For those who are unaware, Deus Ex turned 10 recently (yay!). Instead of waiting for my Christmas holidays for my annual play through, this year I decided I'd jump in early to celebrate one of my favourite games hitting double digits. The graphics may have aged, and the A.I. bugs are as hilarious as always, however Deus Ex still remains one of the most engaging titles I've ever played. As part of this anniversary, Rock Paper Shotgun have been doing a few Deus Ex articles. In one, it was commented that to do a game like Deus Ex (without the pre-established name) today would be impossible due to costs. AAA titles are bloody expensive to make and taking a risk on something as random as emergent gameplay is financially irresponsible. This made me remember back to when Final Fantasy XIII was released and the Director remarked that towns and the like were removed because creating them use industry leading visuals expected from AAA titles has simply become too expensive.It seems to me that game development might have crossed a line here. FFXIII is regarded fairly poorly, and some of the main criticisms leveled against it is the pathetically linear and non-interactive nature of the game - the removal of illusion of freedom offered by previous titles in the series. Essentially, the removal of towns, optional quests, NPCs and the over-world hurt the game, and they were removed because to create them at the level of visual fedality desired was too expensive. My personal solution would to have been to decrease the level of visual fedality desired for the project, saving the company money on the whole project while allowing the game to have everything it needed to really shine.Obviously, my personal choice doesn't reflect the thoughts of everyone, and so the question: would you trade HD Graphics for gameplay? Imagine, say, Call of Duty 4 with visuals slightly better than the original Call of Duty, however will hundreds more NPCs and significantly larger battlefields. Is the trade off worth it? If a developer released the game that would become the next 'Deus Ex' today, if it had PS2 quality graphics would it hurt the game? Would the game be worse because of a lack of Normal Maps and Full Screen AA?Usually a game has a focus on visuals to ensure it can be marketed to the mainstream audience to make up the development costs in sales, however it would see that the development costs are now so large due to a focus on visuals that the games are having to suffer as a result, which should mean less sales over-all? So, to make more sales to cover the cost of producing industry leading visuals they have to produce games with... industry leading visuals which means cutting features which results in less sales because no one wants to actually play it now?Maybe I'm way off here, however it would seem to me its simply smarter, from a business perspective, to make a game with decent, not industry leading, visuals and let your gameplay capture your audience rather than the resolution of your textures?
Graphic whores make me want to puke my brains out. They'll kill the gaming industry if they keep up this Graphics>Gameplay BS. That's why I like stardock. Elemental looks nice and has a ton of potential.
Games with less then stellar graphics usually are still good looking enough to convey the story, which is whats most important.
Games that look really great, are usually rentals for me, because they lack any REAL depth.
It's like the difference between the girl that's relatively pretty has a good attitude and a deep personality.
Or the girl that is drop dead gorgeous but is a total bitch, dumb as a brick and deep as a mud puddle.
One you might pick up for a night or two... The other sticks with you for a lifetime.
I'm playing Deus Ex through right now. Just left Hong Kong. Awesome game. To call it non-linear is a misrepresentation. It's more, linear but with many branches which lead to the same point with a different outcome. Consequences arising from characters you kill/save may pop up later and change the story a bit, but the overarching plot and the levels are the same.Also, OP - emergent gameplay isn't what you've called it there. Emergent gameplay is where something the devs never thought of turns into a feature of the game. Using buildings to make a wall-in in the first Starcraft, or using your jetpack in a slightly buggy way in Tribes 2 to get extra speed, rocket jumping in Quake etc.
Because graphics look better on a box then gameplay does. It's hard to convey gameplay in ads, and it's easy to convey "ooh, shiny!"
But the idea that PC requirements are still going up is silly. My wife's system until it died was a fraction of what you're running (older dual core, 512MB video, only 2GB RAM), and there was still nothing we wanted to play that it couldn't handle easily. That's the one upside to so many cross platform games. Since they have to run on the 360, they'll also run on even a modest PC so long as the video card isn't onboard.
