Zod95 said:
Realism is not the keyword here. Commitment, deepness are more like it. This is a very hard thing to explain but I will do my best. As a fan of videogaming, what matters to me is that this industry produces high-quality games. That's what really matters. But quality is about how much a game is appreciated by each person. Then, it varies from gamer to gamer, because it is about tastes. Talking about tastes is going around in circles, it's not possible to argue on this field. What is awesome to someone may be awful to another (and even if it isn't so, one can say it is without having to prove anything, "it's just about my tastes", he/she could say). So, we only have 2 options if we want to debate quality: either we say it's only about tastes, each person has his own, end of the story, let's go out of this forum ; or we remove tastes from the equation and see what's left. For those that stay on the "quality" debate, that's the big question: what's left? In my opinion, what's left is the commitment of each dev (effort/time/money) shown on measurable (objectivity) remarkable (relevance) achievements. Once it's measurable, it's not about subjectivity anymore and thus is give us a commong ground to debate. Once it's remarkable, it proves it is related to quality. Once it requires effort/time/money, it proves it is rare (only few are willing to spend so much resources) and thus it's valuable. Therefore, any achievement one can find that fits into this criteria is proof of commitment to work towards quality. Is this a perfect criteria? Not at all. Is this a good quality filter? Absolutely. Realism is not really necessary. A made-up city may have required as much work as a realistic one. However, it is much easier to assess commitment on realistic games, once any deviation from reality means lack of effort. On the other hand, any lack of effort on the creation of a made-up city may be seen as an artistic option. The lack of effort is disguised here. An exellent example on how realism promotes effort is The Getaway: - They have recreated the modern London. It's one of the very few sandbox games (if not the only one) that has recreated in 3D a real modern city. They had to buy cinematic equipment to capture every inch of every street to afterwards design it in 3D. They ended up skipping many streets and anyone can easily perceive that lack of effort. Yet, that small and truncated sample of London became a unique asset of the whole industry (as far as I know, there isn't out there any better recreation of a modern city). This achievement showed a great commitment from Team Soho and is one of the greatest software benchmarks that magnifies videogaming and imposes some respect to those that despise it. - They have recreated real cars and real characters. Once more, they had to buy equipment that would let them capture and render those cars and characters. They were pioneers (the first or one of the first) in the movement capture of the bodies and facial expressions. They got to know real people with real lifes that were similar to the ones of the characters from the game. For example, to play the character of a boxer that was also a gangster they recruited a boxer that was also a gangster. To play the character of a high-profile business man, they convinced a real high-profile business man to enter in the project. Etc. These real people were rendered to the game, did all the action scenes to capture their movements and did their own voices too. This whole process demanded a lot of time, interviews, cinematic preparation, performances, etc. But the end result was absolutely remarkable: an immersive game like no other on the 6th generation. Could have all this effort, investment, time-consuming and thorough work been done on a made-up city with made-up vehicles and made-up characters with made-up lives and made-up voices? Sure. Would it be likely to happen? Of course not. The motivation to avoid effort or time or money spending when such resources become painfully expensive is too big when there is an easy alternative to disguise them as "different artistic options". Nintendo doesn't need to go out of their comfort zone. There are still plenty of "objective quality filters" that doesn't involve realism. Fully-editable levels, like LittleBigPlanet has, perfectly fits on the criteria mentioned above. Thousands of km2, like Fuel has, is another. But the point is that Nintendo has very little to show on here. Like the OP says, they have always avoided what is massive money spending, monsters of uncontrolled quality, bold concepts that could become state-of-the-art achievements. Nintendo games are nothing more than small and conventional fun experiences that can only be praised on a subjective analysis. Objectively, they are a nullity.
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@bolded: The foundation of your objective argument is your subjective opinon and your list of objective criteria is subjectively chosen.
@underlined: If we assume the statement to be true, then logically, there exists quality games that don't meet the criteria. In other words, the criteria may filter for quality games, but the games filtered out aren't certain to be poor (see denying the antecedent).
