[Discussion] Browser gaming vs Web3.0?

But as we’re living in the advent of Web3.0, I was wondering if there is any multi- or single-player project trying / thinking of integrating blockchain into their browser game to alleviate the hurdles above?

I wonder: AFAIK crypto transaction fees of are usually high, so how can it help with transferring tiny amounts of money, as needed for a kind of F2P model?
The other question i have: How does a blockchain, including all it's costs for global synchronization, do better than other solutions, e.g. identifying a player by IP or account, and then storing his savegames locally on your server?

As a layman, i do not see the benefit yet. Maybe somebody can clarify.

Alex_prfct said:
historically browser gaming is the usual synonym for “free” time killer where you mindlessly click-away while standing in the queue or waiting for the bus.

Looking at some facebook games, it's free, but you have to watch 5 ads to get free tokens so you can play another round right now, or you have to wait a whole day to get them for free.
So i saw my wife watching a lot of ads.

In this sense, browser gaming is a somewhat lower tier than mobile gaming.
And we might want to raise the level here, but also technically, in terms of cutting edge visuals etc.

However, there are some problems with this idea:
My wife does not want to play AAA games, or to pay at all. And i do not want to play AAA games inside compromised and inefficient browser software, because to compensate, i'd need to pay even more for hardware.

So we have a problem of targeting a user base. Either they are happy with simple casual games, or they already have consoles or PC to play cutting edge AAA.
And all of them have mobiles, and do most of their browsing there, while also enjoying a rich offer of mobile games.

So how, and whom do we sell our idea of browser games?
This brings me to the Metaverse, which feels like a hype about an unspecified promise. The industry is excited, but the people ignore it.
Even worse, the association with blockchain, NFTs, crypto and mining generates a bad image over the entire idea. Most people just hate it and don't want it. It makes their GPUs expensive, it heatens the planet, it only is an invention of rich CEOs to milk more money. ‘Web3’ also is something which frightens people more than it attracts them, as far as i see personally.

So, on the short run, i think we better wait until those tides settle. If blockchain tech is useful, we can use it. But we might want to call it differently, to dodge the current, mostly refusing association.
On the long run, browser efficiency will improve, consoles and gaming PCs might become just too expensive, so i think browser gaming can take an increasing cut compared to other platforms.

I'm not sure I agree with some of your assessment. “browser are undermined by mobile” doesn't really make sense to me, I don't see that as what happened. Browser games transitioned and business markets changed. Flash was once king, and now is dead. Applets were once a thing and don't exist any more. HTML5 and canvas rendering are a thing, and more active than ever. The business is constantly evolving. Mobile games are a different market, and they have also been continuously evolving over the past 15 years.

Your difficulties about monetization are only up to whatever you implement in each case. Certainly mobile users are used to their app stores handling everything, that's a contractual obligation of doing business on that space. If you're on the web you don't have those contractual obligations and aren't forced into uniformity, so you're free to choose other options.

The talk of local storage is nonsense in terms of payment and sales, since you can't trust anything on the client for that.

The talk about integrating blockchain into a browser game for either optimization or monetization shows ignorance of each of them. Blockchain does solve some problems regarding digital currencies by providing a decentralized, externally verifiable, self-validating ledger, but although that's a digital currency problem that's not a problem games have. So basically you're trying to apply a very complex technical solution to a non-issue. Monetization is an enormous topic with hundreds of books written on the subject, and probably millions of web articles, discussion topics, and more. There are tasks, legal requirements, and business decisions around monetization that all need to be addressed, none of them have anything to do with blockchain.

Browser gaming is going to continue to be a viable solution for games. You'll continue to see browser based games, with the logic processed on servers and either locked behind payment and account gating or through ads. Mobile devices also aren't going anywhere, and will continue to also continue to be a viable solution for games.

Alex_prfct said:
I think it’s no sacramental secret that in the past years browser gaming has been greatly undermined by Mobile apps in terms of volume & audience.

