Graphics

Opinion

Video game graphics; Going backward is moving forward.

By Josiah Sapp

    When I was growing up, the main thing that told me if a game was good or not was what the game looked like. The more realistic the graphics the better. That proved to me that a game was going to be entertaining because it was a cool thing to look at. I remember bringing home a Sega Dreamcast and playing it for the first time. The realism was unbelieveable. It was so good that my grandpa sat down to a watch a football game and didn’t even realize that we were actually playing that year’s iteration of Madden. Recently, graphics have been taking a back seat to gameplay and storytelling. It seems like a step back but the industry is moving forward as a whole.

Minecraft

    The independent (indie) game scene has really exploded over the past ten years. You can’t look at a top ten games list without including an indie game or two. Whether it be for originality, gameplay, storytelling or artwork, indie games have captivated the attention of gamers and critics alike. These indie game developers have limited resources with small teams and they can’t create what large AAA developers can. They make games with what they got and these games are innovative and fun without having to be photorealistic. Minecraft is one of the highest selling games of all time and best examples of this. Does it have the best graphics? Nope. It actually has terrible graphics but that’s not the point. Minecraft is as fun as you want it to be. It gives all power to the player and it needs to be graphically inferior to process how large the game is. This is what makes decreased graphic realism a great thing. It gives developers the power to increase gameplay opportunities while decreasing graphic capacity.

Undertale

    Some games choose to go the 16-bit route. The highly addictive Stardew Valley proves that graphics can be simple with complex gameplay mechanics. Constantly making sure that you always have something to do and makes you want to engage with the game and it’s characters. Undertale is the same way. It has a simple 16-bit aesthetic inspired by Nintendo’s title Earthbound. It tells a complex story with multiple endings. Some games with millions of dollars behind them can hardly pull off a game that ends differently based on how you play. These games have reviewed extremely well and a lot of developers have left the AAA scene to start their own indie companies. They’re realizing that there’s a shift in the industry.

    You don’t need five hundred million dollars from a publisher to make a great game. You don’t need a two hundred person team to tell a great story. A lot of these award winning indie games were developed by one person (Braid/Fez) or funded by the fans (Undertale). Fans and creators alike are starting to see that harking back to simpler times in video games isn’t just  a fun nostalgia trip but can be a useful tool. They are able to still convey what they feel games should be without spending the money and time making the graphics realistic. Some people may say that VR or even mobile gaming is the future for this industry and they could be right.  What we do know is that old school early nineties graphics  might seem like a leap backward but once you take a step into these worlds and experience their depth, you’ll want to walk out the journey to the end.