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With all the news of the PS3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Revolution and all their capabilities got me thinking one word: Why? Why is it that we're so obsessed with getting top of the line graphics for a game? I'm perfectly fine with the graphics our current game consoles have to offer but is it necessary to make a new one that is possible to have Photo Realistic qualities and textures? I don't see the reason for this, I see it mostly as a "Because we Can" kind of situation. The graphic quality of a game isn't gonna tempt me even more to buy a game, I'm not going into a "Good Graphics don't make a Good Game" rant, but a "Why are we so obsessed with wanting more powerful consoles when it's not necessary anymore?", do we really need highly interactive environments, photo quality characters, and vast amounts of gameplay when the stuff we have are more or less capable of doing such things?

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The short answer would be "Because we can."

The longer answer would be because it's progress. If you have something better, you'd have to be pretty dumb to resort to something that's rapidly becomming depreciated. Why use blocky polygonal models when the average graphic card can handle a hundred times as many polygones? Toss in a LoD algorithm and you'll allow people with better cards to take advantage of what they paid for. Got better, more realistic textures? Then why use the badly-drawn ones your previous game had? Found out how to implement a Bloom filter effect with ease? Why leave it out?

There's absolutely no reason not to add features if they make the game look nicer other than time constraints. But seeing as most 3D things are just as trivial as most 2D things ten years ago, the time constraint thing is moot.

What I'd like to know is your opinion why we should limit ourselves to lower-end graphics when the option for something better is not only there, but easily implementable? Why would you take the $5 check someone hands you when asked to chose between it and a $500 check free of charge (all "what if" situations aside)?

Mind you, what I'm a little unclear about is wether you're talking about 2D over 3D, or non-textured blocky 3D from 10 years ago over better 3D effects.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
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An important thing to note on this subject is that many, MANY (more than half, I'd expect) of all the gamers out there have a thing for finely-tuned graphics and beautiful atmospheres, myself included, I'm shameless to say. I still value gameplay way over graphics, as to me, gameplay is what counts, but look at it this way:

If you had to choose between playing a game with out-of-date graphics but excellent gameplay, or playing the EXACT same game with the EXACT same gameplay, story, characters, et cetera, with brilliant graphics that push the limits of the technology open to us, would the better-looking game graphics-wise not be more appealing?

Why make a game that's godly gameplay-wise on an old (but damn well classic) system like the SNES, when you can make pretty much the exact same game on a new-age system like, say the Xbox 360 or the PS3, with better graphics, better atmosphere, a more interactive and immersive environment and God knows how many extras that can only be included because of the increased capacity of the disks used, for example, while retaining the exact same plot and gameplay qualities as before? Given the choice, I'd personally buy the latter version, seeing as it's an improvement over the former without sacrificing any of the important elements that made the original great, and I'm damn well sure I'm not alone in this preference. And it's because of this logic that the devs choose NOT to fall behind the competition graphics-wise.

Also, you'd probably want to beat the opposition in whatever way possible, correct? Improved graphics can act as a tool for this metaphorical bashing-over-the-head of the opposition, so to speak, because so many people out there value graphics AS WELL AS (or instead of, but I don't agree with this psychology and I'm not putting it in that sentence because I'm a one-sided git) gameplay and everything else.

This post has been edited by MarquisElmdor on 25th July 2005 21:38

The "Because we can." argument stands pretty well.

You are right it isn't necessary. I would be just fine with late PS1 graphics. But as already stated, if the graphics in the game can be improved without much effort you might as well do it, considering it improves the overall appeal of the game.

If making the graphics top notch begins to take away from other qualities of the game, or takes too much time, then I think game makers should put a limit on how well the graphics are done.

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Yes, because "we can" but the better the graphics the closer it gets to becoming real, think about it if all games become virtual reality wouldnt that be cool? It would be like "living" the game. I dont know why people have a problem with better graphics i think the better the graphics the better overall quality of the game.

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Quote (Rujuken @ 25th July 2005 18:03)

If making the graphics top notch begins to take away from other qualities of the game, or takes too much time, then I think game makers should put a limit on how well the graphics are done.

From a design standpoint, my personal opinion is that a game should have functionality built into it, THEN graphic-related code. That way focus is placed on gameplay over image in relation to the company's deadlines. At least, in theory.

In a real situation, you can't just hammer in low-quality textures and models, THEN redo them at a later date. That's just counterproductive and makes meeting deadlines even harder. Even adding graphic effects and filters is something you don't decide after the game engine's been created: often you'll need additional data and various modifications to the game engine. The last thing you want when everything works is to introduce new bugs or have to start parts of it over to wedge some new code into place.

