Improving PC Graphics Setting Names
For many years, at least as long as I can remember, graphics options in games have largely used the same structure for defining different levels of quality and performance. No doubt you've seen a setting or two that look like:
[The Setting]: Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High, Ultra.
Hopefully it will also at least have some tooltip or other UI that describes the setting in some way along with its impact on framerate, memory, or both. Why use these names for the options, though? What does "medium" even mean? Have we been using this setup for
this long because it works well? I'm not so sure.
Naming Convention
With the common graphics settings naming conventions, lowering a graphics setting feels bad. Why? Because the act of changing from "Very High" to "Medium" means opting for lower quality as communicated by the setting, and while any player understands that doing so will improve performance, the way it is framed feels negative.I believe the independent hardware vendors (IHVs), and to some extent console developers, already figured out a better alternative. During the mid-gen upgrade period of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, there was a surge of games released with "Quality" vs "Performance" modes which we see even more commonly today. In the PC space with upscaling technologies DLSS and FSR from Nvidia and AMD respectively, we saw a similar expanded range of language in the same spirit:
[The Setting]: Ultra Performance, Performance, Balanced, Quality, Ultra Quality.
I would bet the IHVs spent meaningful time considering the naming of their settings' levels, as they are very good at marketing. It was they who within 2-3 years convinced the gaming community of the benefits of upscaling and that resolution was not always equivalent to quality, at a time when pixel counting was an obsession. Nowadays I more fully appreciate what this did towards leveling up the graphics of the entire industry, but initially when I saw their settings naming convention, I mentally blew it off as "just marketing." Despite my cynicism, marketing is sometimes wielded for good, and I think this is good. They probably didn't want their users to feel "Low" or "Medium" about their technology, it's ultra at either end of the spectrum. We can do the same and form a more positive impression with players through better framing of settings. The positive feeling of maxing out the graphics settings as much as possible doesn't need to come at the cost of others seeing their experience framed as "low."
I see no downsides to this! It's a small change that may have a genuinely positive impact to some, and as a bonus it may also bring clearer purpose to the settings for the developers. If the "lower" settings aren't meant for performance necessarily and don't fit within this model, could they be named something different? Chances are if performance-to-quality doesn't communicate a graphics setting, low-to-ultra probably does not communicate it meaningfully either, and more specific language should be used to bring better clarity.
The Meaning of Ultra
The classic highest setting, Ultra, has a long historical disagreement between players and developers. Among developers, Ultra (or whatever they choose to name it) can typically be translated as "Use this setting when playing the game on future hardware." This is a nice and simple way to give players who buy the game later a better experience on their newer hardware, especially in cases where developers know in advance that they aren't likely to update it again for that purpose. Some players may know this, but for many, Ultra can be translated as "The best setting. It better run well on my [insert top-tier current-generation hardware here]." If the Ultra setting is implemented as devs tend to interpret it, as in it would only run well on future hardware, this difference of opinion causes frustration on both sides on launch day, which you can see demonstrated in the community commentary sections of basically any graphically demanding game.We can turn to a name change to solve this as well, and simply call the setting "Future Hardware", there's nothing ambiguous about that! And it fits in nicely as an option tagged onto the end of the earlier-described settings convention:
[The Setting]: Ultra Performance, Performance, Balanced, Quality, Ultra Quality, Future Hardware
Maybe it was silly to devote so much text to something so seemingly straightforward, but as an industry we've shipped with the same old convention for so long, I wonder if raising the question alone brings you any pause. It did for me, which is why I'm going to ship with this new convention next time. If you are reading this and are also convinced and beat me to shipping it, I would love to hear how it goes. Thank you for reading!