Death to Good Graphics!

[sneakypenguin]

And here I was starting to whine that graphics are starting to look a little stale. I want my graphics to be the best possible not some agreed upon arbitrarily low setting, while I understand and agree somewhat with the view shared. I think another evolution of gaming is acceptable,and that would be having 3-5 "big" publishers putting out 5 "major" titles a year (provide these are great games technically)

I think that great graphics, good gameplay and long stories can go together (and be profitable) Mass Effect for example.

 

[Blackhauk]

Agreed, games are too mediocre when graphics are spent on rather then game/level design. Take resistance 2 for eg.

also graphics are usually turned down on rts games, where the graphics usually lag online...better games not better pictures

 

[Echolocating]

Good article and a very valid point.

I wish that game developers would hold off on the graphical arms race. It's needless and unprofitable in this day and age. However, most of these graphically rich games are so shallow that I don't care if my PC can't run them; I wouldn't buy them anyway.

 

[JC175]

I totally agree with you on everything there, especially the 2004 tech idea.

I have a PC which I tend to play older games on, and it could just about run Doom 3 at a decent graphics level, but really struggles with newer games, to the point where I now need to upgrade to be able to play things at higher detail levels.

There is one example of following your model, and thats Valve. They continued to use the Source engine to bring out a variety of games, to maximise the amounts of people who would be able to play, and therefore maximise the amount of money they can make.

As usual, Valve is pretty much the only game company that really understands how the games industry works and how it's going to evolve.

You took my thoughts exactly. They've been using the same engine since 2004, and it still looks great due to the small updates they continue to make - without increasing system requirements.

 

[Limos]

I love this guy so much. I have been trying to tell people for years that graphics don't matter. Here I am with my DS and Wii while my friends are drooling while they describe the newest lighting system in the new game for the PS3. Whats the name of the game? Who cares! It has really well rendered ferns!

I don't give a shit about graphics. I want a game that runs smooth and is fun. I don't care if it's 8-bit. If it's entertaining and bug free I'm good to go.

Not to mention that as games get progressively more realistic (read: gray/brown and blurry) I find it harder and harder to play them because I have bad eyesight and can't tell what the fuck is going on.

I played Gears of War for a grand total of 10 minutes before I finally tossed it simply because I couldn't tell where the fuck I am, where the fuck the enemy is, or where the fuck I am supposed to go.

Fuck graphics.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Graphics never ever make the game, they only make it look nicer. That's not an excuse to deliberately cut back on it though.

 

[badsectoracula]

I fully agree with the article (and i'm a graphics programmer myself, i have worked in a games company and i've made a bunch of "indie" games).

However it isn't the technology that is the problem. Really. If you think about it, making an engine doesn't take much time. What it *does* take time is using the engine. This includes using the tools to create content. And with "tools" i mean both the engine-specific tools (such as the world editor) and the generic tools such as the 3D modelling program and the 2D content creation program (Max, Maya, Blender, Photoshop, etc).

In the company i worked at we had some great art. Technically our engine wasn't anything spectacular, edge-pushing, etc. In fact most of the art worked with your standard diffuse + normal + specular + lightmap rendering, plus some shadows, particles and other "common" effects. Yet the results we had (back then) were amazing.

Why? But because we had about five times more artists than programmers.

Content creation is the bottleneck in game development and this isn't always tied to technology. Sure, in Wolf3D era one could make a good level in a single afternoon. Doom expanded this to a week, Quake... well some people over at func_msgboard need at least a month to create a good looking level. And if you notice, every single one of these games removed some limitation. As we get less and less limitations, we reach more "life like" results for our virtual worlds and these virtual words become more real.

The problem is, the real world took millions of years to become what it is today.

I believe today we have enough technology to display a very convincing imitation of a real world. But to display something, we first have to create it. And our technology on this aspect is far from ideal. For the last 20 years (and more) we use the same principles developed by SGI to create the world content. Triangles. 3D mesh models. Our 3D modelling tools are just extensions to the same tools people used in old SGI workstations. The Quake 1 models were made the same way the Crysis models were made: pushing triangles around. Sure we now have ZBrush and similar tools, but these are just extensions to the basic idea of texture mapped triangles.