Well everything hates graphics in this thread, were are those people from gamespot comments? No fun.
Anyway, I think good graphics are important it does help sell the game yes but for me it draws me into the masquerade all the more smoothly.
I saw people complain about the graphics of dragon age but I saw nothing wrong, sure some blurryness here and there but with a body replacer on the aa cups should draw your attention more than... Anyway my point is there is a range bewteen "good" (useable by everyone) and (OMG MEGA EDGE YEAH!! 40x AA!!!) and dont h8 on dem graphics!
Remember without PCs pushing those boundrys the console boys would't HAVE any graphics, Sony and M$ can't afford to push that front with the already loss leading consoles, they take the well used and cheaper components to make all these gadgetry junk.
If the PC dosn't push the graphics nothing will because Nvidia wont have any reason to make anything but teslas. And that would make me a sad panda.
So PUSH that wall devs! PUSH IT HARD! Just make sure theres an option to play it without killing your PC or making it look like a brown smuge on your monitor.
THANKS!
Aesthetics beat graphics as well. Some games have superb graphics but they just fill lifeless scenes. Here is a list that I made a while back:
Functionality, must be playable
Engaging, you must want to play it
Usable, you must be able to use it (here goes basic graphics that elevate it beyond Ascii, interface too)
Atmosphere, basic sound+aesthetic style+some lighting
Random or Replayable, a bit of all, but some games you play for ages while others are fire and forget, very hard to say what is and what isn't replayable, I don't find Dragon Age replayable yet I've played diablo 2 for over 400 hours
Simple or easy to learn, you can understand it quickly, you can pick it up and grasp what to do, several games people say are great I won't play because they start a jumbled mess
Deep and Complex, there is a lot more to learn
Dramatic/Cinematic, the bang from the explosions and the sound of all that happens, atmospheric but pointless
Visual eye candy, graphics go below sound and atmosphere
A good list, but how much does sound, a few particle effects and things cost versus the cost of the graphics?
Other than voice sound has barely changed over the years right?
Diablo 2 sounds could be ported into a brand new game and if you havn't PLAYED Diablo 2 you woulnd't notice, now try doing that with the graphics... lol.
Although Kirby's Epic Yarn was voted most beautiful game on E3 by Gametrailers.com
Glad someone said something about Deus Ex! KARMA!
This is a no-brainer. I see the current focus on graphics as the biggest reason for the decline in PC gaming. During the 80's and 90's around 50% of the games made for the PC were really good. Games were made with passion by people who themselves played games. Just about anyone could get into the industry, there were a ton of great games to choose from that even today around 20 years later still shine when looking at their story, gameplay and complexity. There were 3D cards during the 90's but the games that made use of them were few and even though the technology was new and intriguing it certainly did not make games that didn't use it obsolete or any less interesting. For some reason however the industry leaders felt the need to make this new technology standard and with the dawn of the 2000s it became the norm that every serious game developer had to conform to to stay at the edge. Probably because creatively it's really hard to quickly make a game that tops your previous one and that your customers really will want, while graphics is purely bound to technology and much easier to improve on and measure. Companies eventually started making the same game over and over just with updated graphics and people were buying them showing the devs that this is a strategy that really works, but only as a short term profit-cow it seems.
A 3D engine back in the day worked great for first person games but sucked for pretty much everything else. You can probably remember a lot of games during the early 2000s that used a 3D engine because it had become the thing to do and it was a huge marketing point for games, "featuring state of the art 3D graphics". And when you fired up those games you noticed that they looked like crap and wondered why on earth they decided to go 3D when they could have made the game in standard 2D-graphics and it would have looked better, been cheaper to make and the interface would have been far more intuitive and immersive.
