32 replies to this topic

[dannyjenn]

The graphics make people play it. Gameplay keeps people playing it.

That idea itself makes gameplay more important. If a game has awesome graphics and horible gameplay then maybe you'd get a million players. And then... they'd all stop playing it. And then... they'd be unlikely to play another game that your company made ever again. In the long run you'd have practically no players / customers.
But if the gameplay is good then it might not start off with as many players but the number of players will grow over time without decreasing that much. And then people would want to try the next game in the series (or the next game made by your company)

But I agree... if you have a good balance of graphics and gameplay then you won't lose any players and the graphics (and sound) will only help in the sense of attracting players to the game.

Edited by dannyjenn, 28 May 2012 - 04:29 PM.

[Terrified Virus]

Good points here everyone, but has anyone thought about other aspects such as creativity? For example, war games like Battlefield or Call of Duty don't have much creativity, but they still are fun.

[Yal]

I think I gotta agree: a good game motivates its players to play it, and it rewards them at regular intervals when something is achieved. A good game has motivation and rewards in some form, be it graphics or gameplaywise... or otherwise, as long as it's there.

[11clock]

I'm going to list the five basic elements of a game, from most important to least important in my eyes.

1) Gameplay
The main reason why I play games. This is mainly what I care about, how the game plays and its fun factor.

2) Polish
The game has to work as you expect it to. A simple bug can ruin the entire experience.

3) Music
I simply can't play a game without music. There at least has to be some sort of music in the game. I personally prefer music with no lyrics.

4) Graphics
Not really all that important to me, as long as it doesn't hurt my eyes. I honestly don't care about visuals. To me staring at a painting is the exact same thing as staring at a brick wall. I do have a preference of graphics, though. I prefer clean, simple colored graphics over realistic graphics. Even with my preference, I still don't care all that much. My eyes don't recognize candy when they see it.

5) Story
The only thing that a game can actually live without. You can find plenty of good games without a storyline. Super Mario Bros. has a stupid, recycled storyline and the games are still good to this day. I also don't care much for storylines, why I get bored of most RPGs.

And there's my list.

Edited by 11clock, 31 May 2012 - 05:36 AM.

[Terrified Virus]

I'm going to list the five basic elements of a game, from most important to least important in my eyes.

1) Gameplay
The main reason why I play games. This is mainly what I care about, how the game plays and its fun factor.

2) Polish
The game has to work as you expect it to. A simple bug can ruin the entire experience.

3) Music
I simply can't play a game without music. There at least has to be some sort of music in the game. I personally prefer music with no lyrics.

4) Graphics
Not really all that important to me, as long as it doesn't hurt my eyes. I honestly don't care about visuals. To me staring at a painting is the exact same thing as staring at a brick wall. I do have a preference of graphics, though. I prefer clean, simple colored graphics over realistic graphics. Even with my preference, I still don't care all that much. My eyes don't recognize candy when they see it.

5) Story
The only thing that a game can actually live without. You can find plenty of good games without a storyline. Super Mario Bros. has a stupid, recycled storyline and the games are still good to this day. I also don't care much for storylines, why I get bored of most RPGs.

And there's my list.

Just a question, since you rated gameplay first, does that mean you would pay money for a text-based game, if it was really good?

[Lune]

Just a question, since you rated gameplay first, does that mean you would pay money for a text-based game, if it was really good?

Considering he doesn't care for story, I'm going to have to guess "no."

Personally, I think all of the elements are important to a game. Exactly how important depends on what is boring and/or distracting to different people. For example, I myself find bad graphics to be more distracting than bad audio, so I would place graphics of higher importance.

It's not perfectly cut-and-dry, though; with game play, I have different thresholds depending on which genre the game best fits. I can play and enjoy a mediocre FPS or RPG, but I get too picky with platformers and get distracted/bored by all but the best of them.


Speaking of genres, I think the genre influences the importance of everything else. FPSs generally need to have top-of-the-line graphics so that you can see and distinguish everything as quickly as possibly, and enhance precision as much as possible. An RPG, though, is going to want a good story or at least good storytelling.


Another way to think of it is that something is only as good as its worst part. If the story isn't a part of the game (such as Super Mario or Tetris) then the game doesn't suffer from having a bad story. :

[11clock]

I'm going to list the five basic elements of a game, from most important to least important in my eyes.

1) Gameplay
The main reason why I play games. This is mainly what I care about, how the game plays and its fun factor.

2) Polish
The game has to work as you expect it to. A simple bug can ruin the entire experience.

3) Music
I simply can't play a game without music. There at least has to be some sort of music in the game. I personally prefer music with no lyrics.

4) Graphics
Not really all that important to me, as long as it doesn't hurt my eyes. I honestly don't care about visuals. To me staring at a painting is the exact same thing as staring at a brick wall. I do have a preference of graphics, though. I prefer clean, simple colored graphics over realistic graphics. Even with my preference, I still don't care all that much. My eyes don't recognize candy when they see it.

5) Story
The only thing that a game can actually live without. You can find plenty of good games without a storyline. Super Mario Bros. has a stupid, recycled storyline and the games are still good to this day. I also don't care much for storylines, why I get bored of most RPGs.

And there's my list.

