Poll: Do high end graphics take more than they give?

[badgersprite]

I agree with your points but I can't whole-heartedly agree with you because what graphics do is create atmosphere. I guess we perceive graphics differently, what you seem to be referring to is modern "realistic" graphics. I believe good graphics are those which serve a meaningful purpose (most often immersion and engagement) while remaining stylistically consistent.

I can see where you're coming from here, but I have to mention that some of the most immersive and atmospheric games I've played are on older generation consoles with outdated graphics. I've played several games with supposedly great graphics that I actually find more jarring and distracting, and actually take me out of the experience.

Now, everyone's experience with a game is going to be different, so the games I'm specifically thinking of may not evoke the same reactions in someone else as they did in me, but, since I do like to backup what I'm saying with examples, I'll just mention a few titles that fell on either side of that line for me.

As far as immersive and atmospheric games, I'd say the games that top my list for sucking me right in are the old Silent Hill series and GTA: San Andreas. Sure, when they came out, their graphics were pretty good by the standards of the day, but I've gone back and played them alongside 360 games, and they're still just as engaging and immersive even with the graphical limitations of the older consoles. I never found myself caring about the cartoonish, polygonal designs or the fact that nothing looked particularly realistic; my brain accepted that as the look of the world. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that the graphical limitations on the first Silent Hill game especially make for a stronger atmosphere, because it's the things you can't see that make the environment so oppressive.

Now, I'm probably going to cop some flack here for listing this title as an example where good graphics don't help the atmosphere, but, well, I'm just being truthful when I say that this was my experience with Far Cry 2. This is a game touted for its incredible graphics and environment engines and having great rendering detail, but, playing it, I always found myself being taken out of the experience by aspects that were slightly off. I never got really sucked into it, and part of that was the graphics. It's like the Uncanny Valley effect; the closer a game gets to realism, the more jarring anything that looks cartoonish or poorly detailed becomes. If you have an entire world that's more stylised in animation, the less it's going to bother you when something doesn't look right.

I can certainly see how amazing environments with scenic views and intricate detail can help you get lost in a world. I mean, I'll freely admit that my jaw dropped each time I played my first game on the new console generation. But that's the thing. It's nice to look at, but it's not essential. For example, one of my favourite games is Oblivion. And there are heaps of texture packs which greatly improve the environments, particularly those of the towns and cities, and make them wonderful to look at, but, while those texture packs make the world a wet dream for people to look at, I personally found that it didn't make the experience anymore atmospheric than looking at the blank, featureless walls of the vanilla flavour game. If anything, it took me out of the experience by making me think so much about the fact that I was playing a game, and noticing what was different.

In short, graphics are the icing on the cake, but the visuals are not a meal in and of itself. Graphics won't satisfy your hunger if the cake itself is bad, and, if the cake itself is really good, no one's going to care if there's no icing on top; the rest of the game will stand up on its own. If it doesn't, then that's a whole other problem designers and developers need to look at.

Just my thoughts.

 

[crudus]

It is weird because I say graphics don't matter but they do. I recently found my N64 in a box. I hooked it up to the tv and started playing a game. I remember the great graphics etc. Some games were horrendous. I couldn't play them. Now, this was only some games (games where peoples heads were various forms of a parallelepiped). Still, I played these games at some point and found them decent and thought the graphics were good.

 

[Daipire]

I'm not going to argue that such and such has crap graphics. (Unless it's a Wii game, because I'll use every angle I can get against Wii)

So, it's nice to have, and adds to the game in the gritty, over-realistic case of Gears Of War.
And in the beautiful, magical world of Fable.

It's like listening to music, but not watching a video clip. Great graphics aren't vital, but they sure do add something.

 

[blankedboy]

Actually, another point. Dark lighting in games is just something that doesn't work. Even if it does make it atmospheric, it takes away your ability to play the game properly. No matter how immersive a game gets, once you enter a near-pitch-black room, I turn the gamma up as high as possible because otherwise it's impossible to see shit. Doom 3 is the perfect example of a game that needs to be brighter. Borderlands did it right, and the hardcore cel-shading made it even easier to see what's going on, so you never have to look twice at something.

 

[Nexus4]

I was playing FF tactics: War of the Lions, uses 2d sprites on a low res 3d world. But the artistic drawings of the characters and the overall style and charm of the game made me forget that I'm looking at primitive sprites not unlike their 10 year old predecessor. As long as it carries some uniqueness to it, I don't care if it's at crisis level or not.

 

[Nouw]

Sometimes the graphics make or break a game. I hated Starcraft because of the graphics. (Played it while playing Dawn of War and the gameplay was different so yeah. Also, I'm loving Starcraft 2)

It depends on what game so I can't really say anything about it.

I love Doom and Duke Nukem. I also love beautiful graphics. What can I say..?

 

[Delock]

I'm going to say this right now: High end graphics have actually made a game worse in recent memory.

The game is Enslaved, a game that clearly has it's own style. However, there is this rather strange quality about it due to the Unreal Engine that I just can't get over. Characters have realistic faces, yet they have absurd bodies, their world is hyper detailed which somehow feels out of place, the lush vibrant world is blinding in the way it's set up rather than being a beautiful place, and the whole game has this sort of PS2 era feel that horribly clashes with the 360 era graphics.

This is a game that could have benefited a whole lot from using lesser graphics (not at all helped by the fact that the Unreal Engine is getting so overused, it makes it harder for Enslaved to stand out) and probably could have spent the money used with all the modeling and such on better combat or a bit more open world design (not saying nonlinearity, but the game at points feels like you're just following a single path rather than making your way across the colorful post apocalyptic world).

