When it comes to game graphics, I’ve always had something of a mental dichotomy. Despite being obviously really keen on real time graphics (you might have noticed a hint or two to that end over the life of this blog), I’m also a very strong believer that in good games, graphics are far from the most important element. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to make better and better graphical subsystems, because as a graphics geek I love to do it, but at the same time I have my feet firmly on the ground as to the place of these results in the grand scheme of things when it actually comes to enjoyment. Graphics are the window dressing, the ‘attract mode’ on the arcade machine if you will – they just get you that initial attention, make the punter stop and go ‘oo’ for a second. Let’s not underestimate that – in a crowded, competetive market it’s important to grab some attention, but really as soon as said punter grabs the controls and starts playing, the graphics immediately jump several steps down the importance scale, giving way to things like gameplay and story content (if applicable).
I’ve always thought this but a few experiences recently have really reinforced it. Most obviously was the fact that I spent over 3 hours playing Legend of Zelda: The Occarina of Time last night. I didn’t actually intend to – I put the wrong disk in the machine, intending to play Wind Waker, which I’ve only gone back to recently after missing out on it when it was released due to lack of time (Wind Waker came with Occarina of Time on a bonus disk) and on a whim I thought what the hell, I’ll give it a try. I’d never had an N64 so I’d never played it.
Now, at first the graphics really made me wince. This is 1998 game technology after all, so it’s primitive in the extreme. Nevertheless, I stuck with it for half an hour out of interest, and something odd happened. I didn’t really see the graphics anymore. I saw what the graphics represented – a tree, a path, a monster, my character – but I didn’t really see them as such – I perceived them. What had happened is that because the game itself was engaging, my brain had just jumped into ‘pattern recognition mode’ where the surface details weren’t important, and all that mattered was grokking the visual cues required to play the game. The graphics were just as awful (in 2006 terms) 3 hours later than they were in the first 5 minutes, but as far as playing the game was concerned, it was irrelevant.
An example from the other end of the spectrum was playing Call of Duty 2 a little while back. Visually on a good card, it was very pretty indeed. At first, the whole WW2 atmosphere engulfed me and I really dug the whole visual and aural spectacle. But, after a while I stopped noticing that. The graphics and sound got no less impressive as I played, but except for a few rare spikes of interest, what I actually perceived was “I’m running around obstacles shooting people in the face. Again.”. I wasn’t even seeing the graphics anymore, I was just seeing the underlying mechanics, and after a while, I got bored enough not to bother anymore.
Raph Koster talked about this a lot in his book, A Theory of Fun, which I read a few months back. He talked about how the brain’s primary function is to learn patterns, and to learn to recognise them quickly without having to perceive all the detail. That’s why you see faces in clouds / trees / patches of dirt (our brains are particularly hardwired for facial recognition), and why you can be fooled by trick pictures, and why you can make sense of so much visual information in nanoseconds whilst the fastest computers in the world are baffled. The brain is lazy – it doesn’t want to do all the work of processing visuals in raw form all the time, it just wants to recognise the important details according to its learned patterns, and move on. Whilst I found myself agreeing with him whilst reading this based on my own experience, I don’t think I’ve had such an ideal example of it as last night’s Occarina of Time sojourn.
In summary – graphics catch the eye, make for great (and necessary) publicity, but know that the human brain is hardwired to make them irrelevant, and it’s amazing how quick it achieves this. You can mix it up every so often to make the brain learn new patterns, and rekindle that initial ‘ooo’ somewhat, but in the end, they won’t matter. There are many game makers and fanboy game consumers who fail to keep this in perspective, IMO.
December 31st, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Thats how games should be and hopefully how much will come out to be. I think that the Wii will make a good effort in that line, just imagine if the new Zelda games captures your interst as much as Occarina of Time, I think you might need to put a whole day aside
. Thought I have not had change to play a Wii yet, I have only seen one so far in person. I am looking forward to playing it though.
But at the moment I am just getting into NWN2 which I think I remember seeing in your Blog a while back. I know a couple people that have it also, we are planing on doing some multiplayer gaming on it soon. Were also going to try the toolset since we play D&D a bit and it uses the current rules.
