The Growing Problem of Video Game File Size
Summary
TLDRThe video script discusses the increasing file sizes of video games due to advancements in technology, resulting in more detailed graphics and complex gameplay. It highlights the shift from physical media to digital downloads, necessitating larger storage space. The script contrasts games like 'Demon's Souls' and 'Modern Warfare', questioning the latter's massive size despite having less content. It praises 'Ghost of Tsushima' for its efficient use of space without compromising quality, and raises concerns about the impact of large game sizes on storage and internet connectivity for rural gamers. The video concludes by acknowledging the trade-offs between faster SSDs and the cost and space requirements of modern games.
Takeaways
- 🌟 As gaming enters the 4K era, games are evolving with more detailed textures, increased polygon counts, and improved visual effects like ray tracing.
- 🚀 The new generation of SSDs significantly reduces loading times, sometimes eliminating them entirely, enhancing the gaming experience.
- 📈 The average file size of games is increasing due to technological advancements, leading to more storage space being required for individual games.
- 🔍 The transition from physical media to digital downloads has made installation and storage space more critical for console gaming, similar to PC gaming.
- 📊 Games like 'Demon's Souls' and 'Red Dead Redemption 2' have large file sizes, with the latter being noted for its 90GB install size on day one.
- 🔧 Game developers use asset duplication to reduce loading times, which increases file sizes, but efficient engines can minimize this without sacrificing performance.
- 🏆 'Ghost of Tsushima' is highlighted for its efficient use of storage and quick load times, achieved through fine-grained mesh and texturing systems.
- 💾 The cost of SSDs compared to HDDs means that while speed improves, the cost and available storage space for gamers might decrease.
- 🌐 Large file sizes can be a barrier for gamers with limited or slow internet connections, affecting their ability to download and enjoy digital games.
- 🔮 The future of gaming may see a need for larger storage capacities and more frequent management of game libraries due to increasing file sizes.
Q & A
What is one of the main reasons for the increase in video game file sizes?
-The increase in video game file sizes is primarily due to advancements in technology that allow for more detailed textures, higher polygon counts on 3D models, longer draw distances, and the implementation of visual effects such as ray tracing.
How has the introduction of 4K resolution impacted game file sizes?
-The introduction of 4K resolution has contributed to larger game file sizes because it requires higher quality textures and more detailed models to maintain visual fidelity at higher resolutions.
What role do SSDs play in the context of game file sizes?
-SSDs have reduced loading times significantly, which has allowed games to become more complex and larger in size without a corresponding increase in load times. However, they are also more expensive per gigabyte compared to traditional HDDs.
Why did physical games on seventh-generation consoles not require installation on the hard drive?
-Physical games on seventh-generation consoles like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii were directly playable from their physical media, and only a few required installation for better loading times, but it was not mandatory for the majority of titles.
What was the initial file size of 'Demon's Souls' on PlayStation 5?
-Demon's Souls was confirmed to be 66 gigabytes in size on PlayStation 5, making it one of the largest first-party launch titles.
How does 'Ghost of Tsushima' manage to have a smaller file size compared to 'Modern Warfare' despite its detailed open world?
-Ghost of Tsushima's smaller file size is attributed to efficient compression techniques and an engine that keeps specific data ready to be loaded the moment it's needed, minimizing asset duplication.
What is the significance of asset duplication in game file sizes?
-Asset duplication is a common practice where copies of assets are placed throughout a game's files to reduce loading times, but this significantly increases the game's file size.
How does the size of 'Modern Warfare' compare to other AAA titles?
-Modern Warfare's file size is unusually large, reaching up to 250 gigabytes, which is more than twice the size of some massive open-world titles with detailed maps and lengthy stories.
What is the impact of large game file sizes on consumers with limited internet connections?
-Large game file sizes can be problematic for consumers with limited or slow internet connections, as they may have to wait for extended periods to download games or updates, and they might also face data caps.
How do game developers sometimes address the issue of large file sizes?
-Some game developers address large file sizes by implementing new compression techniques or by allowing players to uninstall certain parts of the game that they do not use, such as single-player campaigns or multiplayer modes.
What is the future outlook for game file sizes as technology continues to advance?
-As technology advances, game file sizes are expected to continue growing due to higher quality assets and more complex game engines. However, the price of SSDs may decrease over time, making additional storage more affordable.
