Game graphics and its problem

[Muspelheim]

I don't really give that much of a toss about god-rays or super-duper antimastropic lightning. I notice it, and it's pretty lovely, but I'd rather you focus on bullet holes in a wall staying on the whole match.

I mean it. Imagine RTS-es. Rather than having next-gen superfidelity dudes, they could focus on tank wrecks not despawning with an ugly fade-out after five minutes. A permanent tank wreck staying for the whole match providing cover and having to be shoved out of the way for new tanks would mean something. Anti-asised martipaskroptic lightning doesn't, at least in comparison.

 

[happyninja42]

I don't really get into the graphics war, as I don't really care. I mean yeah sure, the better the graphics, cool, that's always a plus, but I don't tear my hair out if they don't hit my system cap 24/7.

Also, as someone above skillfully pointed out, a lot of it is art style. Making this same argument with animation for example, doesn't make sense. It's like saying that Bob's Burgers isn't a good show, because it doesn't look like Avatar: The Last Airbender. It doesn't have to look like A:TLA, it's it's own thing. As long as it is consistent with it's art style, and is enjoyable, I'm not really going to care if it matches/exceeds the last game with the same engine that came out a few months before.

While I do enjoy a good form, I am definitely in the "function over form" category of what I prefer. Pretty bells and whistles are nice, but they are better on a fully functional bicycle than a rusted out frame.

 

[Areloch]

I don't really give that much of a toss about god-rays or super-duper antimastropic lightning. I notice it, and it's pretty lovely, but I'd rather you focus on bullet holes in a wall staying on the whole match.

I mean it. Imagine RTS-es. Rather than having next-gen superfidelity dudes, they could focus on tank wrecks not despawning with an ugly fade-out after five minutes. A permanent tank wreck staying for the whole match providing cover and having to be shoved out of the way for new tanks would mean something. Anti-asised martipaskroptic lightning doesn't, at least in comparison.

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'd also really like to see more of. One of the coolest examples of "permanence" still in gaming I'm aware of to date was the fact you could mow down all but the biggest trees in crysis. With enough time and bullets, you could pretty much de-forest the area. It felt AWESOME.

I will say though that some groups pushing the technical envelope encourage new, better and more efficient techniques, which enable games to do stuff like 'bullet holes that last forever' and the like.

It's just that in context of most AAA experiences, if there's the choice between 'depth of field + bokeh' or 'permanent bullet holes', they're gunna go with the fancier technical effect for the cost rather than something that's not likely to be noticed by the masses.

Which is a shame, but it still means that other devs can come along with different priorities and do a game where they picked 'permanent bullet holes' instead. We just need more of a balance.

 

[Cold Shiny]

It's almost like Nintendo's timeless graphical style it uses in its games has an indefinite lifespan, while so called "realistic" games
look like crap after 2 years. Keep on chugging, Nintendo.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

With the recent release of Witcher 3 and Fallout 4, I have been thinking that graphic "realism" is getting "crazy" and out of hands.
I feel like the exponential growth of the need of better and better graphic, and hardware, is not something good in general.
By demanding more and more, games become harder to test, strenuous and costly, because more company have to make more hardware and so its become a huge ocean of headache and stupid variation of the "same" stuff. All that for what, what is the % of gamer that really really want to play their games at their fullest? What is really the point of just shooting yourself on the foot just so you can praise your game to be the best in graphic.
Not saying that a large portion of gamer are like me, but I think graphic is becoming something that is less and less something I'm looking for into a game.
Not sure why big AAA is just still trying more and more to push that "high" barrier for the last couple of years and I think its became obvious that most don't really mind graphic in general.
Yes I want a good looking game, but I don't care about 80% of it. Shadows, grass, leaves, sun bloom and similar small bonuses are uneccesary and "useless".

Also, you may want to look at the "wallpaper" effect or the "its new!" effect, my point is, when you put a new wallpaper to your wall, yes its great, you look at it for the first few "hours", but then, you get accustomed to it and its doesn't really matter anymore. To me, its exactly that, since the "realism" or graphic "niceness" peek around 2005 or 06 (to me its almost since Half life 2 and more closely to Fallout 3)

My 2 cents

I'm assuming you must be younger because it's actually gotten much worse. Back during the 90's and into the early 2000's, graphics were advancing at such a fast rate that you basically needed to buy a new console or upgrade your computer every 2 years in order to keep up. Now consoles have a shelf life much longer (XBox 360 was released in 2005 and didn't really get fully supplanted until 2014).

