Graphics Don't Matter

Dave Long writes "My column at GamerDad features some musing on how unimportant graphics are becoming to enjoyment of games. Everything looks great today which removes the excitement of that bullet point on a game box. There's some historical context and speculation on next-gen consoles and graphics' effect on consumers." From the article: "I guess we're getting closer to photo-realism, but I just don't care. The games shown don't look markedly better than anything from this generation. I guess they're impressive in a 'that's close to the movies now' kind of way but the graphics aren't changing gameplay in any way that I can see. It just makes old types of gameplay look prettier. For the people who absolutely adore technology and this incessant need to replicate the real world, there will certainly be things to cheer in the next generation. I'm sure I'll eventually buy the new consoles myself and be at least modestly excited at the graphics, but I've just grown so accustomed to things looking nice on current machines that there's no 'wow' factor anymore."

Comments

Stale

[brkello]

Ahh, is gaming news so stale that all we get are people re-hashing the same old stuff all the time. It's such a dull article. He argues that the graphics aren't any better in the next gen. Then he states that they will be better and he will be excited, but it won't "wow" him. Give me a break.

Graphics are only one piece of gaming. There is this dumb notion on here that enhanced focus on graphics is causing a decline in game play. It's easy to fall in to this trap that stuff in the past was better than it is now. Ever talk to old people? They remember the stuff they did as the best things in the world...like playing kick the can. We tend to remember things better than they were. Games were fun and new...but quite frankly, there were plenty of 8-bit games that sucked just as much as our fancy ones suck today. There wasn't more focus on gameplay. There were only 10 people working on the whole game. Now there are 100s of people involved. There are people purely dedicated to the gameplay and purely dedicated to graphics. Having a pretty game does not take focus away from gameplay. Do you think game makers are more naieve then the morons posting on this site? Of course not. There are still awesome games being created and they look pretty too. The only thing that slightly justifies the argument that graphics take away from the game is that the more you stick in to graphics, the less processor you have left for AI. But games from the past didn't use AI..unless you consider a turtle walking back and forth between two pipes something that can pass the Turing test.

It has never been better for games. We have three consoles + PC to choose from. All of them have fantastic exclusive and non-exclusive games. Yes, there are crap games, but there always was crap games. The next generation will be exiting because programmers will be able to have more room to push their games to the limits. Seriously, if graphics didn't matter, there would never had been a need to move off of 8-bits.