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I Hate 3D

Inside the Sausage Factory #35

Originally written July 15 , 2002

3D graphics are about to take control of the last 2D holdout - PC strategy games. I say that with a heavy heart, because I think this transition will result in fewer, less attractive, and generally worse games for the strategy genre. Still, my company, PopTop, and most other strategy developers have jumped on-board the 3D bandwagon, out of necessity if not enthusiasm.

I spent some time this weekend with the new king of 3D strategy games - Warcraft 3. I know it's supposed to be a great looking game, being Blizzard and 3D and all that, but frankly, I found it unappealing. Even on a high end gaming system, character poly counts are low, lighting models are relatively simplistic, and in general, the game does not look as good as games using pre-rendered sprites (including older Blizzard titles). The primary virtue of a 3D engine - a free moving camera - is virtually ignored when actually playing the game. You basically keep your camera rotation and zoom fixed and just scroll around, exactly like a 2D game. Previous major 3D strategy titles like Empire Earth, Black and White, and Warzone 2100 also had low-detail characters and cumbersome camera control.

Unfortunately, major game developers realize that unless they move to 3D, their game will receive minimal hype and will be passed over by the press and public as dated-looking. Tropico, released last year, had (in this immodest developer's view), excellent 2D graphics - pre-rendered characters deliciously modeled with 5,000 to 50,000 polygons, with hundreds of frames of animation. Yet some reviews complained of a 'dated look'. The new 3D RTS games have, if they're lucky, 200-300 polygons per character, with a low-detail look and overly-simplistic, single source lighting models.

We've joined the herd and our upcoming game will be full 3D. We're fortunate in that our game has no characters - only buildings and vehicles. The sharp-edges and squared-off shapes of these objects look better at low poly counts than curvy characters. Still, our upcoming game would probably look better in straight pre-rendered 2D, but I have to be realistic about the marketplace.

Beyond the low-detail look, 3D causes many other problems. Developing and optimizing a 3D engine is an order of magnitude more complex than a 2D engine. PopTop has grown from 2 full-time programmers on Tropico to 5 on our current title, and we're still behind schedule. We're fortunate to have the resources to compete with other leading-edge strategy developers, but smaller developers are being squeezed out. Flying Labs Studios released Rails Across America (a nice looking, but definitely 2D strategy game) to outstanding reviews last fall, but the game's retro look failed to inspire consumers. It sold poorly, and Flying Labs abandoned plans for follow ups and is now scrambling for capital to license a 3D engine and make a mainstream 3D game. Kohan won many 'Strategy Game of the Year' awards last year, but also saw it's 2D look meet with consumer disinterest, and it's developer, too, will be moving to a licensed 3D engine for their next game. A modern 3D game cost about three times as much to develop as a 2D strategy title of a couple years ago. As costs triple, barring significant market growth, only about one-third as many titles will be released.

The move to 3D will not only reduce the number of games produced, it will reduce the number of consumers who can play those games. The rule of thumb used to be that you tried to make your game run on any PC less than 3 years old. A 2D game relies almost entirely on CPU speed to run. The difference between CPU speed on a modern, top-of-the-line Pentium IV (circa 2.5 Ghz), and a 3 year old PC with a Pentium 2 (circa 300 Mhz) results in a 8-10 fold speed difference. A well crafted game can support this range of processing power, and indeed, a 300 Mhz PC can run most modern 2D games.

However, for 3D games, performance is almost solely a result of the 3D card, and the blistering progress of 3D technology means that a modern GeForce IV outpaces a low-end 3 year old ATI Rage Pro by 50-100 fold in raw speed, plus it sports many entirely new types of features that aren't possible at any speed on older hardware. It is effectively impossible for a modern 3D game to support 3 year old low end 3D cards - generally, a gamer is lucky if his 18 month old 3D will work in newer games, and all bets are off when Doom 3 is released.

When far fewer PCs are capable of running your game, your sales fall. From 1999 to 2001, the PC genres that most rapidly jumped aboard the 3D bandwagon (shooters, simulation, racing, and sports), saw total sales drop by 10%. Strategy, which until this year has been largely 2D, has grown by 67% in the same timeframe. Other factors play into this, but I think rapid technological obsolescence has hurt the other genres, and it will soon start hurting the strategy genre, even as ballooning budgets further hurt developers and reduce the number and variety of titles made.

3D is the future, and the future is depressing.