Outlines
🎮 Evolution of Game Sizes and Storage Challenges
The paragraph discusses the impact of technological advancements on video game development, particularly the increase in game file sizes due to higher resolution textures, detailed 3D models, and advanced visual effects like ray tracing. It highlights the transition from physical media to digital installations on hard drives, which has become necessary to cope with the growing size of games. The paragraph also mentions the storage space required by games like 'Demon's Souls' and 'Spider-Man: Miles Morales' for PlayStation 5, contrasting with previous generation games like 'Dark Souls 3' and 'Bloodborne'. It reflects on how game sizes have grown to over 100GB, with 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and 'Modern Warfare' being examples of large file sizes, and questions the reasons behind such large sizes compared to the content offered.
📊 Compression Techniques and Game Efficiency
This paragraph compares 'Ghost of Tsushima' with 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' to illustrate how efficient compression and asset management can result in smaller game file sizes without compromising quality or loading times. It explains how 'Ghost of Tsushima', despite being a visually impressive open-world game with a lengthy playtime, manages to keep its file size to 45GB, including both single-player and multiplayer modes. The paragraph credits Sucker Punch's efficient engine and compression techniques for this achievement. In contrast, 'Modern Warfare' is criticized for its large file size, suggesting that it may be due to inefficient use of assets and duplication. The discussion raises questions about the balance between game quality, storage space, and loading times.
💾 The Future of Storage and Accessibility
The final paragraph addresses the broader implications of increasing game file sizes on storage solutions and digital distribution. It points out that while SSDs offer faster load times, they are currently more expensive than HDDs, potentially leading to higher costs for gamers seeking larger storage capacities. The paragraph also raises concerns about the impact on gamers with limited or slow internet connections, who may struggle to download large game files or updates. It concludes by suggesting that as game development technology continues to evolve, there may be a need for a reevaluation of how games are distributed and stored to accommodate a wider audience and ensure accessibility.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡4K
💡Polygon Counts
💡Draw Distances
💡Ray Tracing
💡SSDs (Solid State Drives)
💡File Size
💡Asset Duplication
💡Compression Techniques
💡Streaming Density
💡Inefficient Engines
💡Internet Connectivity
Highlights
The era of 4k gaming is leading to increasingly detailed textures and higher polygon counts on 3D models.
Draw distances in games are expanding, and environments are becoming denser with assets.
Visual effects such as particles and ray tracing are becoming more prevalent.
Fast SSDs are reducing loading times, and in some cases, eliminating them entirely.
As games become more complex, their file sizes are increasing accordingly.
Technology advances enable developers to create more ambitious games.
Consumers require more storage space as game sizes grow.
Demon's Souls on PlayStation 5 is a large first-party launch title, weighing in at 66 gigabytes.
Previous generations' games were often playable directly from physical media without needing to install to a hard drive.
With the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, console games also require installation, emphasizing the importance of storage space.
Some games, like Red Dead Redemption 2, have had massive install sizes on day one.
Updates and DLC can significantly increase the size of games like Gears of War 4 and Destiny 2.
Modern Warfare has an unusually large file size, sometimes approaching 250 gigabytes.
Ghost of Tsushima, despite its detailed open world, manages to keep its file size down to 45 gigabytes.
Sucker Punch Productions used efficient compression techniques to manage Ghost of Tsushima's size.
Asset duplication is a common reason for large file sizes, as games often contain multiple copies of the same assets.
The move to SSDs may reduce the need for asset duplication, but currently, they are more expensive than HDDs.
Large file sizes can be an issue for those with limited internet connections or data caps.
As game assets improve, average game sizes are likely to continue increasing.
The cost of SSDs may need to decrease significantly before consumers can affordably expand their storage.
The inconvenience of large file sizes is a growing pain of new technology in gaming.
