[omegafail]

I think it is a great selling point. No matter how crappy the final product is, claiming new or better graphics automatically give more sold units.

It is easy to critique a game after you played it. But before you do, the only thing you can do is look. Since you can't interact with the game in any way, what is left is the visuals. And that impression sells the game. Therefore, graphics matter.

[bitwize]

There's a thing I call Amiga Game Disease. It's a thing on many platforms, especially now, but it was prevalent on the Amiga way back when. It's when a game is pretty much a tech demo with a thin game wrapped around it. Take something like Shadow of the Beast. Beautiful to look at, and really showcased the Amiga's power. Nothing looked or sounded quite like the Amiga version of Shadow of the Beast, and the various ports to lesser systems certainly couldn't keep up.

But it was pure, frustrating, junk from a gameplay perspective. The controls were clunky and shit was always popping out of nowhere and killing you. I kept dying at the first "boss", a skeleton thing on a throne that looked like it was made of some bigger creature's jaw. What I didn't know at the time was that there was a gryphon I had to defeat by punching the crystal orb it was bouncing; defeating the gryphon would temporarily grant me the power to shoot hadoukens, and the skeleton thing was only vulnerable to the hadoukens. (If you used up your hadoukens before defeating the skeleton thing, well, sucks to be you.)

And it's just full of stuff like this. The game doesn't tell you ANYTHING about how to play it or what its goals are. Plus it was a pioneer in unskippable cutscenes: moving from one place to another -- like going in a door or something -- entailed staring at a still image while adventure-game-style flavor text scrolled by and no key or button press could dismiss it. And once you die, that's it. You have to start all the way from the beginning. The game could be cleared in half an hour -- IF you knew where everything was. I guess it got replay value by surprising you with deadly enemies and obstacles you couldn't see coming and making you start over each time a new thing bit you in the ass.

But we all remember Shadow of the Beast -- indeed Amiga users look back fondly at it -- SIMPLY BECAUSE OF ITS GRAPHICS AND SOUND.

Sword of Sodan was the same thing: clunky and repetitive, but WOW LOOK AT THOSE HUGE SPRITES.

So yes, "good graphics = good game" is a thing, and it's because of the market, not because of the execs.

[babuskov]

Strange. I played a lot of games on Amiga and do not count SotB in the great ones. My list of great Amiga games is:

  - Perihelion
  - P.P. Hammer
  - Blues Brothers
  - Sensible Soccer
  - Lemmings
  - Alien Breed
  - Another World

Most of those had average graphics.

[ZenoArrow]

I was an Amiga gamer, I played Shadow of the Beast 2, I remember the graphics and audio fondly but I don't ever remember thinking it was a great game. The situation was similar for Shadow of the Beast, was an interesting setting but the gameplay never appealed.

The Amiga had a wide variety of games, and certainly didn't cater only for people who wanted graphics over gameplay, but yes good graphics were celebrated. I think part of the reason for that was the whole 'ahead of its time' idea, that a computer released in 1985 with a handful of underwhelming updates could still stand its ground into the 90s. Amiga was certainly not alone with this, applied just as well to the Neo Geo, and the Japanese got lucky with the Sharp X68000 too.

Another part of this was the game magazine culture, hard to talk about how a game plays, but easy to show off how a game looks. Game demos were a much more complementary medium than magazines for showing off the strength of games (though I had a sizeable collection of game magazines at one point, I'm not completely against them).

[logfromblammo]

Whenever I start to think graphics are important to games, I think about the differences between the Activision graphical sequels to the text-based Infocom Zork games: Return to Zork, Zork Nemesis and Zork: Grand Inquisitor.

Of these, Zork: Nemesis is by far the worst game, even though it put a great deal of effort into its graphics. It was another victim of the Myst effect, but five years later, when everyone should have known better. The plot seemed shoehorned into the set, rather than the locations built to support the gameplay.

Return and Inquisitor felt like Zorks, but Nemesis felt more like a glorified fetch quest. I don't care if the graphics hold up or not after a few years, because the game itself was not particularly fun to play. The only factor preventing me from re-playing the other two is that I can still remember the solutions to their puzzles after 18-22 years, but all I remember from Nemesis is "bring me more red pages... er... I mean pure elements".

Therefore, if graphics matter, they cannot matter more than gameplay.

[pmarin]

Nowadays at least you can see videos on youtube about the game. In the old days with the magazines you only could see the screenshots (with a real camera in front the monitor/TV) and trust the author of the review.

[emirozer]

I see your point and it makes sense but won't you agree a story line or a rich description of game play won't make the same or perhaps a better impact on the potential buyer ?

Of course i am assuming there is a story line or nice gameplay..

To give an example: my favorite game of all times, Ultima Online has at __best__, __meh__ graphics..I remember i got hooked before i even installed it, not because of the screen shots but the way the game magazine editor was telling his own experience how he got murdered while fishing quietly in a small town..

[omegafail]

A good description will impact a small percentage that is already familiar with the genre or that franchise. What will mainstream audience do. Believe the your words or your pictures? Games convey information trough the latter. Game magazines are obsolete and no-one reads long articles anymore. You have one minute to impress your audience. Less if it isn't in a form of a youtube video.

[dagw]

won't you agree a story line or a rich description of game play won't make the same or perhaps a better impact on the potential buyer?

Does it matter if you or I agree?

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2015/Global/ http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2014/Global/ and http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2013/Global/

all seem to to indicate that, unless you happen to be Nintendo, pretty 3D graphics are very much necessary (but far from sufficient) if you want to sell a lot of games.

edit: Mobile and social games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush etc. are of course and exception. If you want make a lot of money in games and don't want to deal with high end 3D graphics, then that is the market you have to get into.

[theandrewbailey]

If there are so many exceptions (plus entire classes), is your observation that meaningful?

Many games are marketed and sold based on gimmicks and features, of which, great graphics is one of them and seems to work well. Unsurprisingly, much of the videogame industry has optimized for it. That doesn't mean that pretty 3D is necessary.