Do Graphics Make A Good Game?
By 
Hib in
MapleStory, Vanguard, features, mmorpg on
December 5th, 2007
As computers travel farther and farther down the road to becoming powerful enough to finally find Sarah Conner, the game industry has become more and more graphics-focused, and the world of MMORPGs is no exception. This is greatly appreciated by the group of gamers that had their game system drop-shipped from a NASA warehouse.
Personally, my Commodore VIC-20 just isn’t giving me the FPS it used to. (I’m thinking of upgrading to a Commodore 64 .)
Admittedly, good graphics aren’t a bad thing. Without graphics, we would all be stuck using IRC for our MMORPG habit (it’s the MMORPG version of Notepad). Some game developers seem to think that good graphics will help gamers overlook other things that are missing from their game, like “fun”, “playability” and “lack of crashes”. Listen to Uncle Hib…
Graphics are not what makes or breaks your game.
Are they necessary? Of course they are. The people that don’t like graphics in their gaming experience are already playing MUDs. But some seem to think that graphics are one of the most important parts of game design, and I don’t agree.
The graphics of a game are the icing on the cake you’re baking. If the cake tastes horrible, then who cares what flavor the icing is? No one’s going to eat it. (Except the investors, but that’s a different definition of “eat it”.)
Let’s compare a couple of games as examples…Maplestory and Vanguard:Saga of Heroes.
Vanguard:SoH had a very rough launch, with more than a few complaints over the fact that it took a fairly high-end system to even run the game, and very few players were ever able to actually see the graphics at their highest setting. The game was sold to SOE, who are in the midst of trying to re-optimize the game (with reports of some success from players). A screenshot from V:SoH:
“Lookit that water! Man, we’re gonna kick everybody’s ass!”
Maplestory (at last report, back in July) had over sixty million players worldwide, generating $250 million from Item Shop microtransactions in 2005. A screenshot from Maplestory:
“What the hell, let’s put some Beefeaters in there.”
Yes, there are quite a few fundamental differences…Maplestory is free to play (with a cash MTA “Item Shop”) while Vanguard is subscription based (after you purchase the box). Vanguard is targeted at more “serious” MMORPG gamers, while Maplestory casts a wide net. And that’s actually the root of my problem. Why can’t you do both?
Target “serious” gamers and cast a wide net…or, in other words, make your game accessible to practically anyone with a computer. I’ll bet you can think of a major MMO that did just that, with good success. And CCP is giving players the option of continuing to use the current graphics standard in EVE if their machine can’t handle the upgrades of today’s Trinity expansion…not a move you see every day.
I’m not saying go back to the days of blocky chunks of pixels with the label “Hydra” floating over their head (to differentiate it from the blocky chunk of pixels that represents “a horse”, “a boat” or “a Norwegian hooker with a club foot”, because there’s not much difference graphics-wise), I’m saying make a good game, design it with a level of graphics that is appropriate to your target audience, and quit trying to “keep up with the Joneses” in terms of graphics.
You’ve seen me say it before, and I’ll say it again…make a fun game. And, by definition, a game that won’t run on someone’s computer is no fun at all.
(This was all inspired by Danc over at Lost Garden with this post entitled “How To Bootstrap Your Indie Art Needs”. He would like to remind everyone that he is still not a chickadee plucker.)
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December 5th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Asking gamers if graphics matter is like your wife asking if she looks fat.
Gameplay is KING, but try getting that good first impression when your graphics are the first thing gamers can see and judge? First impressions count and your visuals need to be good enough to make the sale, and then you can worry about making the gameplay so great that your customer is too hooked to click the unsubscribe button.
A lot of the online games with lower end graphics do a very good job at hiding it with very styilized visuals, World of Warcraft being the most prominent example. A lot of the 2D Korean MMO’s are also great examples of this.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Gameplay is king but if I can’t stand to look at it then the king is dead.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Ladies and gentlemen…Elvis Keen has left the building!
I agree, K, but I think you’re actually driving toward the same point, Scott, with the sentence:
Exactly. There are things you can do to help yourself that don’t involve “DX13 graphics” that take a $500 graphics card to run properly (again, back to V:SoH). To me, if you’re having to say “Look at these graphics…aren’t they awesome!!?!?”, then there must not be too much else to brag about.
People will play a great, fun game with “acceptable” graphics for longer than a lousy game with awesome graphics. Keen is right…make it, at the very least, “not-unpleasant to look at”, but make the damn thing playable. There should only be one answer to the question “Should we max out the graphics, or step’em back a bit so that more people will be able to play?”.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:18 am
I agree with Keen. The graphics don’t have to be great but 9/10 I will look at the screenshots of a game on their website first to see if its the type of game I would like to get into so graphics are important, but not a means to an end.
January 12th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I feel graphics make or break the game for me, I guess if your running on a slow computer you may not like it. I for one though am I strong believer you need great graphics and gameplay for your game to succeed.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I personally feel that graphics are a + but the story line and plot is what makes the game. Make it different from all the others and try not to be the same as every other!
January 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I grew up playing RPGs on the SNES, and eventually the PS1 and N64. Back then, the graphics of FF7, Tales of Phantasia, and Lunar Silver Star Story were more than good enough for me.
On the PC, I played Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout, Mechwarrior 2, SimCity 3000, Red Alert, and Red Alert 2. If video games ahd stayed that way, I wouldn’t have a problem with it at all.
Unlike Maplestory, WoW, Guildwars, or Runescape, I still play these old games. Why? Because they were carefully engineered, with blood sweat and tears, and even with below-average graphics they still look great. The real problem with graphics these days is that there is hardly a limit to what people can do with them, so instead of trying to optimize for a low-end computer, they’re trying to push something high end even higher. You should see the kinds of things they did back on the SNES with Star Ocean and Firefox. That’s some amazing stuff.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
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