But anyway, as someone pointed out, if you use the world's highest quality paint and canvas and paint a boring picture, it's still a boring picture. But if you use it to paint a beautiful picture, and then use crappy paint to paint the same picture, I'm going to prefer the more beautiful one. Just having good graphics doesn't automatically mean you have a crap story, and vice versa.

 

[sanquin]

Eh, I'd say Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 went for more of a stylistic approach rather than a realistic one. If you look at the graphics up close in those two games, they're pretty much last-gen. But combine that with the aesthetics and you get quite a beautiful game. Many people complain about how F4 basically has the same graphics as F3, with low textures and all. And I have to agree, but the game still looks a lot better.

Aesthetics have always been more important to me than graphics. I prefer Borderlands 2 over any newer CoD, for instance. Or unmodded Fallout 4 over unmodded Skyrim, because everything in unmodded Skyrim seems to bleak and dull.

 

[Bad Jim]

I don't really give that much of a toss about god-rays or super-duper antimastropic lightning. I notice it, and it's pretty lovely, but I'd rather you focus on bullet holes in a wall staying on the whole match.

I mean it. Imagine RTS-es. Rather than having next-gen superfidelity dudes, they could focus on tank wrecks not despawning with an ugly fade-out after five minutes. A permanent tank wreck staying for the whole match providing cover and having to be shoved out of the way for new tanks would mean something. Anti-asised martipaskroptic lightning doesn't, at least in comparison.

Didn't Supreme Commander do that in like 2006?

Total Annihilation did it in 1997.

 

[Joccaren]

Well, you've got it slightly the wrong way around to start with; New hardware is made, and thus better graphics are made to utilise it. And that's good. I'd hate it if we were still in PS2 era graphics because it was 'good enough' or something. We're getting to a stage where some of the best looking games today probably couldn't look a ton better, but a lot of games could. And funnily enough, I enjoy looking at pretty things, even if it isn't the most important thing. Offer me better graphics over worse graphics in the same game, and I'll naturally take better graphics.

Why do publishers focus on it?
Well, what else are they going to do for marketing? What else can they really push as having changed that has some wow factor?
Most games are very similar to the last, re-released year after year. You can't really sell the gameplay as new and interesting. It also doesn't help that most AAA suitable genres have been done to death, so even if it was new for your series it'd have been done in something else.
Story is great and all, but immensely subjective, and something you can't really market as when you do that you give away spoilers. Unless you're a well known and ongoing series in gaming with a story people regard as good and are interested in, say the Mass Effect series before 3, you can't market your story. Even if you meet these criteria, you can't market your story to new players, as they haven't experienced the previous parts to 'get excited' over it.
If you've got branding, I.E: Star Wars, you can push that hard. It'll work. At the same time, better graphics helps here as it helps you better immerse in the world of whatever brand or such you're replicating.

By far the easiest and most effective thing to show off to your audience to get them to want your game, is great graphics. If you're beating your competitors, then you're amazing and people will buy it just for that fact, if only a few. If you're on par, people will say you've got good graphics, and it comes down to gameplay. If you've got worse graphics, better hope you're not a AAA publisher as the word of mouth about your game will be how ugly it is, and you'll lose a lot of early sales before you can win people over with gameplay that'd have to be above and beyond, or some other factor that makes it up better than what your competitor has.

Yeah, graphics probably needs a bit less overall focus in AAA games, but I find the bigger issue is how cookie cutter and 'broad appeal' they go, to sustain the budget required to go for broad appeal, and hopefully make big profits. Having a few niche games that are loved and bring in small profits that can keep your business going if your latest AAA is a flop is actually a pretty good idea, though most large publishers seem allergic to the thought...

 

[Valiance]

I don't really give that much of a toss about god-rays or super-duper antimastropic lightning. I notice it, and it's pretty lovely, but I'd rather you focus on bullet holes in a wall staying on the whole match.

I mean it. Imagine RTS-es. Rather than having next-gen superfidelity dudes, they could focus on tank wrecks not despawning with an ugly fade-out after five minutes. A permanent tank wreck staying for the whole match providing cover and having to be shoved out of the way for new tanks would mean something. Anti-asised martipaskroptic lightning doesn't, at least in comparison.

