Red Dead Redemption 2 – The Peak Of Gaming?

Red Dead Redemption 2, created by legendary development studio Rockstar, released on the 26th October 2018. It received near universal acclaim, and went on to become the second biggest entertainment product in history, surpassed only by GTA 5. A game that was, of course, also made by Rockstar.

Although critics were not all in agreement as to whether Red Dead Redemption 2 could claim to be the best game ever made, what was agreed on was that it had the most stunningly realised artificial world in game history. To put it lightly, the sheer amount of hours that must have gone into creating the game’s Old West setting defies belief. From endless landscapes, to hundreds of species of animals, to thriving cities, every aspect in the world was astonishingly detailed.

So much so that, in fact, it raises the question as to whether game’s can, technically speaking, ever get better.

Can It Get Better?

Video games have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in quality over the last few decades. From titles that featured just a handful of pixels in the 80s, to games that now require obscene amounts of time, and vast teams of professionals to create. This all equates to a ridiculous cost required in order create a game like Red Dead Redemption 2.

In fact, it cost between $80 million and $100 million to make the game, over the course of about seven years. To put it another way, there are very few game studios that exist that could risk this sort of effort and expense. It is a far safer bet to simply run an online NZ casino instead, which requires just fractions of the amount and effort to run.

To go one step further, it is obvious that games of the quality and scale of Red Dead Redemption 2 are an extreme rarity, and may indicate an unsurpassable peak for the industry as a whole.

A Dying Artform?

It may well be that no game ever surpasses the bar set by Red Dead Redemption 2. The time, money, and effort required may simply be too much for any developer to risk. Plus, given that gamer expectations have become higher than ever before, it may even be that any amount of effort would never be enough.

So does this mean that large scale games the style of Red Dead Redemption 2 will simply die out?

It more likely means that they will become increasingly rare, limited to perhaps just one or two titles over the course of a year. As the bar has become ever higher, the less companies will even attempt to compete in the genre.

Though, this may not necessarily be a bad thing. As focus shifts in the video game industry, efforts may start turning to innovation in terms of gameplay, rather than simple visual dazzle, or mind blowing open world scale.

This, all in all, may well result in a far more diverse industry than ever before, which certainly isn’t a bad thing.