| The_vagabond7 said: Lair and body harvest easily destroy the argument that graphics and gameplay are directly connected. |
On the contrary, it destroys nothing. All it shows is that the relationship doesn't hold always but thats common sense. Its also unreliable to consider an individual game. The fact remains that graphics and gameplay are highly correlated.
Based off the reviews at IGN (Numbers do not include any games released in the last week or so):
Wii: 0.623
Xbox 360: 0.67
PS3: 0.622
Now a correlation of 1.00 implies that the two factors move together always. A correlation coefficient of 0 implies that the two factors are independent. And a correlation coefficient of -1.00 implies that they are perfectly negatively correlated, that is there is always a tradeoff between the two factors.
Now there appears to be clear evidence that graphics and gameplay are positively correlated and move together. That is not to say that one causes the other. In fact I would suspect that the two move together because of an unobserved third variable, skill. Another factor would also be the budget that a developer has to work with. The most important thing however is that gameplay and graphics move together and that there is no trade-off between the two.
So I guess its fair to say that your two game sample hardly "destroys" my 326 game sample.
