If people say a game is poorly optimized, what do they mean? And how do you “optimize” a game?

Question

Edit: Really enjoy threads like this, because you learn and see so many Pov.

My favourite answer (not in this thread unfortunately) was:

*”If you write a story, the number of words you use can affect the reader’s experience.*

*Use too many words, and the reader takes a long time to get through the book, has difficulty remembering everything, and can’t separate what’s important and what’s not.*

*But use too few words and the reader will get an incomplete picture, make mistakes in understanding the story, and eventually become disinvested in the book.*

*A poorly optimized game is like one of these examples. Either too much goes in, making it difficult for the hardware to cope, or not enough goes in, making the game buggy and broken. (Sometimes both, but that’s beyond ELI5).*

*When it comes to optimising a reader’s experience, it is not about putting more or less words in but choosing the right combination of the right words at the correct time in the plot. Optimising a game is similar concept.*

*Most importantly, no matter how well you write a book, there are always people who will think it could’ve been written better, especially by them. “*

In: 404

Answer 1

Imagine you need to go to the store to buy groceries but all of the things you need are at three different stores. Without much of a plan, you drive to a store halfway across town to buy a few things, then turn around to go to another store a bit closer to your home, before finally traveling even further across town to the last store. At this time you realize you are out of grocery bags and need to drive all the way back home anf back before headed home again.

Now, this route makes no sense. You could just as easily visit the closest store first and make your way outwards, or start at the very furthest store and make your way back. Both are valid options, and would save a lot more time and driving than what actually happened. And of course, making sure you had enough grocery bags would also save a lot of time.

Video game code can be thought of like a plan to buy groceries. If things are thought through properly, you can optimize it so that everything can be done as quickly as possible and save energy. When you have so many extra steps that need to be taken, and dont plan through how everything will execute, things will just get slowed down.