[GTAO] Obsoletionist Thoughts on GTAV/O, Consoles, & Gaming Overall

[Rabid Vulpix]

 

Maybe opinion wise people you talk to say or act like console gaming is on the demise, but it's not.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that; I was trying to comment that it seems there's a large populous of young people using their devices to game, whereas in prior years consoles were really the only option.

 

At school, I get why kids play on their phones. It's really the only option. But at home, my own kids often forfeit the console in favor of their phones.

 

I just asked them why, to get a verified answer. One of my sons says because he doesn't want to go all the way downstairs and it takes to long to set up.

The other son said he just likes goofing around for a while, but he'll probably jump on the XBox later – not so much to play, but to chat with his buddies.

 

When I first got GTAIII for the original XBox, there were no distractions. You put the disc in, fired it up, and hit "play."

There was no complicated Home lobby, shopping options, other games to try, or the thousand other things that get in the way of just playing a game.

 

I've owned many consoles, including Pong when we got it in the mid-1970's (yes, I'm that old!).

And whether it was the Apple ][ computer, TRS-80, TI-99/4A, Commodore64, Atari 2600, Nintendo, Sega, or others... it was always about the games, period.

 

Now, I fire up the XB1 and if I bump the controller with my knee while I'm sitting down, the next thing I know I just launched Netflix and I'm watching The Twilight Zone.

 

Anyhow, my point was that I didn't mean to say consoles were on the decline, only that the interest in mobile gaming has caught on to a younger generation who can't go without their phones.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

Agreed, & it's mainly on how they are raised these days. Cheap phones & apps offer them the peaks in laziness, as they grow up & actually make money they'll invest in more in-depth gaming platforms like consoles & full scale PCs. When I was a kid I didn't have those mobile games, I had Attack Pack toys & a Creepy Crawlers maker. I'm sure I would've been a mobile game nut too yet would've grown out of them just as quickly once more prominent & capable gaming was available to me. Mobile games are like scooters & skateboards for kids, until they or their parents buy them their first car.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Foreverpast

[Blasterman4EVER]

I don't think console gaming is in decline at all. Maybe you're seeing a spike in interest in certain cheap/free to play laptop games that don't require high end graphics cards.

Plus, you're talking about kids in relation to an adult game that is 4 and a half years old. Yeah, they're fickle, they've moved on, they don't care, but of course they have. They're kids.

I'm just not following the narrative that console gaming is on the decline. I'd say the opposite.

[Willy A. Jeep]

(snipped)

Ah, yes, my ignorance precedes me. All of my experience and knowledge of game engines can be summed up as anecdotal stories, a few days reading up on Source engine tutorials, rudimentary modding of New Vegas, and writing basic HTML "visual novel" style games. I don't know how the electricity goes from the outlet to the power unit to the graphics processor to being a representation of light reflecting off a room, to a mirror, and back into the room. What does the process entail? I assume it's a little more complex than calling a texture from memory when the display is repeating the scene.

 

My "everything is secretly a square" line is... probably a little too artful for practical purposes. I meant to make a jab at how the collision meshes aren't the same as the visual mesh - how an "organic" shape, like crumbling rebar or a tree, isn't really that shape when collisions come into play. They've certainly improved with time, but going and playing New Vegas, it can be painfully obvious how mismatched what the player sees is from what the game is truly displaying. The bullets hit air! My arrow is floating half a foot from that tree!

 

Sure, and i don't mean for the game to be unrealistic (though I'd personally vote that Fallout 4 is more stylized than Life is Strange, ahah, and neither is particularly realistic in looks or world), but for the level of technology and "use" we're at now, I just don't see why folks demand the best of the best (whatever that may be) when what is all around them can be fun and perfect as-it-is. For a team of developers, working on a game, with millions of fans waiting for a product they can play and have fun with, reflections might seem like a nice touch, but not an important one. Not when even that, say, day's work of implementation could be spent on other, more important details. Are physics more important than a mirror? Are mirrors more important than the texture tiling? Is the texture tiling more important than the way the player's guns look on the drawing board?

