Interesting C|Net Article on Graphics vs Gameplay

[Saint_Proverbius]

<strong>[ -> Editorial]</strong>

I noticed over at <A href="http://ve3d.com">VE</a> that C|Net's <A href="http://news.com.com/">News.Com.com</a> has posted a nifty little <A href="http://news.com.com/2100-1040-955964.ht ... article</a> about <b>Gameplay vs. Graphics</b>. Here's a bit of it:<blockquote>That's the message being sent by a group of designers at the Game Developers Conference here, who say that as the visuals in their titles approach a lifelike appearance, it's time to focus on other things."<u>The danger is that we end up spending 99 percent of the time modeling dust particles hanging in the air and 1 percent of the time on gameplay</u>," said Peter Molyneux, creator of the game "Black & White."Molyneux and his cohorts in the industry have watched game consoles become ever more powerful, allowing developers to work more and more polygons into their designs to make them smoother and more realistic.</blockquote>I remember the 8bit games when my friends and I were talking about how great it would be if the graphics were better. Then the graphics got better, but now the gameplay has been left behind.However, I bet it was painful for a site like <a href="http://ve3d.com">VE</a> to post something like that.

[Strap]

i hate over engineered shit.

like this one time, i was up in the mountains (colorado) and way out in the middle of nowhere, theres this trailer home with this huge terrassed wall with like 5 tears. god, i hate that shit.

i hate how games suck with storyline. even if the gameplay rocks, and the graphics rock, the story sucks and its no fun.
thats why FO1+2 are good, cause they took a long time on story, i dont give a shit about the graphics, and the gameplay is pretty damn fine.

yes, yes indeed

[DarkUnderlord]

As the next generation of hardware should be able to render at a billion polygons per second, future games will boast lawns made up of individual blades of grass

Fallout 3: A Post Apocalyptic Adventure with Real-Life Grass.

Features:

• Turn-based combat system.
• You can melt your enemies, cut them in half and set them alight!
• Real-life like grass!!

I really don't see why...

"As the technology improves, we can begin to make worlds that are more open, until we end up without a storyline--you will just drop a character into the world and let them get on with it."

I really hope they think about that a bit more, although I can see some merit in it.

[Section8]

We've been throwing around ideas of a course in Game Design here at the Academy, and one of the essentials is getting our hands on something like a Gameboy Advance dev kit and flash rom for students, so they are forced to design for something that can't be "saved" by pretty graphics. I think it's essential as game design training to be able to create something fun from a very limited system, and not everyone has had the luxury of growing up with C64s or Atari 2600s, Apple IIes, etc. It's good practice for programmers to work with minimal RAM and processor speed too, to actually learn about efficient code and resource usage.

[Rosh]

However, I bet it was painful for a site like <a href="http://ve3d.com">VE</a> to post something like that.

Yeah, with the head stooge spewing such pap as:

"Sacrifice is one of the most innovative RTS games ever!"

"Why is it 'innovative'?"

'It's really good-looking!"

I suggest from now on they be quoted as "Voodoo Extreme Cattle".

[Crow of Ill Omen]

Hopefully, we'll hit a break point in the technology and the developers will hit an epiphany soon. As the introduction suggests, when "good enough" graphics can be achieved without undue effort, the developers might start looking at other things again, rather than striving up the top end of the curve towards the plateau at the summit.

I remember the 8bit games when my friends and I were talking about how great it would be if the graphics were better. Then the graphics got better, but now the gameplay has been left behind.

Maybe they should just remake those old games you were playing, but with better graphics. Then again, I'm not sure they'd seem so good from today's perspective.

[VasikkA]

The danger is that we end up spending 99 percent of the time modeling dust particles hanging in the air and 1 percent of the time on gameplay
= Black & White

Oh, the irony.

[Red]

That reminds me of a "tiny game compo" we had quite a while back... The idea was simply making the smallest game possible in a few hours (well, overnight)...

The winner ended up being real simple and clever: the game took your screen and used the characters as walls. You were a yellow @ sign, chased by evil coloured characters, and the only goal of the game was to stay alive for as many turns as possible while the chracters chased you we ended up adding an Adlib player onto it too, so it even had pretty music ...

We also had the classical Tron bikes and a 3D space shooter (but it had nothing to shoot at yet...) those were the days...

[Jeff]

The winner ended up being real simple and clever: the game took your screen and used the characters as walls. You were a yellow @ sign, chased by evil coloured characters, and the only goal of the game was to stay alive for as many turns as possible while the chracters chased you

Sounds like a daleks ripoff to me.

[Red]

Perhaps, but the novelty didn't lie in the principle of the game (as there are plenty of games I've seen with such simple logic), but in using the text screen as the walls. It immediatly allowed for limitless possibilities in "terrain" formation

Our compo hapenned in '95 whilst the Java Daleks is copyrighted '96... Albeit there probably was a version prior to that, but I doubt that Daleks was specifically the base of his creation, but rather other similar games (notably the @ sign coming from rogue/moria (or nethack/angband for those who require contemporary references).

[Crow of Ill Omen]

You want small games? Here's small

(apologies to the people who have already seen it).

[VasikkA]

Cool, it has tiny Pong.