Your not making a picture you are making a simulation
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I agree that if a game doesn’t look nice, I rarely play it, but as a game dev you should concentrate on everything, scripting, gameplay, aesthetics, plus how hard is it to make a game look nice?
That’s okay. Most statistics are just made up anyway. 
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Looking at steam greenlight it seems to be bloody hard.
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99% seems high for gamers in general. Even here in these forums where people seem to be quite a bit more graphics focused than the average gamer (probably because so many Unity devs are artists where your average gamers are probably not) 99% seems a bit high. Maybe 90% to 95% of people here value game graphics more than anything else.
Again remember things are skewed around here. You can’t take the majority of what is said here or the interests shown here as representing the majority of gamers in general. Unless the gaming market you are targeting is mainly composed of artists or at the very least game devs in general. Same way the gaming markets are probably not composed mainly of software engineers.
Yeah, it’s because minecraft looks amazing that it’s so successful…
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It depends on who is looking at it and what’s important to them, right? I’ve seen many people say a big reason for Minecraft’s success was in fact due to the graphics. It just depends on the person really. Some people look at games through a lens of gameplay, others through a lens of graphics, others through a lens of movie-like experience and so forth.
Generally speaking no matter what the reality is when a person looks at a game they will explain its success or failure based on their own personal filters. If someone values graphics greatly and thinks only games with great graphics can succeed they will explain why Minecraft’s graphics are not bad or even just okay but in fact are very good, different, whatever and that was a big cause for the game’s popularity.
The one thing about Minecraft’s graphics that I think is off-putting to a degree is they have a sort of “little kid” vibe to them. It’s very deceptive considering the depth and scope of the gameplay and world. I’ve certainly seen many people say they never tried it because of the way it looked. Not because “it looked bad” but because they thought it was made for little kids.
Well what you can do is focus only on the game. Focus on making the best game possible and don’t think about the graphics beyond their ability to support the gameplay. Meaning being able to send the messages needed for the player to understand what the game is trying to communicate.
I believe it is still possible for a person to make an exceptional game with programmer art that is popular. But the game has to be truly exceptional in some way. Meaning a way that actually matters. Either the game needs to be very rich in detail, highly interactive, a huge size, etc. Basically the game should allow the player to experience something they normally have not been able to.
Minecraft did exactly this. While most developers were focusing on getting better and better graphics, audio, videos, voice acting and such for more of a movie-like experience for the same basic games the Minecraft developers in a sense sacrificed these things going in the opposite direction so they could focus on creating a richer more interactive game world. By using blocks as the basic building component it became possible for the player to build worlds of great size and easily destroy them.
When you really think about it the principle was not something brilliant as much as it was just common sense. A trade-off to make it possible to actually be able to complete the game and achieve their / his goals. Anyone could have taken this approach at any time but the majority were too caught up on pushing gaphics and such forward to even consider it. They probably believed a game with such “simple” graphics would flop.
I guess basically I see it like a game needs something to be exceptional. That something doesn’t need to be graphics.
99% of people dont care about playability they care about look
There is no evidence that this is true.
You’re not making a picture or a simulation. You are sharing an experience. Quite often, visuals play an important part because the vast majority of people have eyes.
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Well it’s because of how they fit with everything else. In a game everything is interconnected. I’d argue Undertale with a AAA photorealistic graphic style would be just plain bad.
It’s all about how everything fits together. Each element on its own must have some appeal by itself, but what really matters is how it fits with the other elements.
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99% Who said that ? lol
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And another thing is that 1% is 74 000 000 people.
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Okay lets play contrarian. No PR no sales, its probably better to go with bad looking mismatched art then it is to go with good looking art because with the former you get some views.
This game sold 10k units on steam
http://steamspy.com/app/369100
This game looks good but no PR, got greenlight in under week but only sold 1k units.
You compare 2 games in different genres, at different price points. And is steamspy even reliable? I’d consider that meaningless data. If it was all accurate, same genre, same price point, same time of release, then it would be anecdotal. If you can gather reliable data on a meaningful number of games, then some patterns might present themselves. Till then I don’t think broad generalizations help anyone.
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Then what are we even talking about.
@echologin I agree with the title of your thread, but not your first post. Games are not simulations of anything except what makes a pleasurable experience for your player.
But yes looks are everything when it comes to one-night (or 1 week) stands, which is probably as long as your average player will be interested in your game. I’m sick of hearing references to Minecraft, it is a completely unique game (LEGO blocks) and the voxel engine would not function with graphics even approaching the high-end graphics in games these days. Players trade off the graphics for the unique ability to play lego blocks. But two games side by side, which have the same gameplay but vastly different graphics quality, the worse one wouldn’t stand a cat’s chance in hell.
The first one has a pleasant hand-painted style and the graphics isn’t horrible, and it just looks like good simple fun. The other one looks like some abstract overloaded visual effects show and it isn’t really clear what the theme or purpose of the game is.
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I guess it was only the 1% that bought Thomas Was Alone then? I don’t know total sales, but it has over 6K reviews on Steam. Pretty good for a bunch of blocks and lines.
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It’s worth noting by the way that Steam’s peak concurrent users was only 12.5 million. They likely don’t have as many people using their platform as we might be inclined to think they have.
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Highly crafted, stylised games will always sell well. However from what I’ve seen they are much, much harder to make than your average game. A game like Thomas Was Alone needs to skillfully leverage player imaginations at every step and find a way to make the simple style not just pleasurable but an essential component to the enjoyability of the game. Again, it is very unique.
A good example of a high-risk project is your average indie FPS. These games often bring nothing that COD doesn’t already have, and haven’t got a chance of competing with COD graphics. They are destined to fail in competition with blockbuster graphics. Any game which directly competes with other games that are very similar but have better graphics is almost certain to fail. There’s a good reason why most successful indie games with sub-par graphics have a strong unique selling point, it is the only way to have a chance of securing the player’s interest.
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