Didn't Supreme Commander do that in like 2006?

Total Annihilation did this in 1997 (yes, before Starcraft). You could even salvage the destroyed tank wreckages for more metal to make more tanks. If I recall correctly, large enough wreckages broke line of sight.

 

[laggyteabag]

Graphics sell games. From pre-release hype material, the biggest thing that someone would take away from a trailer would be "Wow, that game is pretty", and that is why developers hold graphics as a high priority.

I mean, look at Battlefront; that game looks absolutely stunning, but when you play it, it is a giant pile of mediocrity. If that game is going to sell well, it is because of the Star Wars license, and the graphics, and nothing else.

In reality, though, the biggest thing about a game's appearance is its art-style, because, in the end, no matter how fancy or ugly the graphics are, after a while, you acclimate to them, and the art style becomes the only thing that you are impressed by or notice. This is why, if you compare a game like Battlefield 4 to BioShock, I think that BioShock is a way prettier game, even if it doesn't have high-resolution textures or fancy graphics options; the art-style carries that game.

 

[NiPah]

I mean, look at Battlefront; that game looks absolutely stunning, but when you play it, it is a giant pile of mediocrity. If that game is going to sell well, it is because of the Star Wars license, and the graphics, and nothing else.

So you're saying if there is evidence that you are incorrect, it doesn't matter because the evidence is there for another reason... Seems like a self fulfilling prophecy waiting to happen.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do find fault with your logic.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I wouldn't be too worried about it. In any case, graphics are only pushed as far as the current generation of consoles can handle. In the end, graphics isn't what sells a game anyhow. Sure, it might play a role in the beginning, but what wins out in the end is simply whether the game works or not. Judging by that brilliant post by Ambient_Malice, good games are just good, and after that it's just people's personal preference.

The passion that goes into it can be seen by the modding community. Many people think vanilla Skyrim is damn ugly, and since computers can do more than last gen consoles, they juice it up with textures.

Personally, I think art style wins over everything. If a world can draw you in and immerse you, it doesn't really matter about god rays or complex shadows. I do think animation still has a ways to go, though.

 

[Angelous Wang]

Memory that's what they need to work on when it comes to graphics, ether ways to cut down use or increase the amount for less money.

Most of issues I have encountered in modern games are down to memory, take Fallout 4, I've ran to many different issuances where the floor texture failed of load and is stuck in it "far away" texture, this is simply because the 7.900 MB of Graphic memory my computer has to play with is just not enough.

 

[Muspelheim]

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'd also really like to see more of. One of the coolest examples of "permanence" still in gaming I'm aware of to date was the fact you could mow down all but the biggest trees in crysis. With enough time and bullets, you could pretty much de-forest the area. It felt AWESOME.

I will say though that some groups pushing the technical envelope encourage new, better and more efficient techniques, which enable games to do stuff like 'bullet holes that last forever' and the like.

It's just that in context of most AAA experiences, if there's the choice between 'depth of field + bokeh' or 'permanent bullet holes', they're gunna go with the fancier technical effect for the cost rather than something that's not likely to be noticed by the masses.

Which is a shame, but it still means that other devs can come along with different priorities and do a game where they picked 'permanent bullet holes' instead. We just need more of a balance.

Yeah, permanence's the word. Crysis did a pretty damn good job at it, along with other little features that didn't have very much to do with ultra-graphics but enriched the experience. Like throwing Koreans through cardboard shacks. It was great fun.

I don't really give that much of a toss about god-rays or super-duper antimastropic lightning. I notice it, and it's pretty lovely, but I'd rather you focus on bullet holes in a wall staying on the whole match.

I mean it. Imagine RTS-es. Rather than having next-gen superfidelity dudes, they could focus on tank wrecks not despawning with an ugly fade-out after five minutes. A permanent tank wreck staying for the whole match providing cover and having to be shoved out of the way for new tanks would mean something. Anti-asised martipaskroptic lightning doesn't, at least in comparison.

Didn't Supreme Commander do that in like 2006?