Also, let's not forget that games are produced by people who need money to put some food on their tables. If you produce a game and it looks bland and uninteresting, nobody will buy it and you'll suffer a very painful financial loss. If your game sucks but has cutting-edge graphics, people will buy it solely based on image. Mind you, it's not the game companies abusing the common gamer, it's the common gamer being stupid. We (as a whole) are partly responsible for the effort being put into producing bigger and better graphic engines.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
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and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I'm well aware of that, I just don't see what we'd be achieving by getting graphics identical with our reality, sure it'd be great after a while, but then what? Everygame that comes out after that will look the same and eventually it'd be bland and boring. We reached the next level of graphics, whoopee, maybe now we can focus on gameplay and plotlines.

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Quote (Bum's Rush @ 25th July 2005 19:18)

but then what? Everygame that comes out after that will look the same and eventually it'd be bland and boring. We reached the next level of graphics, whoopee, maybe now we can focus on gameplay and plotlines.

But if we stay as we are, every game will keep on looking the same. True, it may be that we're pushing back the unevitable, but it beats giving up right away.

Programmers aren't the ones that write the story to a game. While gameplay may be affected by time constraints, the storyline and the basic elements of a game are something programmers don't even touch (in fact, nowadays, most games use scripting languages and a non-programmer implants scenario data: programmers really don't touch this stuff at all.) Why am I bringing programmers into this? Because all those spiffy photorealistic effects are implemented by programmers.

What IS affected by programmers are various engine-related things. A feature here, a feature there; too much code means certain things that were planned on don't make it into the final product because deadlines end up looming too close for comfort.

But this hardly serves as a reason to simply give up on progress. Once we hit the limits of photorealism, we'll be working on faster and better algorithms to implement these things faster and concentrate on other aspects of the game. It's a thing many programmers fear, but in the future we may not be needed as much as now, if at all.

Kinda ironic that by pushing our field forward, we're racing towards our obsoleteness.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
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I thought that phase already started, what with the dot-bomb and all. Yeah, I see what you mean that graphics peak and get more efficient without progamming (the software automatically does it, correct?).

The idea to push graphics isn't so much because we can, the real force behind the movement is the same reason why George Lucas waited before producing the new trilogy, why nobody dared to make a live-action LotR, because visuals of these creator minds couldn't be rendered in current technology.

Think about Grand Theft Auto, what was a top-down view became a hit when it turned 3D follow view. Sure they could've implemented the 3D play in GTAII or even the first, but how would it look? Too boxy, too ugly, as 3D PSX games lacked DETAIL and MOTION. Gosh, Virtua Fighter was downright hideous, even in a time 3D was brand new, you'd never accept it as emulating, or simulating, the 3D world like reality. Honestly, those early 3D games looked like a bunch of legos.

The "beacause we can" statement really can't explain it, as that counter-argument would also fail to explain why people dress up. Why wear the suit when the tattered jeans and T-shirt won't affect how the wearer as a person is? Same with graphics, the quality must be there to best convey the package.

Quote (SaintWeapon @ 25th July 2005 23:56)

(the software automatically does it, correct?).

Partly. The hardware can be responsible for a great deal of this, too.

Fog, for instance, is no longer something programmers have to calculate on their own unless they use a custom type of fog. Basic fog is supported by any and all types of modern graphic cards and can be created with just a few simple calls (which amount to "Turn Fog On, Make It Look Like 'X', and Set Its Color To XYZ.")

Edit

In fact, here's how you do it in OpenGL. This is the whole thing. The FogType/Color/Density and Red/Green/BlueColor variables can be anything.

Code

float FogColor[] = { RedColor, GreenColor, BlueColor };
glFogi (GL_FOG_MODE , FogType  );
glFogfv(GL_FOG_COLOR , FogColor  );
glFogf (GL_FOG_DENSITY , FogDensity);

There you go. The code to set up fog. Not exactly the complex math you'd expect now, is it? You can then switch it on with glEnable(GL_FOG) and off with glDisable(GL_FOG). Yup: just one short instruction. The REAL challenge isn't with drawing stuff, it's the logic behind how objects interact with what you draw.

Another popular effect is having a dynamic LOD (level of detail): objects are tesselated (broken up into polygones) dynamically (on the fly) to match a level of detail based on the degree of detail required (ie, objects in the distance will be rendered with a far lower amount of polygones than ones close up to the camera) or available (ie, lower level of detail on a lower-end card.)

Most companies use pre-made engines for their games. This involves buying the bare bones of another game, perhaps tweaking a few things, and just adding scripts and models/maps. All the code's already there. And, well, the programmer's job is cut down quite a bit. RPGMaker is a (bad) example of what this involves, only it's been REALLY dumbed down to a common user level. You don't (can't, in fact) have to edit the engine, you can just plug in your own data and let her rip.

