THE SECRET TO A SUCCESSFUL VIDEO GAME IS BAD GRAPHICS AND NO STORY - READER’S FEATURE
A reader asks why publishers are obsessed with high-end graphics and complex storytelling when none of the most popular games have either.
I’m sure I’m not the only person that read the Newzoo report this week and had a bit of a shock. Not because it said anything that we didn’t already know, but because it was a real eye-opener to see all of gaming’s problems detailed in such neat little graphs.
There’s a lot to take from it, but one thing that struck me was the list of the most popular games on the various formats. Again, it’s not necessarily a surprise but what would you say are the similarities between the likes of Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Counter-Strike, League Of Legends, Apex Legends, Valorant, Rocket League, and Fall Guys?
They’re all live service games, sure, some of which have been around for a decade or more, but the other thing they have in common is that none of them have particularly impressive graphics – certainly not for a non-player looking in – and none of them have any real story elements.
I’m sure there’s a backstory to all the League Of Legends and Valorant avatars, and maybe some of the others, but like fighting games it’s only going to be hardcore fans that know about that and to everyone else the games are purely about the gameplay and nothing else.
Well, maybe not nothing else. There’re clearly some other similarities, with the top three games – Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft – all being based around customisation and creation. That’s not something you generally find in other games and yet despite it clearly being super popular it’s not something traditional publishers have really picked up on.
All the games are also very big on online communication and social interaction, which is a big part of why even some of them that are kind of mediocre to play, like Valorant, are super popular. Well, that and they’re free.
It’s always been said that graphics don’t matter, I’ve been reading that since the 90s, but to have it proven so obviously in these charts it makes me wonder why publishers are so obsessed with them. Why do they think people care? I mean, the 1% of ultra hardcore fans on the internet, that spend all day complaining about them, care but nobody else does.
The only reasonable excuse is that you need decent graphics to tell a story with a big triple-A but… none of these games have a story either. Spider-Man 2 isn’t in any of the top 10s, but Starfield is: a game with sub-par graphics and barely any story. I’m sure being free on Game Pass pushed it up the ratings further than it would’ve been but even then the only example of a single-player game, on anything but Switch, doesn’t rate highly for graphics or story.
Unfortunately, knowing all this doesn’t mean it’s easy to change. People may not care about graphics in general, but they’ve been conditioned to expect them when it comes to single-player games. And that 1% will complain even louder than ever if there’s any attempt to change that.
Publishers are to blame here, for letting the problem fester for so long, letting things get worse and worse in terms of the amount of time and money needed, and the quality of graphics to be expected. I think they think it may be too late to turn the oil tanker around, but they need to try because they’re spending all this money making games most people don’t even care that much about.
By reader Shoebop
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2024-04-07T04:34:30Z dg43tfdfdgfd