They did, and so did Total Annihilation. Let it never be said I've claimed it's never been done (however I managed to express that), it's that it hasn't been done enough, and for other games. It was really neat in that series, and meant a pretty tidy resource bonus if you took the time to clean up. But the maps are huge plots of slightly bumpy land and the robots are usually microscopic. Great feature, but that's one thing.
Imagine something like the latter Command & Conquer games or Company of Heroes, where wrecks, bodies and debris stayed along for the whole session, and you had to react to that. The Men of War series has come pretty close, but stuff still disappears with an ugly ghost-effect after a while, in most cases.

 

[Areloch]

I don't really give that much of a toss about god-rays or super-duper antimastropic lightning. I notice it, and it's pretty lovely, but I'd rather you focus on bullet holes in a wall staying on the whole match.

I mean it. Imagine RTS-es. Rather than having next-gen superfidelity dudes, they could focus on tank wrecks not despawning with an ugly fade-out after five minutes. A permanent tank wreck staying for the whole match providing cover and having to be shoved out of the way for new tanks would mean something. Anti-asised martipaskroptic lightning doesn't, at least in comparison.

Didn't Supreme Commander do that in like 2006?

They did, and so did Total Annihilation. Let it never be said I've claimed it's never been done (however I managed to express that), it's that it hasn't been done enough, and for other games. It was really neat in that series, and meant a pretty tidy resource bonus if you took the time to clean up. But the maps are huge plots of slightly bumpy land and the robots are usually microscopic. Great feature, but that's one thing.
Imagine something like the latter Command & Conquer games or Company of Heroes, where wrecks, bodies and debris stayed along for the whole session, and you had to react to that. The Men of War series has come pretty close, but stuff still disappears with an ugly ghost-effect after a while, in most cases.

Oh man, the Company of Heroes mention really has my brain going at what all that could mean, because the AI was smart enough to use everything and anything as cover. Burnt out tank husk? That'll block bullets! Giant pile of bodies? Go prone and slowly crawl through them and that'll block bullets!

That'd be pretty amazing.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Battlefield 3 serves as an exellent example here. It was amazing in a technical sense in how much graphical fidelity it put out, but then they laid on the extreme contrast and blue color correction and lots of people really disliked the aesthetics of the look, regardless of the fact it was astounding from a technical sense.

And this is where things start getting really weird. Think back to the 5th gen when some found the N64's brutal post-processing AA method to be unbearable. Now in 2015, I've seen people getting quite heated about the TAA anti-aliasing solution that Fallout 4 employs because it makes the game a "blurry mess", or "too soft." Defenders point out that post-processing AA methods are designed to imitate the look of movies.

"But games aren't supposed to look like movies!" purists protest. Except they're wrong. These games are SUPPOSED to look like movies. It's no accident. This is another thing we can thank Crytek for to a large degree, although they're not the only ones. But, just as they gave us ambient occlusion, Crytek helped popularise the idea of the game camera as being a literal camera, not human eyes. A really crappy camera which suffers from chromatic aberration and really prone to getting dirt and water on the lens. Crysis 3 is a very, very good looking game, but it doesn't exactly resemble what your EYES would see in a destroyed New York.

This clashes directly with some gamers who feel that game graphics should "look like real life". They insist on stripping out colour filters and film noise and chromatic aberration and bloom effects and on using obscene sharpening filters to remove the developer's soft, dreamy vision of the world. For some reason, they also mistake "darker and bluer" for "better graphics." (Graphics mods for STALKER and Bethesda games tend to be insufferable because they make everything stupidly dark.)

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'd also really like to see more of. One of the coolest examples of "permanence" still in gaming I'm aware of to date was the fact you could mow down all but the biggest trees in crysis. With enough time and bullets, you could pretty much de-forest the area. It felt AWESOME.

Delta Force pretty pioneered chopping down trees with bullets in 1998. It also pioneered voxel terrain in FPS games, something CryEngine later reintroduced.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

Why do publishers focus on it?
Well, what else are they going to do for marketing? What else can they really push as having changed that has some wow factor?
Most games are very similar to the last, re-released year after year. You can't really sell the gameplay as new and interesting.

By far the easiest and most effective thing to show off to your audience to get them to want your game, is great graphics

I don't agree at all. After Square Enix announced that they were working on new Dissidia Final Fantasy game, they started releasing character specific trailers for the game that show us how they play.

And that is awesome! That is the way to give us the WOW-factor. People are already discussing how the gameplay is changed from earlier games, what kind of new moves everyone has etc.

