| Bodhesatva said: But Counter Strike wasn't. Nor was Team Fortress. Star Craft was semi-state of the art -- they left off a lot of bells and whistles so that more people would be able to play right off the bat (Blizzard never pushes graphical boundries for this precise reason). Regardless, this wouldn't change my point; even if they were state of the art when they were released -- and again, most weren't -- people kept playing them for 3,5,7,10 years after they no longer were, which suggests it was the gameplay that mattered in the first place, not the graphics. It's simple logic, really: casual gamers care about fun. That's clear, with cooking mama style games selling so well to them. Professional gamers care about skill oriented games -- it really doesn't matter much how it looks, as long as skill plays an important factor. Otherwise, I agree with you. It... sounds like you're criticizing, but you're really not, I guess. Japan will still see a lot of great games, but I do agree it's possible that a lot less of those games will have giant, ten million dollar graphics engines. If I were to detect anything in your tone, it sounds like you think this is a bad thing, and that advancing graphics has some inherent worth; if that's true, I disagree. |
True, CS wasn't state of the art when it released (anyone who played beta 6 or older realizes this), but CS was really ligtning in a bottle. I don't ever expect to see that again. Connection speeds were going broadband (allowing cheap home servers), more people were buying home PCs, and Valve decided to embrace the mod community unexpectedly. While HL was advanced for its time, CS, being a mod, was not. So I guess we can split that one. :D
You're right about Blizzard though. They never really push tech but they always offer a solid middle ground to allow the most access possible. While not groundbreaking stuff, their games never look bad nor are they behind the times.
I'm not saying that a transition away from cutting-edge tech is a bad thing at all. The intent of my posts are just to show that I expect developers to start treating Japan very differently over the next few years. Since I do enjoy pretty graphics (but only if solid gameplay follows), I hope it doesn't bleed into the NA and EU markets too much. But I don't expect it will since the two markets are large enough to support their own tastes and preferences.
Take for example Forza 2 and the H3 beta. There are plenty of people out there who complain about its lack of AA, bloom effects, etc. But both games run like a brick s***house online (and in Forza's case, offline) and that's what really matters to me.
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