Currently the industry tries to solve the problem in a "brute-force" manner: spending more money for more detailed content. I believe this is a short-term solution which already has started showing its drawbacks. The solution lies more on creating new technology which is designed to allow faster content creation than pushing more detail. Currently the goal is to push more detail on the screen without much thought on the content creation speed. I believe this must be reversed and the goal shoul be to create content faster with the detail to be a secondary goal. If we solve the fast content creation issue, adding detail will be a natural evolution of this.

 

[Chadling]

The graphics curve has reached its plateau. There's a big difference between W3D and Quake; Quake/Quake II; Warcraft I/II/III. How big of a difference is there between the latest and newest nearly photo-accurate shooters? Very little.

An interesting graphics style is far more effective than pushing around even more polygons and bloom effects (and I hate bloom effects--even more than I hate that ridiculous lens flare). I still consider Okami to be one of the most beautiful games ever created--I simply can't tire of that graphical style. Is it realistic? Hell no, but it's interesting, pleasant to look at, and will catch a passerby's attention far more effectively than the latest gunmetal gray/apocalypse brown shooter.

The first time I saw Okami in action, I was instantly captivated and couldn't tear my eyes away. It wasn't because what was happening on screen was especially interesting--Okami Amaterasu was just running around in Izanagi Cave (the first area) while the player was explaining the graphics style--but I was entranced.

Also, compulsively taking advantage of the latest and greatest hardware limits the size of the developer's possible audience. Insert Sins of a Solar Empire reference here: one of my friends has told me that his father's computer, a hunk of junk that doesn't meet the System Requirements, runs that game just fine on the lower settings. In my experience with most games, if your system doesn't at least come close to meeting the System Recommendations, your computer will probably have a nervous breakdown and commit the electronic equivalent of suicide at seeing the herculean challenge of running the new game you've just installed.

 

[Doug]

Thing is, I don't thin graphics are the reason originality is going out of the window. It's easier to get into the market with a generic game, then with something different e.g. Mirror's Edge, as there is more room to fail.

I suspect thats tied in with the cost of the games, tied in with the cost of graphics; after all, with generic shoot 5, you know what your getting for you £35 ($60), whereas with Random Quirky game 2 you've no idea what you're risking your hard cash on.

Add to that, gaming has been turning bland for so long, the console kids aren't used to it. Also, Mirrors Edge was abit crap - innovantion is good and all, but £35 for a game is still £35.

 

[Doug]

The graphics curve has reached its plateau. There's a big difference between W3D and Quake; Quake/Quake II; Warcraft I/II/III. How big of a difference is there between the latest and newest nearly photo-accurate shooters? Very little.

An interesting graphics style is far more effective than pushing around even more polygons and bloom effects (and I hate bloom effects--even more than I hate that ridiculous lens flare). I still consider Okami to be one of the most beautiful games ever created--I simply can't tire of that graphical style. Is it realistic? Hell no, but it's interesting, pleasant to look at, and will catch a passerby's attention far more effectively than the latest gunmetal gray/apocalypse brown shooter.

The first time I saw Okami in action, I was instantly captivated and couldn't tear my eyes away. It wasn't because what was happening on screen was especially interesting--Okami Amaterasu was just running around in Izanagi Cave (the first area) while the player was explaining the graphics style--but I was entranced.

Also, compulsively taking advantage of the latest and greatest hardware limits the size of the developer's possible audience. Insert Sins of a Solar Empire reference here: one of my friends has told me that his father's computer, a hunk of junk that doesn't meet the System Requirements, runs that game just fine on the lower settings. In my experience with most games, if your system doesn't at least come close to meeting the System Recommendations, your computer will probably have a nervous breakdown and commit the electronic equivalent of suicide at seeing the herculean challenge of running the new game you've just installed.

QFT!

