It’s funny how things change. for those of you that are old enough to remember playing games on the NES, I’m sure you remember cracking open your first copy of Super Mario Bros. and just being floored by the fast paced action it provided. My copy, personally, was paired with Duck Hunt, which was an alright game, but Mario was where it was at.
Fast forward 20 years, and I’m playing Mass Effect 3, on my fancy new TV, and I’m having just as much fun as ever. The characters, the gameplay, the visuals. Now see, I get that characters and gameplay have come a long way since Mario and I first met. Games are longer, characters are more in depth, and the play is more complex. All simply because we have technology that allows us to store more data, and thus we can really let narratives run longer. Be more nuanced. I consciously recognize all these features to be improved since I first started gaming.
You know what I didn’t notice though? What has snuck up on me? Those visuals I mentioned earlier. Now, you might think that’s silly, but here’s what I mean. Every time a new technology is developed, it amazes and impresses me, but then I accept it as the new norm. Lots of games recently (like Braid or Fez) do the same 2D platforming that Mario did, and it’s still pleasant. Heck, games like Dark Souls are still designed to have speed runs much like many of our favorite NES/SNES classics. But these are games that don’t necessarily rely on their visuals. They would still be good games without them. The super high level of visual fidelity that games like Call of Duty have doesn’t really make the game any better. Every time a new console comes out, or new games get released with a visual heavy focus, we are amazed. That amazement though, soon fades.
Now, I understand that the goal of some games is to make a visual statement. Games are a composition of a lot of individual pieces, and there is nothing wrong with focusing on one of them to make your statement. Just like how we could imagine visual art emphasizing the use of shapes and space, as opposed to the use of color. However, it’s my opinion that in games, the narrative and mechanical function of the title hold several times more weight than the visual representation in most cases.
It’s true that some games would not be what they are without their particular visual style. But the best of those that do aren’t even the ones that invest heavy amount of development resources into hyper realistic visuals (again as far as I’m concerned).
My whole point here, is that I think it’s strange how hard we as a culture, or industry, focus on something that doesn’t really matter. My favorite games in the whole world were released on systems that are now 20 years out of date. Fancy visuals are great, sometimes, but they’re not what really matters. I worked for a large game publisher/developer for a little over a year, and am personal friends with the founders of many other smaller studios. Do you know how many times I even heard of an actual writer being hired to assist with development? Once. However, there were leagues of visual artists all trying their damnedest to make sure the game looked amazing… for the next year anyway. Until it’s out dated. Then they had to hope that the visual presentation had some timeless qualities about it. Something they were doing with 8-bits, 25+ years ago.
I feel a bit pretentious for delving into the distinctions between “low brow” and “high brow”, but games that rely on hyper realism (like any generic FPS out today. CoD… Battle Field… whatever) won’t last. And maybe they’re not meant to. But what I wouldn’t do for more games like Ico, or Chrono Trigger, that clearly have a whole lot more thought put into things other than how cool they look.
