Thief designer says the graphics arms race should have stopped at Alan Wake... in 2010

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Graphics Matter: One of the original designers of Thief has some rather peculiar ideas about graphics in games. Randy Smith thinks the industry should have stopped advancing graphics around 2010 rather than spending massive amounts of money to relentlessly push photorealism in major AAA projects.

Randy Smith knows a thing or two about game design. The developer worked extensively on the Thief series before funding indie studio Tiger Style in 2008.

Most recently, Smith shared his thoughts on how studios should approach graphics fidelity in games. Spending increasingly enormous sums of money chasing extreme photorealism isn't worth it, the designer said in a recent interview.

Smith's idea about graphics fidelity is apparently that the entire industry should have stopped with Alan Wake. In 2010, Remedy released its supernatural action-adventure cult classic to positive reviews, with the game eventually selling millions of copies. Its graphics were photorealistic enough that players could "100%" feel like part of the virtual world.

"I see that I'm going to an island in the Pacific Northwest. Why do we need more graphics? Because they just cost a ton. Like, I 100% get it. I've got the vibe. It feels right. What else are we doing with this graphics arms race, right," Smith said during the interview.

Any additional effort beyond that level of photorealism is just "gravy," the designer said. Graphics have now become a massive part of a game's development budget, but they mostly don't serve any meaningful purpose anymore. The "spectacle" of increasingly impressive graphics fidelity would certainly benefit "immersive sim" games such as Thief or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but Smith doesn't think it is required to build a great interactive experience in which players can freely experiment with the game's world.

Smith's argument comes with an implicit criticism of the ballooning budgets required for graphically intensive games. The designer cited Ghost of Tsushima and the upcoming GTA VI as examples of games designed to be big enough to entice both the general public and gamers. In the end, the increased graphics budget might overestimate the number of people interested in photorealistic immersive sims.

Smith's opinion about graphics is certainly controversial, and most likely wrong. Every gamer on the planet has their own idea of what constitutes the "best game graphics," while game engines such as Unreal Engine and idTech have made enormous progress in recent years, both in graphics and simulation complexity.

Smith is likely – and willingly – confusing photorealism with art direction, with the latter being the really important part of the equation. While it includes some undeniably dated graphics assets, I consider FromSoftware's Elden Ring to be the most visually spectacular experience I will ever see on a screen in my life.

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Thief designer says the graphics arms race should have stopped at Alan Wake... in 2010

 

[GeoffreyA]

Replaying Doom 3 this past month with the dhewm3 update, I am quite stunned at how good the graphics are, in particular the lighting and shadows, and despite the ugly, squarish models.

 

[NumberNine]

The graphics are only an issue if the gameplay suffers as a result, which we see happening quite often and that blame lies squarely on the shoulders of management. Bad companies make bad games because their heads are in the wrong places. Simple as, also purely subjective.

 

[Construga]

Games should be fun and make the player feel the world around him.
Is the "graphic war" too much?
If the studios are just pouring money and delaying games because of the graphics, then I think so.
But to be honest, I don't have the perception of the % of time and money studios spend on developing graphics.
I think the issue is more that right now games have to be AAA all the time, and graphics follow along the same line. We can't have a game with huge maps, 120 hours plot, and the main character is a square with a circle and 4 pixels for legs and arms. At the same time, does the watch on the character's wrist need to have a perfect reflection of the world around it, during a bullet rain on an action scene?
My humble personal feeling is that recently I've played games that are graphically very well executed, but I did not feel attached to the plot and game events, and some with more bugs than a game would have 15 years ago.
At the same time, I feel compelled to replay some older games because the events and the graphics just feel right.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Not sure why the author felt compelled to add the last 2 paragraphs… but Smith is NOT wrong… at least not in his general point. Where the graphics “cutoff” is is open to debate - but it’s not wrong to think that a game needs to be FUN before it needs to “look good”.

If a game is fun to play, it doesn’t need to look photorealistic.