No sacramental secret, you say. I was not so sure about that, but without having any figures to check, I couldn't argue the point with you. I didn't see how mobile app monetization could have an impact on browser game monetization, so I was happy to see…

frob said:
I'm not sure I agree with some of your assessment. “browser are undermined by mobile” doesn't really make sense to me, I don't see that as what happened. … Browser gaming is going to continue to be a viable solution for games. You'll continue to see browser based games, with the logic processed on servers and either locked behind payment and account gating or through ads. Mobile devices also aren't going anywhere, and will continue to also continue to be a viable solution for games.

Makes much more sense to me.

Guys, thank you very much for your input!

@joej

"I wonder: AFAIK crypto transaction fees of are usually high, so how can it help with transferring tiny amounts of money, as needed for a kind of F2P model?"

That's definitely the case right now with the gas fees being what they are. My POV is that we're still very much at the beginning with blockchain adaptation in general and with utility in gaming specifically, hype and speculation (FOMO & FUD) are unfortunately major factors atm and as you correctly mentioned this doesn't do wonders for the reputation.

But all the hustle aside I do believe that when the dust settles there will be some dedicated blockchain or Layer 2/3 solution interconnected with other blockchains that could actually be used for gaming (and would make sense economically)

Ohh, and just to clarify, I'm not referring to Bitcoin blockchain - that's pure currency, but rather smart-contact chains like Etherium (or EMV compatible), that can host some logic and assets.

Taking a step backwards, as @frob mentioned, what are the problems (if there are any) that we could expect blockchain to potentially solve for browser gaming?

I mentioned few above that looked to be at the top - monetization & authorization/state storage, but then again they potentially could be classified as opportunities to improve.

For example:

• Authenticating the user based on his wallet
• Incentives (tokens) for game progress or ads, an in-game auctions
• Storing user profile inside smart contract on-chain to shared between games
• Or storing game state or part of game logic inside smart contract
• Assigning some in-game items as NFTs and making them cross-game transferable
• Game feature decisions driven by community via DAO

One-by-one they may not bring significant short-term value immediately and look like more effort than gain, but cumulatively may change the landscape. I guess a lot of these thoughts are taking roots at the Web3 concepts that lobby personal ownership over proxy/provider ownership.

So in sense it's a chicken-egg question, what comes first - the possibility (aka blockchain) or demand (features).

Alex_prfct said:
Or storing game state or part of game logic inside smart contract

Assigning some in-game items as NFTs and making them cross-game transferable

I take these two arguments because they would bring new options and features to games. All the other points you listed are options we already have.

Discussing these, and keeping my role as the critic, i can easily expose you, as the blockchain proponent, trying to sell me snake oil in form of arguments your technology can not enable:

'To enable sharing of content between different games made by different developers, the developers first have to agree on conventions and standards. For example a general skeleton structure of characters to transfer animation, generalized simulation properties (rigid bodies, what joints are to be supported, motors?, etc.), generalized material specifications so the objects look the same in all games, etc.
Is this possible? Yes, but at the cost of stagnation. Once we rely on common standards, those standards hold us back to achieve further technical progress.
Does blockchain technology help us with developing such standards and compatible software? Simply no.'

So this discussion is actually a nice example to show the image problem. Blockchain proponent: Hey, let's change the world! Blockchain can do it! Gamedev: You have no idea about ‘it’.

Transferring or storing data is just not our problem. Our problem is that games are meant to be different from each other. We want different artstyles, different levels of realism in rendering and simulation.
And because of that, the whole Metaverse idea of transferring content between different games is an illusion, and not really desired in general.
If i import my Roblox avatar into Call Of Duty, it will just look silly. If we do it anyway, games become even more similar to each other, and thus more boring.
Once Roblox and CoD are basically the same game, the final Metaverse is here. Just one game, one shared experience. More the latter than the former, probably.