Stardock/Ironclad have a policy of looking at what MOST gamers can run, not like Crysis, which looked to what the best gaming rigs can run. Result: SoaE has a massive potential market, Crysis a very restricted one.

Also, look at Valve - the source engine is pretty old right now, but they keep working with it, adding new graphical touches and styles to it - and it looks great still! And can support both Half Life 2 through to Team Fortress 2.

 

[Irandrura]

The first two games that came to mind while I was reading this were Metroid Prime (1 and 2) and Starcraft. They're all great games; Metroid Prime still looks aesthetically pleasing, and Starcraft is still my favorite game of all time.

You know, I actually bought Metroid Prime for the first time a month or two ago (for I deliberately run anywhere from one to ten years behind the cutting edge in gaming, so that I'm not being persuaded by hype and the like, and I can focus on simply buying games that I'll like minus the frantic rush for new games, consoles, etc.; this is also cheaper and really pays off when it comes to running PC games!), and the first time I put it in, I was really impressed with the graphics. I'd gone and played a friend's Halo 3 for hours before and found its graphics and environments to be dull and yawned through them, but the art direction in Metroid Prime is great.

Starcraft shows the same principle, which I would sum up by saying this: art direction is far more important than graphics. Whether a game looks nice or not depends upon graphics to an extent, but much more to art. It's more important for a game to get good concept artists than good graphics programmers.

They're also much cheaper, which comes to Shamus' point about content and gameplay length. For example, Mass Effect is about a ten hour game or so, maybe bump it up to fifteen or twenty if you run around doing every sidequest. Baldur's Gate II, almost ten years old, has far inferior graphics (though I'll say that on a purely visual level I like BGII more, as almost every environment is unique and the artists were able to do much more), but is many times longer, and it remains true that I've gotten far more enjoyment out of BGII than ME. While it was cheaper to produce and its graphics are far inferior, it contains much more content, and aesthetically I find it more pleasing because of the range of detailed environments that the later game lacks. The later game repeats most of its environments because simply making one of them represents a huge investment. In the earlier one, we're talking about slapping a different texture on the floor or walls and that's it. That means we got a lot of these environments. There was time to make and implement them all, and so we got a game that appeals to be considerably more. The graphics are far inferior, but playing these games, Athkatla feels much more like a real city than, say, Neverwinter in NWN, and to me it looks prettier. It's all flat backgrounds and 2D sprites, but again this comes down to art direction, and with the lesser expense you have room to be considerably more creative.

 

[Signa]

I've been saying this for years. The current console generation is crap. The only one that has it right is the Wii, and crap developers are making it crap anyways. From the moment I saw the $60 price tag on the 360 games, I knew that we were in for trouble. There just isn't anything to justify the $10 increase if the game isn't any more fun. As time has gone on, I see that games are now even LESS fun. It's driven be back to decade-old games because they just were a lot more fun then.

Edit:

The first two games that came to mind while I was reading this were Metroid Prime (1 and 2) and Starcraft. They're all great games; Metroid Prime still looks aesthetically pleasing, and Starcraft is still my favorite game of all time.

You know, I actually bought Metroid Prime for the first time a month or two ago (for I deliberately run anywhere from one to ten years behind the cutting edge in gaming, so that I'm not being persuaded by hype and the like, and I can focus on simply buying games that I'll like minus the frantic rush for new games, consoles, etc.; this is also cheaper and really pays off when it comes to running PC games!), and the first time I put it in, I was really impressed with the graphics. I'd gone and played a friend's Halo 3 for hours before and found its graphics and environments to be dull and yawned through them, but the art direction in Metroid Prime is great.

It took me about 4 years to finish MP1 (yes, it sat on my shelf that long). Once I finally got into playing it, I literally would say to myself when the game booted and Samus would step out of the save point, "Why the fuck would I need better graphics than this?!" I'm still working on MP2 off and on so I can get on with MP3. It still stands though that the extra $10 on each game is not justified.