 

[Eflow]

There is a possibility that studios are rational, and that they are putting out the graphics that consumers demand. If you drop two modern shooters side by side and one of the games has noticeably better graphics, then you can bank on the game with lesser graphics not selling well. All it takes is for a handful of "influencers" to jump on the hate bandwagon, and the sentiment of young consumers will be easily swayed.

I do think that some studios could lean more into "cartoony" graphics so they can spend their development time on gameplay and story, though. One of my most played games is Deep Rock Galactic, and in my opinion the graphics are perfect for what the game is.

 

[Skully]

Recently I've been playing back through the "Dishonored" franchise. These "old" games look plenty fine to me, as do many other games of the time period. Sometimes I can start an older game and look at it and it looks like a big turd, but the more you play it, you stop noticing sub-par graphics - IF the game is good.

 

[GeoffreyA]

Not sure why the author felt compelled to add the last 2 paragraphs… but Smith is NOT wrong… at least not in his general point. Where the graphics “cutoff” is is open to debate - but it’s not wrong to think that a game needs to be FUN before it needs to “look good”.

If a game is fun to play, it doesn’t need to look photorealistic.

It can be objectively demonstrated that Smith is wrong by comparing Alan Wake with later graphics.

 

[Squid Surprise]

It can be objectively demonstrated that Smith is wrong by comparing Alan Wake with later graphics.

No… his point was that graphics don’t NEED to be better than Alan Wake… which is clearly subjective and can’t be proven wrong or right…

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Replaying Doom 3 this past month with the dhewm3 update, I am quite stunned at how good the graphics are, in particular the lighting and shadows, and despite the ugly, squarish models.

Atmosphere is a part of graphical presentations, one that developers ignore today. We were so obsessed with rendering every pimple and nose hair, nobody stopped it ask if this made the presentation better.

The OG black flag is more fun and engaging then any of the new games despite looking quite old.

It can be objectively demonstrated that Smith is wrong by comparing Alan Wake with later graphics.

And how, pray tell, can you objectively prove that Alan wake 2s graphics are not the correct stoping point of graphical evolution?

 

[Dr Roboto]

I think the author and some of the commenters may be overthinking what he meant. My interpretation was simply that graphics had already reached the point where they were immersive enough, and that the industry would have been better off investing more in gameplay rather than continually chasing marginal graphical improvements.

I don't know if I agree Allen Wake was the threshold, but I partially agree with the premise. Some of my favorite games were made decades ago, when graphics were nowhere near what they are today. Yet I remember them as incredible experiences because of the gameplay and how well it worked with the technology available at the time.

Once I'm immersed in a game, the graphics tend to fade into the background and I just enjoy playing. My brain just fills in the gaps of scene quality. Sure, realistic visuals are impressive at first, but they aren't what keeps me engaged.

The bigger issue is that the cost of developing cutting-edge graphics and the increasingly expensive hardware required to run them has reached a point of diminishing returns. The visual improvements are often incremental, while gameplay innovation has lagged behind.

 

[yRaz]

. We were so obsessed with rendering every pimple and nose hair, nobody stopped it ask if this made the presentation better.

Hey! Staring at pimples on the *** of cat boys is the best part of modern gaming!

 

[GeoffreyA]

Atmosphere is a part of graphical presentations, one that developers ignore today. We were so obsessed with rendering every pimple and nose hair, nobody stopped it ask if this made the presentation better.

The OG black flag is more fun and engaging then any of the new games despite looking quite old.

Modern game development has chased literal fidelity, often to the detriment of atmosphere and imagination.

(Doom 3 is special because my first encounter with it was in my last year of secondary school. Our science teacher had taken a few of us to the mall, and it was at the computer retailer that a gigantic stack of Doom 3 boxes was standing and the game installed on one computer. We were stunned when we saw the graphics. Later, played bits and pieces at my friend's house; then, the full game in 2005. I'm pleased to say that those 2004 graphics are holding up respectably in 2026.)

