| >Graphical quality matters in everything, everything, everything visual. And it's a reasonably reliable proxy for how much effort has been put into the rest of the game. You sidestepped the whole "text only adventure games" thing with the "visual" word. We were talking about computer games in general. As for all the above examples, I don't think they show at all how graphics matter. They show that great addictive gameplay trumps flashy graphics any day of the week. I mean "properly sized view and clear, effortlessly distinguishable artwork"? Those goes without saying. Of course graphics should not obscure the game's goals. That doesn't mean that the graphics are "60% of Tetris" -- in the same way the fact that Tetris would be totally unplayable if the background was all black and the tiles dark gray --doesn't mean that graphics are "100% of Tetris". As for "MUDs require a quality typeface, proper layout, and appropriate coloring", yet people have played them in bad typefaces --heck, even not typeface at all, just bitmap graphic card fonts-- and black and white. Matter of fact, in the eighties lots of people on DOS PCs played color games in black and white monitors, and enjoyed them too. |
Indeed, you might say in that case the graphics are of high quality! Low quality graphics can easily detract from gameplay.
I think there are two definitions for "graphics quality" commonly used.
- Realism, as used in this article.
- Aesthetics, an example of which would be Team Fortress 2. By any definition it is not a very realistic game, but it still has very well-made/high quality graphics (before hats, anyway.)