The advanced capabilities of state-of-the-art game engines are extremely impressive in a technical sense. Unfortunately, in recent years this cutting-edge tech is rarely the enabling element in delivering games I enjoy playing. This is one reason I've changed my gaming focus to retro-gaming (of course, the DLC and other monetization-centric sins of big game studios are also a major factor).<p>While there are a few newer games I do enjoy, as far as I can tell, the bleeding edge features aren't needed to create what I find enjoyable about them. For me, I think the issue is that, outside rare exceptions, beyond a certain point increasing fidelity doesn't add value to game play. Admittedly, this is my own subjective assessment. Although I'm not in the game industry, I also worry that the increasing breadth and complexity of SOTA engines requires increasingly specialized knowledge and skill sets to leverage thus raising the bar out of reach of the smaller developers who often create the new games I do enjoy. It would be reassuring to hear from smaller and indie game developers who've found the new engine features in recent UE versions to be both accessible on small-team time budgets and enabling of significant new game play value.<p>Outside of gaming, I think newer capabilities like using SOTA engines for real-time virtual sets during film production are more creatively exciting because they can enable big budget story-telling on smaller and indie budgets.