And how, pray tell, can you objectively prove that Alan wake 2s graphics are not the correct stoping point of graphical evolution?

We can't. We can compare against the past but do not know what's round the corner. However, I would agree with him in the sense that graphics hit critical mass a long time ago, and have since seen diminishing returns. In the '90s and early 2000s, especially with the advent of programmable shaders, the progress was rapid, after which, it trailed off. Much has been made of RT but it is minor compared to shaders.

 

[RudyBob]

Games should be fun and make the player feel the world around him.

Comment of the day. I like the worlds the games are in. Dishonored is such a world I enjoy.

 

[Tantor]

I agree with his views. Graphic fidelity is just part of what makes a game feel real. For me it's about being able to interact with the environment in a natural 3d mode. The factors are 3d motion, audio, a highly interactive, natural environment, day-night cycles, weather, interaction with man made objects, and the ability to destroy and create new objects.

Two of the most popular games of all time, Skyrim and Minecraft, are popular for those reasons.

My favorite games are Dying Light 1 and Valheim, neither of which is noted for graphics. Dying light is famous for the parkour. You can climb almost anything and the motions feel real. Audio is very important to sense the positions of zombies around you. Valheim has a similar 3d awareness, and adds sailing boats on stormy seas, and even flying with mods. Valheim also has a highly destructible environment. You can build and destroy castles, forts, tree houses, and much more.

 

[Tantor]

Game designers forget that games are about PEOPLE, not picture perfection . Find out what stories people want to hear and give it to them. But designers need to be mature adults with a strong understanding of human nature. That includes the ability to see through, and discount many modern fads.

Stories need to speak to the deeper elements in human nature. Otherwise they feel shallow.

 

[AnilD]

I don’t agree that 2010 should have been the stopping point, but I agree with the broader argument. Going from PS2 to PS3 graphics was transformative. Going from very good modern graphics to slightly better reflections at triple the development cost is a much harder sell.

Art direction ages better than technology anyway. Plenty of 15-year-old games still look fantastic because they knew what they wanted to look like. Meanwhile some cutting-edge games look dated six months after launch.

 

[amghwk]

I agree to what he said.

For me, chasing after graphics realism is missing the point of the game itself.

Graphics is just one part, but the true gameplay immersion does not require photo-realistic graphics. More so for isometric and top-down perpective strategy/RPG games.

And this may be too much for new-gamers, but I still enjoy VGA and EGA games of yesteryears from DOS era. For me, these games still keep me pre-occupied more than current AAA games.

The 320x200 and 320x240 resolution graphics games are still very enjoyable even to this day. But this may be too crude for current gen gamers.

It is a wonder to see how the EGA artists managed to create very nice graphics with just 16-colors - those from Sierra, SSI, Microprose, etc.

I still spend weeks playing SSI's "Gold Box" games. And in these games, the graphics window is actullay the smallest, but the gameplay is very deep.

Full screen VGA graphics are also a sight to behold (at least for me). When Sierra came out with King's Quest V - it was one of the most breathtaking game at that time.

And even recently, I was playing the original GODS by Bitmap Brothers, and it has some of the best bitmapped 256-color VGA graphics.

All these have fantastic gameplay, and don't require photo-realistic graphics to immerse yourself.

 

[Eldrach]

The increase in fidelity is as much a push from the manufacturers as a push from the public.
When you eliminate the push to incorporate «the newest and best» features from the manufacturers, you can still get awesome looking games.
Look at Claire Obscure and Kingdom Come - they skipped Ray Tracing - the result was still two awesome looking games..that also ran well on older rigs.
Then we have an example of optimization - Cp2077 ran like a turd at launch - but over the years it’s transformed into a great game that runs well on even handhelds.
I think what we’re facing is that if a game tries to do -too much- at launch, they usually end up a mess.
No «right» answer here - but good discussion points

 

[alexnode]

I am happy with both stylised and photoreal games. No photorealism is needed for a game to be good, I like Minecraft, CP 2077, Chess... It's pretty problematic to do adjustments to a game with an extremely detailed photorealistic world, if you need to improve something structural you might have to spend weeks or months working on it.