However, I'd like to point out that when you use lesser graphics, make sure it's done in a right way. Minecraft has this sort of blocky design that it uses on everything, making it so it doesn't seem like "horrible graphics" but more of "that's its world." Also, when doing the cartoon sort of design, make certain that the background isn't normal either (look back to the previous sorts of similar designs. Notice that the houses were often not realistic in design in order to keep the feeling constant).

 

[Frozengale]

One of the things that I love about graphical limitations is that it forces you to be more creative and stylistic with what you've got. Think back to the Ye Olde days when Nintendo was first stretching it's legs. Mario was given Suspenders so that you could more easily tell his arms from his chest/torso and a mustache and hat so it was easier to tell that was his head. And today he is THE MOST iconic image in gaming history. The reason he wasn't just another generic awkward looking pixel man was because they used the limitations and created something strangely unique and interesting.

Limitations are better at creating innovation then blind freedom. When I think of the most graphically interesting games I can't help but think of games that were released 5+ years ago, when good graphics were still coming into their own. Some of my favorite styles to this day are games like Psychonauts where the polygon count on entire character models is less then what we use to make a hand in todays games.

I like pretty games, but I miss really great games.

 

[joshuaayt]

Not gonna lie and say I don't care about them at all, but I won't not play a potentially good videogame because it looks like shit. Imagine- if I did that, I'd never have played Arcanum of steamworks and magick obscura. Then where would I get my fear of necromancers? [sup]Harm, harm, harm, heal, harm, harm...[/sup]

I *would* play a game I know to be horrible if it were a graphical masterpiece, because I'm appreciative of the work that goes into

 

[Krantos]

OT: it's not as simple as the OP makes it seem. Yes, far more development time and money is going into visuals these days than I would like, but it's the result of consumer feedback.

Having been a gamer since the days of Atari, I've seen the industry ebb and rise over the years until it's become the phenomenon it is now. And this complaint has only been raised in the last generation or two of consoles, mostly the current one. The reason is that there has been significant pressure on companies to push the envelope on graphics up to this point, but we've reached a plateau. In order for games to get any better visually, significant advancement will need to be made in the ways that these graphics are created, because, with today's tools, it just takes too long to make anything.

I know it's easy to claim that graphics have ruined the industry, but what was the last game that sold on graphical quality alone? COD4? Maybe Crysis? (Not saying they weren't great games, but the graphics played a major part in the hype).

What are the big sellers now? Where is the industry going? In a word: Innovation. Don't believe me? Look at the Wii. Look at Kinect and Move. Look at Dragon Age (Horrible graphics by today's standards, but still a great selling and critically acclaimed game).

The need for extensive graphics is fading because there's no point in companies trying to one up each other on graphics. They can't get any better and still turn a profit, so companies are moving in different directions, trying to focus more on different aspects, be it story (the BioWares), gimmicks (Motion sensors), Multiplayer (Infinity Ward et al) or whatever.

What we'll see (I'm speculating here, but I've been speculating for years that graphics would eventually taper off) is different genre's becoming the battlegrounds for different developers. FPS's are already a heated battle between COD and MoH and others. Expect to see more and more RPG studios trying to one up BioWare and Bethesda. These battles will be fought with different methods than graphics. Expect many of them to try to integrate the new motion sensors. Expect others to try new engines and game mechanics. Others will simply try to be the forerunner on something new. This will give us more games like Mirror's Edge (though, hopefully better quality) and... something else innovative that I can't think of right now.

Any, graphics will and already are starting to take a back seat, so expect more innovation in the years to come. Or just more motion sensor gimmicks and sequels.
Either way.

 

[XMark]

Graphics are nice, but good art design can make a game of one generation look better than some of the next generation. Case in point: Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[Brazilianpeanutwar]

I agree with the original poster,Just think about how much you'd make up in your own mind when you were playing an old game with blocky graphics.

 

[BenjaminFranks]

My preference of graphics generally depends on the genre of game I am playing.

For example, I prefer better graphics in games such as FPS Shooters, but I wouldn't necessarily get in a fuss over graphics in Action/Adventure games or RPG games because there should be more focus on plot in those aspects.

Things like Call of Duty need to keep upping their game in their graphics because it means when we buy the game we physically sit down to that first mission and think "Wow."

 

[lacktheknack]

The true trial by fire for anyone who says "I don't care about graphics, just gameplay":

Play Dwarf Fortress without a tileset. I dare you.

 

[Ace of Spades]

Yes, good graphics are not important and sometimes detrimental to an experience such as minecraft, but there are also games that benefit from having excellent graphics. I enjoyed playing the two Uncharted games since they made me feel like I was playing as the protagonist of a movie, and contrary to what many people think, I think it did it well, and the experience wouldn't have been as good if the characters and environments were in blocky low-resolution.

 

[dogmachines]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I don't care about graphics, but they aren't the most important part of the game. They can go a long way with immersion, but games like Minecraft do just fine without a robust graphics engine. Crysis is, for me, an example of taking graphics a bit too far. Without the nanosuit to spice up the gameplay that game would have flopped. The way I see it, a game can be measured by a certain formula.

Gameplay+story+graphics=game experience.

No one portion is essential, but the remaining elements would have to make up for it. For example, Mass Effect has so-so gameplay. However, the story is amazing and the graphics are good. The result is what is widely regarded as a great game. Minecraft has no story, and plain graphics. The gameplay is incredibly immersive and player-centric, however. This leads to a great game.

 

[Stryc9]

I'm all for pushing the boundaries of technology further than they are now to get shinier water and better facial animations and so on but I also feel that not every game has to do it.