Why Are PC Game Sizes Increasingly Swelling? And is there a solution or not?
The Size of PC Games is Getting More and More Inflated
Those of you who continue to monitor the development of news about new games that will be released such as Red Dead Redemption 2 which will visit the PC and Call of Duty Modern Warfare which gets a reboot of the series will understand the similarities between the two. Yes, both of them have a large storage demand, which is above 150 GB for each game.
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This is certainly a problem for gamers around the world, especially in Indonesia where the income of gamers to buy hardware such as HDD or even SSD is still very low. Plus coupled with the internet connection is still very limited, especially for those who are located outside the big cities.
So what exactly causes the size of these games to continue to swell every year? Especially for games released on PC, because consoles usually have a size that is not as large as a PC for the same game.
The Inevitable Development
The first, of course, is the development of the video game itself. Every year video games continue to develop in almost all aspects. Starting from the graphics, the size of the map, the length of the story, animations and interactions that are increasingly complex, the music and sound are getting clearer and other aspects of course make the size of the game swell. Plus aspects outside of gameplay such as game cutscenes which now usually use 3840 x 2180 pixels aka 4K videos, which of course doubles the size of the cut scene videos which a few years ago usually still used 1920 x 1080 pixels or Full HD resolution.
If you want to explain the reason, then we can start with the game graphics that are carried by games now. We certainly know that games like COD: Modern Warfare reboot and RDR 2 bring graphics that can be considered hyper-realistic, especially when compared to graphics 5 years or even 10 years ago. Every object in modern games now has a high level of detail. Almost everything that is shown in the video game has resembled the real world. Call it the details of the faces of each character, their bodies, details of other characters in the game, details of objects in the environment and so on. Of course, this is indeed a demand for gamers from developers, and in addition to making 3D models of these objects more detailed and complicated, this has the consequence that the size of these objects is also getting bigger.
Not to mention, to make the existing character or environment models appear realistic, the implementation of the textures used in video games is getting bigger in terms of size to pursue sharp character details. Although not too many gamers still play their PC games in 4K resolution, just like the cut-scene problem game developers usually now include 4K textures in their game data. Which of course swells in size even though it is not used. And it’s still limited to basic textures where modern games add a variety of additional textures such as diffuse texture, normal map texture, specular texture to make the objects in the game look more realistic.
Audio or sound also turns out to have a part in the swelling of the size of the video game. With the higher quality of the audio used for every aspect in the video game and of course the more complex the audio variant used for each scene in the video game also causes the game size to get bigger. Not to mention that there is now surround technology used in speakers or even headphones/headsets used by gamers, where every sound is simulated according to the location of the origin of the sound, of course, developers must make every sound that appears in the game can be simulated so that player immersion is maintained. But luckily unlike textures and models that can’t be compressed so the size actually swells significantly. Audio can still be compressed in its installation data.
Unlimited PC Platform
Then another cause is the PC platform itself. Surely many are questioning how can the platform used to play the game be the cause of the size of the game to swell? The explanation is that for game developers, the PC platform has no storage limitations. In contrast to consoles, which have limited storage, developers try to compress the game installation data so that it still has a size that is considered “reasonable” for console owners. On PC there is no limit to the maximum size that a game can have, and there is also no “additional charge” from digital game stores such as Steam and Epic Games for ‘jumbo’ sized games, of course, so developers don’t have to bother compressing. their game installation data.
Because on the other hand, this compression process usually takes a lot of time and puts these developers at risk of being late from the supposed deadline. And of course you also understand how gamers react when they find the games they are waiting for have to be postponed. Not to mention from the Publisher which of course has a strict agreement with the developers. So that the developers of course prioritize the game to be completed on time and can be marketed according to the initial agreement rather than having to spend time making the game 10-30% smaller than its original size. Moreover, as we discussed earlier, almost all aspects of video games are now becoming more complex and detailed. Developers certainly don’t want to take the risk of thinking about size when even a small mistake can cause bugs/glitch that will ruin the game when it’s released.
Possible Solutions Developers Can Take
Then, what is the solution that can actually be done by the makers of this game? Considering in the future it seems that the size of the existing games will continue to soar with the various new technologies offered. The easiest solution for PC gamers, of course, is to save often to keep buying a new HDD/SSD, and look for a more reliable internet service provider to reduce long download times. But of course this burdens many gamers rather than solving the main problem.
Actually there are several things that maybe these developers can do to at least reduce the burden on gamers to download large game files. One of them is that the developers give PC players the freedom of choice to download the files they need and don’t have to include files that they may not need.
The technical thing is that in the game there are some files that can actually be left out. Think of it as Texture Pack 4K which of course can be missed when we only play it in Full HD resolution. Then there are 4K cut scenes which are sometimes separated from standard Full HD resolution cut scenes which are sometimes deemed unimportant and may not be downloaded. In one game also usually contains several kinds of language which in addition to changing the language in the gameplay UI also changes the language of conversation in the game. Audio in foreign languages is certainly not very useful because the majority of gamers will play it in only one language they understand.
By having the option not to download the files above, of course gamers can save several to a dozen Giga when downloading games. And can cut longer download times. This method itself is said to be implemented on the Playstation 5 which will be released next year where gamers are free to choose whatever they want to download.
It’s been proven but in the wrong place
The funny thing is that this method has actually been implemented for a long time for PC gamers. Which ironically has been done by the pirates who provide these games via Torrent. Those of you who may be familiar or at least know when downloading from Torrent will know that at the beginning you will be given a choice of which folders or files you will download. And there you can get a smaller size of the file you are going to download.
Not to mention that these pirates will usually be available later in the form of “Repack” or a compressed version with a smaller size than the original game file. Indeed, this repack version has the consequence of taking a long time and up to hours to restore compressed files. However, for some people it is better to have a long installation process than having to download longer and of course with more data. Steam actually implements a similar file compression system when downloading games, so if you pay attention you will find that the size of the file you download is smaller than the final file of the game or storage requirements written on the game page. But unfortunately Steam still doesn’t have a feature to choose which files to download.
Another Solution That Is Being Conquered
The last option for PC gamers to deal with the large files that must be downloaded is to switch to Cloud gaming which seems to be starting to be pushed by various parties. Cloud gaming itself has the advantage that you don’t have to download the games you want to play, you don’t even need a hardware upgrade such as a graphics card or processor to play the latest games. But of course there is a risk where cloud gaming requires internet that is not only fast but also has to be stable which may still be very difficult for some gamers.
For now there may be no other real solution that can be taken by PC gamers other than following the development of game files that continue to grow and enlarge. The console is actually also not safe because the size of the games on the console also continues to swell. With the advent of next-gen consoles next year, and PCs that continue to be developed, there may be a solution to reduce or optimize the size of the games used. Or vice versa, maybe in the future there will be a cheaper and pocket-friendly storage solution to accommodate these jumbo-sized games.
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