The Quake engine is a more reasonable and better known example, as well as the Unreal engine, the Doom engine, and the Endless Saga engine (...what? What?! Ok, ok, fine...) Very little time is spent programming: most of the work goes towards making what's essentially a complete mod with a few tweaks to the game itself.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 26th July 2005 05:35

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

"Because we can" is probably one big reason, motivated by economic factors. From what I remember of psychology class, if something is eye-candy, people are initially biased in favor of it, and I'm not just talking about members of the opposite sex. Of course, favorable bias = more likely to buy = more revenues.

Is is true that videogame companies are putting too much effort into graphics and not enough into gameplay/interface design? That's possible. I can't say for sure, since I've played very very few of the newer games (newer being anything PS1 or more recent, in my case), but again, from an economic standpoint, eye candy is more likely to gain a following more quickly than is the best gameplay in the world (look at how much time it took games like FFVI to become popular, and how many people actually are familiar with it).

Now, personally, I think game graphics reached their zenith at the SNES. Past that, three-dimensional graphics gradually caused excessive concern for realism, followed by increased efforts at imitating realism with computer-generated graphics. Now, that time, in my opinion, could be spent designing better game features.

Problem is, though, that when games are advertised, we usually see screenshots of them, and (using my perspective as an SNES-generation gamer) NES screenshots are _not_ attractive. Especially when compared to something like FFVII tech demo on PS3 technology, or a screenshot from a Metroid Prime FMV. And for most gamers of this newer generation, not even the plain, mouth-less faces of FFVII make the cut. Gameplay has to be experienced; for this to happen, stores have to have demos OR the game has to be bought. Graphics are used, instead, to cause 'love at first sight'.

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Although one thing to keep in mind is how 3D adds quite a lot of depth to the gameplay that 2D simply never will acheive.

Some games will never work out in 3D. Fighting games come to mind: the best 3D fighter will never beat the best 2D fighter because it's a genre just meant for 2D. I'm talking 6 degrees of freedom 3D, not 2D-but-can-sidestep 3D, mind you.

Other games, however, can benefit VERY strongly from 3D. These are the kinds of games where you explore stuff and wander about. Having a 3D map means a whole new dimension of nooks and crannies, impressive cinematic-friendly scenes, and interaction. 2D can only simulate multiple height levels and having a 2D map with hills and overpasses and buildings often ends up looking bad: the hills are either flat or jagged (movement-wise) and objects dissapear entirely underneath higher layers, which makes for terribly frustrating gameplay ("Well, I'm in the clear. I'll just step off this bridge and- oh crap. An ogre was trying to get to me from underneath the bridge. How could I ever have know? Oh well, game over.")

I remember, however, reading gaming magazines when I was a wee little kid. What struck me in the screenshots wasn't how the game looked: it was what the game allowed you to do that caught my attention.
"Wow! Look at this new megaman game! You have a jetpack!!"
"Oh my god, this new mario game looks great: look at that frog suit and that shoe!"
"Oh god, an oldschool- er, present-day-school RPG! I wonder if it's good?"

Nowadays, graphics seem to be what these screenshots are all about. FMV screenshots are a great example: what DOES an FMV show you? Nothing. Who knows what the game's like: FMVs are pre-rendered. Yet many ads are nothing but FMV screenshots; in fact, many videos on demo disks are just FMVs. And when they're not FMVs? "Woah! The per-pixel lighting filters through the volumetric fog so well it actually affects the underwater caustics! And this indoors scene: just look at that radiosity filter taking bump-mapped textures into consideration! Wow, they've really pulled out all the stops for this one, huh?"

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Too true. Although I'm no huge FFVII fanboy (there are many games I like better), I'll use a classic example to show my opinion on this topic: How many people do you think would've cried during

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Aerith's death scene

If the game had NES-quality FF1 graphics? Nobody, that's who. Graphics (as well as art direction, which I actually find more important) can add a great deal of emotion to videogames, something which previously could only be accomplished through music, and not to as great of an extent. That extra level of design can sometimes peak at one particular moment in the game, making that moment its defining point, and how the game is remembered (like in the spoiler tags above, for one example. Or the ending of Xenosaga Ep. 1).

You can never have too good of graphics, I say, as long as it doesn't detract from other elements of a game, which occurs when companies FUND thier programmers and artists more than the other departments, which causes a game to have AMAZING graphics but nothing else, as opposed to a game with GREAT graphics and great everything else as well.

@SilverLance: Programming and plot/events/general gameplay may be separated in most games, but they still have to stay within the budget that their company gives them. And when a company is out solely to make money, the dough generally goes the direction that'll attract masses of idiots.

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Quote (Spiffyness @ 27th July 2005 00:59)

@SilverLance: Programming and plot/events/general gameplay may be separated in most games, but they still have to stay within the budget that their company gives them. And when a company is out solely to make money, the dough generally goes the direction that'll attract masses of idiots.

Ah, but ideas are free. Their implementation, on the other hand, isn't.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

its all a massive competition for the best graphics, soon games will just look like real life, untill then the cometition will go on....

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