Something I was thinking about... (1 Viewer)

[Morgan Jolley]

Within the last day or two I started thinking about how important graphics are to games. After thinking about it, I decided that graphics are THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of any game. Now let me explain.

When I say graphics, I mean the visuals. They don't need to be 3-D and the best available, they just need to show time and effort. Many SNES games have what are still considered amazing graphics because of how much work was put into making them as good as they are. If a game has bad graphics, then it can become a bad game. Imagine REZ or Frequency without the cool effects; they would suck!

When you watch a movie, you are watching it. This means you see something with your eyes. If what you see is out of focus, poorly shot, or has technical problems, then the movie is no longer enjoyable. If the movie has a good story, it might as well be a book at this point. Why can't the same apply to games? They are called "videogames" because they are visual images that you interact with. Granted, gameplay is extremely important, but some games can get away with just graphics.

Gameplay, storyline (if applicable), and control in a game are also extremely important, but a game with good gameplay/control/story and bad graphics can be a bad game simply because it is unbearable to play.

I'm not saying that a game can only have good graphics and be good, though it has happened before. Graphics are a huge part of REZ and Frequency (music being the other part, though the visuals are what makes each game unique). Graphics can also define a genre or series. Up to FF6, all FF games had similar character designs (and now they do again). Both Fear Effect games have similar graphical styles. Many praise JGRF for its cel-shaded graphics (and now Zelda, too).

So overall, graphics are the most important aspect of any game. A game can still be good with OK graphics, but if the graphics are just overall bad, then the experience in hindered moreso than it would be with other possible problems.

 

[Mark Evans]

I could not disagree with this more .
It may be the fact that I'm a bookworm in the extreme or have a solid imagination, but I have never cared what the graphics were like in a game. Gameplay is the king. You only need to look as far as Myst for something that looks great but is deadly dull to play.
Not to date myself, but I used to play Infocom adventure games for hours on end. The Lurking Horror is one of the best adventure games I ever played. It has not a lick of graphics, not one. But it's still phenomenal. The gameplay is sound, the puzzles are clever but not insane, and the writing is amazing.
I still pull out my SNES to play Prince of Persia on occasion, or Mario Kart. These games look old but play great. Who needs graphics? Sure they're great, not going to say they aren't, but they're far and away the least important thing.
Better still, look at Dance Dance Revolution. Its look is about one notch above spartan, but the gameplay is so solid that nobody even cares what the hell it looks like.
Frankly, I think anybody who can't play a game with solid gameplay because it has shoddy graphics is a few zorkmids short of a Coconut of Quendor, in my opinion. Geeze, look at X-Com. I'd play that now if I had my CD here at university with me, it's awesome.
Current case: Is Bomberman no fun as a multiplayer game because it only has 2D graphics? If gameplay really doesn't mean anything, why does the Gameboy Advance do so well? The PSOne and GameCube are both portable, and nobody would buy the Gameboy Advance if they thought it was ugly and unplayable.
If Doom 3 ends up hard wiring its control scheme to use the Q, P, B, and F9 keys to move your character, I can guarantee you that it will do far less sales than it would.
My opinion anyhow

 

[Morgan Jolley]

If Doom 3 ends up hard wiring its control scheme to use the Q, P, B, and F9 keys to move your character, I can guarantee you that it will do far less sales than it would

True, but the sales wouldn't be any better than if it used visuals worse than what was in the first Doom game.

When I say "great graphics" I mean that a game's visuals have been worked on extensively, so much so that it shows, whether they're 2-D, 3-D, cel-shaded, whatever. Great graphics doesn't mean the best that is available now, it means the quality of what is in the game based on the power of the platform (so SMB3 for NES has amazing graphics).

In a movie, you can tell the quality of the production values by the wardrobe, makeup, backgrounds, etc. When a movie has low production values, its overall quality goes down a bit (though if a movie takes place on a street, they can just shoot it on a street and the production values can still be high; its more accuracy than price tage).

A good comparison for old games to new games would be black and white movies. Is a black and white movie a bad movie because its black and white? Absolutely not. If it's horribly shot, out of focus, and sets look extremely fake, then its a bad movie. The action in the movie might be good and the script could be wonderful, but you're not reading a script or watching a stage production; movies are visual pieces and all of the visual pieces must be put together perfectly.

I'm not saying this to be superficial, I'm just saying this because its how I see it. A movie has to visually be appealing to the audience, and so does a videogame.

 

[BrianB]

A movie has to visually be appealing to the audience

Absolutely & utterly wrong. Go start a thread about that in the movie forum & see how long you last.