To make a more practical example, i can imagine publishers enable content sharing within a set of their own games. E.g. people can take their NFT gear from Rainbow Six and wear it in the next Assasins Creed, which coincidentally takes place in present time.
And publishers may deal with each other, so transfers also work between Final Fantasy and Assassins Creed. It's some work to develop such tech, but they decide to invest, to try it out.
What can we expect from this? Huge fantasy swords and anime girls fighting against Vikings and Romans?

It just makes no sense at all, as long as our games try to represent some theme, some idea, some background and story, some definition and direction.
It is like promising new features which nobody wants, just to sell a new technology, together with a new lifestyle. It's like Musk sending a Tesla to orbit. May be awesome, but for sure it's useless.
From my perspective, the claim blockchain or NFTs would be ‘technology’ is ridiculous on its own. We've had hashes or checksums before, why is this suddenly new technology, and why do they confuse identity with ownership? Just because the database is larger now, and synchronized copies exist on multiple servers?

Alex_prfct said:
I guess a lot of these thoughts are taking roots at the Web3 concepts that lobby personal ownership over proxy/provider ownership.

Most people think that's just another false promise:
Web1: People owned their websites and made them entirely themselves. It was just some static links and some gifs, though.
Web2: Facebook owns the website, people post their 2 cents there, but FB takes the profit from shiny, animated apps.
Web3: People think they own digital property, FB thinks they own the people, but it's an illusion on both ends.

Well, i tried to be open minded, but i ended up with just ranting again… sorry for that ; )

Thanks for sharing your optimistic perspective anyway. Not following the topic specifically, i do not read such arguments often.

As a gamedev, i believe in user content. The games i've spent most time on were Quake 3, Trackmania, Super Mario X. All of them because users provided never ending new content in form of levels.
But it seems this works best on a non profit basis. Neither the creators nor the devs saw any extra money from the fact i've played those games over years, while playing others just for hours.
Ofc. we want to change this to our advantage. We need some money to make our games. And there is opportunity for the players too: Being creative over being just a consumer is good without doubt.

But, if we want to get there, we have to solve true problems. Not showing progress on them, but instead trumpeting ‘blockchain, NFT, Meatverse’ buzzwords only exposes our cluelessness.
Selling in game items to people, but claiming it's something new now because each item is a NFT, and claiming it to be unique, although it's just a random mix of modular templates, exposes our greed and borderlines scam.

We surely need to try harder, and blockchain tech won't really help us much on the real problems.

Another point is that we could do all that today if developers actually wanted to. And if it could be made profitable, developers absolutely would want to do it.

JoeJ said:
To enable sharing of content between different games made by different developers, the developers first have to agree on conventions and standards.

Totally achievable right now today.

It has even been done before. EA's Spore had a creature creator that exported fully rigged models. It was a great technology, and we used it to make a bunch of prototype creatures. They used standardized formats — Collada models — and they were useful to some people.

In practice, apart from developers using it for prototyping, there was zero interest from most of the world, and certainly not enough commercial interest to design products around it. Spore was widely panned by critics, and the functionality was seen as slightly fun but ultimately useless. Anybody could create whatever creature types they wanted, with a range of movement types from slithering and inch-worming to typical walking, running, and jumping. They could be textured and skinned to look cute and cuddly with fur and go-go eyes, creepy, or frightening with teeth, spikes, scales, and claws. A little fun, but short-lived and deemed pointless.

And as pointed out, you generally wouldn't want it. Just like above it might be fun and novel for a short time, but games must be fun, and there is little fun in that feature alone.

Releasing content in blockchain is also the exact opposite of what most developers want. Blockchain is immutable by design. There are no upgrades, no bug fixes, no corrections from hacks or exploits. This is usually what we want from an online currency, once somebody has made a transaction, for better or worse it is permanent with no corrections. There are occasionally issues where someone transfers funds into the void where they are permanently irretrievable, and there are occasional mistakes where people send to the wrong account, which are all human error that banks and entities often deal with but are difficult to address in blockchain. In games, that permanence means exploits are permanent, it means tuning (also nerfing) are impossible, it means that once a defect is found it will remain forever. There is no patching around it, no rollback, no undo, no reverting, no server reset. At worst, it means a single defect destroys the IP forever.