And then we get to today when they've worked out all the kinks and made 3D engines really work for just about all game types, the games look stunning but most of them are just shallow when compared to similar games from the past. And most of all making a game requires a team and budget of Hollywood movie proportions. If you go small, indie, perhaps even opt not to use a 3D engine the market completely ignores you effectively getting rid of most of the kids who want to get into game making as a hobby rather than spending 5 years in a school bench and joining a large corporation at the bottom where you do as you're told and don't get to give any creative input on what kind of game you want to make. Today only 1% of the games are actually so good that you'd call them a life changing experience similar to reading a really good book or watching a really special movie. Very few games leave such an impact that you just know you will be replaying it 10 or 20 years from now and enjoy it just as much. Today it's all play until you get bored, forget about it and move on to the next great thing that keeps you thrilled for a few days, just as long as the game still feels new to you.
The creative control of the games have switched from passionate gamers to rich businessmen like the leaders of EA and Activision who aren't interested the art of game-making or how good games they make but how much profit they make. PC gamers are getting tired of shelling out big bucks to play the same game over and over with improved graphics and now want something more and something fresh. The big game companies have money-milked the PC market to near-death and are slowly starting to move on to "more profitable" markets. To me this is what's wrong with the PC industry, not piracy or the threat from consoles or whatever the devs like to blame today. I just hope with the decline in PC gaming that the creative control of the games will slowly again be taken by the average Joes who have a passion for games and are not just interested in making a fortune. I hope the games made by such people will once again be looked on as viable contenders for our hard-earned cash and get their moment in the spotlight, giving the devs a chance to evolve into a small business that becomes competitive in the game market but doesn't lose the focus from making the games they always wanted to play.
Before it was an art, now it is an industry. There will always be the general blandness, there always is. One thing I have stopped liking is the USP, which I almost ignore entirely. Several of the bad bits are added there just to have them. You did mention it, but I will further point it out. Some games promise the moon in these but at best deliver a lump of rock. In the "old days" games didn't have the scale, marketing value, or the competition anywhere near todays market. The developers that don't stand out or lack enough arguments to why their game is better will simply sell less games.
Elemental has a USP list too btw. (Taken from impulse) Unless the 64-bit is excluded, nothing can be said to be a lie, if you read the USPs, you notice that few are. Any game can promise hundreds of hours in fact, since shooting into the ground is still considered gaming in a court.
Now that was cynical wasn't it?
As a long time gamer I definitely feel that games are going backwards more than they are going forward and graphics are one of the main culprits. I'm not against pretty graphics but for me gameplay is what matters and anything that holds that back is a bad thing. I am someone who can have fun with pure text games like Nethack or Dwarf Fortress though. Not saying games with no graphics are my preference but for strategy games I really don't think it adds much. As long as it is easy to understand what is going on and the interface is nice I'm good. For a 1st person shooter or any game trying to make you think you are in a real place graphics are more important but having something that looks pretty good is fine with me. Having hair that looks like the real thing and blows in the wind isn't important to me. It doesn't make the game more fun in anyway. I'm not familiar with the example of Final Fantasy 13 but hearing that an RPG took cities out of a game basically because the graphics would be too costly is very scary. I'll just play Ultima or Baldur's Gate again instead.
Unfortunately I know I am in the minority (the minority of the minority even). I see what my co-workers say about upcoming games, see what the reviews say and see what sells and it's usually the games with the pretty graphics that are the ones that people want. I think it has a lot to do with the type of gamer you are. Are you someone who plays games here and there and for short periods and just wants to have some mindless fun, or are you someone who wants a game that challenges your mind and your imagination. I can definitely have fun with a mindless shooter for small stints but I get bored with it quickly. Having an expansive world filled with mystery and challenge is what I really want and graphics aren't necessary for those.
...
Just want to say that I think you summed up the current situation perfectly.
Yes I would trade HD for gameplay. I was talking about this very subject with my brother recently and how we both agree that lately it seems as if the games main focus is just in the graphics. We were wondering how it was possible that newer versions of games kept coming out with less and less options instead of more, the only thing they kept getting more is graphics...
