Why graphics don't matter

[BSim500]

Different people have different priorities as do different games (eg, Thief 1&2 used acoustics as a primary sensory input often more than visuals). Different "genre expectations" too (point & click / puzzle vs FPS are received differently). Memories of Bioshock 1 for me bring up "soundtrack" way ahead of GFX. You could "prettify" some textures and some people wouldn't notice, but if you swapped out that unique soundtrack for hip-hop / dubstep, you'd virtually tear the heart out of the game...

What I find stupid is when people demand photo-realism in FPS games which have a intentionally non photo-realistic art style by design. I liked that washed out "bleak watercolor" art palette in Dishonored. It added another subtle layer to the city's rising level of desperation in a way that stuffing 4K photo's of trees & green grass everywhere wouldn't and just "felt right" for the game. Same with "OMG teh GFX suck. Elizabeth don't look real" some morons 'shared' with the world upon Bioshock Infinite's release. Then there's "Torchlight looks cartoony". "The Cat Lady and Machinarium look different, like they've been hand drawn". Yes. And the problem with all of that is...?

 

[HeXen]

Minecraft, every single Blizzard game ever made, every single classic PC/console games (compared to Crysis 3/Ryse Son of Rome/The Order 1886), countless indie games like Braid or Super Meatboy don't agree with your assertion. Great gameplay can ensure that a game is a game of the year contender, but the world's best graphics do not.

The Order 1886 destroys Half Life 1/2, Starcraft 1-2, modern Zelda games, 99.9999% of all single console games made in existence in terms of technical graphics, but no one sane would even suggest to put it into the top 100 games ever made. I'd rather play this or this than The Order 1886.

Gameplay >>>> Graphics, until we can't distinguish bad graphics from good graphics when all graphics will be like real life.

But wouldn't you prefer them to be better if the option was there? Would they not be more immersive or visually inspiring or more immersive if they looked better?

That was my point. I never heard of anyone saying...gee, I wish this game had worse graphics. As I said, they can still be fun without the graphics, many are but it can be more fun with graphics.

 

[bystander36]

What he said was gameplay much more important than graphics, not that they wouldn't enjoy better graphics or not.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Elder scrolls 3: Morrowind.

A great game with terrible graphics.

Morrowind had the best visuals in the business when it was released. AS mentioned already, it had the best water by a mile back in 2002. I think they were the first game to have water that actually looked like.....water and not just a transparent texture or whatever trick they used to use. I bought a new video card just to play it

 

[RussianSensation]

But wouldn't you prefer them to be better if the option was there? Would they not be more immersive or visually inspiring or more immersive if they looked better?

That was my point. I never heard of anyone saying...gee, I wish this game had worse graphics. As I said, they can still be fun without the graphics, many are but it can be more fun with graphics.

For a lot of games I would want better graphics. We can list a lot of games that have bad graphics like Fallout series or Half-Life series that would look better if there were made in 2015. Some other games are unique because of their graphics and I wouldn't want those games to be remastered in 10-20 years. Games like Limbo, Braid or Ori the Blind Forest I would want to stay exactly as they are. But yes, for a lot of gaming genres, better graphics (all things being) equal are better. My point is great graphics can't save a bad game but you can have a fun game with bad graphics. I've been disappointed by many games that had overhyped graphics marketing campaigns like AC Unity, Watch Dogs, Dragon Age Origins or The Witcher 3. But that's OK, we just move on from the technical graphics hype and enjoy the gameplay and storyline where it's actually decent.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Graphics absolutely DO matter ...

In an age where people have a lot of expectations for AAA games, developers have to match up to the technical expectations of the consumer so high end graphics ARE important as well ...

Graphics IS a large part of the experience in a game and the people who go on raving about how "gameplay is more important than graphics" are missing the point ...

Their called VIDEOgames for a reason ...

 

[RussianSensation]

Graphics IS a large part of the experience in a game and the people who go on raving about how "gameplay is more important than graphics" are missing the point ...

Their called VIDEOgames for a reason ...

No, they are not missing the point.