For payment processing, if a developer wants to accept it as currency nothing is preventing that today. In fact, people can already pay with digital currency right now today. Not only can a payment processor accept various credit cards, direct money transfers, and currency conversion, there are payment processors (including PayPal) that are willing to take Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others.

I've been involved in quite a few discussions at work and in other sites where people propose all kinds of ideas for integrating blockchain into games. None of them have stood up even to basic questions, let alone deep ones. Anything the person wanted to do already had better, cheaper, easier, lower-risk solutions. Most data solutions had better cheaper solutions in traditional databases. Currency solutions could be solved cheaper and easier with a payment processing gateway (e.g. PayPal) or some other intermediate in-game currency just to avoid the tremendous volume of problems associated with currencies.

Mixing two blockchains together is a popular theory that people have, somehow tying their game's blockchain with a currency blockchain. Unfortunately that also fails fantastically because of classic database engineering flaws: you must have the ability to abort or rollback for consistency. The concept of futures in a blockchain comes close to solving this, but doesn't completely because the two systems aren't fully entwined. Although a single blockchain can make ACID guarantees, the moment you mix two ACID falls apart. People have tried to build systems that could handle it, but so far none work both as digital currency ledgers and as pieces in secondary transaction. It's been solved in traditional databases for 70 years, among the first business requirements that needed to be met.

So far, I've not seen a single actual problem in games that is better solved through blockchain technology. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to use them, people can contort and distort and squeeze problems into a blockchain solution, but apart from online currency (which is the problem current blockchain tech was explicitly designed and crafted to solve) the tech has been a bad fit for games. It is possible someone will discover a problem for which it is a good solution in our industry, but I've not seen one yet. It is a great solution tailored to a specific problem another industry had, but it isn't a good fit for any problems we currently have.

First: Integrating payments is easy, compared to building a full, competitive game. Anyone who says it's hard, certainly doesn't have enough time and skill to ship a competitive game. Supporting Square, or PayPal, or Google Pay, or Amazon Pay, is no harder than integrating a crypto SDK.

Second: Regarding “item portability:” I don't understand how anyone believes developers would have any incentive to import someone else's item into their game. The economics aren't there. Consider:

1. I'm building a Renaissance world exploration game.
2. There's some magic sail cloth that can make my ships sail 50% faster. Ultra powerful!
3. I now have the option of:
   1. Selling this for $25 in my own item store
   2. Checking whether the player has bought some particular item in some particular other game, and granting this effect for free to my player

If you were a game developer, which of these would you choose?

If you choose option 2, then that's almost certainly for marketing purposes – e g, trying to entice players of successful game 1 to switch to your game. But marketing items are almost always “pre-order custom skin” type items, not actual valuable game items. AND, if “stealing players because of inventory" was actually a mechanic that worked, then the first game developer is incented AGAINST publishing a particular player's inventory.

So, even if the technology could work, the economics don't. And as for the technology, any publisher can, today, provide a REST API that lets you verify ownership for some player of some item. No block chain needed. Very quick and easy. And nobody does it, quite likely because the economic incentives absolutely work against this ever happening.

So, anyone who makes this “re-use items between games” claim, goes on my “persons who don't think hard” list. Not because they like crypto – I like crypto for use cases it works for! – but because they didn't spend even 15 seconds thinking about how or whether the proposal would work.

hplus0603 said:
So, anyone who makes this “re-use items between games” claim, goes on my “persons who don't think hard” list.

What if it's you who does not think ahead far enough?

The argument is decentralization. Instead mighty banks, use crypto.
Similarly: Instead buying games from greedy publishers, made by lazy devs, make a better game yourself in the metaverse, and even earn by doing so.