Thought the difference with NWN2 is that it keeps the interest and looks very nice as well
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December 31st, 2006 at 5:28 pm
I agree. Pretty much summarizes why people could play old systems like NES (which, compared to today’s standards, had horrible graphics)… gameplay is *the* most imporatant aspect in a game. Graphics probably comes in around 4th place or so in my list:
#1 – Gameplay (funness, playability, imersiveness)
#2 – Responsivesness (lagging/slow games are no fun to play)
#3 – Good Story (not every game needs a story though)
#4 – Graphics
Which reminds me, I found an open source game recently, and a small little flash game that are fun to play. The open source game (UltraStar) is a PC clone of SingStar (a PS2 Karaoke game).. I currently have like 10 songs for that
The flash game: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=424557&PageSize=25&WhichPage=1
An addictive little tower defense game – that gamedev.net thread gives tips, ofers a hacked version with more money, and someone even made a game with the same idea with slightly better grapics
Anyway, graphics is not everything by a long shot in fun games… but, graphics really do help push/sell games in stores.
December 31st, 2006 at 5:55 pm
I get the feeling this may be in response to something I said!
Yes, story and game-play are very important but the graphics have to be at least enough to make you forget you are playing a computer game.
Back in the day the wire-frame graphics of Elite could manage that – today it doesn’t cut it for me. My brain needs more eye-candy.
Sure it doesn’t have to be cutting edge but as you get exposed to better and better graphics what becomes acceptable does move up with it.
I loved Ocarina of Time too alas I fell into the same trap as FFVII – I went on holiday and when I came back couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing next and couldn’t get back on track.
[)amien
December 31st, 2006 at 6:39 pm
@steve: NWN2 is ok, the story & quests are a little hackneyed though, not hugely inspiring. What people do with the toolset will probably be more interesting.
@pjcast: cool, have to check those out.
@Damien: no, it wasn’t in response to your post (only just read your new comment), it’s just a coincidence that my accidental playing of a very old game crystallised a number of my existing views into something I wanted to blog about. Sure, the eye candy does have to be better each year to get your initial attention, but as far as actually playing the game goes, it’s almost totally irrelevant. Honestly, your brain filters out all that nice eye candy after playing a while and strips it down to the basics – hence why you’ll waltz through the later levels of a game that relied on its graphics to sell itself with far less ‘oohh’ and ‘ahh’ than when you first played it – graphics have a distinctly diminishing return on investment. The problem with Elite is that some of it’s initial appeal was based on the graphics (ie they were 3D – woah). The underlying trading etc is just as compelling but the combat is woefully dated because it’s too simple. So it’s actually the gameplay mechanic there that’s not very enjoyable – the graphics made up for that in the day, and tided you over between the more meaty gameplay elements, they don’t now. So I stick to my original assertion – that graphics are an attract mode, or a distraction for weak gameplay elements, but they will eventually become just a background to the real issue which is the game.
December 31st, 2006 at 7:14 pm
“the graphics have to be at least enough to make you forget you are playing a computer game.”
I don’t agree with that either. I *do* agree with it for games where their primary purpose is to simulate the real world, where suspension of disbelief is important. So for WW2 games that are trying to create the atmosphere, yes, realistic graphics are a must to achieve that. But despite what the current crop of games would have you believe, realism isn’t everything. I appreciate it on an aesthetic level, but I also recognise that aethetics aren’t entertainment. Western (particularly US) audiences love their gritty realism games, but that’s just one kind of interactive entertainment, which really doesn’t deserve to be as dominant as it is today. But the hardcore love it, and they buy most of the games, and the industry can’t afford to experiment anymore since every game has to sell big. Personally I’ve played a million games where I’m the tough grizzled hard man making his way in a hard world blah blah blah blah crime ridden streets blah blah blah terrorist infiltration blah blah blah. Enough already, how about something new, something outside the thirteen year old boy power fantasy genre, hmm?
Whatever the case, I personally find that pretty soon, I start seeing behind the visuals of any realistic simulation pretty fast and in the end it could just be Wolfenstein all over again for all the difference it makes. Shooting people in the face is shooting people in the face, whether it’s gloriously rendered or not. Your brain fills in the blanks, that’s what it’s good at. You don’t read a book and think ‘wow this isn’t entertaining enough without seeing what these people are doing in great detail’ – your brain does that for you. Same with a film – did you think Toy Story would have been any better if it was rendered with the latest version of Renderman? Yes, progress is good, but entertainment is about far more than what you see, and there comes a point that concentrating resources on visuals too much detracts from other areas such as variety of subject matter or story content.
December 31st, 2006 at 7:33 pm
I am super surprised that you’d never played the Ocarina of Time before. I think it’s by far my favourite game ever and has never ceased to outstand me. In fact, I found it very strange playing Wind Waker because of the cartoon-esque style to it. I’ve just remembered asking you whether you found it weird that it was in cartoon style and I wondered why you didn’t find it strange.
