What makes the game what it is? 50% code 50% visual design? I think this can be a interesting topic, with many different opinions. I have 20 years in graphical design and 3D experience, but only 10 years in C++ and C sharp development. For my projects i do both design and code. Shader development is also code, lots of visual experience is pure code. For me graphics is easy, but making the best code architecture is always a harder challenge, because it can become very complicated. A 3D model can also be complicated, it has lots of mesh weight that effects how your bones effect your mesh, how cloth wraps. Etc. How important is the object oriented concept? Does it impact how the game plays and look? Or is it just pure visual content?
Narrative.
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The question is pretty vague, but I think the way a game is perceived by the player is largely due to intangibles, how well the code (the way things work) and visual design(the way things look/feel) provide the things that make up a complete experience will define how the player perceives it as a whole.
Just off the top of my head:
Aesthetics- how well interacting with the game communicates a feeling, time and place.
Immersion- how well a game creates a cohesive whole to interact with. (ie. a character that vaults a waist-high wall when the player pushes forward to move into it. If the character stops on collision with the wall, it breaks immersion, as a real person would jump the wall to continue in that direction.)
Player agency- the feeling that the playerâs choices/actions have weight in the game.
Pacing- the rate of progression in the game doesnât feel rushed/padded.
Tension/Release cycle- the interest curve flows naturally through states of lower and higher tension.
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Like you said, there will be a lot of different opinions on this.
Although I appreciate just raw graphics quality as far as âhey that looks greatâ and think most folks do I tend to look past that to ânow does it play like crap?â. To me graphics quality beyond the minimum is just a âsurfaceâ thing that tells me absolutely nothing about whether a game is good or bad. All it tells me is they put a lot of effort and time into the graphics. Iâve seen this scenario (exceptional graphics, sucky game) so many times over the years.
Recent (2010 and on) examples would be things like:
Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter
This was widely praised for its graphics and criticized for its very confusing gameplay and also bugs.
The Fighter Within
I think many folks around here will disagree with this but I will write it out anyway. Graphics quality has very little to do with how good a game is. Graphics period on the other hand are very important. Obviously games need graphics and/or audio to provide feedback (describing the environment, result of the player performing actions, receiving damage, etc).
Exceptional graphics can be enjoyable to look at it but I donât play games to look at the graphics. And you can have the most exceptional graphics possible and still the graphics will fail on what they are really actually required in a game to do: provide great feedback. The purpose of graphics is not to look the best they possibly can. That is a shallow goal.
The purpose of graphics (and audio) is to provide feedback on what is going on in the game. This is why you can have games with very primitive graphics be far more meaningful in the context of the game than super fancy graphics are in other games. Although they may look simplistic or even âbadâ they succeed on providing the vital feedback. History is filled with numerous examples of people being so focused on achieving exceptional graphics quality (for the time) and failing on every other very important piece that would have turned a game that sucks into an exceptional game.
I donât think using OO or any other specific coding paradigm is necessary. Itâs more about just doing a decent job on everything and a very good job on the important things (overall design, controls, collision detection, etc). Besides design these are definitely programming concerns.
Whether you use pure procedural programming in C or the latest greatest OO and Component Based Design is simply a personal choice of programming style. The important thing is to âcode it rightâ regardless of which approach you take. And that is driven more by the design / engineering aspect.
TLDR: You can have superb visuals in a terrible game. You can have a superb game with terrible visuals. The one game would be rated terrible all around except for graphics and the other game would be rated superb all around except for graphics.
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If you want my opinion, itâs actually 30% Narrative design, 30% Visual design, 30% coding and 10% sole idea. If even one of these lacks professionalism, the game dies.
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I personally look for good mechanics and lots of discovery, but games are so open that there is no single answer.
Last of Us had a great story with a chilling ending which made me overlook the fact that I was sick of playing the actual gameplay by the end.
I think, that right people and good team are these components needed to make a great game.
You can try to make the same project by two different teams, using the same architecture, design and graphics. I believe, eventually you wonât get 2 great games (I even not sure whether you got 1 great game).
You asked what makes a game great, I agree with @frosted , I think narrative is what elevates it beyond merely âvery goodâ. All the other things, such as mechanics, visuals, sound, they all take a game from âcrappyâ to âvery goodâ but to make it special to a player it needs to tell them a story they donât forget.
I got this. Ahem
A great game is one that engages its target audience in a way that is satisfactory for both the developers and said audience.