 

[Credge]

I'm really enjoying the exaggerated PC price numbers here. "Thousands of dollars." On what? Alienware? Yeah, no crap. That's no different than anything else out there. I can spend thousands of dollars on a Gibson or $500 on an Epiphone and have it play, sound, and look identical.

Anyone that does that is stupid. Further, you don't need to spend tons of money to be able to play high end games on the highest settings. I've got a 3 year old computer that plays Crysis full tilt at 1680X1050 minus AA (I can't stand how it makes games look, so why have it on?) that I spent about $800 on, monitor, case, keyboard, and mouse included, and it's just fine.

People who don't know the hobby will waste tons of money. PC gaming has almost reached audiophile stupidity levels.

However, graphics don't make games fun UNLESS the game is about exploration or is based around the idea even if the path you take is linear. An example would be Uncharted. The graphics in that game truly made the game enjoyable. It was a visual pleasure. What makes me come back to it is the game play.

However, I would like to make a correction on what Doug said. It's Half-Life 2 through Left 4 Dead as L4D is also on the same engine.

 

[Samah]

But i still play Starcraft.

And yet it is still the clear leader in RTS awesomeness. I haven't played an RTS since SC that I could even put on par with it. We'll have to see how well SC2 plays out.

I was talking to a young guy who had recently spent a few thousand dollars upgrading his PC to play games. I asked him what he liked to play. He said "I mostly play games for the graphics. So, like, Crysis."

I just stared at him. All I could think was "You spent thousands of dollars... so the games you don't really care about would look a bit better?"

Crysis is just an expensive interactive 3D benchmarking program.

 

[Credge]

I've been saying this for years. The current console generation is crap. The only one that has it right is the Wii, and crap developers are making it crap anyways. From the moment I saw the $60 price tag on the 360 games, I knew that we were in for trouble. There just isn't anything to justify the $10 increase if the game isn't any more fun. As time has gone on, I see that games are now even LESS fun. It's driven be back to decade-old games because they just were a lot more fun then.

That's exactly what I've been doing as well. I've been playing older games more than newer games with some rare exceptions (Neverwinter Nights 2 and CoD:WaW... but one is simply an old-school game with tons of content with updated graphics and I'm a WW2 shooter nut). There are a few games this gen where I could easily justify $60 on it, but that is simply because they were truly incredible games.

The games industry is currently suffering from the same problems that the music industry is with a few exceptions. For example, we have $60 for consoles where CD's are $15. Are you really going to suggest that this band I've never heard of with songs I've never heard of is worth the same as a new Eric Clapton CD?

Some game companies are starting to get it. Stardock is one and Valve is another, although L4D was a pretty meh deal compared to the Orange Box in regards to value.

I've found I've gravitated more towards PSN games and Wiiware games this gen more than anything else. They have simple, yet fun games that don't miss the point ~ the game play.

 

[VZLANemesis]

"...but graphics that augment fun usually are considered bad graphics."

Bioshock doesn't agree with you ^^

Crysis is just an expensive interactive 3D benchmarking program.

You have to admit that game is FUUUUN (apart from the graphics)
I mean, the suit is a cool basis for a fps. I liked it way better than most fps games I've played. But yeah, I'm not that into fps games, they're too repetitive and the themes GOD the themes, WWI or II, alien invasions or some zombie/disease/mutation. Apart from that they're all the same game (excepting painkiller, that game kicks ass).

 

[InProgress]

Try telling that to Epic Studios. Most of their work is based on creating and improving their game engine, which are then used by other publishers who believe that the better the graphics, the more people will play it. I say that the CryEngine is the top and it shouldn't evolve further. We don't need to see every little leaf blowing in the wind. For that we have pre-rendered cutscenes. As some of you said publishers should just take the engine and improve it without increasing the requirements, and make it unilateral. As right now, it's pretty ok to use the UnrealEngine to make car races (and I know a few that are working on Wipeout mods with the UT3), but not really useful for RPGs and RTS'. Something like an all-versatile game engine would be great. Offer it at a minimal price to studios (to also help indie games, make it a pro version for studios at around 1000$, and the indie/student version, which has some features disabled at 350-500$). While the company that published it, doesn't make games, just keeps on improving the engine. Sounds like a utopia, so now I'll shut up.