Our days are counted… :D

First: There are cryptos with small transaction fees and the ability to store data in the chain itself easily, such as Bitcoin Cash. You can store some user activity of the game on the blockchain, the technical possibility is there - you CAN, but this doesn't means you should HAVE to. It makes no sense to spam the blockchain with random game variables. It makes sense to use it as a payment system in the game, to control item purchaches and such.

Second: html games making far more sense than these wasd flyby techdemo ,,games'' made in unity and in other similar joke environments. Modern browsers can load and handle the assets easily, making a game engine should be straightforward and easy even for beginners.

Optimization: I dont think there will be any optimization issues, starting from 2012 to 2018 i have measured multiple emulator cores in browser vs C code (the code was the same, just the syntax was changed to compile it under both environment). Html was only about 50-60% slower, so nothing deadly slow. Instead of optimization, you might get compatibility issues instead, like webgl will maybe not work, or will be slow on certain systems. If you want to focus on optimization, just ensure not to use too much polygons and textures, be logical and think on people who have like 32 kbyte/sec download on a cellphone, and trying to run your game like that. This is where the optimization begins, with the sober mind and realistic design, and not with localstorages and not random pre-alpha-technologies.

But as we’re living in the advent of Web3.0, I was wondering if there is any multi- or single-player project trying / thinking of integrating blockchain into their browser game to alleviate the hurdles above?
Like identifying user based on his wallet or storing game data directly on-chain… or anything like that?

If you want examples of browser games having integrated NFTs, have a look at ev.io, miniroyale.io, and, in a certain way, what The Sandbox is doing

I don't like the whole blockchain idea.
However:
1. Looking at my kids, and their friends: Fortnight is huge. How huge? They talk about it the same way I used to talk about game consoles. One could argue that MMOG are proto-metaverses. The kids don't much care about the game itself, but are rather invested in the community inside the game. In real time… They don't talk about it forums. They set playdates in fortnight.
2. I do think there is incentive to share assets cross game to enable cross promotion. It makes no sense for Assassins Creed to import an asset from an indie game, but it makes all the sense in the world for the indie game to use an asset/achievement from Assasins Creed to promote itself.
3. I agree, blockchain is garbage for all of this

Envision the following: Instead of Facebook creating a metaverse, Nintendo creates a meta-verse with all of their existing IP and gaming oriented users. This metaverse isn't forever, but will have the lifespan of a normal console (a decade or so?). Doesn't that sound more likely?

SillyCow said:
Envision the following: Instead of Facebook creating a metaverse, Nintendo creates a meta-verse with all of their existing IP and gaming oriented users. This metaverse isn't forever, but will have the lifespan of a normal console (a decade or so?). Doesn't that sound more likely?

The final vision seems slightly different, if i understood it correctly:

In the end, there will be only one Metaverse. A single hub, which you use to play Super Mario, but also to see a immersive virtual simulation of the car you might eventually buy. And you can change the color of the car, and you can drive some rounds on your favorite Mario Kart track to test the car. Basically a 3D realtime internet. So i see two options:

1. There is just one platform holder. Sony, MS and Steam is no longer needed. One winner takes it all. Explains the interest of some CEOs. But usually, if new things come up, they come from a new player, distanced from the legacy establishment of the old school past. So likely Zuckerberg just pays the bill to develop new tech, but then someone else will earn. Maybe they have still enough money left to buy the winning startup, but i doubt it.

2. No more need for a platform holder either, because the promise of decentralization holds. It's like internet, where everybody can do anything as long as he uses html.
To make this work, web3 is meant to use AI to replace standards and conventions with a form of natural language, so servers can communicate without a need to agree on some restricted protocol. Wolfram Alpha would be a first example of such intelligent technology, they say.
But the consequences would be similar: Investors pumping money into the idea would disempower themselves. Because if it works, no more need for Amazon, Google, etc. There is no single winner in the end. Instead the mega corps would loose and the small people would win.

The fishy smell comes from the fact that trumpeting investors loose in either case. The promises can't match their true intend.
Or they are just naive. Zuck thinks fb would replace the whole internet, Sweeney thinks the whole internet will run on his engine.
Much more likely it looks like the real investors in the background just want to ensure they are on top of a potential raising tide of tech innovation, so they can adapt to any uncertain future situation more easily to secure their power.

