It’s official: With powerful new tools like the Unreal Engine and other advanced game engines, AAA video-game titles have officially crossed the uncanny valley. They look and feel more real than ever.
But at what cost? To one of the industry’s most respected OG developers, it means less AAA games to play, more out-of-control budgets and flops, and less interactivity than ever before.
This reaction came after footage from the highly anticipated 2025 Captain America title “Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra” was released online:
Hi rez of Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra scene. pic.twitter.com/LBxAVrNcLF
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) March 20, 2024
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Short, yes — but sweet, and amazingly lifelike. The game is being helmed by Amy Hennig, the “Uncharted” writer and director, according to The Verge. The title was showcased last month at the Game Developer’s Conference by Epic, which makes the Unreal Engine, because “Marvel 1943” is showcasing the latest version of the engine, Unreal 5.4.
A more robust story trailer in late March further showcased the graphical prowess of the game.
It’s being developed and published by Skydance New Media and will feature an “ensemble” cast of Marvel superheroes, most notably Captain America and Black Panther.
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This footage got some pretty solid plaudits for the graphics, as one might expect:
Awesome graphics 😳
— MedSciInsights 💙 💙 (@Health__Vibes) March 20, 2024
This is directly from film. Wow
— Andrew 🤩 (@BatKingAte) March 20, 2024
THIS. Is next generation. Sheeeeeesh 🔥
— FaZe YourRAGE (@YourRAGEz) March 20, 2024
Is that a game?? It can’t be
— Lilly ❤️ Brooks (@LillyBrooks_luv) March 20, 2024
However, count Mark “Grummz” Kern among the unimpressed. Kern was the former team lead for MMORPG “World of Warcraft” and, while he admitted it looked good, he warned that a focus on hyper-realistic graphics could lead to less AAA games with less gameplay in them than ever before.
“It’s impressive what Unreal can do,” he wrote in an X post shortly after the footage debuted last month.
“But I feel the focus on realistic graphics and games that play more like movies is the wrong direction. Out of control budgets and team sizes with reduced gameplay/interactivity focus in AAA.”
It’s impressive what Unreal can do.
But I feel the focus on realistic graphics and games that play more like movies is the wrong direction.
Out of control budgets and team sizes with reduced gameplay/interactivity focus in AAA. https://t.co/JDCs5hzl9c
— Grummz (@Grummz) March 20, 2024
Indeed, as Game Developer noted in a December 2022 article, the ballooning cost of producing a top-flight title had risen to the point where it was on par with some of the most expensive films coming out of Hollywood.
“It cost $174m to make ‘Cyberpunk 2077.’ Normally development budgets are tightly guarded secrets, but in this case we know because CD Projekt Red published the total cost of the project in an official post-mortem following the game’s disastrous launch in 2020,” Game Developer noted.
“Cyberpunk’s development was troubled by everything from unrealistic hype to overwork of development staff, but one thing that didn’t attract much attention was the huge cost of the project. Development budgets of upwards of $150m have become unremarkable for modern AAA games — and this actually greatly understates the total cost, which can easily reach twice that number once marketing is taken into account.”
Indeed, a report by Omdia cited by Game Developer found that the typical AAA game could cost up to $300 million to produce, with half of that being marketing and half being development.
Meanwhile, a typical high-profile mobile title might cost $50 million — but only a fraction of that is on development. Almost all of the money goes toward marketing the game.
“The core driver of cost increases is fundamental: diminishing returns on improvements in graphics hardware. Every subjective step up in graphics quality requires a greater increase in raw rendering power than the last,” Game Developer reported.
“But while manufacturers have done an impressive job of maintaining an exponential rate of improvement in raw hardware performance, human effort does not scale so easily. Vastly bigger and more detailed games are now possible, but require far more work to create. This process is now approaching a tipping point where costs have begun to accelerate alarmingly.”
And what happens? We end up with games that look nice, but are bug-ridden when there’s actually gameplay and not just cinematic cutscenes or quick-time events.
The gaming experience becomes a bloated, improved version of the full-motion video games of the early 1990s, which took advantage of new video cards and CD-ROM technology. They looked great — but as for how they played, ask any Gen X’er how “Myst,” “The 7th Guest” or “Night Trap” holds up after 30 years. Sure, they might wax nostalgic about those titles. Just don’t ask them to sit down and play them again.
That isn’t to say this is what “Marvel 1943″ will turn into. However, too many AAA titles have gone down this road, and there are less and less of them to begin with. It’s probably why gamers are increasingly sticking with older titles and focusing their playtime there — or trying out indie games from smaller studios.
There’s nothing wrong with graphics development, of course, but it mustn’t come at the expense of the core gameplay experience.
Hopefully, that’s not the case with the new Captain America title. Unfortunately, given recent history, it’s difficult to get one’s hopes up. Shiny graphics are one thing, but huge budgets combined with subpar in-game experience is a recipe for failure.