The gameplay is excellent, not just that but the storyline is pretty excellent and then of course there’s the sub-games such as the fishing and the horse racing etc.
There’s a lot more to the game than you think if you’ve only played it for a few hours. I recommend getting a good 20 hours of game play in (not that you have the time) and you’ll find it gets a lot more interesting
This is generally why Zelda is so popular, the Ocarina of Time was a turning point for action adventure, although I do love Wind Waker despite the cartoon style.
December 31st, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Steve, you may be interested in getting a copy of the book “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud. Although it’s about comics it’s relevant to all fields of visual communication. It’s an incredibly thought provoking book that completely changed the way I think about art and design. McCloud would argue that impressive/realistic graphics are likely to detract from the story telling. So the graphics being less impressive could actually be helping you to get to the game playing experience! The book is in the form of a graphic novel and he uses the graphics to illustrate his ideas.
December 31st, 2006 at 11:35 pm
I’ve always enjoyed played “old” games. Lately I’ve been going back and playing some of my favorite Genesis game(Herzog Zwei, Phantasy Star 3&4 and Starflight). Don’t know why but I just love those games. Starflight especially.
January 1st, 2007 at 8:00 am
Well, better late than never with Zelda:OOT.
As I’m sure you’re aware, this is by fat my favourite game of all time and I’m glad that you’ve gotten around to giving it a go. As you’re only 3 hours in, I’m guessing that you’ve just completed the first dungeon and maybe got as far as Hyrule field… Trust me, there is a lot to come. Having played it through again recently (in preparation for Zelda: Twilight Princes) I must confess, however, that there are a few parts of Ocarina which do frustrate. There are times when you do not know what the heck to do and the guidance is a little limited. If you get stuck, give me a bell and I’ll point you in the right direction.
BTW, If you’re enjoying Ocarina, I’m certain that you’ll also enjoy Twilight Princess as soon as your Wii finds it’s way to you.
As far as the graphics vs gameplay argument goes, I’m firmly a strong believer of gamepaly over graphics. Hell, looking back further than Zelda:OOT, I still love Zelda: A Link to the Past and many other SNES games. For example Street Fighter 2 is still IMHO the very best fighting game on any system. This is despite it’s now dated graphics against the likes of the Tekken, Soul Caliburs and DOA of today.
January 1st, 2007 at 1:37 pm
@Kezzer: I’d played other Zeldas before, I just skipped the N64 so never played this one. I don’t think it would have had any effect on my liking of the cartoon style in Wind Waker – personally I still think it’s one of the most consistently attractive art styles I’ve seen in a game (some of the levels of Psychonauts are also up there). I just think way too many games players are overly conservative and have a bad reaction to change, which is a shame. The Escapist had a good article on the conservatism of the game market and why it happens a while back: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/3
@Drew: That looks really interesting – whilst I’m far from an artist this is an area that interests me so I think I’ll grab myself a copy, thanks for the recommendation.
@Baz: I’m about 5 hours in now and doing the Goron (stone eaters) bit. I’ve already got stuck a couple of times but managed to figure it out, and yeah, the hints of what to do next are a little vague sometimes already. Good fun overall though.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Ocarina of Time was my favourite game for a long time. But now I have Twilight Princess and I have to say that it is better. The graphics of Twilight Princess are good for Game Cube, but not for Wii or next gen. Yes, technically the graphics of Twilight Princess are poor. But artists of Nintendo are genius : the level design and the character design are so perfect…
I think to have the latest shaders, complexe shadows and huge textures are useless if the artistic matter is not good.
In a artistic view, Ocarina of Time is beautiful, even now. Yes, textures size is 32*32 and meshs are poor, but the characters and maps are well designed. It’s the same for Twilight Princess.
So, great graphics are very important in game, but not the technical side, only the artistic side is important.
PS : please excuse me, but I’m french and I don’t speak english very well yet ^^
January 1st, 2007 at 9:19 pm
@Steve: Geez, thank goodness the creative minds behind Star Trek didn’t think the same way or we may never have seen a high-graphics Halo-deck on the show.
*I’m exaggerating of course.*
My desire will always be to play fun games, like Zelda, etc, but I also have a desire to see visual “realism” increase. Take fantasy movies like LOR for instance. Those movies could have been done in lower-detail CG or in animatronics but that unique magic of great story and great detail would never have existed. I’m greedy, I want both. Gimme, Gimme!
