Frame rate is the headline number and consistency of frame delivery affects perceived smoothness more directly.
Frame time
The interval between frames rather than the average per second.
Which is what the eye actually responds to.
Stutter
Occasional long frames within an otherwise high average.
Which produces visible hitching that averages hide.
Percentile measures
Reporting the slowest one percent of frames.
Which reviewers adopted because averages were misleading.
Variable refresh
Displays synchronising to the output rate.
Which removes tearing without the penalty of fixed synchronisation.
Why averages hide the problem
A game reporting sixty frames per second may be delivering fifty-eight frames evenly and two that took far longer.
Which the average conceals entirely and the eye notices immediately.
This is why reviewers moved from quoting averages to quoting the slowest one percent of frame times, which correlates far better with how a game actually feels.
Causes of stutter
Shader compilation, asset streaming and background processes.
Which produce characteristic patterns.
Shader compilation stutter
Compilation happening during play rather than in advance.
Which has become a widely discussed problem on one platform in particular.
Frame generation
Inserted frames improving smoothness without reducing input latency.
Which is a genuine distinction worth understanding.
Measuring it yourself
Overlay tools reporting frame times rather than averages.
What smooth actually feels like
Frames arriving at even intervals, with input latency low enough that the response feels connected to the action.
Which are two separate properties that both matter and are frequently confused.
A game can be perfectly evenly paced and feel unresponsive, or highly responsive and visibly stuttery.
Input latency
Time from a button press to the result appearing.
Which accumulates across the whole chain from controller to display.
Display refresh interaction
Frame rates that do not divide evenly into the refresh rate.
Which produces uneven presentation even with steady rendering.
Capping frame rate
Deliberately limiting output for consistency.
Which frequently feels better than an uncapped higher average.
Console modes
Performance and quality options trading resolution for frame rate.
Why this became a common complaint
Modern games stream assets continuously and compile shaders during play, both of which can produce individual frames that take far longer than the rest.
Which means a game can report an excellent average and still feel poor.
Players noticed the discrepancy before benchmarking practice caught up, which is why frame time graphs are now standard in technical coverage.
Shader pre-compilation
Building shaders before play rather than during it.
Which is why some games have a lengthy first-run step.
Storage speed
Asset streaming depending on drive performance.
Which is why some titles specify solid state storage.
Background processes
Other software interrupting the game.
Which is a common and easily fixed cause.
What to look at in reviews
Frame time graphs and percentile figures rather than averages.
A note on how this industry reports itself
Games is an unusually opaque business for one with such a visible product. Budgets are rarely disclosed, sales figures are announced selectively, player numbers are quoted in whichever metric flatters, and profitability is almost never stated at all.
Most of what is publicly known comes from court filings, leaked documents, regulatory submissions and former employees speaking after the fact. That material is reliable when it exists and covers a small fraction of the industry, which means any general claim about how games perform commercially rests on a limited and non-random sample.
Where the better information is
Developer conference talks are the single best public source on how games are actually made, and a large number are freely available. Regulatory filings during acquisitions have disclosed more real financial detail than a decade of press releases. Trade publications with industry sources are considerably more informative than consumer coverage on business questions.
Treat anything presented as an industry-wide figure with some caution, including in this article, and prefer sources that say where their numbers came from.
Why the business side is worth understanding
A great deal of frustration with games comes from decisions that look inexplicable from outside and are entirely predictable once the commercial structure is visible. Why a game shipped unfinished, why a beloved studio was closed after a successful release, why a sequel dropped features the previous game had, why a service shut down two years in.
None of these are mysteries. They are the outcomes of funding structures, platform economics, publisher portfolio decisions and the fact that games are made by people working to schedules set before anyone knew what the game would be.
Knowing that does not make the outcomes better. It does make them legible, and it makes it easier to tell the difference between a studio that made a mistake and one that was never given the conditions to succeed.
One thing worth remembering
Games are made by people, mostly people who care a great deal about them, working inside commercial structures they did not design and frequently cannot change.
Criticism of a game is fair. Criticism of the decisions behind it is usually aimed at the wrong floor of the building.