What is game optimization really? Durante talks to game developers to explain the details.

In this PC Gamer article, Durante and Croteam's Dean Sekulic shine some light on what optimization really is, and why some games that you may have thought were poorly optimized were simply attempting to push the envelope in terms of graphics fidelity.

Durante concludes:

In a similar vein, consider the idea that additional high-end graphics settings, even if they are not fully usable at the time of a release, are never a bad thing compared to not having those settings available in the first place. Their presence doesn't make a game unoptimized. I’ve always believed that coming back to a high-end game many years later and seeing it in even more splendor is one of the many major perks of the PC platform, and it would be sad to see this diminished due to shortsighted judgments about optimization.