Developers! We want Games, not Graphics!

danbroad

danbroad

danbroad

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30 Sep 2007
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75
Does anyone else feel that sometimes, devs seem to try and push the graphics envelope so hard that the games themselves suffer? Does anyone here wish that the story and gameplay came first?

Isn't a great game a great game, regardless of the graphics engine it uses?

After all, here we all are, feeling inadequate in the face of Crysis. I'm sure it's going to be great, but Half life 2 was GREAT fun to play again last week, and the graphics didn't look too bad at all.

When I think of my favourite games, it's the playing experience, and not the graphics, that come to mind first.

I'd rather a developer took, for example, the ageing Havok engine and crafted a work of immersive genius - one that could run on a PC world laptop - than provided a repetitive and generic piece of eye candy.

An older engine has advantages - ironed free of bugs, tweaked and patched, and less expensive to license.

If it runs on everyones computer as is, then it'll sell more copies at full price - rather than picking it out the bargain bins in two years when the average computer can then run it.

System shock 2, remade right now with the Havok engine? It might not be DX10, but don't tell me you wouldn't be interested...
 
This is the problem with devs like EA, all show and no go. I just hope Crysis is all its cracked up to be. I think Valve are getting it spot on, really enjoyed playing Ep 2 and especially Portal recently and the gfx were good enough for me :).
 
Valve seem to be way ahead in terms of this stuff - that engine's good but old - but the games are so good, the graphics don't matter quite so much.
 
I've found people asking for 'gameplay' is a bit like walking into a restaurant and asking for 'something nice'. The games of old had great 'gameplay' and little graphics apparently, but their concepts were ludicrously simple and interaction with the world around you is limited, almost non-existant.

With the gamers of today demanding more and more photorealism coupled with this unknown factor 'gameplay' things get complicated. I feel sorry for the devs who don't really know what to offer. Graphics is something you can quantify so they cater for that, but what actually is 'gameplay'?
 
I agree with Killerkebab that not everyone will be into the same sort of 'great gameplay'.

In my opinion devs should spend longer researching and testing new innovations in gameplay, games like Spore (which I know very little of, but am still excited about, and I'm usually a FPS gamer) look to be creating new innovations, and still look great.
 
Killerkebab said:
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With the gamers of today demanding more and more photorealism coupled with this unknown factor 'gameplay' things get complicated. I feel sorry for the devs who don't really know what to offer. Graphics is something you can quantify so they cater for that, but what actually is 'gameplay'?
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A unique and interesting story line that gets the player immersed into the gameplay. A good example for me is Zelda: Twilight Princess.
 
i agree. i have a top rig but i can confidently say the best gaming experience ive had in the last 2 years was playing an old ps1 game on an emulator (parasite eve 2). by todays standards the game looks like someone has taken a pixelated dump in a 600*400 window, but the story and character development made me think how overrated things like HDR and AA are.

all the demos of the past week have been prime examples of this. UT3, timeshift, CoD.. are just new renditions of old concepts. I will be buying UT3 as i think its great for some mindless fun, but it's really going to be just a time killer when i have nothing to do. there is no story or atmosphere to get sucked in to.. it's just cheap thrills and not an "experience".
 
To me gameplay is about aking me want to play it again, to get past that level im stuck at, to defeat that last boss...

Ive done many closed beta's played loads of PC games... to be honest all the online games are becoming WOW clones or WOW with guns and grey skies....

Give us something different, dont just copy another game and hope no one notices. Not a single game i have bought int he past 4 months has kept me playing longer than 2-3 days at the most, the last one, Quake, well, 25 mins in i thought i was playing BF2 again...

Give us eve game - but not P2P and not online only. Give us C&C type game play - fun - fast and addictive, even the last supreme commander was nothing compared to TA. Sure the graphics of the old games are big blocky and only in 256 colours, but it was fun! now we get photorealistic games with about as much game play as playing snooker with only a white ball on the table.

Most Sword and socery games to me, the online ones are WOW copies, same buttons, same interface in some games, maybe better colours, but the same. I want to see a game take it to the next level, as WOW did for MIR, MIR was a great game, fun to play, easy to learn, hard to master, fights all over the place, then wow came out, after others of course, but wow had it right with game play, graphics and the UI. Now all we see are Quake/HL clones or WOW clones....

