Graphics Schmaphics

Hey, guess what time it is! It's time to spin another Gamasutra article into a vaguely-related tangent about game theory!

Today's article is this one here, in which some EA dude says a bunch of stuff about social gaming I don't care about. However, he does make the point that he thinks video game budgets have reached their peak, and that future games will be given more modest budgets. Now, the way he phrases this, he makes it sound like "more modest budget" means "games for more casual players," and this is the bit I wanted to talk about today.

You don't need a huge budget to make a game that appeals to hardcore video gamers!

This is something I'll never understand. Why do people continue to think that having the best production values ever equates to increased sales, when the opposite has proven true time and time again? I'm not trying to be one of those "APPRECIATE INDIE GAMES YOU PHILISTINES" bloggers, because I don't need to be. People already appreciate low-budget games so long as they have well-crafted gameplay. Case-in-point, Monday Night Combat, a game that came out this month as a low-budget, fifteen-dollar Xbox Live release. People are loving this game. And why not? It's an awesome (albeit very, very derivative) game with tons of personality. Then you compare it with something like Mafia II, which came out this month as well, which clearly poured a ton of money into creating a massive and fully-realized city...and manages to be the blandest thing ever if reviews are to be believed.

A video game only really needs a fun core of gameplay in order to be engaging. I've played games people have coded in their basements for free and had more fun with them than I ever had with Grand Theft Auto 4. As many gamers and critics as there are out there who praise graphical fidelity and count pixels and all that, I feel like game companies really overestimate how much anybody out there really cares about production values.

But the real proof comes from the numbers, and this is something I've never heard brought up before. Has anyone ever noticed that, when two video game consoles go head to head, the one with the better graphics almost always gets outsold by the lower-powered machine? Seriously, almost every time. I mean, let's ask Wikipedia.

Game Boy vs. Game Gear? Game Gear had better graphics, in color even, but was absolutely decimated sales-wise by the two-color Game Boy.

In the 16-bit era, you have the SNES outperforming the Sega Genesis, which seems like a victory for the graphical powerhouse...until you realize that both of these systems severely crushed the "Neo Geo" in sales even though it was a far more powerful system than either. During this console generation, the Jaguar also tried to break into the market, and ended up more or less dead-on-arrival despite being able to process goddamn polygons.

Then you have the Playstation vs. the Nintendo 64. While it's true the N64 wasn't capable of doing full-motion video (at least not very well) in actual in-game terms the N64 consistently had smoother, better-looking 3D graphics...and it was brutally, brutally outsold by the Playstation.

Playstation 2 vs. Xbox vs. Gamecube vs. Dreamcast! Playstation 2, despite generally having the weakest graphics of the four, sells more than the other three consoles combined, and by a significant margin, too!

And that brings us to today, with the Wii outselling all other consoles all around the world and the DS outselling the PSP despite considerably inferior processing power.

...

THAT...IS...A...GODDAMN...TREND!

I really can't think of a better indicator that gamers, all gamers, prefer games with solid and interesting gameplay over high-fidelity graphics. People don't by consoles, and they don't buy games, just because of how good they look. If reduced budgets on future high-profile titles lead to a shift away from polygon-boosting and towards an examination of what really matters in terms of making a quality game, I'm all for it.

I know I'm oversimplifying. I know that. But, at the very least, I feel like this is an important jumping-off-point when considering game design theory. Are developers actually shooting themselves in the foot by pumping so much money into these games? Is there really such a thing as a "safe" investment? The mentality of "sequels are safer," which is part of the core of this problem, is something I intend to tackle next time. For now...I think I'm gonna go buy Little King's Story and enjoy the hell out of it.