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[Tschumi]

I did a very quick forum search, and found an example of a graphics vs gameplay thread from 2012. That was quick, but I'm sure we've been seeing there threads since the start of this or any other gaming forum. Why bring this up? Because I want to revisit this debate in the context of the upcoming next gen consoles, and their expectations.

In the 00s and early 10s debates raged much more hotly about this tradeoff - PS2 vs xBox vs GCN was a hot tamale...

...but these days we're unabashedly going ape over the faux pas of your unpretty Halo (or, less controversially, bugsnax), or the recent graphical triumphs of games like Ratchet and Clank. Granted we haven't played any of these games, but i feel similar has applied for new games across a number of recent years.

What I'm getting at here is this: some time midway through the last decade - maybe around Witcher 3 - graphics seemingly became so capable that we stooped cringing when mentioning them in the same artistic breath as gameplay. And these days it looks like things have actually started going in the opposite direction, that maybe graphics are now more important than gameplay (gameplay in this sequel-heavy, retro-loving age arguably being a predecided quantity with most AAA/cult titles)

So, yeah, i wanna take this poll again and get your thoughts on what graphics vs. gameplay means to you in 2020.

 

[GymWolf]

It's okay to have both, but i probably can enjoy a game with good gameplay and shitty graphic but not one with great graphic and shitty gameplay.

It's also true that a game like flight simulator without the graphics lose 90% of the appeal...

I have more problem to digest shitty animations tho, a game that play well but it's shitty animated can only bring me so far...

 

[hayesdude]

To me, it doesn't matter how good a game looks if it plays horribly. On the other hand if a game looks horrible, visually, but plays well. I'll almost always give it a try.

 

[Nico_D]

Gameplay over graphics any day, i appreciate and love great looking games like the next guy but if playing it bores or frustrates me or just leaves me cold, I'm done with it - regardless whose game it is.

 

[GreenAlien]

First party games that exist to promote a new console need to look the part or they are absolute failures, especially if graphics is all you have going for you. No one expects great gameplay from MS anymore.

 

[Ellery]

Those two should not be compared. It doesn't matter if someone thinks one is better than the other or more important, because a failure in one of these areas should not be an excuse for the shortcomings of the other.

We cannot expect every studio to be as good as Naughty Dog and get everything right, but we also shouldn't condemn great graphics just for the sake of the game having great graphics and thinking that the game has to be bad in other areas because of that.

Then there is also the factor that both can be subjective, because people like different art styles and not every hardware is capable of delivering top notch visuals (Xbox One, Nintendo Switch) and not every studio has the resources to hire hundreds of animators.

And thankfully for us in recent years, especially with Playstation exclusive titles, we were blessed with amazing graphics and great gameplay. Bloodborne and God of War probably popping to a lot of minds here.


As for a more simple and one dimensional approach to this question : Gameplay will always win. It is going to win in this thread and it will sell more Nintendo consoles and games than the Xbox One X could ever hope for despite being 12x the performance and having better looking games. Fun gameplay (for whatever that might mean to each individual) will always be the very essence of gaming. We still need great looking games and we need it continue getting better.

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

Nintendo proved to me that gameplay will always be the ultimate deciding factor on the quality of a videogame.

 

[xviper]

Gameplay of course is more important, but that doesn't mean it's okay for the graphics to be shit (looking at you Halo Infinite)

 

[Shmunter]

Popped on Modern Warefare 2 remaster on a whim. Couldn’t stop playing it. Still the best COD campaign in execution. Shits gone nowhere, at least over the last decade.

 

[rofif]

I don't know. Souls games have best gameplay and best graphics so...

 

[bitbydeath]

They’re both compliment each other so should be treated equally. Look at RDR2’s animations which impact gameplay. Shitty animations/graphics can bring an otherwise great game down.

 

[Humdinger]

I appreciate good graphics, but one of the things that makes me lose interest in games is when there is a lot of discussion about graphics and tech (usually combined with console warrioring about minor differences between platforms).

 

[Guilty_AI]

Hypotesis: people who vote gameplay and graphics should be equally regarded probably only really care about graphics, but don't want to admit it or don't realize it themselves.