Transcripts
[Music]
as we enter the era of 4k
being standard we'll be seeing games
continue to evolve in
impressive ways aaa titles will boast
insanely detailed textures on 3d models
that have
polygon counts in the millions draw
distances will be miles far
and environments will be dense with
assets a plethora of visual effects will
constantly fill your screen
whether they're beautiful particles or
awe-striking ray tracing techniques
and let's not forget the new super-fast
ssds will severely cut down on loading
times
in some cases eliminating them entirely
it should come as no surprise that as
games become bigger flashier and more
complex
the average file size of games will
follow suit
it's unavoidable it's a cycle that
continues to repeat
technology advances allowing for grander
visions to come to fruition
and game developers take advantage of
this technology to reach new heights and
offer greater experiences
and for the consumer this means more
real estate on their storage drives will
be taken over by individual games
for example demon souls is likely going
to be playstation 5's biggest
first-party launch title
alongside spider-man miles morales it's
already confirmed to be coming in at a
pretty hefty
66 gigabytes in comparison dark souls 3
was less than 20
and bloodborne less than 30 on day 1 for
each
obviously this wasn't always an issue
all the way up until the end of the
seventh generation of consoles which is
the playstation 3 xbox 360 and the
nintendo wii
physical games were directly playable
from whatever physical media they came
on
disks or cartridges with only a handful
of exceptions we didn't need
to install them directly onto a hard
drive to play them
and if we did it typically wasn't the
entire game being installed
sometimes it was just recommended for
better loading times
but for the vast majority of titles it
wasn't mandatory
this requirement was something that was
still limited just to pc games at the
time
however when the next generation started
with the playstation 4 and xbox one
console owners had to get used to the
installation process too
because the average game size was going
to grow and reading the game from the
disc
just isn't as fast as reading it from
the hard drive
thus storage space became significantly
more important
almost overnight and throughout the
generation
we saw just how stupidly massive some
games can get
at the very beginning we already got
games crossing 40 gigabytes which wasn't
a size that was unreasonably large
just yet however now at the end of it
they've finally begun to cross three
digits
it's not yet a regular occurrence but it
very well could be once the next
generation
which is the playstation 5 and xbox
series x hits its stride
in the lead up to release red dead
redemption 2 was noted for
alarming people with its massive 90
gigabyte install size on day one
this was the amount that came on the two
discs
before you added any patches or updates
several other games come close to or
even past this number
mostly due to updates and dlc that came
later such as gears of war
4 and destiny 2 both of which crossed
the 100 gigabyte mark
but also received updates that addressed
the size issue and shrunk them down
either by implementing new compression
techniques or eliminating old content
however the most egregious perpetrator
of storage drive gluttony
which is such a space hog that the size
of its updates
sometimes outweigh other entire aaa
games
is modern warfare depending on which
platform you play on it could approach a
frustratingly gargantuan
250 gigabytes in size for the entire
package
the game does allow players to uninstall
certain parts
either the single player campaign
multiplayer or special ops to free up
some space
if you're the type of call of duty
player who only plays the campaign
you'll just uninstall the whole thing
when you're done anyway however
if you're a multiplayer focused call of
duty owner you're still going to be
asked to surrender a massive chunk of
your storage
because for some reason it still takes
up around
170 gigabytes of space and it's not even
known how much of this
is war zone only content which is
mandatory
according to a production director over
at infinity ward
it's not much but still why
that's the big question everyone asks
why does one first person shooter take
up
more than twice as much space as a
massive open world title with a 60 hour
story
and insanely detailed map why does this
shooter's multiplayer
by itself take up to four times as much
space
as an mmo with three full expansions and
thousands of hours of content
what is lacking under the hood that
forbids the game from being crunched
down to a size that doesn't ask
players to forfeit up to half of their
entire hard drive
for comparison's sake let's look at the
recently released ghost of tsushima
it's an open world game with a map
that's in the ballpark of about
11 square miles or 17.7 square
kilometers
it's not particularly huge there are
much bigger maps out there
but it's sizeable enough to have many
unique features and landscapes that
don't feel crunched into an impossible
space
the game is very new but it's already
known to be one of the best looking
games to come out this generation
every single line of dialogue in the
game is fully voiced
and the story takes anywhere from 30 to
50 hours to finish
and the game is noted to have shockingly
quick load times
in spite of all of these details you
might be thinking
but that's a single player game it
doesn't compare to call of duty which
has a heavy focus on multiplayer
and well actually as of the 1.1
update that came out a few weeks ago
it's a multiplayer game now too
thanks to legends mode which is a fairly
content-rich
cooperative mode with redesigned
environments new armor and weapons
cosmetics many new enemies and a
self-contained narrative
and guess what even after legends came
out
ghost of tsushima the entire game single
player and multiplayer
still comes in at only 45 gigabytes
how did sucker punch manage such a thing
well as it turns out their black magic
was just
good compression techniques in an
interview with kotaku sucker punch's
lead engine programmer
adrian bentley said our art teams did an
amazing job pushing their assets to fit
in our aggressive performance and memory
budgets
as an example one of our 200 meter by
200 meter terrain tiles
only usually takes up around 2 megabytes