Examples of games we were talking about, Final Fantasy. All the FF's were imho works of art until they came up with FFX which is another topic for another day . Anyways, in FF's you could explore the map at any time and go on side quests and just spend a whole bunch of time looking around for secret stuff. New FF they set you in a straight line and you cant even explore much yayyy, but instead we get a super flashy cutscene that we cant even control and is only good for the first time you play it. Open world exploration just gave you inmense replay value. You didnt unlock Aeris final limit break the first time around, you did that after the 2nd or 3rd play through in FF7 (least I did ). I enjoyed Final Fantasy 1 for the NES a lot more than FFX for the PS2, which was the last console FFX Ill ever play.
Another game I've always loved is Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, first one I ever played was RTK2 for the SNES and that game was different every single time, and had a plethora of things you could do. Many diplomatic options, different plots you could perform on your foes (or friends). Fast forward to the latest RTKXI and the only options you can find is Ally, Joint, Gift and a few others I can't remember, same for the plots and city management. It seems most games only get dumbed down for every iteration that comes out and the only thing that gets better are the graphics.
So many SNES games that were just filled with soooo many different options and you wonder how did they do that with just 16MB cartridges, and nowadays with virtually unlimited resources most games you can find are a buncha crap that are just a pretty looking game with no depth and no need to replay the game after beating it once (if you even felt like beating it).
I guess someone noticed "Hey we can make money out of video games" and thats were the quality and passion put into games started to go down since its a race to make a lot of money and to crank out as much as possible in a given time frame.
However, we're most definately seeing a return to the grass roots of the industry. Activision and EA are now fighting PR battles due to their business practices, and are scrambling to make themselves appear less than the bastards that they are, while other developers are scrambling to make blockbuster titles. Independant Developers, however, are sprining up with new and interesting mechanics and art styles and while they're not making billions, they are posting profit margins large enough to make people take notice. The 'bedroom developers' of legend are starting to return to fill the void left by Publishers only focusing on 'Lone Hero War Simulator #113' and 'Drunk Party Game #97'. Maybe as these independant developers advance we'll see a shift from the spiraling budgets used to produce terrible games like FFXIII, towards smaller budgets to produce incredible titles like World of Goo, Lumi and even the likes of Elemental: War of Magic.
I know it's ridiculously popular(Deus Ex) but I'm one of the few that thought it was a sub par game. I think it may even have started the slide towards the plethora of crap that passes as pc entertainment today. But that's a personal opinion of course(and before someone freaks out and says of course it's an opinion,I must point out there are facts and then there are opinions and this was the latter).
Now to the titular question at hand. Game play trumps graphics.
And that friends is a fact not an opinion.
I think this is an important point too. You see this a lot in the MMO sphere. You've got these small developers/publishers complaining that their games are being unfairly compared to existing Triple A titles. My answer to that is simple, don't charge Triple A prices, and you will probably not be compared to Triple A titles, especially in the graphics department. Of course, if the game play was solid, there would be fewer complaints, but still complaints, about graphics. I'm still waiting for a good x-com game, not that FPS thing where all you see is shooting and graphic presentations. I play the original now so a graphical overhaul from that would be relatively easy.
I would gladly trade the best graphically enhanced game out there, for a game with well thought at gameplay anyday. I still have my moments where I go back and play Starcraft lol, which still has a huge multiplayer community, and for today's standards, the graphics definitely don't bring that much to the table. But the game itself was great.
While AlienShock might be a good game, its not X-Com. I too want an X-Com with better graphics - what I don't want is a switch to super detailed completly static enviroments that can't be destroyed. Every wall, every door, every shelf, every console must be destroyable! Random layout of tactical missions is also required for good gameplay and is difficult with 3D.
Hard question.
All of the games I play have good graphics, where "good" is what I say it is. Everyone else including reviewers and techno geeks can bugger off. There is a whole community over at Good Old Games that would more or less agree.
Right now I'm playing a lot of Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction and the graphics look fine to me. I can well understand why so many rabid (are there any other kind?) D2 LoD fans view the upcoming D3 with great suspicion. Master of Orion 2 and 1 have excellent graphics in my eyes because I like the games.
