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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zardnaar" data-source="post: 7226308" data-attributes="member: 6716779">Video games are in a funny spot right now. Consoles and PCs are more powerful than they have ever been, but games are arguably getting worse. Consider the Metacritic top games of all time list.<a href="http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/all/filtered" target="_blank">http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/all/filtered</a>Not a distinct lack of Xbox One/PS4 and recent PC titles in there? I would argue that the golden age of gaming peaked somewhere around the PS2 through to Xbox 360 era with help from the other consoles of those eras. The PS2 for example was loaded with so many AAA+ titles, right now the Xboxone has a handful and the PS4 is not that much better off.  Nintendo can consistently produce a good Zelda or Mario game but those games are not for everyone. In the 16 bit era you could have a killer app game with a handful of programmers. Something like Assassins Creed Black Flag cost 100 million to produce and required 8 studios. How about a nice big sandbox world for a game that is a critical and financial hit and is one of the best if not the best console game ATM? Grand Theft Auto V apparently cost in excess of 250 million dollars which is around 10 years of D&D revenue (good years as well) and that is revenue not profit. Hmmn how about an MMO, Star Wars The Old Republic 200 million+ erm darn. This is why the last great D&D game was arguably in the 90's while the last good D&D game was over a decade ago while the last great d20 game was 2002's Knights of the Old Republic. CDs, DVD,s BLue Ray can all hold huge amounts of data but someone still has to take the time to write all of it. Not all games cost 100+ million dollars these days, the Witcher 3 comes in at a reasonable 80 million dollars (around twice the size of the RPG industry).  I did start a thread about 16 bit graphics (a'la Star Dew Valley) for a D&D title as you need something to build on and you are better off having a high scoring indie game that might shift a million units than some piece of crap like Sword Coast Legends which more or less flopped and bankrupted the studio.  Something like Pillars of Eternity still costs around 4 million which used to be the price of an average PS2 game. IN terms of graphics I think that is the best they can hope for a D&D game and they used the Pillars Engine for the Tides of Numenera game IIRC.  Basically you can't afford a decent D&D game by a competent developer. I would also settle for a competent console engineer (360 red ring of death, PS4 controller connection issues grumle grumble).</blockquote>

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