Poll: Do you give a crap about graphics?

[Danpascooch]

Of course good graphics matter, most everything in a videogame matters, but it's not one of the main things that makes a game good.

 

[jamesslater]

Graphics do matter to me.

I think Steven Poole said it best (from http://stevenpoole.net/trigger-happy/edge-109/):

Why has this myth about the irrelevance of visual quality in videogames come about? Here's why: it's down to the ambiguous nature of the term "graphics". When we say "graphics", it is often not clear whether we are talking about the aesthetic quality of the designed image, or the technical virtues of that image - resolution, detail, lighting effects and so on. This has entailed an idea that "graphics whores" are people who think that games are always better if they use the latest GPU and have the most fanatically detailed environments. The truth is that such considerations are largely irrelevant. The true visual sensualist considers the visual style independently of the system that it is running on. That is why we can agree that Vib Ribbon looks splendid. That is why I prefer Wip3out to WipEout: Fusion in every way, including visually. Wip3out's environments are not as detailed as those of its successor, but they have an aesthetic coherence and an overall design character that is far more pleasing to my adrenaline-glazed eyes.

This points to a response to the tired old graphics-versus-gameplay argument from a historical perspective. If Defender is arguably as good as or superior to any modern-day shoot-em-up, the argument runs, that must be because visuals are irrelevant to gameplay pleasure. After all, look at it: it's low-res, it's not 3D, and so on. But to argue this way is rather to miss the point that Defender remains an extraordinarily beautiful game. There is no point attempting to improve the visuals because they accomplish their job with such great élan in the first place: those fizzing rainbow lasers, those particulate explosions, the amazing amount of menace squeezed into the few pixels that constitute a Mutant. It is the style of the visual image, rather than just the brute quantity of information packed into it, that counts to the true graphics whore.

Similarly, the discerning graphics whore does not care how good an image looks in screenshots if it doesn't move properly. For some reason, there's a tendency in first-person shooters - Red Faction and Max Payne especially spring to mind - to marshall grimly all the computing power available in producing moody, pseudo-realistic environments, and then to populate these environments with insultingly jerky approximations of human movement. Good animation is an essential tool to encourage the player's psychological projection into the gameworld.

The ideal situation, of course, is for the brute informational quantity embedded in the visual image to grow, without stultifying style. Because it can hardly be denied that better graphics (in the technical sense) can allow for innovations in gameplay. You wouldn't improve Defender by upgrading its innards to 128 bits, but you would make an entirely different sort of game - such as Halo - possible.

The problem we have with contemporary games is not that everyone is concentrating on flashy graphics per se, but that aesthetic innovation has lagged behind technical innovation, for understandable and purely practical reasons - the pressure of development cycles, for instance, or the plain fact that there are never enough truly talented artists to go round in any industry.

But when authentic artistic imagination is married to contemporary technology - as in Ico - the result is a game where looks are supremely relevant, firstly because they define so beautifully the psychological atmosphere of the game; secondly because, with the technical power available to create Ico's gorgeously grandiose architecture, they actually constitue the context in which such haunting gameplay is allowed. In fact, the distinction between those two terms - graphics and gameplay - is almost obliterated. And we can count ourselves fortunate that such a game has only now become possible. We can, finally, rejoice in being graphics whores.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

They are like the pie crusts. Really good, but it's not the most important part.

 

[Casual Shinji]

A game needs to look the part and if it doesn't my overall experience with it suffers. I still play older games like Abe's Oddysee, but that doesn't mean that current gen games can pull that on me.

A current gen game needs to look like one and not like a game that was made 10 years ago.

 

[sirkai007]

Yes but I do want to qualify that.

I must have story but there are games that the graphics are so out of date that I can't go back once I've moved on no matter how good the story is.

 

[rokkolpo]

yes it matters to me.

so i do give a crap. just not that big of a crap.

 

[The Maddest March Hare]

Not a great deal, I still play N64 and original gameboy. Hell even some 16bit games if I'm in the mood.

But to say I don't prefer great graphics would be a lie, so long as the gameplay can match it.

Case in point, Assassin's Creed 2:

 

[MaVeN1337]

I enjoy somewhat exaggerated graphics. Borderlands is one of my favorite looking games, And from what I've seen of brink it looks even better.

 

[dthvirus]

I give enough crap about graphics but not so much as is mainstream these days. I think we can all agree on that.

 

[RanD00M]

They do to some degree.I have never played a text game that I enjoyed.
But graphics don't need to be top notch for me to enjoy the game.

 

[Captain Pancake]

To an extent. It shouldn't take priority over gameplay, which is sadly the case with many developers. But if you have the processing power, then putting some effort in to making it look pretty is no bad thing. I think half life 2 had the perfect balance, I could still tell what was going on and could admire the pretty vistas or an awe-inspiring kill, but it didn't detract from the gameplay in any way.

 

[P.Tsunami]

Is it a high priority? No, but it matters to some degree. For example, I find Deadly Premonition has its substandard graphics standing in the way of my enjoyment of the game. It has a lot of good things going for it (a healthy dose of Narm Charm, for one), but the graphics are just so... aesthetically displeasing.

One of my most-played games these days is a roguelike, with just ASCII symbols for graphics. So it's not an absolute demand for me, but it sometimes breaks a game for me.

 

[Red Right Hand]

It's not essential no, but it does help. I mean, Zelda or Goldeneye 007 with current-gen visuals would be better than them without, but it still doesn't make them bad games because they don't look as realistic as todays games.

 

[DarkPanda XIII]

Really you need a good damn system before you can push to us some heavy graphics.

God of War gave us this, but it made me laugh because it seems Dantes Inferno never really got the same memo. Ugh x.x

 

[UkibyTheMaid]

I voted no.

Of course it's AWESOME to see the really pretty graphics of Heavy Rain on a huge TV with a stunning resolutions, and it also helps that I think the game is pretty fun.

But, playing the good old Pac-Man on my Atari is fun too. And those are 8bit graphics.

So, I almost always give priority to how much fun I'm having while playing the game, instead of getting totally attached to how that game 'looks'. As long as I can play it without getting ubber frustrated at the controls and I'm having a nice ammount of fun, i can't complain ^__^

 

[Deadlock Radium]

I won't vote until there comes an "a little" option.
Because old games doesn't have as good graphics as newer ones, but in many cases, good graphics makes the game a little more interesting. Therefore, graphics matter a little.

 

[Mr. In-between]

I still play Super Mario Land on a daily basis. That game has some of the worst graphics of all time.