Are graphics killing the gaming industry?

[Nostalgia]

Yes. There is a lot to it when making a game, but make no mistake that polishing the graphics makes it take much more time. I'm on the edge though about it as a whole.

I enjoy the occasional eye-candy here and there. Crysis didn't wow me. I guess it should of, as it does to many, but it's not like I won't admit when something does look very nice. It does, but I am more likely to give an eye to something that's artistically pleasing rather than just looking nice.

Graphics don't make a game for me, especially considering how apathetic I am when it comes to titles coming out anymore, all while residing in my corner of retro games and poor hardware. Perhaps I'm just not spoiled enough. I do not own a console from this gen (unless the DS counts, but I only got that last month). My computer sucks. Perhaps it's because I can't actually experience playing games as they are now. But that's no excuse for how gameplay is often thrown to the side, extremely short, or buggy. So much work goes into polishing these games to look nice, yet a lot of other things that are much more important are often ignored. Not due to graphics as a whole, but it helps.

Graphics aren't killing the game industry. It's just making developers lazy. There is less you need to focus on when beautiful graphics will excuse the game a lot of the time. Also, multiplayer. If you really want to shift blame to something about game length and horrible campaigns, it's all because of multiplayer.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Halo =/= Good Graphics.

Look at how well that's doing, and is doing still.

http://majornelson.com/archive/2009/04/28/live-activity-for-week-of-april-20th.aspx

That being the latest stats release by Nelson

Halo 3 has great graphics!

And the mythic map pack is probably helping those numbers (a tiny bit).

Spoiler

Killzone 2

Spoiler

Gears of War 2

Spoiler

Halo 3

Your witness.

Keep in mind that your comparing Halo 3's graphics to other games that were released after Halo 3. Halo 3's graphics are just fine. Seriously. This is why I'm a gameplay person.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Yes and anyone who says no are atrociously misinformed.

 

[thecresta]

Yes, but I'm sure they will eventually hit a brick wall.

I can't see our governments just sitting by as technology advances to the point where we can smash a photo-realistic by-stander over the head with a hammer, or perfectly-formed bullet holes litter a life-like grunt's corpse.

It's only a matter of time until developers have to reduce the detail before they're allowed to release their games.

 

[Ushario]

To the OP, I'm a games programmer, so I can see why you might think that graphics are the issue, but they aren't.

There simply isn't an issue of games taking longer and getting delayed more than previously occured. Its always happened and it always will. Some games do spend a extended times in production, which is often caused by a developer running low on money, so they have to take on other work, or axe staff.

The 'games are shorter and have no content' crowd are all wearing blinkers and suffering from severe nostalgia. Move on, open your frigging eyes and at least try and look in the right places.

As for Valve and their production speed, thats at least partly due to the Cabal process, just google Valve Cabal and you should get an explanation.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

There simply isn't an issue of games taking longer and getting delayed more than previously occured. Its always happened and it always will. Some games do spend a extended times in production, which is often caused by a developer running low on money, so they have to take on other work, or axe staff.

Money and Business only explain so much we know that really great games can be made by people living on dried noodles and working their bedrooms. What uses all of the money?

The 'games are shorter and have no content' crowd are all wearing blinkers and suffering from severe nostalgia. Move on, open your frigging eyes and at least try and look in the right places.

What are the right places? Does it actually take less time and training to make a good level in Unreal 3 engine than Mario World?

 

[Ushario]

Money and Business only explain so much we know that really great games can be made by people living on dried noodles and working their bedrooms. What uses all of the money?

What are the right places? Does it actually take less time and training to make a good level in Unreal 3 engine than Mario World?

Really good games can be made by those working under horrible conditions. I'd much rather get payed a wage while I work on a game than live in poverty personally. People like to be paid for their work, that is where money tends to go. That includes purchasing middleware and games engines.

The right places are not games like Crysis, which get a lot of complaints from people wanting substance and content. Look at RPG's, MMO's etc if you want depth.

As for comparing level creation using the Unreal 3 engine to Mario World, all I can ask is that you elaborate? I seem to have missed your point.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Really good games can be made by those working under horrible conditions. I'd much rather get payed a wage while I work on a game than live in poverty personally. People like to be paid for their work, that is where money tends to go. That includes purchasing middleware and games engines.

