Thread by @delaneykingrox

I think a lot of what I am seeing in attacks against my #gamedev threads can be described as 'hardware elitism'.
That arrogant attitude of 'yeah but that isn't a problem for me' (because you are working/playing on expensive high end spec hardware).

We always push for better graphics, more detail, cooler lighting, crisper textures and awesomererer particle systems.

And that is great.

However, all systems have finite resources.

I don't care about those people who can afford ultra high end machines anywhere near as much as I care for people who cannot afford them.

And I respect artists who can do amazing things with limited resources and can really push the graphics for those low spec players.

I am impressed by a game that has killer visuals on a low end platform.

I am not impressed by a game that wastes huge resources simply because it can on the expensive platforms.

You should be pushing graphics EVEN FURTHER rather than wasting them.

I especially do not respect artists who don't learn their craft, and insist others take the resulting burden.

Others being their team members, and their customers.

That smacks of supreme arrogance and elitism.

And it robs players of the amazing graphic experiences they could have.

The vast majority of modern games can be played on much lower spec machines than they are built for. By which I mean, the gameplay itself would run just fine if the graphics had been designed for the earlier machines.

This is different to just cranking down the graphics settings in the options menu, making draw distances shorter for grass, turning down the texture resolution and so forth.

If you take a badly used 4k texture and downsize it to a 512x512 texture it isn't gonna look as good as a well used 512x512.

This is where the craft side comes in, and ultimately a skilled artist who knows what they are doing can really squeeze out incredible results.

Robert Rodriguez calls this "the money hose". You can fix a problem two ways: You can be smart, or you can hose it away with money.

Same with game resources.

So, great, I am happy for you having a PS50000 but I will be over with the lovely people enjoying their switch games and enjoying their steam library on the PC they could afford five years ago.

Support my free lessons by shouting me the price of the sort of coffee my worst local cafe makes.

ko-fi.com/dellak

Because I can't afford rent let alone a play station.

Patreon takes forever to pay out. :/