But that's just my interpretation. In reality, both ‘Metaverse’ and ‘Web3’ are seemingly undefined buzzwords.
It feels like: You shall not ask what those terms mean, if you want to be hip, an early bird, and profit from the ‘new idea’. You shall just believe there is some new idea, and you pretend to be part of it, to ride on top of the tide.
Which is the same mindset as we currently see related to NFTs or crypto in general. Promises, visions, words, influencers, some rich kids to proof success. But no substance, no new technology, no solutions to any problems.

SillyCow said:
Doesn't that sound more likely?

Honestly, no.

Ideas are easy, cheap, and numerous. Implementation is difficult, expensive, and rare.

What you described is like a kid saying “I want a game that is 300x bigger than GTA 5, with twice and many weapons, and you can do anything you want!" It's fine for a dream, but has no basis in reality. Somebody someday might make something like that, but it's hardly realistic in the near term.

frob said:
I want a game that is 300x bigger than GTA 5

When i am seeing these 150 GByte games, i can see that the kids gta clone will be indeed 300x BIGGER :P Using 4096x4096 bmp files for the textures of the flowers around the road, and 20 gbyte high poly character models will indeed help a lot to achieve this dream.

Having worked on several games that fit that description, it's a mixed bag.

Players continuously complain about the size of assets. In one where the game is open and mods, players look at the sizes of released asset, this type of tree is 100MB, that type of tree is 90MB, these crocus assets are 45 MB, the hibiscus assets are 40 MB, and so on, they protest how wasteful and inefficient, how unoptimized, how terrible the systems must be. Yes indeed we have material layers that are 4K square, sometimes even 8K square when needed. Same thing with audio, we not only have full symphonic audio records, but also a huge variety of sound effects for every environment, every creature,, every weapon, and nearly every object in the game. If you're wearing a flak suit or a ghillie suit or a loincloth each comes with a bunch of different Foley sounds. Sure we support stereo, we also support 5.1, and everything through 7.1.4, and we have Dolby Atmos certification. And wouldn't you know it but the wide variety of audio files are enormous. Players will ask, “Why does this specific assault rifle contain 3 MB of sound data? Why does a simple raft contain 10 MB of sound data?” Players decry that the game is a waste of space requiring 150 GB, and that clearly the development team knows absolutely nothing about resource efficiency, or compression, and that the devs are absolute garbage and requiring so much disk space. I think of that 150 GB and am amazed how we got so many terabytes of source assets down that small.

Then in their next post, they will show a video or an image of a beautiful grove, basically the garden of Eden, with a bunch of incredibly detailed close-up flowers and trees, and a grand expanse opening up before them with hundreds of curated models, photo-realistic clouds with God rays, a pool of water in the distance, and an assortment of high detail animals near and far, birds, fish, and insects, their customized user-painted constructions or their dream home, all animated with gentle breezes showing in the foliage and water across the entire world, and praising the game for creating stunning imagery and immersion.

You don't get it both ways. If you want to get nose-to-nose with every creature and have them look beautiful, be able to reach out and touch the realistic environments, comprehensive audio, the asset space becomes a necessary cost. I suppose we could always go back to the 8-bit era with 4 kilobyte cartridges to store the game including art and beeps. There are very good reasons AAA games today cost a quarter billion dollars or more to develop. So often the things people claim they want and complain about are simultaneously in direct opposition to what they review and post about as the best features.

This is yet another factor in why what is described just won't work. There may someday be a different solution that resolves the issues, but no tech today will bring in the resources from a wide variety of games and have them form a coherent whole.

