draft: what's the deal with aaa graphics?

content/blog/29-whats-the-deal-with-aaa-graphics.md/index.md

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+---
+date: 2026-03-19
+title: What's the Deal with AAA Graphics?
+description: like seriously do people buy this stuff?
+preview_image:
+tags: videogames
+draft: true
+permalink: /blog/29/
+---
+"Everybody" knows that graphics don't sell games, right? If anything it's the opposite. If a game runs on a potato, then it means you have a dramatically larger market. Even mediocre games will sell better if they have low specs. Undertale, Stardew Valley, Balatro, Baba is You, Papers Please, these were all ported to the Switch 1 which has specs that were already considered "cheap" in 2015!
+
+So: what's the big deal?
+
+## hypothesis 1: dark matter demographics
+
+The constant push for graphics must be making money somehow, right? I'm in a bubble, I play mostly queer indie games because that's what my friends play. I also don't play a lot of 3D games because I get motion sickness. So, the number one "blind spot" could be that maybe 3D games with lots of Graphics actually sell like hotcakes. There must be millions of people who can afford a steady supply of 80$ games and 1000$ consoles and they just keep buying everything that "looks good" no matter what it's about. We have to assume this audience exists because otherwise there's no way making these expensive AAA games could turn a profit, right? Unless...
+
+## hypothesis 2: hidden costs
+
+What if the studios who make "expensive" games aren't actually paying for them? Do they just... not pay their workers? Or maybe they coerce their workers into "crunch time" that doesn't pay more even though it's harder work. This sounds fairly plausible and also fairly illegal.
+
+It also seems very likely that they use stolen work. That would explain why they're pushing to normalise the use of automatic plagarism, right? Again, this seems like it should be very illegal. But I have to assume they're doing it?
+
+yeah actually this whole blog post seems kinda speculative and I don't feel like researching it properly so I'm gonna leave this in drafts.