 

[OortCloud]

I think maybe 2010 was pushing it - low-poly and pop-in were still pretty prevalent back then but the argument that they are 'good enough' certainly seems more true now.

 

[Vulcanproject]

By the PS4 generation visuals had become pretty nicely refined. I can happily play most PS4 games today and they look excellent.

As for Alan Wake itself, I felt the game looked really poor with Xbox 360 played on a HDTV. The image quality was awful, with the game running just 960 x 540, one of the lowest recorded native resolutions on those HD consoles of any game ever released. It was a blurfest. That resolution is much closer to SD 640 x 480 than it is to the base 1280 x 720 HD standard!

Remedy traded good image quality for a bunch of then high end effects, running at very poor framerates with lots of screen tear. It was not pretty at all.

The later PC release solved those very low image quality issues but this was two years later on GPUs with multiple times the performance of X360.

 

[ActualViking]

The first game I played was Pong and even though it hardly qualifies as having graphics (the ball was a squared block), it was still fun. Today graphics and sound is nothing like that, regardless it is gameplay that matters and I do feel that to little if made out of gameplay and that we are likely all missing out by focusing on graphics.
I try to look deeper when picking games, but even so I can get sold by graphics and not all that looks great is really fun. Every time we buy a game we vote with our feet, if we always go for the best graphics we tell developers it is where they must invest. It may even be, that not only does that mean less priority on game play at the big studios it may mean smaller studios simply give up since graphics cost lots of money - which is tragic.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

When Gears of War released on PC and I could jack the graphics up all the way, the graphics on the PC version just blew what the Xbox could do for the game right out of the water.

My younger brother had the game on Xbox and he said it looked great and there's no way the PC version could look at any better. So when he came over to visit I had the game set to medium settings on my PC and let him play, he then hooked up his Xbox and showed me the Xbox's capabilities and a visual comparison on my PC and his Xbox, they looked pretty spot on.

Then I went into the graphic settings and cranked everything to high/max and he couldn't believe the visual difference. He said it looks SO much better on PC than the Xbox. This alone got my brother hooked on PC gaming over consoles and he's never looked back.

As for graphics in games, you get a lot of games over the past 5-10 years pushing the graphical edges, but most of it is just crappy looking. I replayed through The Saboteur last year, a game released in 2009 and it looks great. Some things you can tell on it are certainly aged, such as face animations, but overall it's a beautiful game. There's no DLSS, no FG, no upscaling of any kind, no social media filtering (DLSS5), no RT, no PT and the game looks amazing and runs great.

Even with games starting to come out with RT and at the time having a high-end GPU (3080Ti), when I enabled RT to check games out, I wasn't impressed. I don't care about the shiny reflection in the puddle of water at my feet while I gaze into it at my avatar's reflection. I don't giveashit about it. These add-ons drag down performance or create new issues trying to reclaim the lost performance that it's all just a scam to say prettier graphics make a game better.....that's malarkey.

I don't need to see the world reflecting off a lake as Pegasus flies above me with it's wings opened and light fluffy clouds are scattered across the sky. I don't care. What I care about is the impact these "fancy" graphics have on actually playing a game without needing half a dozen different software programs running in tandem to try and get you back to a fluid, playable frame rate.

Give me a game with decent looking graphics without all the add-ons, a solid story and good controls and I'm set.

 

[dmatheson]

Well, until now, gaming has driven most technical advancement, and now that is changing, such that AI is inhabiting some (or a lot, if you look at the raw $$$) of that space. As an old-timer who worked in visual effects for years, it's an interesting paradigm shift. There is one thing that is clear: the gaming industry is having to compete for the attention of the tech dev, but AI will never be the showroom they walk their clients through; that will probably always be the art, at least as long as humans are the consumers.