This article is sensationalizing a non-issue. It reads like the author went to the convention with the story already written and then tried (and failed) to find people that supported the premise.
As someone who attended GDC for the full week this year, I can tell you that not a single conversation I had or panel I attended discussed the RAM shortage. I’m sure this topic arose in some circles, especially anything related to the timing or cost of next gen hardware. As a professional AAA game designer of 25 years and an occasional game director, this does not affect the way that the games themselves are made. Games on consoles already have their limitations, games on PC should always be (but not always are) optimized to work across a broad spectrum of hardware configurations, with the minimum spec being the lowest system possible without sacrificing playability.
Even people interviewed in the article are saying the same thing:
“Does this affect us? No,” Subotnick said. “We’re making games on as many platforms as we can to delight consumers. Could it impact us? Sure. If there’s less devices for people to get their hands on, then we potentially have less consumers to sell to. But right now, I’d argue that there are plenty of consumers with plenty of devices for us to sell these games to. Where it could impact us is, sure, we will have to make decisions around next-gen platforms when they tell us that it’s time to bring content to them. And if they are threatened to have a total addressable market that is viable from a business standpoint, sure that’s a business challenge. But right now all I’d be doing is speculating on a bunch of hypotheticals.”
So journalism per usual nowadays? Can’t tell you the last mainstream article I’ve read that didn’t read like they had a very preconceived notion they wanted to convey
As a professional AAA game designer of 25 years and an occasional game director
What games have you worked on?
The media has taught me to hate the words could, should, and would when used in headlines but this is probably true for once.
The title is a little more dramatic than the body — in fact, the article is mostly more of a “yeah, this is something that we’ve seen before, more-or-less” take — but it is interesting to get some actual perspectives on impact from the developer side on what the likely changes are. It does also confirm that some studios are working on reducing the memory requirements for their upcoming games.
Indie games are more important than ever.
You mean because indie games tend not to have high minimum memory requirements, like?
For the most part they don’t. And it is only one reason why Indie games are important. The other is that the games often tend to be cheaper, sometimes more innovative, doesn’t try to put micrtransactions in everything and so on.
Could? Should. This is obvious. Only AAA execs don‘t realize it yet because they think cloud gaming will come to the rescue and be adapted on a major scale any minute. I am less optimistic. For AAA that is. This is the year of indie games… again.
So something good might come from all this potentially?
According to the article nothing is changing
such useful articles they make
deleted by creator
The gamers I surround myself with were playing Slay the Spire 2 last week. I hope more people play indie games which don’t have crazy system requirements.
Power gamers/multiplayer gamers who chase after AAA gaming and buying brand new games - I hope you guys consider looking beyond what the big companies are doing.
If you target for the Steam Deck you will do just fine.
I think that you have two factors here. GDC isn’t specific to PC gaming, and additionally, a lot of titles will see both PC and console releases.
For a game that is intended to see only a PC release, my guess is that that that might affect system requirements of the game.
For games that see console releases, things like “will fewer people have consoles” — because current-gen consoles are very unlikely to change spec, just price, is how this manifests itself. “Is the Playstation 6 going to be postponed” is a big deal if you were going to release a game for that hardware.
The indie surge will continue, but for most AAA devs its just going to be investor pandering ultra high fidelity stuff. Which is kinda whatever for me personally?
All video games in the future will be PINBALL. Pure mechanical games that don’t need memory beyond keeping a single number (the score). 😤
Digital scoreboards? No-one will have the cash for that kind of RAM in future, Kolanaki. Going to have to go old-school for keeping our pinball scores.
GTA6 release is going to be hilarious. people are gonna be piiiiiiiiiissed