The right places are not games like Crysis, which get a lot of complaints from people wanting substance and content. Look at RPG's, MMO's etc if you want depth.

As for comparing level creation using the Unreal 3 engine to Mario World, all I can ask is that you elaborate? I seem to have missed your point.

I don't agree with bad conditions for developers unless they are doing for their own reasons. If they could make a good game by going through hardship but enjoying what they are doing and making a good amount of money by owning the finished product then I don't feel bad for them. If I have any problem here it's that's high production values mean that at least some people working on the game are just labour who are expected to work the same way for a fixed salary.

So, a good salary for people working on visual aspects of the game is a drain of money. Buying technology to graphically "keep up with the joneses" is a drain on money. It's not like their is some game tax that has nothing to do with graphics although graphics are not the only cost.

My point about Mario World is just that the more visually complex levels become the more design work is needed. In game complexity and user satisfaction terms Mario World can stand up to an Unreal 3 level. Is that nostalgia as you have accused and can you elaborate?

 

[B4D 9R4MM3R]

Are graphics killing the gaming industry? Perhaps not, but I think they are definitely changing it. I have definitely noticed that I tend to play older games far more often the newer ones, and I mean pre-2000 (which isn't much to some of you, but it is to me).

I think it depends on the opinions of the majority of the public. At the moment they are satisfied with beautiful visuals and shoddy gameplay. Until we reach the point where everything has been moulded down to the fundamental particles people will believe better graphics is further progress. Whether they are right or not is not our place to say, but I fear that developers may not focus on other aspects of the game until graphics either hits that point or a point where it is extremely difficult to progress further.

My only concern is that graphics are increasing exponentially, but work time on games is not necessarily increasing proportionally. For the sake of simplification, a model with four times the polygons would require four times the time spent on it. That requires an exponential increase in time, but unless overall production time increases to meet this time is subtracted from other areas. Gameplay, bugs, glitches, yadda-yadda all require an enormous amount of time to balance, and time is being subtracted from here to meet the graphical demand.

I won?t pretend I know anything about the industry, but if they believe graphics are so good, why do I continue to play 10 year old games and have no problem in believing them then the newer releases?

 

[dadou_gamer]

Graphics are really important for the game industry! The first thing a player will see in video game advert is the graphics, the sound, etc. The graphics must be awesome encourage the players to buy a video game!

 

[Waflmao]

Its always been about graphics

 

[Nutcase]

The right places are not games like Crysis, which get a lot of complaints from people wanting substance and content. Look at RPG's, MMO's etc if you want depth.

RPG's and MMO's? LOL. They have suffered more from the same dumbing down phenomenon than first person shooters have; presumably because there wasn't that much to remove from the FPS's in the first place. A loot treadmill or an Excel spreadsheet is not "depth", nor is it role-playing, but that's another matter. I'm still going to use the misnomer "RPG" even if the games are actually dungeon crawlers and crappy tactics games.

If things are fine, then where are the RPG's with richer interaction than roguelikes and MUDs (dating back 20 years) have? I am not aware of any.

Where are the RPG's where weapons are not the answer to everything?

 

[wgreer25]

It is not the fact that we are demanding better graphics, but more the fact that the industry (and I will include movies in this) have the tools to make amazing graphics, so they are compelled to use these tools. So more concentration is given to graphics/CGI (for movies) and less is given to story/gameplay.

To site a couple of examples: The latest mummy movie, tons of CGI, shitty movie. Spiderman 3, tons of CGI, one of the worst comic book movies ever made.

In games: I'm gonna call out a new game that has OK graphics and really fun gameplay. The new Wolverine game (yes, the one based off the movie... its actually good). This was obviously something that was rushed to market to meet the movie release, but they used an oldfasion gameplay mechanic (a-la God of War, DMC) and put an X-man spin on it. The result was a really fun game.
Also- L4D, L4D graphics are definately last gen, but the game is a lot of fun because more work was put into gameplay. It makes you hope that developers will get the hint that we the gamers are not screaming for uber-realistic graphics.

