Re: Oh, Randy (Borderlands 4 edition)

On Fri, 23 May 2025 07:55:10 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Tue, 20 May 2025 20:15:20 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>

** but an equally important question that never seems to be asked is:
do games NEED to be that large?

>
With 4k textures, so you can play in slightly less than 4k, with a
graphics card that could make buttered popcorn while pushing 8+ million
pixels a frame?
>
Hell YES they have to be that large. Games haven't actually gotten much
bigger from a play standpoint, but they are awfully *large*.
>
Every GB costs a pretty penny, or so they tell me. If you measure your
price in $/GB, prices are going down!

I'm not talking "big" in terms of disk-space. I'm talking big in terms
of "let's make every game something that requires 120 hours to
complete, with a needlessly large open world and seasonal updates".

There's something to be said for games with a definitive start,
middle, and end. Too many games --especially in the AAA end of
things-- drag things out because the longer and more grindy they make
the gameplay, the more likely a player is to go to the store to buy
MTX to make the journey worth it. But these giant worlds cost money to
fill up; artists to texture, map-designers to, erm, map, voice-actors
to give the NPCs life, developers to ensure the AI doesn't go nuts.

But a smaller game world can provide as intense an experience. It
costs significantly less too. And since the customary excuse AAA
studios make for their live-service nonsense is that games are too
expensive to develop without that added revenue, maybe they should
consider trimming back their games before reaching into our wallets.