 

[Dean DeMass]

I just busted out WWF No Mercy for the N64 last night and its graphics are horrible. The sound is horrible and character models frequently crash through each other, however, the gameplay and animations are fantastic and I can't get enough of it.
Graphics are great and all, but if the gameplay is great and the graphics just happned to be top-notch, that is just icing on the cake for me.
Oh, I also agree with Brian about your movie comment.
-Dean-

 

[BrianB]

To be honest, my statement applies to games as well.

 

[Dean DeMass]

I would also like to suck up, I mean add that if graphics were so important, Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 would have not been so popular.
-Dean-

 

[Iain Lambert]

I think, to defend a version of Morgan's argument (without at any time denying that Myst is an absolute load of horse manure), that the quality of a game's graphics are a vital part of the game.

Rise Of The Robots (to choose an infamous example), while you might say it has good graphics because a screenshot looks (or at least looked at the time) fancy, actually has bad ones; the bad handling of this dire fighter is a direct consequence of their inability to add either enough frames of the pre-rendered animation to make it smooth and responsive, or enough variety to give you a reasonable quantity of moves.

Asteroids might be wireframe white on black, but its graphics are an abstract perfection. At no time to they distract you with superfluous detail like the bitmapped second-rate remakes did, and the stunning effective resolution created by the vector plotting draw method allowed far more precise handling and aiming than the blockiness its peers had at the time.

Basically, a great game uses its display to its strengths, a bad game can have graphics that look good in a screenshot, but is often made bad by them being inappropriate. To give a hypothetical example, if GoldenEye's at times appalling framerate had been in a faster-paced FPS it would have been unforgiveable (certainly if this was a new game we wouldn't forgive it even so), but the gameplay used the limitation to develop a new strength by introducing Stealth to the genre.

 

[Iain Lambert]

Oh, I've just seen Dean's post. I'd counter that by pointing out how in the games Brian worked on, I never had a problem driving at high speed, because the camera always panned out far enough for me to see both where I was going and who was trying to ram me from behind, and I never had problems aiming at enemy criminals during shootouts on foot due to them being behind the camera.

I'm sure you can all see where that argument is going...

 

[Aaron Copeland]

Absolutely & utterly wrong. Go start a thread about that in the movie forum & see how long you last.

Sorry, he is not "absolutely" wrong by any stretch of the imagination. Visuals are important to a lot of people. As for movies I see many people bash movies for poor cinematography all the time. If he was "utterly" wrong that a movie's visuals need appeal to an audience then this would not happen.

You guys are clearly missing his point. He is not saying a game (or movie) needs to have flashy or impressive graphics. Only that the visuals fit the game and thus enhance the gameplay. He is also stating that distinctly poor visuals will detract from gameplay.

I think this is very true. As the graphical power of systems improve, the bar for how a game should look is raised as well. If someone released a game on the XBOX that looked like a NES game (no pro-scan, no widescreen, no surround sound), you guys, and everyone else, would be ripping it to no end. Yes, even if the gameplay was solid.

Another example: Why do you see so many complaints about ports that haven't been optimized to take advantage of the system(s) it has been ported to? EA catches flak for this ALL THE TIME. The enhancements when going from one current system to another are going to be fairly minimal, yet people complain when the enhancements are not there. So why it that? Because visuals are quite important to people.

I'm not saying I agree with him placing graphics ahead of gameplay. In fact, I don't agree. But to say that he is "utterly" wrong is, in fact, utterly wrong. His viewpoint does have merit.

Anyway, I would place the elements of a game in this order: gameplay, graphics, sound, and story. This order may change according to genre.

Aaron

 

[Iain Lambert]

More than that, Aaron, I believe that its impossible to truly seperate gameplay from graphics, as the one should influence and inform the other fundamentally. To repeat my comment on the GTA series, the top-down graphics of the first two affect your view of the action, the control method and 'immersiveness' of your character in a very different way than in the over-the-shoulder view in the third game. In the other direction, the move from Mouse&Keyboard of the PC to the Gamepad of the X-Box has meant that Epic have changed the look of Unreal Championship to be more 'flat' than that of Tournament, in order to minimise how much players have to look up and down.

 

[Dean DeMass]

Iain, I have no problem with GTA 1 and 2's graphics, I actually like them. I was just saying that flashy graphics are not everything.
-Dean-

 

[BrianB]

I'm not saying I agree with him placing graphics ahead of gameplay. In fact, I don't agree. But to say that he is "utterly" wrong is, in fact, utterly wrong. His viewpoint does have merit.

