This is something that I've had on my mind regarding games since I was a teen, first starting to really think for myself. I started playing games on the Genesis and SNES, the 16 bit era, so the games I started with really weren't that pretty, though they were considerable steps further in development than their predecessors. Around the end of my childhood and the beginning of my teenage years, the PS2, Dreamcast and the original Xbox debuted. For years until probably midway through the Xbox 360's lifetime, I absolutely hated the Xbox.
It wasn't the games, or the advertisements, or the controller or anything like that that caused me to loathe it, but instead the gamers that sprung up alongside it. You might be thinking "Oh, you're clearly a PlayStation fanboy then!" or some such statement now, but that isn't right either. As of right now, I'm pretty much an equal opportunity gamer, though I spend a lot of time on my PC and my Dreamcast right now (Barring my Skylanders addiction on the PS3, of course). It's the fact that the Xbox was touted as the most powerful machine of its cycle in regards to consoles and they used that for the most part, to talk about how graphically powerful it was. They didn't care that more power in general meant better engines could be run and more stuff could be done, they seemed to care solely about the fact that the games were prettier than everyone else's.
That statement in itself is kind of funny to me, seeing that it has basically ALWAYS been the state of things for PC master race to be the most beautiful and powerful anyway, but not everyone uses their computers for gaming. In any case, this campaign to show how beautiful the games are really irks me, because I don't really see a point in it. The way I see games, and I think a lot of other people do, are as a chance to experience something new, something different, to live a life aside from yours, where you can literally be someone/thing else entirely. That being said, while graphics are a great way to draw in your audience to the setting, they shouldn't be viewed as the only thing that's going to do that.
There were so many games released around then that were absolutely beautiful, but they played like absolute shit. To this day there are still tons of games that fall into this pit of irksome behavior. I don't really care how beautiful a game is if the controls are clunky and you can't do what you're intended to be doing. I guess since that was part of the campaign for the Xbox, for the games to be MINDBLOWINGLY BEAUTIFUL, I sort of equated the type of gamers that care only about graphics with it. I'm sure there are other factors, but I always seemed to blame the Xbox for creating those gamers out of nowhere, at least from my perspective.
I know quite a few people that won't even play a game if it's considered "ugly" by today's standards. I can't fathom living with such an elitist view as that. It just doesn't make sense to me. A couple weeks ago, I brought DDR MAX 1 + 2, and EXTREME 1 + 2 to school to play with a few friends, and when we were trying to decide which to play, one of our friends asked "Which one has the best graphics?" I just... kind of stared at her and I must have blinked at least 1000x in the span of 10 seconds, before finally replying "They're just arrows, what do you mean graphics?" to which she in turn replied "No, the character models can be better!" First of all, who in their right mind that doesn't play on Beginner or Light in DDR still uses the avatars? Really though, the avatars are like a secondary or tertiary part of the game, but she's going to choose which to play based on which set of avatars looks best? Why would you do that as opposed to the fun factor or the tighest controls?
I just want to put it out there, especially to all these game developers that like to put 700 hours of cutscenes in their games and have no real gameplay inbetween, that graphics should NOT be your first priority. Though I fear that there are far fewer gamers out there that care more about gameplay than graphics nowadays, PLEASE consider the fact that you are making a video game, and it has more to the title than just "video." I played through Halo 4 with The Laundry King a month or so ago and there was a cutscene at least every 30 steps, and the MAJORITY of them weren't even necessary! I wanted to play a game, not watch a movie. Why are there still people out there that think that a game has to be beautiful to be playable? Those two things can be mutually exclusive you know? Beauty is not synonymous with fun, nor playable, and I wish that more people would realize that. They just might miss out on some of the greatest experiences of their lives!
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