I, for one, would love to see a 1080p version of Zelda. Why not? In high-detail AND high-fun. Bring it on. Make that fantasy world feel as real as the real world. Just like great fantasy movies. Take me all the way there, not part of the way. Overload ALL my senses – ok, well maybe not all.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:08 pm
@Dan: sure it’s nice to have both, but my point is that visuals only matter for a finite period of time before your mind begins to block them out – it gets desensitised very quickly. So the budgetary bias towards graphics in games is often taking effort away from other more significant areas in most cases (not all, but most). I’d love to have a ton of gameplay and content innovation going on in parallel with extraordinary visuals, but money and time are not infinite so that doesn’t often happen – the current trend is that so much time and effort gets put into making visuals as realistic as possible, that budgets are so severely bloated by it that innovation is too risky. Just take a look at the lineup for 360 and try to point out any that aren’t largely exactly the same games we’ve already played but with nicer graphics (Viva Pinata and Dead Rising are the only ones I can see).
Games have to improve all the time but just making the graphics flashier isn’t the answer. Graphics are the low-hanging fruit in most cases since it doesn’t take much invention to make something look nicer on new hardware. This works with the traditional gaming audience, but studies have shown that they’re a shrinking pool. Breaking the mould and taking risks is essential if gaming is ever going to mature as a medium, but the opposite is happening too often. Instead of thinking ‘how can we make a new version of a game using all this cool new tech’, we should be thinking of a great game idea and mapping the tech to fulfil that. That’s the approach Nintendo takes which is why its hardware tends to be very specific to its first-party ideas. That brings interesting new directions, and I applaud them for it.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:05 am
Desensitised very quickly? What are we plugged into the matrix? I just don’t buy it. I’ve said wow at the visuals of several high-detail games after playing for lenghty periods of time. I don’t recall suddenly being desensitised. In the midst of a heavy battle, sure focus is limited, but while moving through lush environments(real, alien, and fantasy), I’ve always been entertained by the attention to detail and I enjoy soaking it in. I absolutely love to see the next game that takes the physics one level higher, or the graphics affects to the next level. I’ve played Far Cry several times, just so I could re-explore the little details. It’s exciting for me. Am I alone in this? I sure doubt it.
At the same time, I love to pop into xbox live arcade and play a fun low-res game. I suppose my tastes are rather eclectic.
I agree, Nintendo is keeping budgets and barriers low and generating fun games, I just hope they are not painting themselves into a corner with limited scalability.
And once again I say, and shout from the roof tops, give me both!! I want amazing graphics, and amazing new innovative game-play!! And no brain boulderdash from Raph Koster will convince me otherwise.
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
Physics is something else entirely – you can argue that’s a gameplay element (when used well). Did you re-play Far Cry mostly to look at the graphics some more? I don’t believe that, Far Cry had some interesting improvements in its AI / gameplay elements that made replaying it fun, the graphics were just the sugar on top. I’m not saying don’t spend time on graphics, I’m saying in the current climate they’re weighted too highly relative to their importance in the core gameplay. Expecting to have it all with no knockon is naive because resources are finite – regular consumers can take that position but anyone actually involved in real projects knows that something always has to give when push comes to shove to deliver, and there are always real tradeoffs that have to be made. You can’t honestly tell me that spiralling budgets, which are a result of this trend, haven’t had an effect on the industry as a whole. How many small studios are out there doing their own thing today compared to 5 years ago?
But, we can of course agree to disagree.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Believe it or not, I absolutely did go back to re-experience Far-Cry for several reasons including the graphics. For instance I went back and purposely took different routes to see different areas of the jungle, swam out to small islands to get different views of the horizon. I was hoping sharks would get me, but alas there were none. Downloaded a mod that added them, which was rather fun. I used the binoculars over and over looking around, taking it in. I found it stimulating. I really enjoyed the paradise environment, it was unlike anything I’d seen before at that time. Yes, I also replayed to re-experience the AI as well and go through the game on the hardest level. A fun challenge. I also went into the SandBox editor and played with the maps. That was fun too.
Steve, I guess I simply don’t prioritize as disticntly as you do. I think, although it’s easy to shove games into genres and say many of them are alike, I find that there are intriguing nuances amongst them all. Some show their strengths with graphics or soundtrack, sound effects, AI , puzzles, story and every once in a while you get a gem that does a bunch of them really well – GOW for instance.