I will kinda recant some of my statements by saying that graphics can make a game much greater. Example would be Shadow of Colossus. I have posted it before, if you were to take that game and only do one thing (update the graphics to current gen), you would drasticly improve on an already amazing game. Likewise, I think the graphics level in Assassin's Creed really helps create the atmosphere of the game and greatly enhances the emersion factor. Dead space is the same way.

So graphics are important (more so depending on the game), but really not the most important thing.

 

[kawligia]

The right places are not games like Crysis, which get a lot of complaints from people wanting substance and content. Look at RPG's, MMO's etc if you want depth.

That's just it. I AM looking at RPGs. Take Bethesda's games for example. Morrowind had me sucked in for MONTHS and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Oblivion, sucked IMO but that was due mostly to some horrible design decisions like the new leveled loot/enemies system. Aside from that, the game was a bit smaller and shorter. That was ok though because the as the quantity of quests went down, the quality of them went up.

Then we go to Fallout 3. Even though the quests were still interesting, the quantity had dropped SO MUCH that I finished the game in just a couple weeks. And it was only that long because I kept restarting and I tried to take my time. There is give and take involved in that quantity/quality analysis but at some point one can't cover for the other anymore.

Part of the problem was that, according to one of the devs, its hard to do voice acting for more quests. Once again, we have the cart before the horse. Voice acting ADDS to the enjoyment of the quest, but it should NEVER replace the quests. I would rather have 3 or 4 non-voiced quests than 1 voiced one. Or they could be creative and add quests that don't need voice acting, like getting a quest from a computer or message left somewhere.

Anyway, the point is that RPGs are the ones loosing "depth." I have always looked there for depth, but I just can't seem to find it anymore!!! It's fading away and all I have to show for it is half-ass voice overs and realistic looking grass or rubble for my character to spend 20 minutes walking on before the game ends.

 

[Gamer137]

They aren't killing the industry, but too much emphasis is placed on them. Marketing use graphics as selling points. Consumers buy pretty games regardless of what the gameplay may be like. Publishers demand pretty games so marketing will be easier and consumers will buy more. Nothing wrong with detailed graphics, but graphics is the last item on the priority list, and too see such attention on graphics is just disappointing.

 

[Groovewood]

Halo =/= Good Graphics.

Look at how well that's doing, and is doing still.

http://majornelson.com/archive/2009/04/28/live-activity-for-week-of-april-20th.aspx

That being the latest stats release by Nelson

Halo 3 has great graphics!

And the mythic map pack is probably helping those numbers (a tiny bit).

Spoiler

Killzone 2

Spoiler

Gears of War 2

Spoiler

Halo 3

Your witness.

Well, your comparison is quite biased. The Killzone 2 pic is from the 2005 or 06 trailer, which was cg, using capacities 'similar' to the PS3's specs. The Gears of War pic is a press pic which always look better because they're taken without any gameplay proceseses running, i.e. just the graphics being rendered. And the Halo 3 pic is a character model on a plain background, of course it's not going to look up to par with press shots of other games.

I don't disagree that Halo 3's visuals are below those of KZ 2 and GoW, but your examples are quite uneven, as usually happens when graphics are compared.

With regards to the topic at hand, they aren't, I think since video games have been around they've always tried to push the visual aspect harder. To me video games have always been a visual medium, like movies, they mainly rely on being able to see and as such there will always be a desire to increase and make graphics as good as possible.

 

[Durahan2]

Now I don't believe they're hurting in much of a way. But I would like to perfer a game thats long like they used to be. Now-a-days most games clock in at about 10 hours of play. Rpgs streach that to 20 and rarly to 30. I think the longest game I've played in awhile was persona 4, took me a good 60 hours to get through that whole thing once. Didn't even count up the other 3 times I went through it.

In the end I really do hope the content and not the visuals is in the end sells a game. I'm pretty tired of paying 60 wing-wangs to get a game thats just a bunch of flashy visuals that clocks in at 10 hours of total play.

Edit: I remembered one thing, graphics do hurt in that they'll time and effort away frome everything else. Wanting the shine on the lower lip to look more realistic or get an hour more of play. heh.