I believe this is a no-brainer. Graphics are nice,but they don't define a game on their own. The gameplay is far more important than how many pixels/polygons you can cram into a square centimeter. Less disc/drive space used for graphics means more data can be put towards the game itself,such as engines,mechanics,animation and the game world. Games should be advertised for their content and unique visual style,not how sharp their graphics are. HD doesn't mean squat when you have a three hour experience of same-old-same-old.
Plus,call me blind,but I don;t see the difference between HD and standard,these days...
You mean Skyrim or Witcher 2? They're both fantasy worlds and they seem to have both. In reality I don't think it is a viable choice, length isn't a big seller and indeed why should it be, who honestly has time to play even a quarter of the games that come out these days?
If the money that went into making high fidelity experiences went into improvingthe breadth and depth of gameplay I would absolutely love that, but it won't because I'm in a minority. But as long as we're playing what if, well, I wouldn't trade graphics for length but I certainly would for breadth.
Pfff, hell fucking no! I like my games to look good.
Yes, visuals are damned important in a game no matter what anyone says.
Are there games that simply feel like giant sightseeing tours? Sure, but games like inFamous 2 and Dark Souls prove that you can make beautiful looking games with a shit ton of content.
And really, games of the previous generation weren't as long as you might remember. Silent Hill and Resident Evil could be finished in under 2 hours of you knew where to go.
And for those mentioning it; Yes, you are blind if you can't tell the difference between high definition and standard definition.
It depends on the sort of game. I don't want my fast paced action FPS to last for 100 hours and look like it belongs on the PlayStation, I want it to hold my attention for six to eight hours and look good doing it. In contrast I don't want my sprawling non-linear RPG to be that long, even if it looks like I am literally inside Fallout or Skyrim.
And besides all that I don't play on an HD TV, so HD makes no difference to me in practical terms. Whenever I have played on an HD TV I've noticed some difference, but it's never made me think 'this game is better because it looks slightly shinier.' If anything it makes all the flaws more obvious. Like why is that NPC clipping into the background? Shouldn't a game with this much attention put into its graphics have done some bug testing first?
My solution would be simple though. Using a slightly more stylised animation style for the bigger games could let them have lower resolution and more content. I'm not talking cartoonish but something like FFVIII, which had realistic enough depictions of humans, just in an exaggerated world. and it had 100 hours of content (if you played the whole thing) Imagine how much content you could get in with current technology but that same stylised style of artwork.
I'm actually pretty tired of HD graphics. Well I should say the overall lack of creative art design in favor of pseudo realism, especially when its obvious that 90% of the budget when towards it and the actual game was gutted because of it.
I'd rather play a rom hack of Symphony of the night, than a next gen Lords of Shadow sequel.
I'd take Link to the Past over Skyward Sword etc. etc.
But if I could get Skyrim's graphic quality and leveling system grafted into Oblivion...
Basically I prefer gameplay to graphics. Big name companies could probably save quite a lot of money focusing on making games fun instead of pretty.
Like right now the games I most want to play are Fez (I don't have xb), Dragon's Dogma, and Borderlands 2.
These are also the ONLY games out this year I am even interested in sadly. Well RE6 might be good, who knows. AC3 will be the first non DS AC game I probably won't play. I have zero interest in the era its set in, and the overarching plot has long since stopped being of any interest to me.
When they decide to go back to more exotic locales and periods of history a little further back than the American Revolution I'll bite.
Seriously they could have done feudal Japan and made Nobunaga a Templar and they would have turned an easy profit I bet.
Visuals aren't important in the slightest. They add to a good game (and that's nice of course), but their lack does not make a bad game. Conversely, having a full on 3D holodeck wouldn't make a bad game good (plus then you have to deal with evil Lincoln.)
Think I'm wrong?
Minecraft... Scoreboard.
And I'm not even a Minecraft fanboy, I have not even played it yet. But it was one of the biggest name games of 2011 with basically 8-bit graphics. That's a clear win for graphics < quality and quantity.
Just some thoughts stemming from my time spent playing Xenoblade Chronicles, and some information I've been picking up over the past couple years concerning game development.
