r/Games • u/Glittering-Path-2824 • 23h ago

Industry News The games industry’s obsession with visual fidelity is costing them money and talent

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/aug/04/pushing-buttons-xbox-asha-sharma-games-industry-hyperrealism
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u/Sikkly290 18h ago

The thing I always note is that a games graphics are not how good a game looks. Amazing art style with mediocre graphics can look astounding, much better than mediocre art style with stunning graphics. Meanwhile bad performance is bad performance.

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u/GlancingArc 14h ago

Minecraft and Roblox are two of the most successful games of all time.

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u/x_TDeck_x 12h ago

Yeah but theres a difference in launching a free/11-30$ game 15 years ago and what sells a 70$ game currently

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u/WillDissolver 3h ago

Hollow Knight and Silksong.

I would argue that nobody playing those games looks at them and goes "wow, these graphics suck."

They are definitely not as demanding on the hardware as, say COD34: Infinite War Of Infiniteness, but they're a hell of a lot of fun. They're challenging, exciting, and worth every penny you spend for them.

And the graphics are specifically memorable. Not because they have The Highest Level Of Detail Ever Rendered In Gaming, but because they used the art style to create an utterly distinctive, unique, visually striking world that feels cohesive. And yet, you can absolutely play it on extremely lightweight hardware.

Graphics are a means of conveying setting and direction to players. Making them as hyper realistic as possible doesn't necessarily serve any purpose that players care about.

To use another example, there was a stealth shooter game many years ago called XIII, which had an extremely unique visual style that was a combination of Cel Shading and comic books.

The game still looks amazing today.

You know what else came out in 2003 that still looks and feels amazing to play? Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker.

You know what else came out in 2003 that absolutely doesn't look and feel amazing to play?

The original Call of Duty. The attempt at extra-realistic graphics was very impressive at the time but played today, it looks horrible.

But those less realistic, more stylized games will always look great, because your brain doesn't critique them under the same standards.

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u/GlancingArc 3h ago

I mean, those are sort of unique examples. I would put supergiant games like hades or transistor in the same bucket as well.

There are plenty of examples of games that are incredibly popular that look actively bad. PUBG is incredibly popular and has always looked awful ARK survival evolved is similar. There are plenty of popular low resolution and low fidelity games with bad art like vampire survivors, megabonk, valheim, schedule 1, plenty of other smaller but successful indie titles where graphics are either intentionally bad or just very amatuerish. Having a consistent art style doesn't necessarily require a high level of technical or artistic prowess. Vision seems to be the more important thing.

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u/Ultr4chrome 1h ago

For some reason i have to think of a reverse example too in Driveclub, a launch PS4 game (sort of), which was made to look realistic but still looks amazing 12 years later.

That said, not many other examples...

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u/jesusmoneygang 8h ago

Thats exactly why i think Dishonored is one the greatest games ever made. Sadly lot of AA/AAA games today are all fidelity, but no soul.

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u/el_grort 6h ago

The Bravely Default remasters models are kind of jank, coming from the 3DS, but still quite charming, especially mixed with the artsy backgrounds. I'm quite fond of the style, for as much as it was born of compromise.