Should games stop trying to have better graphics?

[white_wolf]

Yes they should stop focusing on the graphics for a while they've done well enough, in some games they're going above and beyond and entering the uncanny valley where gamers expect real world rules to apply to their games and this is causing conflicts in the mind of the gamers themselves like, " Why can't I go into this store?" or " I can shoot glass out in real life, why isn't this game letting me!" both of these problems are our brains applying real world perimeters that the designers didn't intend to have you can't shoot that window out because they didn't design it for you to do that, you can't go to that store because it was only made to be a pretty prop.

So far the more realistic games are going for the dress the pig up really nicely and not focusing on making the pig into a swan or something more beautiful in a beautiful frilly dress ie they're using the games high end graphics to cover up poor level design, poor writing, poor plots, poor characters they feel so long as it is pretty no one will care about the crap underneath and that's not always true.

I also feel another reason for them to stop where they are graphics wise is so they can improve game mechanics, concepts, and stories being told. The game play and world now need to catch up with the graphics so the game is more fulfilling.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Lots more "yes" in this thread than I anticipated. I was expecting more knee-jerk "go play your ps2 noob"-type stuff.

Have to agree myself, most of the games that blew me away the past couple years were not underwear-spoilers in the graphics department, they all had a clever idea, and they grabbed me by the throat with it. Bastion and FTL come to mind, I'm sure there's something awesome I'm forgetting, but... sleepy... ugh.

I'm glad the gamers of escapist are on board, but should we let the upper echelons of the gaming press know? They might be out of the loop. It drives me nuts to read a review where a game gets tea-bagged not for having bad graphics, but just for focusing on other aspects of the game. You know, all those little things you spend 90% of the game dealing with after you get over how great the water looks.

Of course, even if gamers voiced this opinion en masse, they would call us a "vocal minority" and ignore us. Less refined gamers (lol) DEMAND better graphics, or failing that, they want graphics that cost alot more because then they can convince themselves that they are better. And even forgetting the gamers, hardware and software companies WANT more demand for there fancy doodads and engines, and lets face it, as far as the masses are concerned, this new generation is just as big an improvement as the last one.

There's always gonna be room for improvement, but it does seem like there is a hell of a lot less room this generation. Of course, I didn't hook up my 360 to an HDTV until 2 years ago, so I feel like I'm still living in the last generation. Get off my lawn. I'm gonna go watch a let's play of a text game.

I don't want to start a war, but I think the new thing the gaming press gushes over is things like "social justice" pandering and such... which I guess means our press has caught up with movie press.

Captcha: first world

Hhm... I guess something like graphics would be a first world problem.

 

[Casual Shinji]

They should just stop trying as hard.

If games can look better, I'm all for it, but don't break the bank on it.

Pretty much stole my answer there Casual Shinji. We're at a point now to where we aren't going to see a huge jump in graphics like how we did when going from SD to HD or from 8-bit to 16-bit. Heck I'm seeing a return of hand drawn sprites more and more lately and I love that.
Take for example the games made by Wayforward, which are hand drawn sprites, or Rayman Legends and how it is mainly hand drawn.

While some will still try to push graphics to the limit, I've been a kind of person who has always said that graphics honestly aren't the main part of a game that I slobber over. Hell more than anything cel-shading is always a nice thing and generally ages quite well (see Wind Waker for example).

Honestly, I would like to see a focus on the little details the coming generation. There was a thread about this a while ago about giving games those little touches to make them more believable. Like having long guns or swords hang from straps instead of being magnetically sealed to a character's back.

This coming generation more then ever do I feel like is the right time to focus on that. Games can't look that much noticably better anymore, so it'd be nice if they just focussed their attention on ironing out the seams sorta speak.

 

[Joccaren]

Games should stop trying to optimise as much high end graphical stuff into a low-end hardware machine, but should not stop advancing graphics.
The former costs a lot of time and money. The latter not as much. In both cases high detail assets are made, then scaled down to fit a system. In the former, however, time and effort is placed into pushing what a certain set of hardware can run, rather than just letting it run what it can run easily, and allowing stronger hardware to run better graphics.
This would allow more money and time to be focused in other areas.
As for the costs of new consoles and such; Buy a PC. Honestly. They are cheaper than you'd think, and when a new console comes out spend $200 upgrading to a mid range GPU. Not going to max everything out, sure, but why do you need to?