« Spwug home page
« Office of the Don #1: Establishing My Geek Cred
Office of the Don #02 »

Random Flavors of Pocky #24: Warning: Graphic and (non) Explicit Graphics

Late again. Sorry, folks.

How many of you play video games? And how many of you care how good the games you play look?

As I’ve looked at the video games released in the past few years, there have been two trends that I’ve noticed when it comes to graphics.

One is the ‘we need to push the envelope as hard as we can’ trend, where games like Crysis require the absolute best possible machines to run them in their full glory. Games where it is not uncommon to hear, “I’m upgrading X on my PC so I can play Y,” in reference to that game.

On the other hand, though, there is also a movement of ‘let’s make it so this game can run on as many machines and consoles as possible’. Games like World of Warcraft and many of the games that are fully cross-platform, which garner comments like, “Well, it’s not the prettiest game out there, but it still looks pretty good.”

I understand the desire to have the most badass, beautiful game out there, but at the same time, as a member of the game industry, I’d rather have my game being purchased and played by as many people as reasonably possible.

It raises the question of how important graphics are to the average user these days. Is it worth satisfying one segment of the buying population to lock out another?

So, which camp, if either, are you in? Do you think games should always be on the bleeding edge of technology, or do you think games should be playable by the largest number possible?

Share This

Stumble it! Explore posts in the same categories: games, Richard Kim

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 11:11 pm and is filed under games, Richard Kim. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Comment on “Random Flavors of Pocky #24: Warning: Graphic and (non) Explicit Graphics”

  1. Torrentus Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 10:12 am

    I myself am in the camp of “everything else comes before graphics”, not in the sense that graphics are something to neglect but in the sense that everything else has to be perfected before you perfect the graphics.

    Taking one of the most influential games of all times as example, Final Fantasy VII, it was the game that gave birth to the concept of “highly budgeted games”, how many now feel that the story or the music is that awesome even now? But on the same tense how many feel that way about graphics?

    Whether its a short time later or a decade, only the graphical aspect of a game lessens.

    ………….

    I’m more partial to the second camp, if you haven’t guessed/read my post yet.

Close
E-mail It