I dont want to have it both ways, as a developer i only recently switched from ~ 32x32 textures to 64x64 (ofc there are exceptions to this). as a gamer (i am not really a gamer any more so i am not sure how relevant my opinion is) i ignore titles above a couple of gb, also it would take multiple days for me to download them, which i will not do. google also restricts apk sizes in its store to 100 mbyte or something. unfortunately some game developers abuse it, and after installing the apk, the game itself starts to download multiple gbytes of assets on its own, to circumvent this, i hope google will eventually also ban this.

You doesnt have to agree with me, you do you, i respect that, and your choice is your choice as a developer / and as a gamer. I think the people who oppose these sizes are right, because a 100 gbyte vs a 1 gbyte game doesnt differs from each other in any ways (in my oppinion - no one has to agree with me). I think its just about fueling pointless megalomania, trying to quickly sedate the buyers with spectacular miracles and mobilizing marketing campaigns through influencers to get back the poinlessly blown money, before the masses jump from one useless title to another one after they realize its more boring even than …. (i will not insert any title here, to avoid triggering someone for no reason).

I agree that we shouldnt restrict ourselves with unnecessary limits, such as 100 kbyte cartridges. The thing is, in their own era, the cartridges were the usable and acceptible size, even the floppy disks for c64/pc were approx 360 kbyte, that was pretty much the acceptible size. And a few game developers released games on 3-4 floppies, i got very annoyed by those, and i remember people showed them around like bloody sword (oh look how fantastic the virtual reality is becoming, 4 floppies wow, wow, wow) and never played them ever again. As it was not comfy to handle that data size. Just like nowadays with these 200 gbyte games, they are just as bad idea, a game really shouldnt be bigger than a couple of gbytes. Maybe in 2040 (just put a random date here) when literally everyone will have at least 1 gigabit internet, and the cheapest $200 laptops and smart phones will ship with 100 tbyte integrated storages, these multiple 100 gbyte games will be acceptable. Until then, i am happy with the 100 mbyte limit in appstore.

Geri said:
a 100 gbyte vs a 1 gbyte game doesnt differs from each other in any ways (in my oppinion - no one has to agree with me).

Let's take a group of developers to discuss this.
Many of them are willing to lower some standards, to spend more focus on fun gameplay, and to lower costs on all ends.
Others of them prefer cutting edge, willing to pay price of high HW requirements and big downloads.

Then we listen some time for what they say. This is what we'll observe:
Cutting Edge guys mostly agree on their choices. They also agree on HW and SW technology to use. Subtle differences - enough to have a discussion, but more agreement than argue.
Alternative guys disagree with them, but the disagree even more across each other. Their choices of sacrifices and compromises differ wildly: Texture and geometry resolution, baked or dynamic lighting, 20 vs. 100 bones, etc. They can't agree on any point, and they can't convince any other to follow their own choice of priorities.

Looking at that from some distance, the conclusion is that the alternative guys are probably wrong. They can't agree, so they are probably on the wrong track.

On the other hand, the cutting edge guys may fail to keep minimum specs at the sweet spot. We have decades of a ‘increase size, detail and accuracy with every new game’ mentality behind us, backed by a HW industry who wants to sell their newest stuff, which works best by introducing new features and increasing power limits and chip sizes. At some point, which seems now, sweetspot HW is not even offered anymore. The platform became entirely enthusiast and high specs. The alternative of low power mobile games covers the rest, but HW is below the sweetspot and cutting edge isn't possible.

That's a pretty difficult situation. It's maybe not as bad yet as i say, but that's where we are heading, currently.
I think the only solution is not to lower standards (there is no way back), but to enable future progress more based on better software than relying on increasing HW power.
That means progress at a lower rate, but people are used to that anyway, as the visual difference between HW generations natural becomes smaller and smaller too.

That said, i think you miss the proper argument about your own project. By saying ‘200 polys for a character, and 64 x 64 textures are good enough’ you only put yourself into the alternative guys group for no good.
The better argument is that low resolution content is easier to make, up to the point where a single person can make a small game without investing money and lots of time.
The applications probably also differ from AAA but also indie games. I could imagine something like interactive memes for example. If people can make a simple funny minigame on a webpage, and it would be possible to share such games across social platforms and comment sections, maybe this could be some new trend.

