I think it's more because nowadays the higher "realism" makes asset and level creation much harder. I remember seeing a presentation about "The Order: 1886" where they described how they created the visuals for a simple fire hydrant. With amount of work that went into it you could have created a Doom level.
I would argue that the resources spent on (visual) effects is dumb money trying to improve a game where the creators fail to build a better, more engaging, highly replayable game.
To this day, I haven't encountered a better FPS than Quake3. Quake3 isn't the fastest (Painkiller was IIRC), but it hit the sweet spot and today's contenders (including the new Quake) fail to deliver. The new Unreal Tournament looks promising and likely to be a replacement for Unreal Tournament 1.
I've tried and failed to play an FPS with a controller on a console and PC. The games are adapted to the imprecise input devices but it's still nothing like the Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament 1 keyboard+mouse experience. I couldn't get a positive experience out of it, and I hope kids getting started will have a chance to play those games as intended in order to have the full picture.
> I would argue that the resources spent on (visual) effects is dumb money trying to improve a game where the creators fail to build a better, more engaging, highly replayable game.
Graphics make you buy the game, mechanics make you keep playing, and story gives you happy memories afterward. That explains why AAA games have good graphics, average mechanics, and bad stories :-)
The games with the highest replay value to me have been GTA 3, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. Haven't played GTA 4 or 5, so don't know if the high replayability factor was kept.
I don't recall any freeware to make and animate models for Quake1. Maps, sure; models not so much. Everybody I knew in the mod scene was using 3D Studio. I don't recall what id Software used, but it was something other than 3D Studio.
I suppose something came along later on in the lifespan leading up to Quake2?
The Creation engine by Bethesda is still highly mod friendly. For example, there is a fan-made total conversion mod being created for TES V: Skyrim that is a remake of TES III: Morrowind [1]. Also, the SureAI team is creating Enderal, a total conversion mod in a completely different setting [2].
Maybe it's a bit the complexity of todays game engines, but I suspect that also, If you give people that much freedom, the publishers and other DRM-zealots will freak out, since then people will easily build their own servers and such...
Yup, it's a bit like trying to build a static HTML page with the full AWS stack.
There's this incredibly high cost curve for assets. Back about 6 years ago the dev:art ratio was about 1:10 and I'm going to guess it's even higher these days.
That's partially also why you see pixel art style thrive in the indie game space. It's the right combination of low production overhead that can still convey a large amount of information/style.
Maybe because these days you can't get away with a CLI compiler and some freeware to make "total conversions".