As video games develop more and more over the years, companies have been making them more and more realistic-looking. I can guess this is related to expectations, but am I the only one who doesn’t care about graphics? We could be using the same processing power to store worlds that have as much exploration potential as the Earth itself if we weren’t afraid to save on processing power by going back to 8-bit.
I care about art direction. Graphical capability can give digital artists more freedom especially for photorealistic styles. But few games actually make good use of such artistic freedom.
My favourite 3D game graphics is Super Mario Galaxy. Other than that I mostly prefer game graphics from 16-bit consoles.
I do care about art direction, I just care so much more about the world in the game that if whole parts of the in-game world can come at the same processing cost as a little realism, I’d choose more chunks of the world.
I want a Fun game. Art (graphics) can help and be supplementary towards making a game fun, but it is not the end all be all. Some fun games I’ve played use intentionally shitty graphics to add to it, other games are so unfun because all they do is try to wow you with the images.
I’ve found lately the indie Dev sphere has been more focused on fun games and AAA studios have more focused on graphics alone. I think this mostly happened because early on when (video) games where becoming popularized hardware was increasing at such a rapid pace and graphics genuinely could be made better, not necessarily as just a stylistic choice. You could show off the new hardware capabilities with good story for more appeal. This also made them lazier over the years as those big hardware and software leap allowed them to focus on the consumer draw utilizing showcase imagry over story. As hardware advances slowed and graphic leaps became smaller the gains just aren’t there. And you’ve left many consumers with nostalgia over the fight for when graphic improvements meant something, in a time when good story/gameplay was also pretty necessary.
On the bright side, games with intentionally shitty graphics are very memeable, especially Undertale.
Some fun games I’ve played use intentionally shitty graphics to add to it
If it adds to the experience, wouldn’t the graphics then be good?
Too realistic graphics take me out of the game, are visually overwhelming, and make it hard to see certain important details.
If I have to pick up a quest item, I don’t want it’s stone texture blending into the dirt floor. I want it highlighted so I can see the damn thing is interactable.
Reading this, I realize I’m surprised more games don’t have colourblind accommodation.
i think stardew valley is itself proof that detailed graphics are not a requirement for good game play.
That and Undertale.
It’s not a proof, it’s an exception.
is earth proof of life across the universe or are we an exception?
Stardew looks fantastic, what are you saying?
that detailed graphics are not a requirement for good game play
They’re not, but your example is a game with detailed graphics…
yep, that is an interesting opinion on graphics.
…It’s not really an opinion, but okay
whatever floats your boat semantic master
Graphics are important. Polygon count is not. There is no real value in being able to see each individual eyelash, but I also don’t think there’s much benefit to making every game look like the original Lode Runner.
Wouldn’t it save data power? I would imagine that a game with the simpler visuals from the golden age of video games would cost a machine less bytes to perform.
It depends on a lot of factors. Minecraft, despite its signature simplistic artstyle, takes a surprising amount of CPU power to run - a lot more so if you run mods. Even a Minecraft server, which doesn’t render graphics at all, takes a beefy machine and a lot of RAM.
It’s as much about graphical fidelity as it is quality of code, and unfortunately, there are a lot of game studios that don’t seem especially bothered about optimising their games. To the extent that you can fill, say, an Xbox’s hard drive with only two or three AAA games.
All that said, you’re right in that simpler graphics in general mean less work for the graphics card to do. Just that it’s not the only factor.
You should play Nethack
I can attest to how neat Nethack is.
While I agree with the OP, I don’t like dungeon crawlers due to the way you lose several hours of Progress for a simple mistake.
But that is why I play NetHack. It’s like an endurance test
Good for you. I play games to have fun, not to test my endurance.
I care about the art on an individual level and as a whole when compared to how it adds to the game. Applying a strict criteria of detail and other metrics is pointless when games are meant to be works of art and passion. Its too subjective to judge it. Like judging Salt & Sanctuary solely on its Dishwasher inspired art would be a misstep. The art adds to the bleakness of the world while also maintaining the studio’s style
I remember when Wind Waker first came out, the graphics were something everyone complained about, and now two decades later, everyone misses that style of visual representation.
“Function over form” is a mantra I live by. This is reflected in the software I use/make, as well as the games I play.
What software do you make?
Nothing noteworthy. Mostly just utility stuff that I use myself, or work related stuff. A typical example is a self-test script that I wrote in perl because I’m lazy, and somehow it became a company standard and made it’s way into written procedures - It just checks various services and misc network stuff, and let’s you know if there’s something obviously wrong happening.
I really don’t game. And so yeah. It is odd for me as when I look for a laptop, for example, I want a 16 inch, without a gpu. I do text and VNC. Please sir, may I have more screen?
Ironically advanced graphics processing is likely what shortened the life of my last device.
sounds like PC gamers should fire up an Amiga emulator and learn what gameplay could be.