Go back to 25 years of PC or console gaming and look at Games of the Year. How many of those games had the best graphics of that year? Hardly many, almost never.

From a developer's point of view, how many of the best looking games are actually best selling? GTA games or Blizzard games wipe the floor with sales of almost all gaming franchisees and the graphics in those games are average->mediocre. Graphics matters in creating the immersion and the message the artists are trying to get across but it doesn't help hide garbage gameplay. Half Life 2 > Crysis 1 and almost any Nintendo game is better than the Order 1886.

 

[gamervivek]

 

[Madpacket]

Graphics when used for immersion matter. But graphically demanding games today tend to be snore fests compared to the more simple ones that focus on game play and user experience. It's rare when both work together but when they do its great to have excellent graphics to back up the game play.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Graphics absolutely DO matter ...

In an age where people have a lot of expectations for AAA games, developers have to match up to the technical expectations of the consumer so high end graphics ARE important as well ...

Graphics IS a large part of the experience in a game and the people who go on raving about how "gameplay is more important than graphics" are missing the point ...

Their called VIDEOgames for a reason ...

They matter to a point. I expect a AAA game to have a graphical fidelity that is competent and reasonable, but they don't need to be Witcher 3 like to make the game immersive. Games like Skyrim and Deus Ex:HR are competent and do the job, and if the budget is limited I'd rather they focus on gameplay aspects.

 

[therealnickdanger]

Morrowind had the best visuals in the business when it was released. AS mentioned already, it had the best water by a mile back in 2002. I think they were the first game to have water that actually looked like.....water and not just a transparent texture or whatever trick they used to use. I bought a new video card just to play it

Morrowind was OK, graphically speaking. The draw distance and wonky character animations always bothered me. Many other games on PC, even console games and ports, were aesthetically better IMO. When you factor in shadows, physics, and particle effects, games like Halo, Metal Gear Solid 2, Ico, Shenmue 2, Gran Turismo 3, Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, SPLINTER CELL! were all more impressive. At the time I was playing some UT mods that looked better. ES3 had good water and fantastic lore/story and arguably is still the best overall ES game, but its graphics were generally average. Thank God for mods!

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

No, they are not missing the point.

of that year? Hardly many, almost never. Go back to 25 years of PC or console gaming and look at Games of the Year. How many of those games had the best graphics

From a developer's point of view, how many of the best looking games are actually best selling? GTA games or Blizzard games wipe the floor with sales of almost all gaming franchisees and the graphics in those games are average->mediocre. Graphics matters in creating the immersion and the message the artists are trying to get across but it doesn't help hide garbage gameplay. Half Life 2 > Crysis 1 and almost any Nintendo game is better than the Order 1886.

Yes, they absolutely are missing the point ...

Back then 25 years ago, hardly anything was well developed and the digital gaming crowd was a LOT smaller in the past ...

Best =/= meaningful statistics ...

More often than not in this day and age, a lot of AAA games that do succeed feature high end graphics and it's not like the guys at Rockstar and Blizzard don't have technical standards either ...

"Garbage gameplay" is hardly a quantifiable characteristic plus there are examples of games succeeding with minimal interactive mechanics ...

 

[StrangerGuy]

Graphics absolutely DO matter ...

In an age where people have a lot of expectations for AAA games, developers have to match up to the technical expectations of the consumer so high end graphics ARE important as well ...

Graphics IS a large part of the experience in a game and the people who go on raving about how "gameplay is more important than graphics" are missing the point ...

Their called VIDEOgames for a reason ...

We are already well inside the curve of diminishing returns in terms of graphics to the point every game that tries to sell graphics prowess looks meh to me; I would rather have devs spend budget in other places where things are far more lacking. What's the point of lifelike graphics when the interactivity isn't even close to real life?

 

[xthetenth]

Morrowind was OK, graphically speaking. The draw distance and wonky character animations always bothered me. Many other games on PC, even console games and ports, were aesthetically better IMO. When you factor in shadows, physics, and particle effects, games like Halo, Metal Gear Solid 2, Ico, Shenmue 2, Gran Turismo 3, Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, SPLINTER CELL! were all more impressive. At the time I was playing some UT mods that looked better. ES3 had good water and fantastic lore/story and arguably is still the best overall ES game, but its graphics were generally average. Thank God for mods!