So, although, it may be conveniant to create a priority list of whats most important in games, it really comes down to the eyes, ears and minds of the beholder.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Fair enough – you’re more of a tourist than I then
As I said – prioritisation is an absolute must when it comes down to real projects. You can’t avoid that – you can ignore it as a consumer, sure (which I think is the perspective you’re coming from), because you don’t have to deliver – just tell the developer you want the best looking and best playing game ever made and you want it yesterday, that’s pretty normal I think
When you’re the team actually up against a deadline and dwindling budget, keeping a clear set of priorities and keeping perspective is paramount so you know what gets cut first. And something *will* have to get cut, so you can’t say everything is equally important all the time, you’ll be deadlocked 
Thinking in detail about the real relative importance of different elements is really important, as hard as it might be. This post was all about my (and many others) perception of the relative importance of visuals given a typical game playing experience, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s is the same.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Speak of trade-offs all you like, I am simply speaking as a consumer with varied tastes. I never said games have to vear off in only one high-budget direction. I’m simply saying I want to get a full range of experiences when I play games – and that includes games that can deliver on all fronts. Those will be unique gaming experiences I will treasure. I’m naive enough to think that all games have to be at that level, but at the same time, I want to see the do-it-all games created as well, I want to see the envelope pushed. I find it exciting, and as a consumer, I have no need to apologize to indies who feel squeezed out. Hey, I’ll play the indie games too, because I like variety. Bottom line is I like games for many different reasons, I just happen to be most stimulated by those games than can raise the bar on all fronts. But hey, I suppose that’s just me.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Woops, correction: “I’m naive enough…” should have read “I’m not naive enough…”
Although, for those reading, you may think that’s debatable.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
> This post was all about my (and many others) perception of the relative importance of visuals given a typical game playing experience, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s is the same.
Yes, and a good topic it is, but what I find often interesting about this topic, when I see it brought, is the lack of perspective form the consumers side. I just thought throwing my consumer 2 cents in would be useful. You be the judge.
Just to reiterate, as a consumer. I don’t expect all games to do all things at the highest level, including graphics and if I was forced to choose great graphics or great gameplay, I would certainly choose gameplay. However, what my consumer heart really wants, is to see a somewhat steady stream of games that can deliver both. Yes, demanding I am, but I suppose that’s to be expected.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Indeed
My post was firmly from a developers real-world perspective – I realise consumers just want it all, which is fine, but we know that in the real world choices have to be made. I happen to think that the balance of those choices have been going the wrong way in increasing numbers in recent years which is why I think there’s a crisis of non-visual creativity (and why I cling on to as much creativity as I can get). Opinion, not fact 
Consumers might not care if a few indies go to the wall, but it’s just not healthy for the industry to be in a state where only multi-million dollar budgets will do, any more than it would be good if low-budget movies weren’t possible. IMO consumers will eventually suffer even if they’re not yet noticing much yet.
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
@Steve, this sort of thing is precisely why I do not intend to work on heavy graphics for the eventual game I hope to bring to fruition (it’s a dream still of course). I love the cel-shaded look, and you can achieve a lot with it, I think. Your post is very insightful as to how the brain works, though, and I agree with it 100%. I just finished completing (playing) a game called Freedom Fighters, which is in and of itself a very pretty game (even for coming out in 2003; soft shadows, many point lights, bump mapping, tons of enemies, and still plays well on my laptop). There’s just a lot of “asthetic” stuff which serves no purpose. You can find yourself walking around in any of these super realistic games, looking at stuff up close for all of five minutes, and then you simply don’t care as it has no purpose in the game. A desk full of pens and paper and such looks nice, but goes ignored as you fly through a shooter with the only thing on your mind being a mix of offense and defense.
It’s something we should all think about as amateur and pro developers.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I think I just found an absolute winner in the gameplay/graphics ratio. Has anyone heard about Dwarf Fortress?
It’s an RPG/economy game, in which dwarves have decided to dig a fortress into the moutain, and you have to make everything to make them survive against the winter, hunger, savage beasts.. It’s a bit like Dungeon Keeper, but much more advanced in terms of realism.
I just discovered about it, at first I thought it was a joke, graphics don’t exist (pure ASCII) and it’s very hard to get into the game. But after a few hours, you just don’t see these terrible graphics, you just enjoy the game, and you tend to believe that the ‘c’ you can see are actually cats, the ‘d’ are dogs, ‘~’ are rivers, etc…
I wonder if all its possibilities would have been possible to create with 3D content, just because there would have been too much content to create, at least for a small studio..
May 19th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
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