compressed on disk
including all the terrain and foliage
placements it's easier to load a lot of
data when you keep it compact
a huge reason for games having inflated
file sizes
is duplicated assets games typically put
copies of assets all over the game's
files so they're easier to locate and
thus minimize
loading times at the cost of increasing
size
as an example back at the game
developers conference in 2019
insomniac games gave a presentation and
in that presentation
was this simple slide pertaining to
their spider-man game
showing that almost 56 000 assets are
duplicated one or more times
inflating the game's size by 10
gigabytes from 0.9 without duplication
to 11 with doing just a little math we
can determine that each asset was
duplicated
on average up to 11 times considering
the retail version of the game is 45
gigabytes
that means duplication takes up about 22
percent of its size
now let's go back to ghost of tsushima
surely sucker punch must have duplicated
a ton of stuff if the game's loading
times are insanely quick
right in that same interview with kotaku
mr bentley continues our mesh and
texturing systems are very fine-grained
and fairly conservative
we only have one copy of every asset on
the disk
during most loads when not jumping into
a close-up we
only load newly required assets and can
dial down our streaming density a bit
this usually results in requesting one
or maybe two fewer mipmap levels for big
textures
users shouldn't see pops because we
still have the textured data we need to
render
when jumping into gameplay 99 of the
time
essentially ghost of tsushima is able to
keep its total size small and loading
times fast
because its engine is insanely efficient
and keeps specific data ready to be
loaded the exact moment it's needed
why did sucker punch go through so much
trouble in developing such amazing
software
i don't know maybe they just respect our
storage space and understand that we
don't want to nuke
half of the games in it just to shove in
one
and maybe they also know that generally
speaking no one likes loading times
no consumers specifically asked them to
go out of their way to create such an
amazing engine
they definitely could have gotten away
with one that wasn't so good
but they put the work in anyway and our
storage space and our time
are thankful for that and what's more is
that they didn't need to sacrifice
graphical quality to achieve these
things
because it's still one of the most
beautiful looking games to come out this
entire generation
so why is modern warfare so insanely
massive
if i were to take a guess i'd say it's
likely big assets supported by the iw
engine and a metric ton of duplication
of those assets
so loading times aren't an eternity and
a day
but does that really excuse the absurd
size of the game
how many more titles should be allowed
to balloon this much
before it starts to become unacceptable
thankfully black ops cold war is already
confirmed to be much smaller
both on current and next-gen consoles
but how long will it stay that way
and how much larger will the next call
of duty be
with gaming making the move over to
hyper-fast ssds over old school hard
disk drives
games can do away with constant asset
duplication to save on loading times
but we're no longer saving money on
space like we used to
right now a 2 terabyte hard disk drive
is anywhere between thirty to sixty
percent cheaper
than a one terabyte m.2 ssd
from the same company so what we gain in
speed and technology
we sacrifice in price and available real
estate
of course these prices will drop as ssds
become more standard
but it'll take years for them to match
the cent per gigabyte rate that hard
disk drives currently have
so while we may enter an era where
loading times are starting to become a
thing of the past we're still likely
going to end up spending more money
on space than we did before another
reason as to why huge file sizes are an
issue isn't just because storage space
it's a total lack of consideration for
people who have
not so stellar internet connections
there are 47 million adults who live in
rural areas of the united states
which are areas that have extremely
limited isp options
and those who have internet access
likely have either strict data caps
mediocre download speeds or both and of
those tens of millions i'm willing to
bet a couple of them play video games
in fact in the blog post that announced
the patch that would help shrink destiny
2's file size bungie specifically
acknowledged and apologized to people
with capped or second-rate internet
generally speaking the internet service
infrastructure in the united states
is subpar all around but people in rural
areas are especially [ __ ]
over time it'll become more and more
difficult for them to be digital game
owners
in some cases it'll be difficult for
them to even download an
update for a game they own physically
they're doubly screwed when they want a
game that's
exclusively available digitally and not
only would downloading it be a potential
multi-day commitment
but the game would probably hold their
storage space hostage
because they might be too reluctant to
download it again if they uninstall
as the quality of assets grow game sizes
on average
are going to follow it's an
inevitability that goes hand in hand
with ever evolving hardware and game
development technology
and to make things worse there will be
some games running on very inefficient
engines
requiring more gluttonous hoarding of
space than what should be necessary for
their genre
unfortunately it'll take a hot minute
for the price of ssds to sink enough
that an extra terabyte or two is no
longer a significant expense
worst case scenario people who only play
aaa games
might only be able to fit about 5-8
titles on their playstation 5
or xbox series x before filling them up
meaning significantly more frequent
cleaning up of their space
or spending up to two hundred dollars
for more of it
it's inconvenient but unfortunately it's
the growing pains of new technology
this concludes all of my thoughts on the
subject of growing video game file sizes
it's a bit more ranty than the other
videos i usually make but
it's something that's been bugging me
for a while hopefully i wasn't too
obnoxious about it
thank you for watching and i'll see you
around
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