Morrowind at least had an engine that was up to date mostly. A lot of what made it impressive was design though rather than the best looking models and animations.

By now though they should rename the engine to War for Fallout 4 because it never changes.

 

[BSim500]

and the people who go on raving about how "gameplay is more important than graphics" are missing the point ...

Back then 25 years ago, hardly anything was well developed and the digital gaming crowd was a LOT smaller in the past...

If a game has great gameplay and feel to it, you'll often get immersed to the point where after the first 20-40mins, you don't notice that x tree at y meters texture is 1% less than desired. Portal, Bioshock, Thief, Serious Sam, Deus Ex, early MoH games, etc, none had bleeding edge GFX of the day but few cared either. But if it has broken gameplay, then it becomes literally unplayable and an exercise in misery. Above a certain baseline, I'd rather see developers properly play-test keyb + mouse input for PC versions - then they can work on adding surplus eye candy after that.

"Super graphics" falls into the Hedonic Treadmill effect far more than any other factor like iffy controls or poor gunplay, ie, once you are happy about a pretty game (or sad from lack of) after so many minutes of gameplay, the "happy / sad" feelings over the visuals will often start to fade into the background for many people if the plot is engaging and gameplay solid enough. But broken controls will irritate from start to finish without fading (assuming you get anywhere near finishing). It also applies across time. Getting into trouble grinding the school's ancient 10Base2 coaxial network to a halt with multiplayer Doom in '94, seeing the sheer size of the single-piece level in Thief 2's "Life of the Party", reaching Paris in Deus Ex after 15hrs only to find you're still barely halfway through the game, storming Omaha Beach in MoHAA for the first time, sneaking into an enemy base, stealing a T-80 tank and blowing the base up from the inside out in Operation Flashpoint CWC for the first time, etc, elicit exactly the same "this is freakin' awesome!" happiness factor as playing a "perfect" 2015 game today and drooling over the trees / grass. Same with other media - a great classic movie is still great despite aging special effects, etc. It's never really been a case where the more technology evolves, the more relative happiness you can purchase with today's bleeding edge vs how excited you were with yesteryear's bleeding edge at time of release.

"But you can have both great gameplay AND good looks". Yes it is possible, but the sad truth is such games are more the rare gem than the everyday norm. If a developer is short on time / money they'll have to compromise somewhere (and regularly do). The Talos Principle is far better looking than Portal 1, but is it a better game in totality? No, it's just different. I found both equally enjoyable & fun, both on first play at release and replaying both back to back in 2015. And that's the bottom line of gaming - to have fun.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

You're making a logical error when you say that gamers pay the most for graphics therefore they must matter the most. The error is because we have little to no options for hardware to buy for better stories or gameplay, so it's not a fair comparison.

Generally speaking gameplay makes games, a game can lack decent graphics and still be a very good game, such as minecraft with it's ultra basic graphics or very old 2D puzzle adventures that use pixel art. But you can't make a game fun based on graphics alone, you can make a game impressive based on graphics but not fun, engaging, addictive, etc.

 

[KingFatty]

The existence of "mods" supports the idea that graphics matter.

You have a game that is plenty fun, but when mod comes out to make it prettier, then yeah there is good reason to install the mod to upgrade the graphics.

If graphics didn't matter, then graphical modding would not matter either. Yet it thrives.

 

[Dribble]

For most people good graphics are nice but far from essential. On this forum where everyone spends hours arguing about who gets the best fps, and which card runs which feature better graphics are everything - not because they play the games but just because they like arguing about graphics cards.

Imo, that is actually the most fun thing about graphics - arguing, benchmarking, arguing some more. If you actually play the game then having 4k with hairworks and perfect AA adds an initial wow factor but after that I suspect you'll find you're having no more fun then someone else who's used to playing at much lower res and medium settings.