 

I still maintain my stance on it, I guess. It's a lot of levels - from the developer's time and effort and money, to the style of game, to the players' bias - and I doubt I have a full, unbiased understanding of it. Though when we're getting into this sort of argument, I wonder if bias is a useful tool. It's certainly part of what is being discussed. Hm.

[Fireboy769]

Wait, so the crazy bastards at Konami were actually right about Mobile Gaming?

 

 

Jesus christ we're all f*cked.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Fireboy769

[Ayylien]

(1) Now, literally no one talks about GTAO, anymore. One student said, "it's old and too hard to make enough money to buy all the good stuff."

I had to agree and could see it from his perspective.

 

(2) Their game of choice for the past few months was Rules of Survival, which most students played on their phones, all over the school.

Now, they're all playing Fortnite on their laptops.

 

(3) Recently, we talked about how a large populous has become dispossessed from the console experience and prefer their laptops or phones when gaming.

Sure, they still log on to their consoles, but said they spend more time on devices, these days, than their consoles.

 

(4) I asked what would changes that, their reply was, "maybe a new console that wasn't a shopping and social media hub and just stuck to gaming."

I'm not sure that's the answer, but I got the idea.

 

(5) Prior to the next gen console releases and GTAV/O, I remember the Wii being the hot console. Now, barely anyone mentions Nintendo.

The whole PS4 vs. XB1 debate has worn down into a dull, "meh."

 

(6) So, I'm just curious as to what other's thoughts are on the GTA franchise, starting with GTAV/O, as well as consoles, altogether, becoming obsolete?

Will the future of devices, like phones, iPads, tablets, laptops, or some unrealized device potentially be the future of gaming?

 

(1) It was always going to die, the only people who are consistently playing are younger children and the 'extreme' fans of the game. I seriously don't know why anyone would still want to play this game 5 years after release on a regular basis. I think a large section of this forum (myself included) don't even play that regularly any more and just login and check out updates when they release. Due to the nature of this website being basically a fansite for the series, it will always attract discussion and said 'extreme' fans. If you frequent this forum you may have the illusion that the game is more popular than it actually is.

 

(2) I don't game on my mobile so I've never heard of that game, but I have heard of (and played) Fortnite. It's an OK game, not as good as PUBG though in my opinion. People who are casual gamers will tend to just play what's popular (and these battle royale type games are extremely popular at the moment) and what their friends play, not necessarily what they enjoy. It's probably the same reason why so many of those people picked up and dropped GTA V.

 

(3) Again, the really casual players (for example, your mother) was always going to turn on her phone and play some puzzle game rather than load up something like DOOM on a console. This is where it does get more complicated, you need to ask the mobile players if they played on console before moving over to their mobile. For most of these players (again, your mother) it will be 'no'. So it's not a market consoles have lost, they simply never had it to begin with. The Wii did pull in a large chunk of that casual market, but that's only really because mobile phones as we know them today weren't really around back then.

 

(4) I'm not sure what to make of this, really. The PS4 social media options aren't at all intrusive, I honestly forget they are there. I'd even forgive you if you weren't aware that they even existed. This is simply a non-issue. I can't speak for the XB1 because I haven't played one in quite some time. The store on the PS4 isn't no more intrusive than say Steam. Mobile is considerably worse for social media and shopping. This really does confuse me.

 

(5) I find that a little odd, since the Switch is selling like hotcakes at the moment. The last time I checked on sales, it was outselling both the PS4 and XB1. I'm not sure what you teach and what ages but maybe your class just aren't interested in gaming in general, I could guarantee that if you walked into a tech class and asked, 90% of them would own a gaming console and prefer to play on that over mobile. Everyone I know in my age bracket plays on a console or PC, and I wouldn't exactly call any of them 'hardcore' gamers, they are fairly casual. As for the console wars argument, it's dead because Sony practically won it at launch. The XB1 offers literally nothing and that was apparent from day 1.

 

(6) While it's possible that the next GTA may not be popular, consoles will always have a market, they will never become obsolete. Tablets and the modern phone have been around for 10 years now, it's not like it's something new nor have they impacted sales on console gaming.