So far I've noticed tat Squall has new Draw-move, the game seems more comboish now especially in the corner and air dash canceling is a thing.

And that gets me hyped, not the pretty looking graphics but how the game plays. I can't wait to see rest of the casts trailers.

 

[Joccaren]

Why do publishers focus on it?
Well, what else are they going to do for marketing? What else can they really push as having changed that has some wow factor?
Most games are very similar to the last, re-released year after year. You can't really sell the gameplay as new and interesting.

By far the easiest and most effective thing to show off to your audience to get them to want your game, is great graphics

I don't agree at all. After Square Enix announced that they were working on new Dissidia Final Fantasy game, they started releasing character specific trailers for the game that show us how they play.

And that is awesome! That is the way to give us the WOW-factor. People are already discussing how the gameplay is changed from earlier games, what kind of new moves everyone has etc.

So far I've noticed tat Squall has new Draw-move, the game seems more comboish now especially in the corner and air dash canceling is a thing.

And that gets me hyped, not the pretty looking graphics but how the game plays. I can't wait to see rest of the casts trailers.

And I have literally no clue WTH is going on, as I've never played a final fantasy. All I see is flashy animations and funky music.

A lot of the time advertising isn't just for established loyal fans of the series - they'll see anything and want the damn game. Its for those who haven't gotten into the game, or weren't convinced by it when they tried it. The former needs something to draw them in, and it is going to be flashy graphics. Whether its in animations, or pure graphical fidelity, that's what'll draw them in. Imagine those trailers with PS2 era graphics, and animations on par with Dragon Age Origins or worse, and tell me you'd be as hyped. The graphics play a major part in it. That trailer doesn't cover at all the gameplay mechanics for someone who hasn't played the games previously. Its literally just flashy animations and funky music to try and appeal to them on a basic, graphical level [And mood from music, you NEED music for your trailer too else it just doesn't work]. Sure, fans of the series might pick up what you did, but there's a reason SE didn't have it be one of those 5 minute gameplay demos where they explain what all the changes are, and show it more slowly and deliberately, focusing on the gameplay rather than flashiness. Because such a trailer wouldn't have attracted many people. Sure, long time fans may have gone "Oh my god Squall has a new draw move", everyone else would have gone "Uhh... Ok? I guess it looks kinda pretty at least?"

Occasionally, you do get something really cool that just speaks to everyone. See Skyrim: Motherfucking Dragon Slaying. Everyone wants to slay dragons. Hear that epic music? Yeah, you can shout dragons to death. Fuck yeah.
Other times they go a completely different route like Borderlands 2, where it was very much a tongue in cheek humour dubstep thing that got people into it. The whole 'Twice the weapons' or W/E BS wouldn't have greatly appealed to many people, the dubstep and almost just blunt humour would have.
Such exceptions are pretty rare though. Even Skyrim, with its Dragon slaying push for its game, couldn't resist trying to show off the graphical scenery in their trailers to draw people in - and it was probably 60% of what people talked about after the trailer was released, even though the game's graphics overall were fairly mediocre. Borderlands is as well known for its graphical style as it is anything else. In fact, its probably better known for its graphical style than anything else.

To the masses, graphics sells. And AAA publishers tend to target the masses. As such, AAA publishers tend to focus on the graphics, as everything else kind of takes a back seat to the people you're advertising to. If you've got a good, strong, well established story you can push that, but in videogames its rare for such a thing to exist. If you've got a completely new gameplay style or idea, you can focus on that, but new ideas are running out quickly these days in the AAA space. Pretty much the only thing you can strongly push, is how the game looks, and for most AAA titles, at least the ones being complained about, photorealism is the most sensible choice to take for that game's style.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

snip

I guess I agree. I just don't play AAA games that much anymore because like you said, there really isn't nothing new on the gameplay aspect. Graphics just don't sell it to me anymore. Maybe artstyle does to some extent but that's it.

I just wish AAA publishers would focus, even if just a bit, to more interesting gameplay aspects and not just graphics.

edit:

Imagine those trailers with PS2 era graphics, and animations on par with Dragon Age Origins or worse, and tell me you'd be as hyped

Ummm... yes? Dissidia Final Fantasy was originally on the PSP of all places.
Does this still get me hyped?
Hell yeah!