Is accessibility more important than graphics?

It's a common issue for all game designers: should we make the best looking game on the market, or should we sacrifice glamour and style for a less CPU-GPU intensive result? When the designer chooses style over accessibility, there are often many sales that result simply from the sheer gorgeousness of the game, and many customers and reviewers applaud the designer's work. However, at the other end of the spectrum, when a designer chooses accessibility over graphics, more players can access and play their game, leading to many sales also. So, with this in mind, what are your opinions? Do you believe that gorgeous graphics are more important, or do you believe that none of your possible players should be left out from the experience? Do you believe that graphics should be a requirement for this day and age, or do you believe that the less fortunate should also be accepted into the various communities that we create? What about mobile? Leave your responses below.
Examples of popular graphics-heavy games:

1. The Witcher 3
2. Battlefield 4
3. Grand Theft Auto V
4. Arma III

Examples of popular heavily-accessible games:

1. Minecraft
2. Terraria
3. Angry Birds
4. Undertale

 

Good question. My friends asked me this before actually.
I think each style has its own market. Some player love to play with realistic graphic.
Some player just love to enjoy the game-play and almost ignore the graphic. Or both.

For players. There are basically 2 types of players: Casual & Hardcore.
Both type of players have different reason for playing games. Basically.
Casual gamer: When waiting people. Kill time. Mind refreshing. Relax.
Hardcore gamer: Has (extra) goals. Love to challenge. Sometimes play graphic.
If your game is able to support from casual to hardcore gamer. It's a plus.

Another secret is. Player always love multi-player / online since able to play with others.
Or include a level creation tools which can share their own creation online with others.

For me. I love playing games with unique game-play which no people did before.
As well as unique graphic. Realistic is not a point to catch my eye because everywhere is realistic.
I think game-play is more important because it's a game. I just go watch movie for realistic stuffs.
Nothing right or wrong. This is just my personal opinion.

For sales. I think it's not related to the game content but promotion strategy.
Sometimes you will notice some common games but lots of people knew it.
At the same times. Some games are good but not much people knew it.
Supercell spent several million dollars for just doing marketing hence everybody know them.

That's it. Hope this can help you out something.

 

I would only consider making graphics heavy games on consoles where everyone can acess it. I think alianating fans because they cant affoard a gaming computer is stupid.

 

Graphics is not about computational power,it's about the artistic flair and identity.

 

Fair enough, and I get your point. Some games such as Okami and Grim Fandango can pull this off to a great extent, however I was referring more toward modernized graphics, such as having higher LOD in a scene at a given time, or having higher texture resolution. Although, again, I do get your point. Thank you for posting your opinion, it is greatly appreciated (= I also love it when games come out which don't have to have the BEST graphics in the world, but when their style shines through.

 

Thank you for the post! And yes, I completely agree with what you are saying. I also believe honestly that it depends on the type of game. For example, Call Of Duty and Battlefield have clearly taken a more realistic tone than WInd Waker or Littlebigplanet 2, simply because the substance is more gritty and brutal than anything offered from The Legend Of Zelda or Media Molecule. And I also agree that marketing has a lot to do with it, and sadly, some indie games are lost in the sea of games because marketing isn't a thing that the studio can afford to do. )':
However, I personally believe that if it comes down to a choice that a studio has to make on whether to choose graphics or gameplay/accessibility, the studio should choose gameplay or accessibility. My reasoning is that there are some really good games released recently which are amazing at what they do and have minimal graphics (Project Reality has been around for a while, but is a nice example. Another is Minecraft), and at the same time some games are being released that look glorious but fall short on gameplay. (The Order: 1886 is a sobering reminder of this...)
Overall, as said before, I think it's still up to the type of game you're trying to make. Some games can pull off both - Journey is an excellent example of that. Most can't. I think as a whole, all game designers should try to make games as good looking as possible, but let the lowest graphics settings still be playable on older PCs or consoles. (= Again, thank you for responding. And very nice DeviantArt.

 

Agreed, although not on everything. (= I do agree that games should be excellent looking on consoles due to the fact that everyone has the same gear, however I do not believe that games on the PC should look inherently bad so that everyone can play. I think there's a way that the lowest graphics settings can be ran on a toaster, and the highest require a hardcore gaming rig to play, and that all of us game designers should strive for that. (=

 

I think this question really answers itself - though I do like the discussion and I'm a biased artist.
If a game is ulgy - it doesn't matter how many places it can be accessed from. Fewer people will buy it - regardless where it is accessible from.
If the game is pretty - it will sell more - as long as the game play is good - everything else is equal to the ugly game. Graphics sell - and so does accessibility.
However graphics is a generic term - visually appealing games can be high poly, low poly, stylistically odd, stylistically beautiful, 2D or 3D, post processed to death or have no lighting and post effects at all.
But if it's not visually pleasing it's not going to sell - as many as it would if it was.