Cant even bring myself to buy Football manager 2008 as it reminds me of work and excel tables! What happened to games like sensable soccer! Flight sims like XwingVtie figher. I am disapointed with each new release that comes as nothng changes, always the same old game with a new name and 256 more colours...

Maybe time we stopped falling for the hype and make them write games that work... When i did coding, back in *** day of assembler and Cobal - there was no 180mb patch 1 day after release. it worked or it didnt come out....

/rant over lol

Dam that was a long post...

Colin
 
I think there are still plenty of good games being made, it's just that the media latches on to the one thing that's easy to quantify - graphics. When a game is in the early stages of development, both gamers/fans and the gaming press have very little to go on other the screenshots and the odd interview.

Put it this way: Take 2 different new games. Until you have played them both, the only way you can choose between them really is on the graphics you get to see in screenshots/trailers. The reason games like STALKER: Oblivion Lost got so much hype back in 2002 was because of the unbelievably good looking trailers. Likewise FEAR trailers in 2003-4. They were both made by relatively unknown development houses (well, actually Monolith weren't, but a bit of a sleeping giant if you know what I mean) but they were able to gain a lot of publicity from their advanced engines.
 
True Hangtime, but isnt that what demos are for. To be honest the demo for hellgate was a prime example.

Meant to be the next Diabalo... yeah right... the demo gave you 5 levels to which you saw *** gun toting cartoon is much better than the sword man. No upgrades, very basic skill and the game didnt even tell you when the demo had ended...

sloppy programing, managment and a lack of respect for game players as a whole, for 1.5 gig of a download.... i expected much more.

They have the means to test and re-test, they can beta and invite for bug testing, they have a means to get new patches out, and yet, the games are the same. Even the graphics are becoming the same. Soon the pictures on the front of the box will even be the same.

I want good graphics, we all do, but i want the game to last more than a week, be entertaining and make me want to play it. For now, nothing out there does this for me, they seem interested in your money only and thats it.

Until games beat EVE online, WOW or C&C, for game play, we are at a stand still.. imo

ColiN - Mr happy lol.
 
Like I say, I genuinely believe that there are good games out there, it's just that if you only try the 'AAA Hype-factor 100' demos then you may miss out on them.

One thing I've always said on this forum is that if you aren't happy with current games, there's probably some quality older titles you haven't tried.
 
Im all about at the gameplay too but if devs didnt try and make games with better sound and graphics we would still be playing games along the lines of pong. Internet would probably only be used by businesses to communicate etc etc

Soon enough the graphics/animation will be almost life like and gameplay will be built around this (making incredible games) This might be 20 or 30 years from now, but id love to see games in 30 years compaired to now
 
Havok is a physics engine which is still in development and widely used.. I'm not sure what it has to do with the graphics :s :p
 
valve shoudl just buy out that fakefactory v4 mod and integrate it into thier games as standard. cheap and extremly effective way to boost gfx quality with minimal impact on performance.
 
Graphics are so overrated, yes nice graphics are nice. But I still play 6 year old games, in lower res. Even though my computer could run them at the highest settings.

Game play over graphics anyday.
 
With the kind of hardware on the market today theres no reason why games shouldn't have good graphics without sacraficing gameplay.
 
I am always interested to see the latest advances in real time game graphics. Some of them are really good. But, once I've seen the latest realistic water reflections and gone 'oooo', that's it. Interesting to see, but only holds your attention for a matter of seconds.

The fact that even now, many years on, I still like to play Syndicate just goes to show that a game does not become unplayable just because it's graphics are no longer cutting edge.
 
Souness said:
all the demos of the past week have been prime examples of this. UT3, timeshift, CoD.. are just new renditions of old concepts. I will be buying UT3 as i think its great for some mindless fun, but it's really going to be just a time killer when i have nothing to do. there is no story or atmosphere to get sucked in to.. it's just cheap thrills and not an "experience".
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Well UT3 is primarily an multiplayer game, so it wouldn't have much of a story
 
I agree that Valve have things spot on at the moment, I love all the Half Life series, Team Fortress 2 & Counter Strike Source.
 
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