In conclusion: I whole heartily agree that the graphics need to stop advancing. If we want realism, we'll just go outside.

 

[Signa]

I've been saying this for years. The current console generation is crap. The only one that has it right is the Wii, and crap developers are making it crap anyways. From the moment I saw the $60 price tag on the 360 games, I knew that we were in for trouble. There just isn't anything to justify the $10 increase if the game isn't any more fun. As time has gone on, I see that games are now even LESS fun. It's driven be back to decade-old games because they just were a lot more fun then.

That's exactly what I've been doing as well. I've been playing older games more than newer games with some rare exceptions (Neverwinter Nights 2 and CoD:WaW... but one is simply an old-school game with tons of content with updated graphics and I'm a WW2 shooter nut). There are a few games this gen where I could easily justify $60 on it, but that is simply because they were truly incredible games.

The games industry is currently suffering from the same problems that the music industry is with a few exceptions. For example, we have $60 for consoles where CD's are $15. Are you really going to suggest that this band I've never heard of with songs I've never heard of is worth the same as a new Eric Clapton CD?

Some game companies are starting to get it. Stardock is one and Valve is another, although L4D was a pretty meh deal compared to the Orange Box in regards to value.

I've found I've gravitated more towards PSN games and Wiiware games this gen more than anything else. They have simple, yet fun games that don't miss the point ~ the game play.

What is sad about this too, is that devs don't seem to realize that their best works from the past are a far bigger threat to sales than what some one else might be releasing at the same time. At least with PC games, there are no "last gen" games that people will refuse to play because of age or digging out an old console. As consumers, we have no obligation to buy a new game just because some one who made it says it's the best game ever made. We can always fall back on those titles that we got 4 years ago or the ones that are $20 in the bargain bin. One of the best games I've ever played was fished out of a bargain bin by my brother, and it was so good, it ruined other RTSs for me (I'm talking about Total Annihilation).

I admit that I am driven by eye candy as much as the next person, but it's gotten to the point where everything is so beautiful that I just don't care anymore. The games market is getting over-saturated, and the only thing that will save it is more effort that no one has to give right now. Making cuts somewhere will help immensely, and graphics should be the first to go.

Edit:

Try telling that to Epic Studios. Most of their work is based on creating and improving their game engine, which are then used by other publishers who believe that the better the graphics, the more people will play it. I say that the CryEngine is the top and it shouldn't evolve further. We don't need to see every little leaf blowing in the wind. For that we have pre-rendered cutscenes. As some of you said publishers should just take the engine and improve it without increasing the requirements, and make it unilateral. As right now, it's pretty ok to use the UnrealEngine to make car races (and I know a few that are working on Wipeout mods with the UT3), but not really useful for RPGs and RTS'. Something like an all-versatile game engine would be great. Offer it at a minimal price to studios (to also help indie games, make it a pro version for studios at around 1000$, and the indie/student version, which has some features disabled at 350-500$). While the company that published it, doesn't make games, just keeps on improving the engine. Sounds like a utopia, so now I'll shut up.

In conclusion: I whole heartily agree that the graphics need to stop advancing. If we want realism, we'll just go outside.

I want to give Epic some credit there. All the UT engine games that I've played are BEAUTIFUL, and none of them run crappy. It seems like if you have the hardware to handle the engine, it runs without a hitch. In my experience, there is no spectrum of performance. Either it doesn't run, or it looks second to Crysis.

Edit 2:

That was the single most absurd post I've ever read in my life...
Stop graphics advancement... really? You think you're not getting it WAY too far?
REALLY?!

Stop being so melodramatic. While stopping graphics advancement is ludicrous, slowing it to a halt is critical right now. Graphics are at critical mass, and are taking the industry down with them. It's reading between the lines, but it's effectively what the article was about. Calling it the "single most absurd post I've ever read in my life..." is even more absurd.

