All Aboard the Bloat Boat

Years ago, there was a time when my friends and I would have conversations about hard drives and say stuff like, "It's a whole gigabyte? What would someone do with all that space?!?" Now, a good 20 years later it's all about the terabytes. Huge, hulking drives with what seems like enough space to keep any sensible person happy for years. However, when one looks at the steadily bulging sizes of a lot of major game releases that come out each year, it's hard not to wonder if even these new technical marvels' days are already numbered.

It's only been over the last year that I've really begun to take notice of this trend, starting with the PC release of Final Fantasy XIII. When I perused the specs for the game on its Steam page, I noticed that it requires a 60GB download. Even with all of the fancy cut scenes and dual Japanese / English voice acting, that's a pretty bitter pill to swallow, and required some creative uninstalling to make space for it. Sure, we get slightly less annoying dialogue from Vanille, Hope, and Snow, but it comes at a very high cost.

Final Fantasy is by no means alone, though. There are plenty of other games that are sporting some rather hefty downloads. Titles like Wolfenstein: The New Order (50GB), Elder Scrolls Online (85GB), Grand Theft Auto V (65GB), and Batman: Arkham Knight (55GB) are but a few examples of the bloat we're beginning to see in terms of how much hard drive space games are beginning to gobble up.

Granted, all of the games that I've mentioned are of the AAA variety. Those that have little to no interest in that sort of thing aren't really affected. Nonetheless, there's still a substantial number of people who do like them, and are being impacted by this.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a 50GB goliath.

To an extent, growing game sizes makes sense. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, it's something that has been happening for years. With each leap forward in technology, we've seen games' graphics get better, but it comes at the cost of bigger files. Now, as this process has continued for 30 years or so we're at this point where the files in question are gargantuan.

That being said, when I look at some of the other recent titles to come out that have had some very high fidelity visuals, they haven't suffered from quite the same bloat as the traditional AAA games have. One just needs to look at something like The Witcher III or Elite: Dangerous. Both have been released only in the last year, have stunning visuals, and yet they've managed to avoid the 50GB+ club. This in mind, it does begin to bring into question what some of these other studios are doing when making their games. Is there a certain level of sloppiness in the coding that is contributing to this bloat?

Elite: Dangerous looks gorgeous, yet manages to clock in
at only 7GB.

At least on the PC gaming side of things we can readily address the issue simply by installing a bigger hard drive. This will at least make sure there is enough space to accommodate these games. However, unless you go with one that is solid state, there will still be hurdles, that being the thing's writing speed. HDDs are quite slow when it comes to this, and installing one of these mammoth-sized games on such hardware takes some time. When I was installing Final Fantasy XIII, I pretty much couldn't do anything else with that computer once the process got into full swing. Adding insult to injury was having to wait over two hours for everything to complete. It's a bit of a drag having to deal with something like that. Obviously, over time SSD will come down in price, the process has already started, but as it stands, the technology is still more of a luxury than anything else for a number of people. Even when it does become affordable to the masses and we don't have to deal with sluggish write times anymore, it won't change the fact that these games are massive storage hogs that only seem to be getting bigger.

This doesn't even take into account the console side of things. Those have some pretty small hard drives that can fill up fast. It is possible to replace them, though much easier on the PS4 than the Xbox One by most accounts. The question is how many people out there will actually do this. I'm sure the majority of those reading this article have the technical wherewithall to do such a swap in their sleep. However, when it comes to the general public, I'm not so sure. How many people in that group will upgrade their console HDDs? I can't imagine them doing so en masse.

Grand Theft Auto 5 gobbles up 65GB
on PC.

Whether one has the means and knowledge to upgrade their hard drive, be it on a PC or console, there's one area where they will likely have far less control: their ISP. With games shifting so heavily to digital distribution they're going to have to get downloaded from somewhere, and that means bandwidth consumption. In my neck of the woods, this is a serious concern. Plans top off around 400-500GB transfer per month, and it comes at a fairly hefty price tag. More common plans average about half of that. So, if someone wants to download even a couple of these massive games, they could well have eaten up half or more of their allotted bandwidth for the month. If someone streams a lot of movies, downloads various other things, and generally makes thorough use of their internet connection on a regular basis, they could suddenly find themselves hitting their bandwidth cap and being throttled or paying additional fees after.

All of this being said, I have to wonder if the growing install size of modern games will be a problem that is corrected on its own. It's hard to imagine this not impacting purchasing decisions. I know I'm thinking twice before buying a game now, taking the time to look at its specs and make sure of just how much hard drive space the thing is going to take. If it's over 25GB I stop and give the game some very serious thought before proceeding. In many cases, I actually don't buy it, or at least put it off for quite some time. Sure, I'm missing out on an experience, but I also don't have to rearrange a small army of other games in order to make space for that big one. Moreover, it alleviates having to worry about going over my bandwidth limit for the month.

Elders Scrolls Online takes a whopping 85GB of storage space.

It wouldn't surprise me if others are doing likewise, and this may well help to force developers to examine how they're making their games. Should sales begin to take a hit because games are getting to darn big, they'll have to sit down and take a look at what they're doing and find a way to address the issue. The sad thing is that I don't see this happening any time soon. For now, we're just going to have to suffer through these massive installs, and get creative with managing hard drive space and our monthly bandwidth.