As for me, gameplay>>>graphics most of the time. Graphics are just a complement to the overall experience (and even then art-direction>>>graphics most of the time too). There are very few types of games where the actual visual tech can heavily affect the experience, such as the so-called 'cinematic' games or certain types of simulators, since both need a certain degree of visual realism to convey the experience they want.

 

[BaneIsPain]

In 2020, it should be both but it depends on the art direction when it comes to graphic.

 

[turtlepowa]

Gameplay anytime. I would rather watch Netflix before i "play" a good looking cinematic walking sim with generic/boring gameplay.

 

[Yoboman]

You can have both, unless some shit like RDR2 animations ruin the gameplay responsiveness

 

[FunkMiller]

Graphics entirely secondary to gameplay. If this wasn‘t the case, the retro gaming scene wouldn’t exist. Some of the greatest games ever made have janky graphics or poor frame rates (Bloodborne for the latter). Great graphics are lovely, but much like how story and character are more important than special effects in movies, the gameplay is always more important in video games. Substance over style. Interaction over aesthetic.

 

[Tschumi]

Graphics entirely secondary to gameplay. If this wasn‘t the case, the retro gaming scene wouldn’t exist. Some of the greatest games ever made have janky graphics or poor frame rates (Bloodborne for the latter). Great graphics are lovely, but much like how story and character are more important than special effects in movies, the gameplay is always more important in video games. Substance over style. Interaction over aesthetic.

Could we not suggest that retro gaming negating the need for graphics doesn't necessarily mean graphics aren't important?

Furthermore, to the contrary, aren't retro graphics a pretty stylised form of graphics? (I'm thinking, metroidvania) and, since the gameplay is often, broadly speaking, pretty derivative, are the graphics of these games not kind of their main selling point?

I'm just speculating, not trying to present my ideas as a challenge to your post.. just riffing~

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Anyone who voted "equally regarded" needs to drink 3 full cups of bleech.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Typesetting or font color. UGGGH!! As a hardcore Reader, I often ponder which part is most crucial to my book consumption.

 

[Tschumi]

I'm enjoying these comments, if i could have my way though I'd ask everyone who didn't to get a bit meta and reconsider their opinions in the context of what we're seeing/discussing with regards to the recent xbox and PS reveals~

Typesetting or font color. UGGGH!! As a hardcore Reader, I often ponder which part is most crucial to my book consumption.

Typesetting fa shaw

 

[Bonfires Down]

At this point in my life: story. But ideally story and gameplay should be completely integrated with each other.

 

[Tesseract]

generating assets often makes me feel dead inside, something about the creative process from concept to finish

mechanical innovation feels sturdier, rules denser, more room to experiment

they both gotta come together if you want something good, level design still the best thing tho

 

[FunkMiller]

Could we not suggest that retro gaming negating the need for graphics doesn't necessarily mean graphics aren't important?

Furthermore, to the contrary, aren't retro graphics a pretty stylised form of graphics? (I'm thinking, metroidvania) and, since the gameplay is often, broadly speaking, pretty derivative, are the graphics of these games not kind of their main selling point?

I'm just speculating, not trying to present my ideas as a challenge to your post.. just riffing~

No worries, that’s cool. I wouldn’t say graphics are unimportant, but if older games with blocky graphics, low resolutions, vast amount of clipping, jankiness and low quality assets can still be played by millions of people, even in an era of very high quality graphics, that must be testament to the staying power of good gameplay. Whereas I can’t think of many older games the prioritise graphics over gameplay that are still played, or that well loved.

 

[Raonak]

Gameplay is more important, but most gameplay styles are well explored at this point. truly novel games are very rare.

That's where graphics and story can come in to augment the game.

 

[Belmonte]

If it was Gameplay vs Art we could have a fiercer discussion but Gameplay vs Graphics? 2020, 2034, 3000...it is gameplay until the end of time.

 

[B-universe]

I just want to pass on one minor observation:

I could be wrong, but I can't recall a single major controversy revolving around gameplay. They've all been about graphics. From the very recent and very consequential backlash Halo infinite just suffered to The Witcher 3 Downgrade, To Watchdogs Downgrade, to Spiderman's Puddlegate, even to the lukewarm reception next-gen consoles have been getting, they all seem to revolve around visuals.

