EDIT: A retrospective on this thread, months after its creation.
I must admit, I was somewhat surprised today to find in my inbox a message telling me that someone had replied to this thread, considering that I made it back in October. This thread is one of those that I have come to regret in a few ways, mostly for the title. Looking back over it, I still agree with most of the points I made, the big thing I regret is the title. I have now attempted to change that, hopefully when I post this edit that change will be made official, suffice it to say that titling my thread "F*** graphics," created a confrontational atmosphere. At the time, that was my goal, to lure people in with an in your face title. My observation has been that topics with long OP's often fail before they can take off, but the more people you can get to read, the more responses you can get, so if you say something ridiculous like "fuck graphics" in the title, you may be able to increase the readership for a long article. Unfortunately, approaching it in this way seriously colored the responses I got. It was not a reasonable title, and while some people looked past that, some never did, so they couldn't see what I was really trying to say.
So, let me take this brief moment to retract at least that sentiment. I have no hatred of high end graphics, as I had attempted to convey near the end of the post, but I think that was overshadowed by the impact of the title. High end graphics can do a lot when used well, but I think that they can also be really damaging to the games industry, a thesis upon which I have elaborated in the post below. For those still interested in reading it, thanks for your time, please try to enjoy, and be more civil than I was with my original title.
-Kpt._Rob
Earlier today I ended up in a thread where another poster said that he wouldn't play Minecraft because of the graphics, and I've gotta tell you, it hit one of my buttons. I've said this before, and I realize I'm not the only one who's said it, but personally speaking, I wish that graphics were worse. Think of all the things that high end graphics take from us.
First off, the obvious affect on the industry of the high graphics that gamers demand is that games are more expensive and less innovative. Creating games with high end graphics costs an amount of money that would make Bill Gates blush. This means that developers have less room to develop new and creative ideas, because the investment required is too great a risk, so instead they create a copy of a game that was already successful with a few minor tweaks and try to pass that off as innovative. If games didn't have to have top of the line graphics to sell, then companies could take bigger risks in the creation of the game part of the game, and because they didn't have to spend as much money making it, they could afford to sell it for less.
Secondly, the demands of high end graphics actually limit who can play, and require anyone who does want to play to pay ridiculous amounts of money. Now, granted, this argument doesn't apply so much to console gamers, but it does actually get to the core of one of the reasons for which I am a console gamer. That is, that the computer that I use, the one I need in order to be successful as a student, can't handle modern games because the demands that even the lowest graphical settings of many modern games make on my computer are too much. And if I want a computer that can play modern games, I'll have to spend a lot of money. And I won't just have to spend that money today, I'll have to spend it a couple years from now, upgrading my computer again, then again, and again. I would love to play the computer games that are hitting the market today, but because of the high costs of a machine that can handle modern graphics I simply can't afford to, which means that I'm stuck as a console gamer. Granted, tossing high end graphics out the window will not completely solve this problem, but it would certainly make it easier for me to run many of the modern games that I can't run right now.
Third, in many ways, high end graphics actually take away from the aesthetic beauty of a game. How many times have we heard someone complain (or perhaps complained ourselves) about how modern shooters are a sea of grays and browns? It is high end graphics that actually allow for this. Sure, there are exceptions, but back in the days of the N64, you really couldn't make a game that was mostly grays and browns, why? Because the machines lacked the graphical prowess to make objects stand out from one another without varying colors. High end graphics allow for the creation of a world that is a more accurate reflection of our own, but in creating an accurate reflection of our own world, we lose the beauty of the fantasy worlds that developers were at one time forced to create by graphical limitations.
That's a big loss, because the worlds that I played in on the N64 had such a wonderful sense of charm, and I hate that it's gone now. See, I'm actually an art major, and one of the things I've always wanted to capture was the beauty of some of the worlds I experienced as a kid playing on the N64. Take for instance the worlds in Super Mario 64, Zelda (Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask), hell, even Glover 64 had some incredibly beautiful worlds. Now, that's not to say that these worlds couldn't have been created with high end graphics, but I feel like if developers at the time had had access to high end graphics, these worlds might have been drastically different. That thought makes me sad, that some day when I have kids, they may not get to experience the whimsical worlds that enchanted me when I was a kid.
Now, that's not to say that high end graphics don't give us anything in return, I'm not saying that. Trust me, I was amazed at the world of Bioshock, the fact that they had an entire art team just devoted to the water. That's something you can't do with low end graphics. When used well high end graphics certainly have the ability to create artistic visions with even more charm, beauty, and all sorts of other wonderful adjectives, than low end graphics.
My problem is that because we demand high end graphics, we lose a lot. Shamus Young recently wrote an excellent article (which you can find here http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8194-Experienced-Points-Mine-all-Minecraft) in which he calls Minecraft "a hadoken-style rebuke to the absurd things the rest of the industry has been doing." Minecraft, I feel, is an excellent example of how a brilliant game can be created that doesn't treat the lack of high end graphics as a weakness, but instead as a strength. I'd love to see more games like Minecraft, but until people like the guy I saw posting earlier get past the idea that high end graphics are a necessity, I feel like the design philosophy behind Minecraft will be an exception, instead of a rule.
