Sure it's a simplification. But it is the truth. AAA are generally that way now, because people don't want to bet a lot of money without it being a sure fire bet. And it's same for game mills in mobile land.
> Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance.
Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on.
Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land, despite your opinions on current gaming trends. There are people working hard on it, including the Unreal and Unity teams.
> Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on.
Again, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, and probably a bit of projection. His rants are often about specific issues he finds, and mostly about low-hanging-fruit issues that cause real usability problems for end users.
He might write and teach how to write high-performance code and high-performance architecture, but it was not to the detriment of code quality, speed of development or architecture quality. The architecture of Handmade Hero, for example, is significantly better than most "make your own engine" shows on Youtube.
> Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land,
I beg to differ it's not an incorrect one.
AAA Titles (+ if I did play them):
Destiny - Review say perf OK.
Elden Ring(+) - Performance Ok on consoles on release it was a slideshow. It ran like garbage. Personally I think it's a clusterfuck
GTA V(+) - Had a huge performance blunder. Released for n-thienth time. Good performance today for game that was released in 2013.
FIFA/NFL/Sports game - Runs ok. It's the same game as year X-1 except with some tweaks (like microtransactions and ads).
Call of Duty - Review while perf is Ok, it's not something
Battlefield - They were Ok, they went too loose with optimization resulting in the shitfest that was 2042. They got punished for it.
Fortnite - Sure stellar work from the guys making Unreal engine no complaints.
According to revenue PUBG belongs on this list.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - Barely holding itself at the seams this game made mad money while being a buggy and lice infested mess. It
Pokemon - It's Ok, but nothing to write home about.
Resident Evil: Village(+) - Played it. It ran like shite. Had to crack it to get decent performance.
Far Cry 6 - Ok performance, but essentially Farcry X-1. With more content.
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From examples given, while performance is usually critical for online multiplayer shooters, it's not so much being faster as being less slow than the guy next to you. E.g. PUBG was fine and dandy, even though it was really, really badly optimized.
> Again, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, and probably a bit of projection. His rants are often about specific issues he finds, and mostly about low-hanging-fruit issues that cause real usability problems for end users.
I think you're missing the point about performance in games.
More than in other kinds of software, adding new "features" to games tends to slow the game down more (you're trying to do more in the time you have to render a frame). So often performance improvements are needed simply to make room for more "features".
>So often performance improvements are needed simply to make room for more "features"
absolutely. I'm an engine programmer and this has to be my train of thought, otherwise I'd be out of a job (you know, until the 11th hour where I break a lot of work just to get something out).
I'm not saving a few milliseconds on some feature that "only" takes 2 milliseconds because the game needs maximum performance. It's so when the director or designer comes up with some other crazy idea that they have more frame budget to try and fit it in. They may still not be able to, but I don't want my default answer to be "no, we can't spare the time" (not unless it's something absurd).
Sure it's a simplification. But it is the truth. AAA are generally that way now, because people don't want to bet a lot of money without it being a sure fire bet. And it's same for game mills in mobile land.
> Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance.
Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in reality it's like n-th thing to focus-on.