Ljink96 said:
There's still a "hardcore" stigma against games that look like cartoons. I understand that intellivision and atari and commodore had a bout about graphics but that's as good as graphics were back then. Now we have all different ways of approaching graphical art styles and visuals, to me, should take a back seat to gameplay. My way of thinking is more eastern. Atari, Intellivision...are American made companies. Western companies. They usually put graphics ahead of gameplay which is a trend I continue to see today. Yeah, NES didn't look like the Master System but guess what sold better? This is a subject that could take either side as Wii Sports and Minecraft are casual games. They're not really aimed at hard core gamers. This in itself breeds another topic or thread. I've heard people on VGChartz ask why people play games that look bad and cartoony like Mario or Zelda. The amount of people who think like that are enormous. Not that there's anything wrong with that type of thinking, everyone is entiteld to their own opinions but that doesn't change the fact that people criticise graphics before even playing the game. So, in short, I guess my way of thinking is more eastern in design philosophy. Make a game that plays well and graphics that aren't complete crud. If they look amazing, that's even better! But at least for me, I'm not going to not play a game because it's too realistic or too stylistic. |
I suppose there may be something cultural there. If you were to look at some of the contemporary art styles of the two regions over the past few centuries, the west did seem more focused on imbuing nearly photo-realistic paintings with some romance, while one thing I've often enjoyed about some of the painting in Japan is that it seems to take a minimalist approach, preferring to use as few strokes of the brush as possible and often leaving the background almost completely abstract.
That's generalizing, though, and western art began moving away from that well over a century ago. If anyone started pushing graphics and cinematics to the edge on consoles it was Japan with Squaresoft and such; the only competing western studio I can think of in that time frame would have been Blizzard, but then PC gamers have always enjoyed seeing how much performance they can squeeze out of their hardware.
For the record, I don't believe Atari or Intellivision ever put graphics ahead of gameplay, or at the very least that was not their usual mode of operation. Just as today, graphics were an edge or a trump card, selling people on it only if the gameplay was also there to enjoy. Given that the NES you mention had more success in the North American market than in Japan or Europe and that, overall, North America has been Nintendo's steadiest market, it seems clear to me that westerners are not somehow concerned only with visuals over gameplay.
I get what you're saying though, as it can definitely be difficult to sell some people on "cartoonish" graphics. Really, I believe if the Wii U had 3rd party and online support you'd see greater acceptance of it and I know first hand that people still love games like Mario Kart 8, but they also want those games like the Witcher 3 or Fallout 4 that are pushing the envelope of what's possible.
Even still, the indie scene is bigger than ever, bad graphics and all. If anything, I'd say people are harder to sell on graphics alone than they used to be, as the improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to discern and at this point you'd need some very expensive hardware and monitor/televisions to truly experience the cutting edge.