I must admit, I was somewhat surprised today to find in my inbox a message telling me that someone had replied to this thread, considering that I made it back in October. This thread is one of those that I have come to regret in a few ways, mostly for the title. Looking back over it, I still agree with most of the points I made, the big thing I regret is the title. I have now attempted to change that, hopefully when I post this edit that change will be made official, suffice it to say that titling my thread "F*** graphics," created a confrontational atmosphere. At the time, that was my goal, to lure people in with an in your face title. My observation has been that topics with long OP's often fail before they can take off, but the more people you can get to read, the more responses you can get, so if you say something ridiculous like "fuck graphics" in the title, you may be able to increase the readership for a long article. Unfortunately, approaching it in this way seriously colored the responses I got. It was not a reasonable title, and while some people looked past that, some never did, so they couldn't see what I was really trying to say.
So, let me take this brief moment to retract at least that sentiment. I have no hatred of high end graphics, as I had attempted to convey near the end of the post, but I think that was overshadowed by the impact of the title. High end graphics can do a lot when used well, but I think that they can also be really damaging to the games industry, a thesis upon which I have elaborated in the post below. For those still interested in reading it, thanks for your time, please try to enjoy, and be more civil than I was with my original title.
-Kpt._Rob
Earlier today I ended up in a thread where another poster said that he wouldn't play Minecraft because of the graphics, and I've gotta tell you, it hit one of my buttons. I've said this before, and I realize I'm not the only one who's said it, but personally speaking, I wish that graphics were worse. Think of all the things that high end graphics take from us.
First off, the obvious affect on the industry of the high graphics that gamers demand is that games are more expensive and less innovative. Creating games with high end graphics costs an amount of money that would make Bill Gates blush. This means that developers have less room to develop new and creative ideas, because the investment required is too great a risk, so instead they create a copy of a game that was already successful with a few minor tweaks and try to pass that off as innovative. If games didn't have to have top of the line graphics to sell, then companies could take bigger risks in the creation of the game part of the game, and because they didn't have to spend as much money making it, they could afford to sell it for less.
Secondly, the demands of high end graphics actually limit who can play, and require anyone who does want to play to pay ridiculous amounts of money. Now, granted, this argument doesn't apply so much to console gamers, but it does actually get to the core of one of the reasons for which I am a console gamer. That is, that the computer that I use, the one I need in order to be successful as a student, can't handle modern games because the demands that even the lowest graphical settings of many modern games make on my computer are too much. And if I want a computer that can play modern games, I'll have to spend a lot of money. And I won't just have to spend that money today, I'll have to spend it a couple years from now, upgrading my computer again, then again, and again. I would love to play the computer games that are hitting the market today, but because of the high costs of a machine that can handle modern graphics I simply can't afford to, which means that I'm stuck as a console gamer. Granted, tossing high end graphics out the window will not completely solve this problem, but it would certainly make it easier for me to run many of the modern games that I can't run right now.
Third, in many ways, high end graphics actually take away from the aesthetic beauty of a game. How many times have we heard someone complain (or perhaps complained ourselves) about how modern shooters are a sea of grays and browns? It is high end graphics that actually allow for this. Sure, there are exceptions, but back in the days of the N64, you really couldn't make a game that was mostly grays and browns, why? Because the machines lacked the graphical prowess to make objects stand out from one another without varying colors. High end graphics allow for the creation of a world that is a more accurate reflection of our own, but in creating an accurate reflection of our own world, we lose the beauty of the fantasy worlds that developers were at one time forced to create by graphical limitations.
That's a big loss, because the worlds that I played in on the N64 had such a wonderful sense of charm, and I hate that it's gone now. See, I'm actually an art major, and one of the things I've always wanted to capture was the beauty of some of the worlds I experienced as a kid playing on the N64. Take for instance the worlds in Super Mario 64, Zelda (Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask), hell, even Glover 64 had some incredibly beautiful worlds. Now, that's not to say that these worlds couldn't have been created with high end graphics, but I feel like if developers at the time had had access to high end graphics, these worlds might have been drastically different. That thought makes me sad, that some day when I have kids, they may not get to experience the whimsical worlds that enchanted me when I was a kid.
Now, that's not to say that high end graphics don't give us anything in return, I'm not saying that. Trust me, I was amazed at the world of Bioshock, the fact that they had an entire art team just devoted to the water. That's something you can't do with low end graphics. When used well high end graphics certainly have the ability to create artistic visions with even more charm, beauty, and all sorts of other wonderful adjectives, than low end graphics.
My problem is that because we demand high end graphics, we lose a lot. Shamus Young recently wrote an excellent article (which you can find here http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8194-Experienced-Points-Mine-all-Minecraft) in which he calls Minecraft "a hadoken-style rebuke to the absurd things the rest of the industry has been doing." Minecraft, I feel, is an excellent example of how a brilliant game can be created that doesn't treat the lack of high end graphics as a weakness, but instead as a strength. I'd love to see more games like Minecraft, but until people like the guy I saw posting earlier get past the idea that high end graphics are a necessity, I feel like the design philosophy behind Minecraft will be an exception, instead of a rule.
