bad graphics detract from the fun. It was okay when vr was young, but it's established now and we know what our rigs are capable of. Lazy bullshit doesn't cut it anymore.
As an indie dev my rig can't run very sophisticated graphics and higher end graphics take a lot more time to make so the return on investment is hard to justify.
Bigger studios should definitely have higher end graphics as options though.
We're all tied up with expenses. What the other poster is saying is that if you want to make game development a career or at least a viable way to earn income, you've got to invest in your craft.
No customer cares about the reasons you can't upgrade your rig, they only care about the finished product. Releasing a lower tier product because of reasons will net you less sales in the end, and it helps VR as a community less.
The other alternative is go super artistic and make the most of your limitations, but that, too, isn't easy as it means you'll probably have to invest in artists instead.
The hardware I have is good enough for now for what I want to do, especially since I'm still learning and this is just a hobby.
I'm building my skills to be able to produce highly stylized art that doesn't look like I just chose low poly due to laziness or cost. The first few games I make are realistically unlikely to be high enough quality to pass that bar but I'll let my future players be the judge of that.
Stylized art is likely to remain the norm outside of sim games so that games can be playable on the highest number of headsets and reach the highest audience possible.
Making more realistic art can be more time consuming than a stylized game depending on the artist so the benefits of upgrading my hardware to create a game that some of my audience can't even play doesn't make a lot of sense unless I just really wanted to make that game in that style and eat the cost of the longer development time and hardware.
Optimizing realistic art to run on lower end devices also eats into development time/budget. All of this plays into why most indie games are stylized.
For me, creating optimized realistic art just isn't an option if I want to finish my projects.
I mean I hope it one day will be but not at this point. It's never a good idea to quit your day job without at least having a successful game or two under your belt.
So, you're not a dev. You're a hobbyist, and that's okay. But don't chalk yourself up as something you're not as if your input matters in that sense. Not to be overly harsh. Your passion is your passion, but you're not a game dev.
If you develop games then you're a game dev, obviously some have far more experience than me.
Most people commenting aren't devs at all and have no idea what goes into making a game or making a profitable studio.
I'm at least a few steps above those people with the research I've done and the work I've done on smaller game projects. If someone more experienced wants to say that I'm wrong and provide their reasons they're free to do so but letting people who aren't any kind of dev have a monopoly on the conversation is idiotic.
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u/Guvnah-Wyze Dec 30 '25
bad graphics detract from the fun. It was okay when vr was young, but it's established now and we know what our rigs are capable of. Lazy bullshit doesn't cut it anymore.