I do this sometimes. Emulators are the best. I wish game companies would use them as a cue to revive the concept of having events around games they consider far in the past.
Don’t feel bad, I don’t even care about video games
What’s your favorite one you’ve played?
I don’t have one, I’ve literally played 2-3 games in the past 20 years
I care – all else held equal, I’d rather have snazzier graphics – but I feel like there’s pretty strongly diminishing returns.
And because resources are finite, all else isn’t held equal. You’re giving up time spent working on gameplay or whatever to stick fancier graphic assets in.
Some of my favorite games don’t have much by way of graphics.
I do kind of wish that I could get upscaled versions of a number of games that I enjoy with low-resolution pixel graphics, though – I’d like “high-resolution DLC” to be a thing for successful games like that. Think Caves of Qud or something like that. IIRC Cave Story did that, along with a handful of other games. Would like to have higher-res versions of Balatro. Same for Noita, though there I guess the resolution hooks into the game mechanics, so have to be careful how to deal with that.
I’ve also seen some games with untextured polygons that have worked out pretty well. Star Fox for the Super Nintendo and Avara and Flying Nightmares for the classic Mac came from an era when texturing wasn’t always possible. Carrier Command 2 is much newer, and uses only limited texturing.
Minecraft went a long way with very technically-limited graphics.
There are a lot of good roguelikes that just use text.
Same. Most of the games I like are enjoyable due to the game mechanics. I can attest a Pokémon game for example could even be HTML (the old, old Pokémon MMORPG’s were like this) and still be enjoyable, since it’s at heart about strategy (hence why the TCG exists).
And because resources are finite, all else isn’t held equal. You’re giving up time spent working on gameplay or whatever to stick fancier graphic assets in.
That’s not how game design works. The people who work on the gameplay and level design and dialog are not the same people who work on the graphics. Sure, making the game prettier takes more time, but it has no effect on how long the rest of the game takes to be built. And lower-quality assets can be used in the interim for things like scripting animations, with higher quality assets swapped in later.
Sure, the same people can’t work on the different aspects, but budget for more designers who spend longer making more detailed graphics could be spent on other departments that do affect gameplay.
You could hire more game devs if that money wasn’t spent on excessive prettiness.
And keep in mind, there’s as much cost in an organization for management overhead, if not more.
A game can only give you so many hours before it becomes boring. Sandbox games aside, most are done after 100 to 200 hours. More content wouldn’t really revive them as you already know the gameplay loop.
Graphics isn’t as important as art style, however I’d rather play a game with realistic graphics but lack of distinguishing art direction, than one with art direction but overall being too basic with their graphics. Graphics is a huge part of immersion to me.
I play a lot of indie games with poor graphics. Best example Minecraft, but when I can install higher resolution textures, realistic lighting and animated foliage, it is eye candy. I can just stand there and look at the beautiful world and relax. I do need zero gameplay at this point and am still entertained.
Gameplay is overrated, give me pretty graphics. Be it realistic or not.
TIL Minecraft is considered an Indie game. I thought it was a company one.
Microsoft bought Mojang after a few years.
Ah, that’s where the confusion comes from then.
You are not alone. I do have a lower threshold that is above 8 bit, but I want enough of a difference from real life that I don’t constantly think I’m watching a real person through the eyes of a drone.
I think there are possibilities for games that are 8bit, depending on what the game style is. Some simple games and side scrollers wouldn’t need to be much higher that that.
Edit: but anything that has the depth as part of the gameplay should have at least PS2 level graphics. In driving games, first person shooters, open world games need that clarity to see where I’m going and what I can explore over there
So something like Wind Waker?
While there are many fans of pixel art and low poly 3D, majority of gamers actually want high fidelity graphics. There are very few indie success stories with low quality VFX like Stardew Valley and pretty much no AAA games like that. Games like No Man’s Sky won’t be such hits if they were made in pixel art.
The reality is that it’s not that games with good graphics are bad, it’s that you can’t afford RTX4090 and a QD OLED 4K monitor. There are plenty of great games with awesome graphics, it’s time for you to upgrade.
It’s not that I don’t care at all about visuals, but I look at a machine like the Nintendo Switch, which currently hosts a number of Pokemon games in complete 3D and two enormous open world Zelda games, and I think how cool it would be if the graphics went back to 8-bit (like they were for the first Zelda and Pokemon games) and they used all that data to make a bigger world, which could now be literally a hundred times larger, and while they were at it maybe put in MMORPG functionality. If they could replicate the whole country of Denmark in a Minecraft server, they could replicate the whole world in something that sacrificed some of the visual advancements. It feels weird we’re increasing our capacity for data power only to waste it all more and more as it progresses.
Again, No Man’s Sky is an example where nothing is sacrificed.
