Appeal to authority fallacy 101.
“You can’t have an opinion on this thing because the arbitrary authority has the only say on it.”
You can have an opinion, your’s is just childish. It’s pure speculation, and tainted with a desire to put others down. Why?
Come on, you are just being silly here. What’s any of this got to do with you completing your own games?
And can you describe how an extra million dollars towards environment art would earn back?
A higher budget doesn’t automatically equate to a higher profit, and especially not when everyone is just going to buy the game because it’s labeled “Pokemon”.
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And ad hominem…
@BIGTIMEMASTER you are usually a pretty chill person, but I’m done when the other person starts to throw insults.
Hopefully we can just move on from this next conversation, but I’m not interested in debate with someone who is just going to get nasty about it.
Have a good holiday break.
You’re entire thread is an insult to begin with. That’s what I’m telling you.
If you go around insulting people, you’ll have to back it up sometimes. Not that Nintendo, probably the most storied game making company in existence, needs to be defended from some random critic on the internet. I only say all this for your own benefit.
If you ever want to actually finish your games, you’d do well to look at what you could learn from the A team, rather than assume it’s a team run by morons because they didn’t do something you think is right.
It’s important to ask ourselves from time to time, “is what I think is true, actually true?”
Studying the teams who continually make hits - not just one hit wonders - is probably the surest way you have to learn about what actually works in the market. Any dumb kid can have something blow up once - but it takes proven methods to continually have success decade after decade.
Could there be some morons doing stupid stuff at nintendo? Sure. But is it more likely they, as a collective, know about 1,000,000 truths for every tiny notion that you have? Probably.
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And that’s fair, so I guess we are just disagreeing on how effective a bigger budget for environment would be.
From where I stand usually budgets (all budgets, not just games) work on a curve. The first bit of money you put in is super effective. Then has diminishing returns.
This game will probably pocket between $750 million to $2 billion internationally over its lifetime.
And yes, most of that will be from a core audience.
But even just one environment artist (~$100k a year) would have made a HUGE difference.
That’s a fraction of their earnings.
and of course, this work would have carry over to the next title, as well as increase the audience for the IP as a whole.
Every customer they win over could end up buying other games, watching their movies and shows, buying their toys, and of course getting a friend to do the same.
$100k is trivial on that regard.
im not reading or replying to you anymore on this thread.
this will be my last reply.
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And that is fine. A game doesn’t have to appeal to anyone’s demands.
But there’s no place to use that “free pass”. There’s no gatekeeper, no quality standard and no high definition police. You are also not that gatekeeper. And random people online aren’t gatekeepers either. Anyone can make anything. And that is also fine.
Sure, there would be people who have different demands, but they are not the target audience in the first place and they have an option not to buy the game.
Also, why do you care?
No. I’m just responding to what I interpreted the main post as being which is that this is a result of incompetence on the part of the company. Having had projects affected by the bean counters I believe this is very much on purpose.
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How? Why?
Don’t you understand the difference between speculation, and something that can be measured and demonstrated?
And you don’t think they have environment artist? Who made the environments? Have you made environments like that? Do you know what the work entails? Can you show use anything that demonstrates what you know on the subject?
Or are you just making things up?
Let’s say you spent $100k and earned $1 mil. That is a good investment, as you increased your money ten fold.
Let’s say you spent $100 mil and earned $102 mil. That is an extremely poor result a good reason to fire person responsible for the product. Even though you earned more money than in the first case.
With current economics, inflation is constant and over time money loses value. That creates incentive to spend it. So whatever you invest should generate MORE value than you’ve lost due to inflation.
At the moment US inflation is 8.5% per year, and if we assume 2 year development cycle for that hypothetical 100 million g ame, by the end of year two, 100 mil will have purchasing power of $83 722 500. So by getting 102 million revenue (not profit), you’ve lost 14.6 million worth of purchasing power and are actually in red despite getting more money on paper. And that’s before taxes.
Therefore at some point it becomes inefficient to throw more money at the project, because percentage of the money you earn becomes too low. Basically, if you earn amount equal to inflation, then you’re gaining nothing in terms of purchasing power and are merely in black, staying afloat.
So it is a good idea to spend as little as possible to get as much as possible in return. And not keep throwing more money at a project.
Speaking of Arceus, they sold 13 milion copies. Definitely a success.
here’s something you can consider: a rewrite of the original thread:
New Pokemon game questions:
“The new pokemon game, which apparently was made by the same team as made Zelda BOTW, looks like they cut out a lot of modern graphics features.
Despite that, games selling, which is a surprise to me because it looks dated, graphically speaking. People say the gameplay is a return to form, etc, but I wonder, wouldn’t more investment into graphics, at least to keep it up to par with peer games in the genre, be worthwhile?
Please share thoughts”
If I read that thread, I wouldn’t have anything to say about it, but I bet you’d get a lot of interesting discussion from people who’ve had to make tough choices about these matters in their own projects. I don’t think anybody really cares to read what sounds like a 12 year old game critics flame review.
A $60 game only makes about $5 for the developer. Adding a single artist at that cost would mean the developer would have to sell 20,000 copies for every year they are on the project.
honestly, because it’s puzzling.
It seems strange that such a massive title would do such a bare minimum effort on the environment.
The title of this thread caught my attention as I tend to do fairly in-depth studies of games in this series. There’s a lot you can learn from them.
I think a big misconception here is that the games looking bad is an “art problem”. That seems highly unlikely to me. What is more likely is that the engine they used wasn’t quite capable of achieving the visuals they desired given the strict performance budget they required. And by the time they realized this, it was too late to switch to something different. And the kinds of people who can resolve these issues efficiently are actually quite rare in the industry, because it takes a lot of technical knowledge and skill in areas that make people’s head spin.
If you want to try and be one of those people capable of solving such problems, perhaps look into Unity’s ECS. The more you dig into it, the more you will learn how truly technical and challenging this stuff can be.
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Even with the consideration of inflation and paying publishers, it just seems odd to me.
and I do need to say this again, I’m not the only one saying that’s about the environment.
Lots of reviewers have commented on it.
this is a good point, I could definitely see them being entrenched into the system they have, and realizing that wasn’t a cost effective solution towards the end of development.
They decided that there’s no point to aim higher, so they didn’t. Users are happy, the title is a commercial success, so the decision was right.
That’s not “bare minimum”.
It looks like a perfectly reasonable decision to me, as this aesthetic appeals to many.
And that doesn’t exactly matter. Lots of people not liking something does not mean they are right or should be listened to.
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Well, there you go. I’ve always suspected that there are really only a small number of people that are truly impressed by fancy little technical graphics features. I think the most important thing, by far, is the overall composition at a very broad level- and that aspect of the game looks very good.
Anyway, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It just looks like a regular game to me. I mean it’s really nothing impressive, but at the same time I’m not seeing this outrageous level of incompetence that requires some explanation.
I’m pretty sure the game visual style must be based on the graphics on the pokemon cards (which is just cartoon-painted flat colors if I recall). If it had a lot of surface details and material properties then that would ruin the look.
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Well from looking at it, my main issues with how it looks is the color palette which seems a bit off putting (I skimmed a large gameplay video, colors seemed very desaturated and leaning towards purples, which I don’t like) and some misc stuff like weird sky choices (brightness seems off, is generally not pleasing).
I don’t see big technical issues. I mean sure, the LODs could be pushed further away and the textures could look a bit sharper, but I don’t see that improving the graphics that much.
Whatever issues I personally have with the art style are there even on the thumbnails. I think the game looks fine btw, I don’t think the graphics are a major draw for the game, but they look fine.
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