And sure, Guild Wars, Borderlands, and other new games have higher resolution graphics and if they are good games I like them, but the graphics is secondary.
As to the question, if the devs can combine excellent graphics with excellent game play then well and good. If they cannot, then I would rather have the game play.
They are not mutually exclusive though. Like for instance look at what Id Software (Quake and such) is about to come out with a year or so from now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd0RtabEah4
As for the trash photo realistic graphics pseudo games trolled out to the proles ... well there's a sucker born every minute and two to take him.
That's an easy one for me.
While I always appreciate games that boast both good graphics and good gameplay, when push comes to shove, I won't hesitate to sacrifice graphics. Unless I find a game's visuals to be truly atrocious (and there's fortunately very few examples that would qualify in my book), gameplay will pretty much always trump everything else.
NO Gameplay is the most important element to any game. If the graphics can compliment the gameplay without hindering it then great but anyone can make a good looking game. It's making a good looking game run and play well that is the tricky part.
Performance is the second aspect that is most important to me. Again if the game does not run well the gameplay will suffer. PC optmization has improved largely in thanks to the consoles but I still see quite a bit of unoptimized code on PC. Developers tend to rely on the hardware of the PC instead of properly optimizing their software.
Personally I'm at a point where I have been doing alot of retro gaming lately. Some of the games I've been playing are:
MULE - Best remake ever but network code needs work.
www.planetmule.com
Knghts of Honor - Perfect Example of WHAT Total War was like when done in 2D vs the very expensive 3D. End result is MUCH better gameplay and dynamics then anything the 3D world has yet to offer. All on 256MB of ram. You can have all of europe running in realtime with more NPC action in a few hours in an entire Total War campaign. However if you want 3D battles this will dissapoint you.
PS This game works on Windows 7 but max resolution is 1024x768 so aspect correction or 1 to 1 ratio is required for decent looking image quality on an LCD or LED panel.
Nexus the Jupiter Incident - Here is a perfect example of what happens when your passionate about what you do. Even though the sequel was canned it's very easy to see how optmized this game was performance wise. Gameplay and design wise it needed alot of work. However the graphics did not detract from the gameplay in this case. Time and money were probably more a deciding factor. For their time they were away ahead of the curve and probably the only one even today sporting this kind of optimization level in the genre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC4y2T0-skM&feature=related
Some of the best games designed were never released but I DO NOT consider Deux Ex a classic by any stretch. How that game was so widely received I will never understand. The models didn't even have death animations they just fell over. System Shock now there is a classic...
Of course this doesn't mean I don't play all the XBOX games or latest PC games. I love it when I get a good game with good gameplay and high quality visuals and sound without a massive performance hit but they are very rare. There are a few other interesting things I've noticed over the years. For example Blizzard seems to be the only developer that can support moving geometry that players can interact with seemlessly without lag or clipping issues. As an example look at the Airships in the Lich King Expansion. They operate in an online environment, are static geometry but moving, yet the engine can handle players landing and interacting with it as if it was any old chunk of terrain. Tricks like these are very hard to pull off and I can't think of any other developer that has that working technology. In previous games from other developers this is always an issue in design as they just can't do that. So while games are getting more and more dumbed down due to console memory limitations and design philosophy there are still improvements being made to the core technologies. Pathfinding is another issue that is due for a breakthrough. Looking at Chris Taylors new pathfinding algos one can clearly see that this technology will eventually and hopefully find it's way into other games. However that being said his new game Castles doesn't look that good overall. Anyone that plays Total War will tell you how nice it would be to have AI armies that form lines and rank up the way they should for the player and the AI.
This is selective recall. There were a lot of bad games in the 80's and 90's. It's just that they were so forgettable no one remembers them - or else you were too young to see how bad they were.
...as a Dwarf Fortress & Dominions 3. fan...I must say that gameplay >>> everything else!
On a sidenote the only x-com clone I've found playable after "X-com: goes swimming" was UFO: Afterlight. That one I've enjoyed enough to playthrough multiple times.
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