It's been made quite clear that HD graphics are expensive (and presumably time-consuming), and I've starting to wonder if the push towards greater graphical fidelity has actually been getting in the way of the creation of the massive story-driven games (referred to as "grand adventures" in another topic) seen in previous generations of gaming. There's no question that the hardware can support visuals right now, and there definitely have been many impressive-looking games over the past few years; but I'm sure everyone has also noticed the stronger presence of shorter games, and that longer games seem much rarer these days.
I'm beginning to suspect the reason why games have been getting shorter is simply due to the cost of production. While it's true a publisher can make more money when a storyline is spread over a trilogy of shorter games rather than one big game, they also have to put much more resources into the entire project; they still have to make some profit, and splitting the game up makes for a safer investment. However, it's not unreasonable to think that they might actually be open to making bigger games... if the cost of production could be reduced. With HD graphics being a huge cost for many games, they'd be a good candidate to get the axe; after all, people do play older games and there are ways to compensate for the lack of visual fidelity (namely, good art design).
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Xenoblade Chronicles is a fairly obvious example, and is absolutely massive for a single-player game. The length of the game is stated to be somewhere around 60-80+ hours for the main quest alone, and there are plenty of sidequests for those which are interested. There's a video in the spoiler below for a brief tour:
Xenoblade Chronicles Tour[/youtube]
The location the video reaches at the end is about 20-25 hours into the game on a no-frills playthrough, and it's stated to not even be the midway point of the game; it's actually stated to show only a mere 10% of the game world. It's also a bee-line from the starting area to that point, never mind exploring everything else in the game's massive locales; it also bypasses a sizable early-game dungeon, though that's because it becomes inacessible after it's completed.
But yes, the unavoidable issue with the game is the low-resolution graphics; being on the Wii means the game isn't going to have HD graphics, but even then it's not too impressive in terms of fidelity. Still, the art design in the game is phenomenal; and when combined with the impressive draw distances for the game's locales, the game manages to look great (once you get used to the lower quality of the visuals, speaking from the technical perspective).
So why is a game that big on the Wii, the least powerful console of the current generation? Well, aside from being published by Nintendo. It would appear that the developpers decided earlier on that they didn't need high-quality graphics, possibly due to being released on the Wii. Not having to do HD graphics meant they could produce the game for less cost... or for the same cost as a game with HD graphics (if still not less), make the game much bigger. An interesting design choice, but Xenoblade Chronicles has certainly benefitted from it.
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The question is whether or not other developpers and/or publishers are willing to consider this sort of thing. HD graphics do somewhat spoil the player, meaning playing a game with less sophisticated visuals at least takes some getting used to; if they're unwilling to tough it out for a bit, the game could be alienating and could end up being a flop (commercially speaking) as a result. The problem could be that they could view HD graphics as a necessity; nevertheless, the lower cost of production is definitely an incentive.
So the real question is should they consider it.
Or more specifically, is the player community willing to consider this option?
What do you all think? Are you willing to give up high-definition visuals if it meant the games you buy are bigger & longer? No difference in the cost to you, no change in the overall budget of a game's production, just a re-allocation of the development costs away from the visuals and into adding to a game's content. Yay or nay?
My response to this is simple: Bigger doesn't mean Better.
Your thesis is that games are shorter because developers spend more money making them HD and thus sacrifice building a bigger world.
My Thesis is that games are BORING because developers spend more money making these huge, pretty worlds thus sacrificing a better story.
I can't tell you how many RPGs and especially JRPGs where I've gone, "Yeah, it's pretty...so what?" In fact, in most of those games, I DON'T want a bigger game world cause I would literally kill myself if I had to spend any more time with those characters.
And that's really the thing: Games need to focus on story more, and worry less about both graphics AND size. Not to mention something: The bigger your game is, the more story it needs and well...a story is kinda like a living thing. It has stamina and after a while, well that stamina runs out. Then your story just sorta drags on.
Look at a game like Skyrim. It's so big and there is so much crap to do on the side that I haven't finished the game. I just got bored with it. Why am I in this dungeon looking for this McGuffin. What's the point? Where am I supposed to be going. Why do I care?
Now take the Portal series. They are both VERY short games, but they're so highly rated because of the writing. Without the writing, they would just be a neat platformer, but they are elevated by the writing.