The key here, is target audience. Far too often the target audience is ignored and itâs likely the single most important aspect of game design.
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The question is what makes it engage the audience. I think we can all agree that a game needs to engage the audience.
It depends on the target audience. Some people are satisfied with deep complex narratives. Others enjoy solving puzzles, and others enjoy fast paced adrenaline games. Thatâs the whole thing though isnât it? How do I engage my target audience? Thereâs no one answer to this question, ever.
How do you engage children?
How do you engage the 18-49?
How do you engage women?
How do you engage men?
All of those will likely have, on average, different answers. But then the fun part is that youâll find major overlap in ever category. Some people donât care about the story and they want a rich character building experience. Other people canât stand numbers and just want a deep story. Other people want to solve puzzles and enjoy seeing wonderful aesthetics and sounds to accompany them.
First identify your target audience, and then figure out what engages them.
Me personally, graphic fidelity is huge. If the game visuals blow my mind I can overlook bad narrative and boring play.
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What makes a game âgreatâ to a particular person at a particular time is due to the emotional impact it has. Emotional impact doesnât have to be about broad emotions like happiness or sadness, it can simply mean that thereâs a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling of tension/danger, a feeling of being transported to another world, or any number of things.
The thrill of outwitting someone (or the tension of being outwitted) in chess is a type of emotion.
Doom isnât remembered for its gripping narrative. It was about smooth controls, fast movement, and the âfeelâ of firing a weapon with the appropriate audio, visuals, and reaction of enemies getting hit. It was a visceral experience.
Of course tons of games tap into a more traditional narrative, but thatâs just a piece of the puzzle. A single sound effect or music cue alone could be enough to trigger an emotion in certain people. For others the same audio could have no effect whatsoever.
Most people had an emotional reaction to the narrative in The Last of Us. It did nothing to others who could not see beyond the gameplay mechanics. So even a âgreatâ game is only great to a portion of the general game playing population.
Unfortunately thereâs no formula for making a great game, and of course everybody doesnât have the same emotional experience with any particular title anyway. You canât necessarily just pull out one aspect of a game and say âthatâs the secret ingredient.â
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the core mechanics and core loop
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I like games without bugs, without flaws, without anything that breaks the immersion.
narrative? it depends, I am not really into games that act as an interactive movie or something but yeah if there is narration - it must be consistent.
graphics? a unique, lovely style please and most importantly: consistent
A great game? a consistent, fun experience. something that just works and if it promises me something from the beginning, it shouldnât feel ârushedâ in the end.
That experience-thing is the reason why most people love and appreciate macs and âŚ(just) work with PCs (if some other evil people force them to.) 
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Depends on the person and the genre. I could list a few: Turtles in time, Arkham City, Goldeneye, Hitman Go, Xenosaga, FF7, Zelda64 then its the niche games that the AAA companies dont cover Assault Android Cactus, Hotline Miami, Enter the Gungeon. Just make a good fun product
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Its really great to hear so many opinions. If you want to put it in to a rating system from 1-10. Example:
Graphics : 7
Narrative: 4
Code and mechanics: 10
etc.
Its natural that the type of game will influence this thingsâŚAnd ofc target audience, age and gender.
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I do agree with @Ironmax , because I believe playing the game mechanics or game tools comes first. Then, graphics comes second, because most indie game does not need AAA graphics. Then Narrative comes last, because a lot of the game narrative is less important or less needed.
Overall I guess what makes a great game is all about creating a User Experience , because I believe the user experience is our main goal.
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In order for a game to be great everything has to âgreatâ. Sacrificing one for another just highlights the flaws in the inferior part of the product. You may not be able to make everything at awesome quality but you can make sure there is not a vast gulf between the sound and the graphics as an example. A âGreat Gameâ IMO is when all parts of the game add together to help define a clear, engaging experience. This experience must closely linked to what people expect of the genre of the game in question but not at the expense of the overall quality. If you can easily find flaws in parts of a game it is incredibly hard to call it a âGreat Gameâ, even if it does do all the things expected of the type of game in question great.
Graphics as an example is very important to FPS. This is due the fact that when FPS were in there heyday, Graphical Technology was growing at an outstanding rate and biggest strength of the FP Camera is immersion in the world. Which of course Graphics play a huge part in. However a FPS with amazing graphics but repetitive, boring gameplay, shonky sound and a canned story will not be a great game.It is highly likely it wont even be a good game. You need to focus on the strengths of the genre without sacrificing too much from everything else.
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