Now, I'm onboard with that. I unapologetically care about first-world graphics and have no intentions to relent. So maybe I'm missing a crucial point here, but these polls, which have been yielding the same smashing victory to Gameplay for years now, don't seem to correlate well with the most popular real-world conversations gamers are having on forums.

 

[Joe T.]

Gameplay and graphics are somewhat dependent on each other, but I do find the next generation showings so far extremely disappointing because the new hardware, the increased RAM and SSD/memory bandwidth specifically, don't appear to have been leveraged towards larger, more diverse behavioral trees, more interactive environments or fixing the very clear problems that plagued the last two generations of consoles.

GTA IV and V make for prime examples, their improved AI, physics and graphics over the previous gen were used to great effect, but unfortunately also served to restrict mission freedom because those assets quickly ate up space in memory and needed to be constantly discarded/replaced. If Rockstar tweaked GTAV's code for PS5 with a priority on gameplay (re: mission freedom, AI, ragdoll animations) over graphics (4K/60fps/raytracing) they could easily show how the jump to this new generation could benefit one of the most popular gaming franchises ever. It would be an easy way to reinvigorate discussion about this topic while renewing interest in a seven year old game.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Gamers have a sense for both maybe it has to do growing up with both

 

[Tschumi]

I just want to pass on one minor observation:

I could be wrong, but I can't recall a single major controversy revolving around gameplay. They've all been about graphics. From the very recent and very consequential backlash Halo infinite just suffered to The Witcher 3 Downgrade, To Watchdogs Downgrade, to Spiderman's Puddlegate, even to the lukewarm reception next-gen consoles have been getting, they all seem to revolve around visuals.

Now, I'm on board with that. I unapologetically care about first-world graphics and have no intentions to relent. So maybe I'm missing a crucial point here, but these polls, which have been yielding the same smashing victory to Gameplay for years now, don't seem to correlate well with the most popular real-world conversations gamers are having on forums.

Thanks for taking the time to talk about this. I have to admit i was hoping to draw out a less lopsided result by appealing for people to accept, first, that graphics do seem to mean something slightly different now, then go from there... But yeah.

For what it's worth, i think Too Human is an example of controversy over gameplay.. and i haven't played it but apparently Halo 5 was a bit of a squib? Anyways that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, yeah, i was trying to touch on a phenomenon I've kinda observed whereby gorgeous graphics seem to be a legitimate part of a game's rep - Witcher 3, God of War 2018 [sic], the interestingly inconsistent Ghost of Tsushima, for example - and try to pin it down. Didn't really work.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[teezzy]

They're inseparable, and thankfully you don't have to. Games with ugly art design are just as unattractive to me as games with poor gameplay. I need both, and there's too many different titles available now to settle for less.

 

[Danjin44]

I personally don’t care about the tech behind graphics, I’m much more in to game’s overall art direction.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

I could be wrong, but I can't recall a single major controversy revolving around gameplay. They've all been about graphics.

the media creates and evelates these controversies, then we see people bash "stupid gamers who only care about graphics".

in truth, i would say most gamers care about gameplay first. but the sexy stuff is graphics, which is why the media promotes those controversies so much.

only real gameplay controversies seem to be around "should every game have easy mode?" which is probably more reviewer-led than anything.

they love the stereotype of the troglodyte gamer and embrace that mindset so they can point at their own argument and say "See! We were right!"

 

[jufonuk]

play space invaders and Tetris.
Bangai-O

super Mario bros
They still hold up

 

[Fbh]

If I have to chose one it's gameplay.
But I generally find this focus on "the most important thing" silly. I can't really pinpoint one aspect that's the most important one in every game. My favorite games usually have a lot of elements that I like and which come together to make a great experience. For examples I really enjoyed The Witcher 3, Doom 2016, Bloodborne, Nier Automata and Yakuza 0, but did so for different reasons in each one of them, and I couldn't really reduce it to "gameplay" or "graphics".

With that said, I'd replace "graphics" with visuals or art direction. I think looking really nice can definitely elevate a game, but it doesn't necessarily have to be through raw "graphics"

 

[DelireMan7]

Atmosphere, art design,world building and gameplay are the priority for me.

Graphics, visuals and performance are the last things I care about

 

[Bolivar687]

Entertainment should look good.