The viewpoint of graphics ahead of gameplay IS utterly utterly wrong. The whole crux of the idea of "functional graphics" relies on the /gameplay/ being good enough to make it worthwhile. GTA1 is the perfect example - would people 'put up' with the 2D graphics if the gameplay wasn't compelling?

Without good gameplay, all the pretty graphics in the world don't make a game worth playing - they just make it pretty to look at.

And to be clear, I'm not getting at Morgan or anything. I like this discussion.

 

[Aaron Copeland]

Without good gameplay, all the pretty graphics in the world don't make a game worth playing - they just make it pretty to look at.

Without out good visuals, great gameplay and ideas can be ruined by poor presentation. It clearly works both ways. Sure, great gameplay can make up for poor graphics, but only to a point. At some point poor graphics will begin to ruin the gameplay. But, of course, this point is going to vary from person to person.

Like I said above, I actually agree with you that gameplay is more important than graphics (though we may disagree on how much more important). But I don't think you can fairly say he is "utterly" wrong. That's a bit strong when graphics clearly play a key role in gameplay itself.

Aaron

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

I'm all for "graphics" can make or break a game. We now have the technology where NO game should have poor graphics, yet they continue to be released. This to me is inacceptable and I won't buy those games no matter how good the gameplay is. I am a graphics whore, but that is what makes gaming nowadays great. I thought the NES had the best looking graphics ever when it came out. It is all relative so I expect games to look as good or better than say Halo or UT2003.

 

[BrianB]

This ruined the gameplay for me.

Except it didn't. The gameplay didn't magically disappear because of the 2D graphics - *you* just chose not to experience it because of it. It may seem like I'm arguing semantics, but I'm not:

"the graphics made YOU chose to not experience the gameplay" is not the same as "the crap graphics make the gameplay crap".

Yes, the art/graphics have to be functional for the gameplay. Yes, they aid presentation. Do they make gameplay 'bad'? Nope.


Oh on a side note, I'd argue with you Iain over the "top down" graphics aiding you - it's more a case of the camera aiding you, surely?

 

[Aaron Copeland]

Oh on a side note, I'd argue with you Iain over the "top down" graphics aiding you - it's more a case of the camera aiding you, surely?

I'd argue that camera angles and such are all part of the graphical presentation of a game. The proper use of perspective very clearly affect gameplay.

Aaron

 

[Yoshi Sugawara]

Good graphics are just an icing on the cake for me, really. After about a half hour or so of gameplay, the "whiz-bang" effect of the graphics wear off and it becomes a matter of, "Is this game compelling enough to keep playing?"
Sure, poor graphics may turn me off, but great gameplay is the factor that lets me continue playing a game.
When the graphics are great and gameplay is mediocre, playing the game becomes more of a tedious chore - and this is contradictory to why we play games - for fun, right?
I pretty much agree with what Brian said.

 

[Joseph Young]

but if the graphics are just overall bad, then the experience in hindered moreso than it would be with other possible problems.

You mean, other possible problems like a bad control scheme or a shoddy targeting system?
'Overall bad graphics' because the game is dated graphically? Each time a new generation of games is released, you raise the graphic bar slightly, and you add a whole new slew of games closer to that 'overall bad graphics' category. The gameplay doesn't change though, does it? So, as the graphics get worse by today's standards, the gameplay worsens along with them? A game becomes less fun as it ages and its graphics become dated? Please tell me you don't mean this. :rolleyes
A game released today with 'overall bad graphics' and great gameplay... name one. It seems to me that you are trying to invent a category of game that doesn't exist objectively. Overall bad graphics rarely accompany exquisite gameplay. Perhaps you mean, 'games without graphical flourish.' Give me a game without particle, lighting and shadow effects, but a rock solid control scheme any day of the week.
I know your point wasn't to say that graphics are more important than gameplay (right?), rather that bad graphics can hinder gameplay, but it's just kind of a spurious argument based on the lack of evidence that such games exist that can be universally agreed upon as having 'overall bad graphics.'
By the way, I am enjoying my Dreamcast copy of GTA2 right now a lot more than GTA3.
Joseph

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Perhaps you mean, 'games without graphical flourish.'

Graphical flourish is different from good graphics. A game can be a simple 2-D game with absolutely no special effects beyond whats available on the NES and still be an amazing game graphically and aesthetically. Even if its on the PS2.

A lot of the people on this forum are confusing "good graphics" for "visual flair." Good graphics DOES NOT MEAN the best available in a technical sense. It just means they put a lot of effort into making them HIGH QUALITY (which doesn't mean flair).