Old thought is old, let's see how it holds up;
Kpt._Rob said:
First off, the obvious affect on the industry of the high graphics that gamers demand is that games are more expensive and less innovative. Creating games with high end graphics costs an amount of money that would make Bill Gates blush. This means that developers have less room to develop new and creative ideas, because the investment required is too great a risk, so instead they create a copy of a game that was already successful with a few minor tweaks and try to pass that off as innovative. If games didn't have to have top of the line graphics to sell, then companies could take bigger risks in the creation of the game part of the game, and because they didn't have to spend as much money making it, they could afford to sell it for less.
Games have
always been apprehensive towards making innovations. Trends in gaming genre's, certain games changing up the playing field, the type of game, how big a budget, these all affect how much a game can innovate. You do realize that if these huge, multimillion dollar budget games fail, they fail big time, and they can't always afford a risky innovation. Smaller, more careful steps are better than huge-ass jumps on a rickety bridge. It's silly to point out just one aspect, an aspect that has been pointed the finger at multiple times already, and claim "Good graphics are ruining the industry!"
Secondly, the demands of high end graphics actually limit who can play, and require anyone who does want to play to pay ridiculous amounts of money. Now, granted, this argument doesn't apply so much to console gamers, but it does actually get to the core of one of the reasons for which I am a console gamer. That is, that the computer that I use, the one I need in order to be successful as a student, can't handle modern games because the demands that even the lowest graphical settings of many modern games make on my computer are too much. And if I want a computer that can play modern games, I'll have to spend a lot of money. And I won't just have to spend that money today, I'll have to spend it a couple years from now, upgrading my computer again, then again, and again. I would love to play the computer games that are hitting the market today, but because of the high costs of a machine that can handle modern graphics I simply can't afford to, which means that I'm stuck as a console gamer. Granted, tossing high end graphics out the window will not completely solve this problem, but it would certainly make it easier for me to run many of the modern games that I can't run right now.
This is mainly just something with computers, and it's been this way
since PCs started. Infact, I get the feeling that PC games are less inclined to go for uber-graphics aside from the odd occasion of Crysis. This is something that has plagued the PC for years, and while I'm not saying it shouldn't change, again you're just pointing fingers at something that's been pointed at so many times.
Third, in many ways, high end graphics actually take away from the aesthetic beauty of a game. How many times have we heard someone complain (or perhaps complained ourselves) about how modern shooters are a sea of grays and browns? It is high end graphics that actually allow for this. Sure, there are exceptions, but back in the days of the N64, you really couldn't make a game that was mostly grays and browns, why? Because the machines lacked the graphical prowess to make objects stand out from one another without varying colors. High end graphics allow for the creation of a world that is a more accurate reflection of our own, but in creating an accurate reflection of our own world, we lose the beauty of the fantasy worlds that developers were at one time forced to create by graphical limitations.
You are looking through some heavy nostalgia glasses, my dear friend. Just to point out, it's actually easier to process browns and grays instead of intense bright colors, so infact if "graphics are ruining the industry" then we would have to strive for more processing power, wouldn't we?
That's a big loss, because the worlds that I played in on the N64 had such a wonderful sense of charm, and I hate that it's gone now. See, I'm actually an art major, and one of the things I've always wanted to capture was the beauty of some of the worlds I experienced as a kid playing on the N64. Take for instance the worlds in Super Mario 64, Zelda (Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask), hell, even Glover 64 had some incredibly beautiful worlds. Now, that's not to say that these worlds couldn't have been created with high end graphics, but I feel like if developers at the time had had access to high end graphics, these worlds might have been drastically different. That thought makes me sad, that some day when I have kids, they may not get to experience the whimsical worlds that enchanted me when I was a kid.
Pure,
pure nostalgia and opinion. You cannot possibly tell me that current video games don't [http://gamerlimit.com/files/2010/06/Enslaved-Odyssey-to-the-West.jpg] have [http://files.playstatic.com/ps3/uncharted-drakes-fortune/e3-uncharted-drakes-fortune-screenshot-2.jpg] that [http://ve3dmedia.ign.com/ve3d/image/article/745/745255/new-crysis-dx10-screenshot-20061110001316019.jpg] same [http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/article/759/759997/okami-20070130074341824_640w.jpg] colorfulness [http://images.psxextreme.com/wallpapers/ps3/valkyria_chronicles_1_957.jpg] or amazing [http://cdn.complex.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bioshock.jpg] fantasical [http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2010/08/bioshock-infinite-screen-4-590x331.jpg] worlds [http://zeldadungeon.net/Soundtracks/The%20Wind%20Waker%20Front%20Large.jpg]. Exceptions to the rule, maybe, but you are also cherry picking, my friend.
Now, that's not to say that high end graphics don't give us anything in return, I'm not saying that. Trust me, I was amazed at the world of Bioshock, the fact that they had an entire art team just devoted to the water. That's something you can't do with low end graphics. When used well high end graphics certainly have the ability to create artistic visions with even more charm, beauty, and all sorts of other wonderful adjectives, than low end graphics.
Better graphics = more processing power = different uses for processing power = more innovations. I prefer to call graphics "visuals" anyway.
My problem is that because we demand high end graphics, we lose a lot. Shamus Young recently wrote an excellent article (which you can find here http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8194-Experienced-Points-Mine-all-Minecraft) in which he calls Minecraft "a hadoken-style rebuke to the absurd things the rest of the industry has been doing." Minecraft, I feel, is an excellent example of how a brilliant game can be created that doesn't treat the lack of high end graphics as a weakness, but instead as a strength. I'd love to see more games like Minecraft, but until people like the guy I saw posting earlier get past the idea that high end graphics are a necessity, I feel like the design philosophy behind Minecraft will be an exception, instead of a rule.
I don't think anyone
demands high end graphics, or even asks for high graphics at all. What most of us what is
adequate graphics. If a game is all muddy, brown, and gray, we can't see what the hell we're doing, that's not high end graphics, that's shitty visuals. I don't mind if a game has average graphics, but it it in turn hinders my gameplay enjoyment with it's shittyness, then ti's getting some point deducted.
If a game, like Minecraft, has a certain visual style to it, that's perfectly fine. It makes sense for Minecraft to have that style because it's a simplistic game built by one dude, what do you expect? With higher end games, however, like Bioshock Infinite or Uncharted, we expect at least adequate to play in. It's not that we demand higher-end graphics/visuals, it's that we demand on-par visuals and improving steps in that field.
EDIT: Ironic Pirate actually puts your post fairly well.