Now that I think about it more -
Honestly I don't think this can be measured correctly - we can measure higher fidelity graphics and releasing later, or lower fidelity and releasing sooner.
Accessible from one type of device and releasing sooner, or accessible from numerous devices and releasing later.
Interesting discussion.

 

If that were the only two choices I would agree. But the choices are not limited like that, you are leaving out graphics and gameplay over accessibility. I choose that - to be accessible on only one device - the one I have.

 

I think you're right... this is quite a hard thing to measure, and I do think that it would be interesting to see a study done on just this topic alone.
Not sure if this is an accurate, unbiased source, but I'll go ahead and link it: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/75-Gamers-Say-Graphics-Do-Matter-Purchasing-Game-64659.html

 

That is so true also! There are many paths we can choose as game designers and artists, and each one is different, often sacrificing one thing for another. Graphics and gameplay can work together well, at cost to accessibility. I want to say Arma, but many don't quite like the gameplay of that... more like Battlefield these days. But thank you for your two cents, I never thought of it like that!

 

I don't think you got what I said
Artistic flair isn't about "stylized" or "simplified" graphism, you can be graphic intensive and have heavy realistic rendering and still be a visual mess or an artistic achievement, see Nolan's batman vs Burton's, and I won't talk about schumacher's. I mean look at mirror's edge vs uncharted or vs metal gear solid 5 vs final fantasy 15. There is a lot in how to control the visual to create mood and atmosphere, all sorts of mood and atmosphere. Stylized, cartoony, realism or whatever is less important than just that.

 

I want all the pretties. None of this box rubbish.

 

True also, and sorry for not getting it The feel of each game also does determine the graphical fidelity of the piece, as you say. I mean, Monstrum wouldn't be Monstrum without the creepy banging about the ship, and Final Fantasy wouldn't be Final Fantasy without the characters and the feelings they evoke. Even with realistic rendering and stuff, I see many games these days that fail to really capture any feeling or emotion in the player, which, sadly, is a big waste of VRAM. But I'm glad that there's other people that realize that there's more to graphics than just the MOST realistic, or the MOST heavily dense forest. There's the feeling that the game is aiming to evoke. And I also hope that more game designers will realize that for themselves so that games can come with a heavy atmospheric impact and can amount to more than just "the greatest lighting effects". While those are great, I agree that there needs to be a purpose behind them.

 

I want to precise this thought, great graphism is about connection.

if the audience connect to your proposition you win. Dank maymay, trollface, etc ... aren't popular because they are pretty but because they propose somthing you can immediatly connect to.

The other way around is also possible, association with a strong value proposition (minecraft) will transform the graphism into the symbol to connect to that proposition.

It's a two way street.

 

If the game developers are competent and still want a really pretty game they should make it optional to have heavy graphics. Making it so more people can play it anyway but you will only get the full experience with an expensive computer, which is fair. Only making it so gaming computers can play the game is just silly.

 

This is true wisdom, right here.

 

TO do that they would need to bake lightmap in vertex again, I'm not sure they are ready to do that, to have their game not look crap when you remove shadow

 

Eh, not necessarily. I was thinking more along the lines of HDR suncones and HD normal maps, with light probes on almost every reflective surface and overkill shadow resolution. But you are right, it would be pretty hard to make a game have extremely good lighting without baking, although a few decent ones are out there. (Grand Theft Auto V has day and night cycle, so it's got realtime illumination). Personally, I think that suncones are overused these days though. While they look pretty on some games, on some they're just too bright and just look plain silly (AHEM Battlefield 3 & 4). I personally would like to see more games use proper suncones that don't take up the whole screen and blind people upon looking at them. Your thoughts on suncones?

 

I kind of go for the two. The first time players starts my games, all settings are set to lowest settings available on the Unity Engine and all post process and other graphics settings disabled. Then I let people tweak nearly any setting they want to adjust the game to their liking and to their PC performances. For example, I put some sliders to adjust texture resolution from Native to Eighth Res. I've done the same for a rework of one of my games. I use the Water shader given in the standard assets with real-time reflections activated. I've put a slider to choose the reflections resolution, from around low end 128x128 to ultra high end PC killer 8192x8192 real time reflection texture. I've done the same for the HDR settings on the camera. The player got a PC that support HDR rendering and some post treatement, and want to use color correction and tone mapping ? It can activate the HDR. He doesn't like the effect or the PC doesn't support HDR ? No problem, it's disabled by default.

Digital Extremes has done that for their beta of Warframe, you can nearly tweak any settings on the Evolution Engine. Of course some doesn't work if you don't activate others, but it gives you a really good control on the quality the game can achieve and to the player to adujst depending on his liking and PC specs.

The major drawback of that is your option menu. It can become crownded of controls that may be hard to understand and you will have a pretty bad time to code it. I remember I needed one full week to code an option menu with so many settings available...

 

True, that's basically what I do also.