Of course, but you try justifying an increased budget for writing or a bunch of smaller titles to a publisher whose only qualification is that they have a lot of money.
Or you can go the Todd Howard route and promise endless proc-generated gameplay, so that they barely even have to pay writers, the game will write itself!
Or you can just show them a pretty picture, describe an action sequence that a 13 year old boy would love.
Or even better, you can point to another successful release and just go “Yeah, we’re gonna do that again. It’s 99% done already so we can do it really cheaply”
When was this? Even in the 90s, realism chasing was a thing. It’s easier to market graphical fidelity than good writing.
Isn’t Minecraft one of the biggest games on the planet? RimWorld simply awesome. Stardew selling millions…
Chasing top graphics hasn’t always been the route to success.
Of course, but you try justifying an increased budget for writing or a bunch of smaller titles to a publisher whose only qualification is that they have a lot of money.
Or you can go the Todd Howard route and promise endless proc-generated gameplay, so that they barely even have to pay writers, the game will write itself!
Or you can just show them a pretty picture, describe an action sequence that a 13 year old boy would love.
Or even better, you can point to another successful release and just go “Yeah, we’re gonna do that again. It’s 99% done already so we can do it really cheaply”
There was a point in time when better graphics meant progress since the expectation of good story wasn’t there at all.
Super Mario never had a great narrative. Unreal tournament 99 was mostly a tech demo that blew up.
Few games like Baldurs Gate took it and ran, but they’re a few.
Until 2002, narrative wasn’t the key to a great game, and it was already 20 years into the industry
Games like Sam and max, beneath a steelsky, it came from the desert, Dune, Darkseed, there are so many counter examples to your claim
Look at Betrayal At Krondor, amazing story that rivals and beats most fantasy today.
They were chasing realistic graphics at the time, but not graphical realism, such as puddles that react when stepped in, and so forth.
Of course it was due to the limitations back then, so they had to focus on polished gameplay.
Which maybe was a good thing after all…