For the past few weeks, almost a month, there has been a very easily noticed trend in gaming news. For awhile, it's been BF3 news, then anything John Carmack of id Software had to say, then back to BF3 news; rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
That's fine and everything, except that the problem is that the discussion was always about PC this, graphics that, Ultra settings blah blah blah.
Go into the comments section, and you'll see ePenis measuring contests where PC fanboys talk incessantly about what kind of rig they have, and how their PC will output at "teh uber grfx rezolushun" and it's not really their fault. It's the developers fault.
Gaming is becoming all about the graphics. All about the damn gloss, the flash of the game. All you hear now is about tessellation, DX11, MLAA, and even light sources when talking about a game.
No one talks about the actual game anymore. It's all about how it looks, and who has the best looking version. And why is that? Because of the developers.
If you look at development this gen, you'll see that most development studios are merely followers, not innovators. Coasters, not risk-takers. If you want to be successful this gen, it takes only two things. One, make an FPS with CoD online. Two, focus on the graphics. Hell, this gen may as well have been filled with CoD and its clones but all outputted with high end graphics because that's all that seems to matter.
You RARELY hear about a game's story, or its music, or its characters anymore. And it makes games like El Shaddai, Demon/Dark Souls, or LittleBigPlanet seem like revelations in gaming because they don't focus on the graphics, they focus on style, gameplay, interaction and the like.
Having been a gamer for over 20 years, if I were to be asked what platform was the greatest for gaming of all time, I'd simply say the SNES. Sure, later consoles did have great gaming experiences, but for my money the SNES had the best and most of them all. Games back then were all about story, music, and characters. But that's nostalgia talking and we have to live in the Present.
Presently, I can't really agree with the direction gaming is going. If you make games all about the graphics, you eliminate the need for consoles altogether because PC will always surpass consoles in that arena due to having an open hardware format. Consoles are great because they have unique gaming experiences you won't find on PC, they are made to work universally rather than requiring various tweaks and setting alterations due to the unending amount of configurations out there on PC, and quite simply are far more convenient/far less of a hassle.
But games are focusing too much on flash, the substance is being drained out. It's gotten to the point where gaming may as well be CG movies rather than games because all anyone cares about is how a game looks.
Graphics are the most superficial aspect of a game. In reality, we constantly hear about how we shouldn't "judge a book by its cover" so to speak, but that's all that's been happening in gaming. It's like giving a really attractive woman a job she is dangerously underqualified for just because she's hot, versus a woman who is perfect for the job not getting it because she isn't what society deems as attractive.
Games should be about gameplay, story, music, ambiance, character development first and graphics way last.
But it looks like it'd take another game market crash like the one in 1983 to change the direction gaming is going, and I really don't want to see that happen.
Maybe I'm making more of it than it is, but I'm worried about graphics being the center of everything these days.
The armadillo returns.
Sony is apparently experimenting with an AI tool that will play the game for you when you are grinding away. A PlayStation patent for “auto-play” mode would simulate your gameplay style in certain environments and apply them to skip that section completely. This technology would likely be built directly into the cloud-based PlayStation Network and be a new feature that subscribers would have access to.
Hah! Either will never happen or publishers will charge you to use this AI. This concept would only exacerbate the problem we already have with GaaS.
Why?
Why not just remove the Grindy part?
I hope it's not an excuse to make them worse, but optional if you pay
This IGN blogger mode will allow 'reviewers' to play games like rest of us.
I will never forget watching GamingBolts spoiler video for Horizon FW and realizing they never played it. Made me wonder if they play games at all.
Duuro says: "I think the idea behind the movement is cool, but on the other hand, the execution and clear limitation of the platform somewhat undermine the whole thing."
I think we're already seeing that schism in the gaming community who are focusing on either the CoD games or the next innovative game. Since the accessibility of playing online as taken off this gen, it would only make sense for publishers to want to push that aspect of gaming. I personally think that the in the next coming years we'll see more successful games that are good at what they do, whether it would be SP, MP, graphics, etc.
Graphics have certainly been a bigger priority than expected; but that's because they enhance that immersion level. Where the disconnect would be in the story, character, etc. aspect (most of the time). It's understandable because of things such as timelines and budgets. I'd say give the gaming community 1 or 2 more years to speak their mind on this issue, and we'll see both the next breed of amazing MP games AND immersive SP games on the quality level of Orwell's 1984 (since I love dystopians :P) being made in unison.
"Sure, later consoles did have great gaming experiences, but for my money the SNES had the best and most of them all. Games back then were all about story, music, and characters."
... most of the games I played on SNES just had good music and difficult gameplay. (... and the music wasn't really that great either, it just got embedded in my mind over time)
Story and Character development is something that's gotten bigger recently (outside of the RPG genre).
That, and I'd say that after the core gameplay, graphics have the most impact on a game's enjoyability.
The gaming industry's priorities will always be about money, and humans tend to be visual creatures who'll look at the visuals first. That, and CoD is popular despite having pretty lackluster visuals... in fact, most of the big money makers haven't been really big in the visual department.
I've enjoyed this gen so far, as it has had a lot of fresh games and ideas... and the upcoming games seem to be about the gameplay too. Sure, devs might boast about visuals, but I wouldn't say that devs have their priorities set on visuals.
... also, you need to stop turning everything into a rant against PCs.
For example statements like the following:
"Consoles are great because they have unique gaming experiences you won't find on PC"
are completely meaningless because PCs have unique gaming experiences you won't find on consoles.
Firstly, stop bitching about PC gaming. You've used previous blog-posts to vent your hatred of PC gamers/gaming and continually doing so only makes you pathetic. This is really a poorly concealed effort to mouth-off about PC gaming again. Your points are never really valid and yet you continually reiterate them. You come off like a child who's harbouring some pretty obvious jealousy and an inadequacy complex.
PC has plenty of unique experiences that are not present or feasible on consoles too. In fact, the only reason these "unique experiences" are not on the PC too is because the developers just didn't bother releasing a PC version. We can use controllers too. Console gamers can't use KB/M.
The only thing I dislike is when people keep posting GTAIV/ICEnhancer shots all over the place. GTA IV is still the same sucky game underneath, and all of the screenshots look roughly the same too. It's either shiny cars on what appears to be a really hot day, or shiny cars in Times Square at night.
Graphics always become the focal point of attention when something new and better comes along. If you think graphics don't affect gameplay at all, you'd be a fool. Graphics allow a game to inspire awe and immerse you. Do you think films are the same without the visuals? Video-games are a visual medium, it's practically in the name. It is one of the most obvious signs of advancement of the industry. In fact, story-telling and characterisation can only get better as graphics technology advances (facial expressions, body-language etc.).
Most of the games we play now are still using tired old gameplay systems with a few tweaks here and there, but little nuance. We're coming to end of a generation, and most of the gameplay mechanics now are so fine-tuned that it's difficult to be excited by the same gameplay with the same graphics. Which is why when something that certainly looks head and shoulders above the rest, a next generation experience, it's something to get excited over.
All I will say is I agree, but expect people to read it as Graphics are not important. That's always where the argument end up. You say graphics shouldn't matter as much as Game play and then some idiot think you saying graphic don't matter at all.
The truth is graphics sell games. It doesn't matter to some people if games are getting shorter or becoming more of the same, as long as the graphics are mind blowing. Anyway I'm way more impress with games that don't try to imitate life, but have their own unique art styles.
But I think we are getting close(next 5 to 10 years)to everything looking great. The graphics of every game will look so good that it will become a nonfactor.