EDIT: I will give you this. I am tired of developers giving me HD graphics and then giving me NOTHING INTERESTING TO LOOK AT. Seriously. I am so tired of looking at uniform BROWN AND GREY WALLS rendered in FULL HD. Do a flower or something. Jesus.
Updated the first post to make things a bit more clear in regards to the aim of this topic, in that the use of HD graphics makes the affordability of larger games a problem. In an ideal world, cost wouldn't be an issue; the option of an unlimited budget in the poll was partially a joke, but it also represented the situation where the publisher was willing to assume the risk associated with having a longer game with HD visuals.
Quality of the final product is should still a top priority for any game in development, and that was an assumption on my part that I thought everyone else would also share. That and the game wouldn't be padded out to lengthen it simply for the sake of having a longer game. It was aimed at longer games being made at all, not how good they would be.
Anyhow, cleared that up in the first post. Now to take a look at the results of the poll and the responses thus far.
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The poll results, at this point in time, are pretty clear. The vast majority of players than willing to give up HD graphics if it meant getting bigger & longer games. They've been sorely missed the last few years, while the presence of shorter games has become much more prevalent. The handful of longer games released these days also gravitates towards sandbox-type experiences and MMOs, which is fine for some players... but those who want to enjoy a long story-driven game can find them lacking. Another note about the the poll is the third most common response; those players weren't willing to sacrifice HD graphics, but wanted longer games just the same.
The ayes have it, players want longer games; of course, they still want those games to be good as well. Grand adventures are in demand (and probably always will be), and the vast majority of players are willing to give up the high definition visuals if it means they can be made.
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Now for the responses... which are a tad more dicey.
Many posts have noted that longer games are not better, which is entirely true. Many games don't need to be longer, and increasing their length (through padding and repetitive content) simply to have a longer game can easily be harmful to the overall quality of the product. It's always a risk with any game that the developper has no idea what they're doing or screws up catastrophically, and the topic question is somewhat ignoring this issue; however, it's to focus on the problem of affordability. The quality of a game will always be a gamble and difficult to quantify, but the cost-benefit of visuals versus content is a little more clear-cut.
The other detail of note is that great asthetic design is still an expectation, if not more vital when a game isn't using the highest levels of detail. This was another assumption on my part, that it would be a given in this situation; to put it simply, I agree with this sentiment. Back to the main issue, I believe that a good asthetic design is more affordable than HD graphics; if anything, it should be present in the game regardless of if it's in HD or not. Not using HD visuals doesn't mean going back too far either, just going down to a level of detail that isn't ridiculously expensive. Another benefit are avoiding the dreaded "Uncanny Valley", which quite a few games these days are fast approach (if not right in the middle of it already). Somewhat unmentioned is that less detailed graphics can allow for higher and more stable framerates, avoiding some of the technical issues (usually "choppiness") that can become apparent when the quality of the visuals exceeds the capabilities of the hardware. Nevertheless, this doesn't guarantee that everyone will enjoy the same asthetic design; but that's more or less unavoidable, there's no accounting for personal tastes.
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Thanks for all the responses so far, and feel free to add if you have anything else.
A hundred times yes. It's a game, not an art show. Of course there is a difference between expensive and good- there are games on the SNES I would still consider to be graphically beautiful due to the use of colours and textures. It only detracts from the experience when it's focused on to the exclusion of more crucial factors such as depth, or when there's so much bloom you can't see anything (I had this problem early on in Xenoblade and Skyward Sword).
Yes but yet again I'm bias on this since I have not yet experience the true might of a HD graphic game.
Still I stand by for saying yes since my bro has too much of an eye candy for that sort of graphic treatment since he refuse to play SWTOR for the olden graphic look. I mean come on it's not that bad (he pretty much bought FF13 for the graphic alone)!
Absolutely! My favorite game is Dwarf Fortress, although enough graphics to see the detailed combat and such would be nice.
I'd say mostly anyone would prefer content over graphics, but the only reason graphics are given all the focus in development is because its easier to market. A typical trailer lasts two to three minutes, and it's much easier to show off visuals than scale in that time.
Absolutely. HD doesn't mean shit to me. With my defective eyeballs I can't even see the HD anyway. Give me fun games that can keep me occupied for awhile and screw this HD crap.
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