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Columns > LongShot > #86: Graphics Don't Matter
"I just don't care how good a game looks anymore."  As I sat in front of the Nintendo 64 playing World Driver Championship last night, it hit me. I just don't care how good a game looks anymore. I have officially crossed off great graphics as a bullet point that games must meet in order to satisfy me. I can pick up an NES controller and start running through Super Mario Bros. one night and then stumble through the dark in Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay the next. On night three I can play Asteroids all night long and I won't sit there with a foul look on my face because the graphics don't look as good as Riddick. It simply doesn't matter to me. It's all about how a game plays. As the new consoles were unveiled in the last couple weeks, the first few games we've seen footage of just didn't impress me too much. 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. Gameplay innovation is what really turns me on the most. I'm looking at the Nintendo DS lineup that's available and coming soon and I'm really excited because I see things that are new. The graphics look fine to me so it really doesn't matter that they're not cutting edge for handhelds. Same goes for games on the current consoles. PS2, Xbox and Gamecube games all look pretty good so it comes down to what kind of gameplay I want to enjoy influencing my decisions on what to play. I recall a day when that probably wasn't so true about my gaming habits. I know I played way too much DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D back in the early 90's and that was driven by how great they looked. Both were also great games but the graphics drew me to playing those games. I bought many games back then because they were technologically awesome even if they played like crap. Graphics don't draw me like that anymore. They're not the thing that makes me say, "I should play that!" If they do have influence on my gaming, it's more because of stylistic choices. Jet Grind Radio on Dreamcast was alluring because of its cel shaded appearance and yeah, that drew me to the game. It wasn't really a technical achievement though. It just was a new way of making things look cool. Cool beats technically amazing any day for me now. Is this a function of growing older? Maybe. I see that my kids don't really care too much though. My oldest (now 7) really doesn't mention things like how awesome the graphics are in one game compared to some other game. When I was his age, that was a really big deal. Consider that in 1979 home games were a lot less sophisticated than arcade games and there was always an argument over whether game A looked better than game B. The technical sophistication of some games completely trumped others in such a way that kids really noticed. Now, it seems like unless you're in some schoolyard argument over PS2 vs. Xbox vs. Gamecube graphics, they're just not a big deal to anyone. Maybe when you start talking about framerates for certain games on all three systems you can come up with real arguments but for the most part, things look pretty much the same no matter which console you choose to play a multiple console release upon. It's the gameplay functionality that really makes the difference. Does the game only have online play on one system? OK, then that's probably a better value. But graphics? Who cares? On a broader level, this might have implications for the entire industry. As graphics approach this level of diminishing returns with each successive console generation, gameplay will become even more important when it comes to differentiating your game from someone else's. I've talked a bit about this before and I think this next generation of consoles is going to be the first where the mainstream really doesn't see the hype. Games like Riddick, Splinter Cell and DOOM have done the dark rooms and flashlights thing to death already. Lighting is no longer a wow feature. Water that looks real has appeared in countless titles now. Huge landscapes and beautiful vistas have come into their own in this generation too. Some folks believe that higher levels of object detail and just severely increased counts of objects on screen will make people really take notice but when you're immersed in a game, most detail is completely overlooked. I made a call for more "grit" in games and I welcome that kind of detail and worn in worlds that look more realistic, but I think it's a relatively minor enhancement for anyone but the hardcore gamer. It's still early to say what will happen in the next generation, but it's very possible that graphics won't be as big a selling point as they used to be. I also think that the closer they've gotten to movies, the more game developers have started to think their games should like movies. That's always my biggest pet peeve with current games. Movies are non-interactive by design and the insistence that games should replicate an experience like that takes all the consequences of actually playing a game out of the equation and replaces it with George Jetson-like button pushing to get to the end. In that way, once again the Nintendo DS has really made a lot of strides by pushing pure gameplay as its selling feature. Lots of puzzle and action games have appeared on the system and all sorts of quirky gameplay functions have replaced storytelling as the focus of these products. That's exactly what I like to see and if you want to tack a story on there after the fact, that's ok. No matter what happens though, I guarantee that I'm going to continue playing a lot of old games. I play games from any era and the first thing I'm saying about these games is "This is fun!" I don't even notice that the character is made up of polygons or is hand drawn anymore. It's all about the quality of what I do with my hands as I'm enjoying the on-screen action. If gaming is becoming more of a lifestyle, then embracing popular and compelling gameplay will become even more prominent. The lifestyle of gaming can't possibly be about the technology of gaming because technology doesn't really make the experience like the interaction does. With people becoming more and more connected by games, the look of them will mean less and less while the ability to communicate within the game and interact in a compelling way will mean more and more. Start your game design by figuring out how people will interact with the game and each other and all the rest of the stuff will come with time.
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