You having an interesting observating when basically saying AAA and indie world is diverging far more nowadays than what the situation was for example in the mid 2000s. Then AAA and C-class titles didnt differed too much, and we had a strong B class as well (in between the two worlds) which we nowadays barely see any more.

If you want a more proper argument about 64x64 / 200 polygons / few 10-100 mbyte game sizes: the human eye has a limited number of receptors, and the human perception is logarithmic. When you increase the polygon count of a game from 10k polygon per screen to 100k polygon per screen, thats a very big and impressive jump in graphics quality. When you increase the resolution from 100k to 1 million, thats not that much impressive, and not that clearly noticable compared to the 10k to 100k…. Despite you increased the polygon count by 10x in both cases. This is true for texture sizes, screen resolution, sound files and so on. The AAA guys will hit a wall very soon (or they probably already hit it and checkmated themself) where it doesnt matters any more if they increase the textures size and polygon count any more, they cant make the visuals any better, no matter how hardly they want to try spending all of the money of this existence, this conception seems like a dead end.

So personally, for me, if they would start biting my ears, like demanding to increase resolutions and they wouldnt pay/wouldnt download/wouldnt play any more if i dont do it… then i would simply do it, as there is plenty of headroom, and teleporting the game size from like 50 mbyte to 150 mbyte, which is still an acceptible and realistic game size, and the increase wouldnt have an impact on adoption.

Geri said:
You having an interesting observating when basically saying AAA and indie world is diverging far more nowadays than what the situation was for example in the mid 2000s. Then AAA and C-class titles didnt differed too much, and we had a strong B class as well (in between the two worlds) which we nowadays barely see any more.

Yeah. Not sure if there was a indie scene in the 2000s at all, but currently it looks like something in between is missing. So the same sweetspot i miss in hardware offerings, i also miss in games themselves as well. I don't want to download 150 GB just to see i don't like the game and refund. I don't want 200h of gameplay either, because there is life and work. And i want some content made for grown ups, no teen power fantasy. Occasionally there is some indie game that i really like, but i'm sure the demand from my >40 group is higher than the offer.

Geri said:
If you want a more proper argument about 64x64 / 200 polygons / few 10-100 mbyte game sizes: the human eye has a limited number of receptors, and the human perception is logarithmic. When you increase the polygon count of a game from 10k polygon per screen to 100k polygon per screen, thats a very big and impressive jump in graphics quality. When you increase the resolution from 100k to 1 million, thats not that much impressive, and not that clearly noticable compared to the 10k to 100k…. Despite you increased the polygon count by 10x in both cases.

This argument ignores two points: In 3D games, scale of content to screen varies wildly, so if you want an immersive and realistic impression, you need close up detail. Otherwise seeing huge texels or hexagons instead cylinders breaks your immersion.
The other is the size of the games levels or worlds. Even if we settle on a low poly artstyle, we may still need a lot of storage for all the content, and 100mb won't cut it anymore, even for the lowest standards i could imagine.

We sure want some progress on compression. Either that or we'll move to the cloud to solve the storage problem. But i don't believe in moving back in time to older standards.

Geri said:
The AAA guys will hit a wall very soon (or they probably already hit it and checkmated themself) where it doesnt matters any more if they increase the textures size and polygon count any more, they cant make the visuals any better, no matter how hardly they want to try spending all of the money of this existence, this conception seems like a dead end.

It looks like that to me too. But not sure. Actually the standard seems pretty consistent and next gen did not yet push fidelity to some unpractical levels. Most games are cross gen. They surely do adapt to current situation and are not stupid.
We'll see what happens with first UE5 games. If they run at 20fps like the city demo, but all AAA studios using it regardless, then i'll agree about the checkmate. I won't buy a 1000W GPU just to run it at 40 fps.
However, such problems would be temporary. I'm sure we can achieve a next gen look with fluid fps on affordable HW after some time.