 

[Madpacket]

I must admit as I age graphics have become less important [to me]. Even though I own two gaming boxes, one with a Geforce 970 and the other a Radeon 290 I usually end up doing the majority of my gaming on the HTPC / couch which houses a simple A10-7800 APU with integrated graphics with AMD DDR3 2400 mem. It fits snugly in a Silverstone Milo case which is smaller and quieter than the latest consoles, and uses less energy to boot.

At 720P / 900P and medium detail most games run fast enough for me. Yes the graphics aren't great (still look decent IMO, like a mixture between last gen and current gen consoles) but I generally don't play games for the graphics. The Milo box can handle Skyrim, BF4, GTAV and some other demanding games just fine. For the games that run like crap (very few) I'll play them on the dedicated rigs.

Advances in graphics are happening at a much faster pace than CPU's but I feel discrete graphic cards have almost run their course. When AMD releases Zen with HBM / DDR4 and Intel releases lower priced Skylake processors with Iris Pro the low end and likely medium end discrete graphics market will likely disappear.

In a few years it'll be like buying a dedicated sound card where you don't really have to buy one but if you have good peripheral devices like headphones and a DAC, you probably want to buy a dedicated card. I think this will be true for graphics cards only needed to drive 4K monitors or surround gaming, VR etc.

 

[blastingcap]

I would not say that graphics don't matter at all, but I would say that some graphics effects matter more than other. In game after game after game, there is usually a significant improvement when you go from Low to Medium graphics, less improvement when you go from Medium to High graphics, and very little gain when you go from High to Very High graphics.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For Borderlands 2, I have a fast enough card but I leave the hardware PhysX disabled. Because those particular graphics don't matter to me.

I don't bother to install modder texture packs to Skyrim or Fallout3/NV, because those improved graphics don't matter to me.

I still use a GTX 680 instead of buying a 980 ti because moving the sliders up for better grass blade shadows are graphics that don't matter to me.

On and on. Past a level of quality and smoothness of framerate, improved graphics don't matter enough to me to spend money or make any effort.

Art and art direction matter more to me than some whizzy soft shadow water droplet bump mapping. I'd rather play a game with great art like Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines than some Dudebro Shooty of War XIV with the latest graphics engine.

 

[Morbus]

As a PC only gamer, I don't care about graphics, and as such, consoles hold no value for me at all. I want games like NEO Scavenger, FTL, Endless Legend, EU VI, Pillars of Eternity, that kind of stuff only exists on PC, so I play PC.

 

[Pariah]

There would be quite a firestorm if a AAA sequel was released with graphics worse than the game that came before it. Graphics matter. That doesn't mean that a game can't be fun without cutting edge graphics, but it is silly to just blankly say graphics don't matter. It's even sillier when you see someone post it then look at the $600+ graphics card setup in their signature. You can play pretty much anything with a $100 video card if you turn down the graphics settings enough. The only reason to spend more is because you care about graphics and you want them to look better.

Totally disagree on the assertion that Blizzard games have bad graphics. Their major releases have always had top level artwork. They don't use cutting edge graphics special effects because they want to reach the largest audience, but their games are still always beautiful to look at. The only exception would be WOW with has been around for so long, and there isn't much they can do to bring the graphics up to modern standards.

 

[Jovec]

I like nice graphics, but my opinion is that if you can tell the difference between high and ultra settings while actually playing the game, you should be playing a better game because the fun, immersion, and action isn't there.

 

[Zodiark1593]

You're making a logical error when you say that gamers pay the most for graphics therefore they must matter the most. The error is because we have little to no options for hardware to buy for better stories or gameplay, so it's not a fair comparison.

Generally speaking gameplay makes games, a game can lack decent graphics and still be a very good game, such as minecraft with it's ultra basic graphics or very old 2D puzzle adventures that use pixel art. But you can't make a game fun based on graphics alone, you can make a game impressive based on graphics but not fun, engaging, addictive, etc.

True, though Minecraft visuals are decidedly primative, everything blends in well enough where you see very few obvious flaws that stick out from everything else as the game isn't targeting photorealism anyway. In a game directed toward photorealism, flaws due to technical limitations become more evident as one would naturally compare such a game to real life.