The New York Times:

When millions are happy to play old games with outdated graphics — including Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2009) and Fortnite (2017) — it creates challenges for studios that make blockbuster single-player titles. The industry’s audience has slightly shrunk for the first time in decades. Studios are rapidly closing and sweeping layoffs have affected more than 20,000 employees in the past two years, including more than 2,500 Microsoft workers.

Many video game developers built their careers during an era that glorified graphical fidelity. They marveled at a scene from The Last of Us: Part II in which Ellie, the protagonist, removes a shirt over her head to reveal bruises and scrapes on her back without any technical glitches.

But a few years later, costly graphical upgrades are often barely noticeable.

As is so often said that it’s become a meme: “I Want Shorter Games With Worse Graphics and I’m Not Kidding”.

Nintendo owned the last few years of hardware sales with the same chipset of a lower end smartphone. My favorite game of the last year was Balatro, which is closer in graphics and execution to Tetris, versus anything triple-A.

I mean, how ridiculous has this become? Here’s another excerpt from this great article:

In 2007, the first Assassin’s Creed provided more than 2.5 hours of footage for a fan edit of the game’s narrative. As the series progressed, so did Ubisoft’s taste for cinema. Like many studios, it increasingly leaned on motion-capture animators who could create scenes using human actors on soundstages. A fan edit of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which was released in 2020, lasted about 23 hours — longer than two seasons of “Game of Thrones.”

It’s too much, folks. Make games as games. We will all be better for it.