 

 

 

Edited March 14, 2018 by Ayylien

[flexcreator]

I don't know how the electricity goes from the outlet to the power unit to the graphics processor to being a representation of light reflecting off a room, to a mirror, and back into the room. What does the process entail? I assume it's a little more complex than calling a texture from memory when the display is repeating the scene.

 

You don't have to know anything about electricity since it it's a low level details that can differ from one manufacturer to another. That's why we have graphical API's like DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan. They serve as an interface, a mid-layer between the game engine and the video driver.

 

I assume it's a little more complex than calling a texture from memory when the display is repeating the scene.

 

 

 

It's all about the color. In the end of the day, you have to calculate the color of the pixel. That the job of the programmer to do that, and he has a lot of creative freedom. The light reflections are typically calculated by pixel shaders, you are selecting the initial color of the pixel ("texel") from the texture. Then you calculate the light using the light sources, the set of normals in the mesh and/or the data in the normal map. Then you add the light color to the initial texture color. It's just a math.

 

The light reflections (like you see on metallic parts) has nothing to do with the mirror reflections. The mirror-like reflections are not light based (even the curved mirrors), it's a pre-rendered scene from another perspective. It's not always accurate and not always represent all the objects in the scene. Especailly, if you have water reflections and the polished metal ones. They are typically not that detailed.

 

I can understand and forgive that. But mirror hanging on the wall is another beast, lol xD

 

 

 

I meant to make a jab at how the collision meshes aren't the same as the visual mesh - how an "organic" shape, like crumbling rebar or a tree, isn't really that shape when collisions come into play.

 

Back in the past the collision data was a form of a tree of boxes. You have a box that surrounds the object fully, then you have a set of child boxes inside this box, every box have a set of smaller child boxes and the hierarchy goes deeper until you have a tree of boxes that represent the shape fiully. When the collision occures, the rough checks are performed first. You are checking if two higher boxes intersect each other, then you go deeper and perform more accurate checks until you hit the deepest and smallest boxes in the hierarchy. This approach allows to save a lot of processing resources. I don't know how the collision data is represented now, but I'm assuming the the divide-and-conquer idea didn't simply go away, it's too prevelent in games. It will all start with a rough checks, that's why the collision data may appear as a rough box in editor programs.

 

The Skyrim mesh collisions works pretty well for the regular slow-moving objects like boats.

 

The bullets hit air! My arrow is floating half a foot from that tree!

 

 

Keep in mind that the you can't compare the projectile collision with a regular object collisions. Projectiles have collisions at high speed, so the collisions have to be calculated by another set of allgorithms that have nothing in common with regular slow-paced ones. I know that projectiles in Bethesda games don't follow the regular physics. Also, Bethesda licensed the Havok physics engine, but I have doubts that it's processing the projectile physics as well. They might have DIY logic for that.

Edited March 14, 2018 by flexcreator

[nido997]

GTAO is an Open world game , plus it offers so many new fun opportunities (especially with the Editor , you can create whatever you like , from races to LTSs ), and because R* was constantly updating the game with a new DLC every quarter, millions still have interests in this game years after the release ...

GTAO will be (luckily) around for several years , just keep on updating the game , R* ....

as for consoles , i don´t care much about them , I always prefer the old fashioned PC ...

Edited March 14, 2018 by nido997

[DentureDynamite]

GTA Online keeps my interest only because of the work that Leslie Benz and his original team put into it.

 

They built an amazing open world with accessibility to cars, aircraft, boats, buildings, etc.--more than any other game I've played. Almost anything you could see you could go and pretty much climb onto or explore, so for me, that freedom of exploration and choice to do whatever you wanted is huge. And they did it all with amazing detail given the hardware limits of the day.

 

But those initial efforts and ongoing overall vision of Los Santos as a living, breathing, interactive multiplayer world has arguably been ditched for the sake of laziness and greed.

