does good graphics lead to bad gameplay?

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purf

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Kahunaburger said:
I don't know if I consider good graphics to lead to bad gameplay, but they are often the result of a "make it more cinematic!" philosophy of game design that I think frequently leads to bad gameplay. So, correlation, but not causation.
Yes, pretty much this. While I'd even lose the "frequently". Rule of thumb: Games ≠ Movies
 

babinro

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In general, yes, but with exceptions.

I'd imagine the reasoning is just based around development cycles and funding. The more money, time and resources spent on visuals, the less can be spent on other areas of the game.
 

deathzero021

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that's a tough question... but i'm gonna say i don't think it does. i don't think there is a connection between good graphics and bad gameplay, i think it has to do with production and how games are "produced" nowadays like a product. today's industry seems to be pumping more money into the graphics than the gameplay because it's easier to advertise and sell a game with good graphics. the industry is focused on graphics 1st, gameplay 2nd. i kinda wish it was the other way around though.
 

Maze1125

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Daystar Clarion said:
Animation, for me, is more important than graphics.


The textures are still awful and people are still block men, but everything moves like it should.

I just wish Half Life actually played like that :D

There are lots of games with pretty visuals, but some things just don't move like they should.

Character models in Mass Effect move terribly in cut scenes.
That's pretty awesome.

At least we now know what's happened to HL2:EP3. Gabe saw that video.
 

Lt. Rocky

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A great deal of the industry seems to think if a game has impressive visuals it can get away with the sort of gameplay that feels shallow or copied from another game. I have alot of doubts that the WiiU and the successors to the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 will quell such practices.
 

DiamanteGeeza

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No, is the short answer.

I've worked in the games industry a long time, and I make games for a living. What I see are the following things happen over and over again:

1) Developers have to sell their game to a publisher. The vast majority of execs at publishers have never made a game before and therefore know nothing about the process. Typically, they will never even play the prototype in a pitch meeting - all they will do is watch someone else play it. Sadly, this means that if the graphics aren't close to , then the pitch is dismissed, regardless of how innovative the gameplay. That is the sad, frustrating truth of games publishers.

2) Writing snazzy shaders on modern hardware is pretty straightforward if you're half decent at math. It's not like the (good) old days, where we were optimizing assembly code to eek every last cycle out of a sprite print. The hardware does the heavy lifting, and the graphics engineer simlpy has to implement a variation of a Siggraph paper. In the grand scheme of things, this is not very difficult.

3) Writing good gameplay code (such as AI, controls, etc.) is not simple. It sounds like it is, but trust me - it isn't; it's very, very difficult to get a game 'feeling' right. It also isn't something that can be learnt - you either have 'it' or you don't.

4) I could throw a rock right now and hit five great graphics engineers. It would take me a long time to find a good gameplay engineer. Graphics guys are much easier to hire because there's so many of them, thanks in part to the multitude of University courses that teach them how to write shader code. Why do they want to write shader code? Because it's the 'cooler' side of programming. The guy that spends weeks tweaking some AI code to get the gameplay feeling just right will get no recognition; the guy that just wrote some whizzbang particle effect will. It's like a AAA physics engineer - absolutely invaluable on your team, but really really hard to find because there's no hero element to the work.

5) The 'our game is going to be cinematic' syndrome. The current blight of the games industry. A game 'looking cinematic' requires a higher number of graphics engineers than you'd usually need. Points #4 and #1 then come into play and increase that number still further.

6) Most game developers think that the public want 'cinematic looking' games. Do you? I'm not sure, but this is another reason why so much of the budget and focus is on graphics; the perception of what the mainstream gamer sees as most important. Personally, I see this a self-fulfilling prophecy within the industry at the moment, and I am sick to death of 'realistic' games where everything is brown.


So no; good graphics do not create bad gameplay, but most game teams these days have a higher quality of graphics engineer than they do gameplay engineer, and this is down (primarily) to the fact that the former is ten-a-penny, and the latter is like finding a needle in a haystack. Good graphics=easy, good gameplay=hard.
 

Kungfu_Teddybear

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Daystar Clarion said:
Animation, for me, is more important than graphics.


The textures are still awful and people are still block men, but everything moves like it should.

I just wish Half Life actually played like that :D

There are lots of games with pretty visuals, but some things just don't move like they should.

Character models in Mass Effect move terribly in cut scenes.
That. Was. Amazing...

I would gladly welcome a re-release of Half Life if it was animated like that.
 

sextus the crazy

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I think that the term "good graphics" is somewhat misleading. A game can look and play well without to much expense; the real trouble comes when you try to make a game that pushes graphical fidelity. Trying to make the best textures and shaders (usually by making a new engine) take a ton of money that could be spent in gameplay. The best resolution will just make your shit sharper if you don't have good art direction, which is the most important visual aspect. Valve understands this; they don't waste time on a new engines because they know their games look good due to art direct and play well. Most people don't give a shit about high-end graphics anyway.
 

dessertmonkeyjk

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It's more of the fact they don't focus on what matters in the long run is how the game plays. There's a reason many games from over a decade ago are still being mentioned at all and it's not the graphics.
 

NeutralDrow

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I immediately started thinking of the Guilty Gear, Arcana Heart, and Devil May Cry games, which got both better and better-looking as time went on.

I'd say no, not necessarily.
 

kickyourass

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No, really the only time graphics has any impact on gameplay is if it's too muddy/pixal-y/other bad adjective-y to tell the difference between important objects.
 

Pumpkin_Eater

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The focus on graphics and flashiness is the problem, not superior graphics themselves. For example, the last three Elder Scrolls games have looked progressively better, but general consensus is that overall game quality dipped with Oblivion and shot back up with Skyrim. The reason for this is the attention to detail, superior writing, and solid gameplay that went into Morrowind and Skyrim, but was comparatively lacking in Oblivion.
 

Vault101

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Sep 26, 2010
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yes, because

"GRAPHIX WHORES ARE RUINING GAMEZ AS ART!!MY WII HAS SUM OF DA BEST GAMES EVA STFU IF U THINK THERE "IMATURE""

.......sorry, its fun to be an ass somtimes
 

Yopaz

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Daystar Clarion said:
Animation, for me, is more important than graphics.


The textures are still awful and people are still block men, but everything moves like it should.

I just wish Half Life actually played like that :D

There are lots of games with pretty visuals, but some things just don't move like they should.

Character models in Mass Effect move terribly in cut scenes.
This is a very reasonable point. No matter how amazing a game look it's all a waste if movement looks unnatural.

However good gameplay and good graphics can go hand in hand. Batman Arkham City had great gameplay and pretty good graphics.
Bad graphics and bad gameplay can also join each other and often do. Really, stop blaming graphics for crappy games. Blame lack of creativity and fear of taking risks.
 

Drop_D-Bombshell

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It's not that good graphics lead to bad games, i see it as how a developer uses those good graphics to further strengthen the gameplay. If the company is more focused on using graphics to make everything shiny and awesome backgrounds which you never get to see, then it's not a good use and most likely the gameplay'll be terrible. But if they use it to further puzzles, enemies and weapon mechanics, it can make a great game better.

It's all to do with where those good graphics are used and whether the balance of graphics and gameplay is good.
 

Monsterfurby

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Technological* and gameplay quality seem to be negatively correlated these days, but correlation does not mean causation.

* - not necessarily graphical. A graphically high-quality game could be using very hand-drawn 2D or pixel graphics.