Just a question, since you rated gameplay first, does that mean you would pay money for a text-based game, if it was really good?

That depends. If you mean one of those text-based adventure games, no. I'm not a fan of that particular genre (typing in commands isn't very fun to me), and I don't care very much about storylines. If you mean a game which graphics are made up of text, I'll treat it like how I treat any other game since graphics don't matter much to me, as long as I can see something.

[Yal]

"Text-based" means "based on text"; it should be possible to interpret that as one of those flashy games using letters as the only means of graphics since they're not BASED on the text, they're merely using it for cosmetic purposes.

[Markonicus]

I believe there's no universal list of which aspect is more important than others. The way I see it it depends on the genre.

I for one love a good story, followed by good gameplay. Sound and graphics can be just adequate and I'd be cool with it. But even as such a story fan, in a sports game I do not need a story.

So when I play PES or NBA or any sports games, it's all about gameplay first,
graphics second and sounds third. Story in this case is completely obsolete unless you count tournaments/leagues as a story.

On the other had there are RPG's which are nothing without a good story. You can have the graphics, sounds and nice gameplay, but if there's no story to hold the player in the game, they won't play it.

And there are first person shooters and the reason why many other genres have suffered. As much as I love some of those, Far Cry, Crysis, CoD and Battlefield and friends have lost all creativity and hide behind a beautifully rendered curtain these day. So in those games the most important thing is to look nice, sound nice then play nice. My problem with FPS is that they've created a generation of gamers who only care about graphics and developers have started catering to them, resulting in worse games in all genres, but hey, they still look pretty.

And there are many other genres and their lists priorities, but overall I'd say gameplay is the one thing that stands out in all of them, as that's what keeps you coming back to a game from years ago even once the graphics have become old rags and you've heard the story a thousand times.

[psycho666]

Definitely the gameplay is the most important part of the game. But gameplay by itself is nothing. No matter the genre the gameplay needs to be at high level to attract players and keep players playing.
Creativity is important as long as the game needs one. Meaning strategy, RPG, adventure games need some creativity, but how creative do you expect sport game to be?
Graphics aren't so important. Examples? as many as you like... Heroes3, diablo1 (many people like it more than D2), Diablo2 (many people like it more than D3), Starcraft (still one of the most played games in the world), NFS Underground (2), (U1 is the best on my opinion, but most fans like 2 more, instead of shift, undercover, etc), hell, freaking CounterStrike is one of the most played shooters in the world...
Sound is important as long as it fits the game. For me if the sound is OK, i don't care about it. As long as it don't misfit the game or annoy me, it's fine...
As for the story, let's just say i don't know starcraft story (my favorite RTS), i learned D2 story just few months ago (my most favorite rpg), i don't care about Heroes 3 story (my most favorite turn based game EVER)... But there are a lot of people, that actually care about it, and prefer intriguing story line and attach themselves to it...

So yeah, the gameplay IS the most important thing, as long as everything else fit...

[Creativita]

I believe that to create a good game every aspect is required in moderation. But this may vary with certain genres.

[Terrified Virus]

Random bump

[DragonEris]

I always love debates like these on game design.


I personally hold Gameplay and Graphics together, as one category. Why? Because to me at least, a good game has put its best in both these categories. Think of the gameplay as a car and the story as a road. If you're just in a car, you're in an undirected path to nowhere, until the car stops (the game ends). If you're on just a road, well... it's likely you're either watching a movie, or playing a game with a good story but poor gameplay.

Don't get me wrong, though. Some of the best games to date have poor storylines but are still best-sellers. Story is not a dependent factor for every game. In my experience however, the games with very well-written storylines and good gameplay keep me coming back. The best games keep these two together.


What I mean about keeping it together, is that there is no story and gameplay separation, or at least very little of it. When something important is told to your character, it isn't done in a separate cutscene. It should be told in-game, keeping consistent with the current viewpoint. This helps drive what I think is the most important category for game design - immersion.

Any game that keeps you glued to your seat, wanting to find out more. You never want to stop playing it. This is due to the game possessing the aforementioned important quality of merged gameplay and storyline. In a first person game, everyone talks to you and you talk back without the camera popping out of your head. Third person games pull this off well too, since you always see it in third person. Sidescrollers or RPGs do it with text, which works too. The story is so good that you're not only playing the game for the game itself, but to advance the story.


The idea is to make the player connect with your game. You want to make your characters interesting so the player feels for them, and super-powerful weapons should only pop up if they have some involvement in the story. You want it to feel like a well-written movie, but at the same time design it so that the player feels like they belong in this universe and isn't just... well, watching a movie.


And while I may have just made a one-page essay on two gameplay aspects, that doesn't mean the other aspects aren't important too. Like it was mentioned before, while graphics are not the deciding factor on the quality of a game, they are in fact what attracts people to play it. People bash games for poor graphics and nothing else all the time. Your amazing story won't change anything, because if the graphics are crap most people will ignore it, unfortunately.



However, most people also purchase games based on 'lastablility,' or replay value. And that's where I drive this point home - if you focus on making gameplay addicting, along with a driving storyline and good graphics and audio to top the package off, you can make an excellent game.

At least what I consider excellent. Most of this post is opinion-based, after all. But I thought I might as well share my perspective on game design.