everything within that triangle will lead to higher quality releases and the best way to do that is lowering the scope making games that aren't a hundred hours long but 20. games that aren't trying to Ray Trace every reflection but maybe focus on a specific art style letting your developers work in comfortable conditions so they can do better work did you know that working more than 40 hours a week actually doesn't increase productivity working more than 60 for a period longer than two months actually statistically leads to it being worse and that is very light crunch time for most game studios you know what does statistically lead to a direct increase in worker output though higher wages shorter games worse Graphics devs who are paid more to do less that is ultimately how you avoid a broken release that is how you make a better game and that is why I think this goofy little meme is important to discuss because this event of frustration that people have been putting out onto social media hasn't just been mindless ranting it's not even a criticism at this point it's a cry for help that the industry just has not been listening to and if they did it might just fix some of their problems [Music] now as a channel who focuses a lot on gaming and talks a lot about problems with the industry usually this might be where I end the video I've made my point I think the message is pretty clear and in most cases the best thing someone like me can do is raise awareness and start a discussion I don't hold any misconceptions that my YouTube channel is making any meaningful changes to a billion dollar industry but while my patrons scroll up the side of the screen here I just want to spend this time talking action if for no other reason than to further that discussion the main way in which consumers of video games like you and me have power is through Collective action a single person not buying a game or criticizing a developer does nothing but hundreds of thousands doing so has led to companies reversing things like microtransactions and loot boxes in the past I've even talked about examples of that happening in my video game monetization video and in extreme cases companies have even faced legal action due to their own poor practices remember CD projekt Red was sued by their own investors for lying about the state of cyberpunk 2077 before launch and they lost the lawsuit there is a precedent that with enough people and energy behind something we the consumers can fight these corporate behemoths for example speaking specifically on the problems with developer treatment there is thankfully an organized effort being pushed already that being the unionization of game devs quite simply I think every AAA game Studio needs to unionize the sooner the better unionization of game devs would not only allow a legal mandate for paid overtime but also a limit on the amount of crunch that developers would have to endure and they stopped to all of the abusive workplace environments that places like blizzard or Riot have made commonplace not only that more union members has been shown to directly link to higher wages for even non-union workers in the same industry ultimately you unions are created to help workers and secure their rights that's literally why they exist and I'll be linking some information related to them in the description honestly with the television and movie industry currently facing the wga and possibly sag after strikes the video game industry has more power than ever to push for a fairer working environment but that's about all I can offer like I said I don't think my small YouTube channel is going to fix anything certainly not in a video about a Sonic the Hedgehog meme but I want to open a conversation about larger change because who knows what can happen as always thanks for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: Lextorias

Views: 477,472

Keywords: lextorias, I want shorter games with worse graphics, I want shorter games with worse graphis made by people who are paid more to work less, I want shorter games, shorter games with worse graphics, shorter games with worse graphics meme, video game graphics, video game length, video game developer treatment, video game crunch, crunch in gaming industry, video game devs, games are too long, games focus too much on graphics, worse video game graphics, short video games

Id: srZDo5bfF6Q

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023