 

And that's what bugs me the most; if I ever leave GTAO, it will be for that reason. It won't be the cheaters, or some obnoxious PvP players, or because some vehicle or weapon I wanted wasn't in the game.

 

It will be because what Leslie Benz believed a game should be about (make a quality gaming experience FIRST, and the money naturally follows) is not shared by current Rockstar leadership--who believe the exact opposite.

 

If you have a "cash cow", you need to look after it well as it ages: feed it, clean it, give it attention; care for it.

 

Milk it dry and see what happens.

 

The same thing happened to Commodore-Amiga; long-term it wouldn't have excelled because of industry changes (waning proprietary hardware/custom chips), but it was basically milked dry because of Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould.

 

BTW, if you haven't already read Yan2295's thoughts on GTA Online, it's well worth the read. It's no wonder he's lost so much interest in the game these days...

Edited March 14, 2018 by DentureDynamite

[Jimbatron]

Reading some of the more recent responses has led to me having some additional thoughts.

 

Back to my original point I can see gaming on mobile phones creaming off some casual game players, but I don't think GTA style open world gaming will become obsolete any time soon. In fact, it could get more exciting and more appealing as technology allows such worlds to become more sophisticated and interactive. It's impressive what you can put on a phone theses days, but what PCs and consoles can do will always be ahead.

 

I think the point has been rightly made that the people regularly on this site are more likely to be hardcore fans, and therefore not representative. However, the fact GTA has allegedly attracts its biggest ever player base online with the DD update suggests it is in decent health for a 4 year old title.

 

I would liken the movements towards mobile gaming to a similar trend in the TV industry. YouTube and the like clearly have stolen viewing time away from traditional shows overall. However top shows, such as HBOs game of Thrones, have continued to break records both in terms of viewing and the amount invested in producing them. The demand for quality hasn't changed - and that overrides the impact of more casual content being more readily available. It's the mediocre stuff that takes the hit. And I think it's exactly the same story with mobile gaming versus consoles and PCs. I believe AAA titles and the market for them will continue to thrive.

 

The worry is of course that R* and T2 get lazy and going after easy money. A warning from history might be Valve who decided it wasn't worth developing Half Life 3 when money could be made from steam with much less investment. However, this is a slightly different situation. Whilst there is no denying Shark Cards are easy money, even the most ignorant T2 exec must surely realise the current income stream won't last forever and only exists because they developed a high quality product in the first place. They'll also be aware that GTA V was a huge commercial success and paid back many times over from the initial sales in the few weeks before Online had even launched. It's hard to imagine how anyone would see it as less than madness to stray from such a winning formula for GTA VI. Sure they will need to evolve it a bit, but there's no reason to suspect revolution is deemed necessary or desirable.

 

I've always thought the SP versus Online debate was a massive red herring. Sure not everyone liked V, but I think that was largely a question of personal taste as to whether people thought the story was good or not. I don't believe that was influenced in anyway by Online. There is one important factor that both SP and Online have in common, that they both need for success. That's the open world, it's scale and magnificence, and the players ability to interact with it. If that is nailed, it's relatively easy to add new content to it, and fix things that might be initially lacking. The new heists for example certainly reinvigorated my interest. It may be disappointing there have been no SP expansions, but I still expect GTA VI will have a substantial story mode.

 

My general perception is that R* and T2 do generally play the long game. Strauss Zelnick gets a lot of flak, possibly justified. However I do think back to the fact when GTA V was delayed from their fiscal 12/13 it meant T2 missed their earnings target for shareholders. That sort of thing can get a CEO the sack. It therefore takes a certain amount of balls to sanction a delay. Many other publishers have rushed stuff through, and ruined franchises in the process.

 

I therefore take the RDR 2 delay as actually a good sign, if it it means they are sticking with the long game. But ultimately, when we see the game that will be the best barometer of the direction they are heading in. If they continue to produce cutting edge quality obscelesence will be as far away as ever. My only question is whether they are now leaving to big a gap between GTAs. V is nearly the same age now as IV was when the former launched, and yet there is barely a whisper of VI. If they leave it too long, the fan base may well move on to something else.