 

[VZLANemesis]

Try telling that to Epic Studios. Most of their work is based on creating and improving their game engine, which are then used by other publishers who believe that the better the graphics, the more people will play it. I say that the CryEngine is the top and it shouldn't evolve further. We don't need to see every little leaf blowing in the wind. For that we have pre-rendered cutscenes. As some of you said publishers should just take the engine and improve it without increasing the requirements, and make it unilateral. As right now, it's pretty ok to use the UnrealEngine to make car races (and I know a few that are working on Wipeout mods with the UT3), but not really useful for RPGs and RTS'. Something like an all-versatile game engine would be great. Offer it at a minimal price to studios (to also help indie games, make it a pro version for studios at around 1000$, and the indie/student version, which has some features disabled at 350-500$). While the company that published it, doesn't make games, just keeps on improving the engine. Sounds like a utopia, so now I'll shut up.

In conclusion: I whole heartily agree that the graphics need to stop advancing. If we want realism, we'll just go outside.

That was the single most absurd post I've ever read in my life...
Stop graphics advancement... really? You think you're not getting it WAY too far?
REALLY?!

The whole point of the article was to say that graphics advancement has been detrimental to gameplay, that's the way it has happened so far, but it doesn't mean better graphics are bad by nature. It's just that way too many companies have relied on good graphics to forget about making some decent gameplay.

But look at Zeno Clash, it's got good graphics, and yet the gameplay was improved from most fps games and it oozes style.

As I said before, look at Bioshock, amazing atmosphere and game immersion, awesome graphics, and what would be the problem if it became photo realistic? More immersion... and it would still be awesome because of it's gameplay mechanics.

 

[Irandrura]

I've been saying this for years. The current console generation is crap. The only one that has it right is the Wii, and crap developers are making it crap anyways.

I would agree with you there. I like the Wii, in potential at least, because it actually does something interesting that you couldn't do before. It is, whether a step forward or backward or anything else, at least a step away from what there was before.

Whereas the X-Box 360 or PS3... I just don't see the point. PS3 games are still ported to the PS2. (I remember seeing a PS2 version of The Force Unleashed and thinking 'why the hell was a next-gen console needed? At all? if the new games run fine on these earlier consoles, what was the point of upgrading?'.) The 360 and PS3 are not actually different to the X-Box or PS2 in terms of anything but graphics. Is there a reason Halo 3 could not have been an X-Box title, for instance? The game would be identical; the only difference would be a minor graphical downgrade, and I don't see how the minor upgrade of the 360 justifies the price of upgrading.

I get the impression that those consoles are in a rut. They're not innovating or doing anything that will actually allow more possibilities in gaming. Earlier generation upgrades did allow for real advances. The NES-SNES leap (forgive my ignorance of other consoles of that era) allowed for Mode 7 and other advances, and at that level the graphical upgrade could be said to be relatively significant. The SNES-N64/PS1 leap was obviously huge, as we got 3D out of it, and there are still series that haven't figured out how to make use of it [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PolygonCeiling]. New gameplay innovations were possible. (And I mention Metroid Prime again; I was a fan of the 2D games and frankly am amazed at how well it works and how it keeps the feel of the earlier games.) PS1/N64-PS2/GC/X-Box is again a significant move. It brings in online console gaming, for a big advance, albeit one I never really liked, and often gameplay itself seemed to improve. Note that this same principle applies in handhelds. GB-GBA brought in most of the same innovations that NES-SNES allowed. GBA-DS was a massive leap, and I applaud the DS for doing things that I never thought you could do on a handheld.

Given all of that... what advances do we get from the current generation? X-Box-360? PS2-PS3? What do the new consoles do that the old ones couldn't? GC-Wii seems to be the only meaningful change, because there are a lot of things you can do with the Wii that you couldn't have done with earlier games. I suspect that much of the reason the Wii seems so gimmicky now is because developers are experimenting with those things; they aren't quite sure how to approach the Wii. In a few more years we might see the Wii really mature and show its quality. At present I don't really think it's had the most made of it yet.