Graphics? Who cares.

As long as video games have been around, their graphics have proven to be an important point of attention. Which is to be fucking boring about it; graphics, as a word, is one of the most mundane words in the entire English language, and does not accurately describe exactly the zeal that many game critics have put into describing and parading the visual achievements of game after game. Take a quick peak at nearly any preview, even of those games that are not particularly interesting visually and which are not even trying to accomplish that goal, and you'll find that talk about the game's visuals are often a centerpiece of at least a large part of the article.

Part of this may be a journalistic reality. Lets face it. Pictures look AWESOME, and obviously video games are a very graphical media, perhaps even more so then video itself. It is, after all, the visual sense which creates an interface between the player and the game. You cannot touch or feel a video game, and while you can hear it, the idea of navigating a virtual environment from sound is not one which has much – or any – popularity or possibility, since the realistic replication of sound is difficult to achieve without very expensive headphones or a similarly expensive surround-sound system. When hearing about a game that will soon be released, we want to know what it looks like because it is what we'll be looking at throughout most of the game. This is particularly true of fast paced action games like World in Conflict or Halo 3, which focus (despite their pretensions) very little on creating a compelling story and mostly on visually driven gameplay.

We're being fooled. For games, the phrase “graphics sell” is as common as the the phrase “sex sells” in relation virtually all other forms of media. It is held as a common-sense assumption, true as the sky being blue. But it is an assumption that is completely and entirely false.

Graphics have never sold well and have never been seen by consumers as a good reason to buy a game or console, a phenomena that is actually becoming more obvious as graphics in games improve. And there is no need for a complex explanation; all one needs to do is check out the top sellers for various video games and various consoles. You'll find quickly that there is no correlation at all between top-selling games and graphics; in addition, the most consistently successful developers, like Valve and Blizzard, are successful not because of their graphical prowess but because their lack of commitment to hardware killing graphics; Starcraft, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft, Half-Life, and Half-Life 2 are not graphically intensive titles, yet they are synonymous with success. Even more telling is the sales charts for consoles; the Wii continues to dominate, as does the Playstation 2, a fact that many want to sweep under the rug.

There are, of course, some games that do sell partly because of their graphics. The Elder Scrolls series comes to mind; Morrow-wind and Oblivion were both famously taxing games at time of their release, as was Daggerfall, though you wouldn't think of it now. Crysis is another example, and Gears of War (maybe). But while these games certainly look(ed) good, you'd be hard pressed to say they sold because they were pretty. There has never been another series of mainstream games that created the same gameplay experience you can find in the Elder Scrolls series, Gears of War popularized a cover system that will now probably become a model for many other shooters, and Crysis, like the not un-beautiful Far Cry before it, sells because of its free-form large-environment game that is not found in most action games (outside of shitty vehicle segments), a trend I wish would become more accepted, but may still be ignored due to its demands on hardware.

What we forget about is the game that are visually impressive but still sales flops. We forget about them because, more likely then not, we've never played them, or if we did, we found them to be forgettable. That is why they're flops. Any Quake game after Quake 2 can be filed in this category, as can the Unreal series (at this point, the games feel more like tech-demos for potential buyers of the latest Unreal game engine). Or what about Call of Juarez, a beautiful game, often used as a graphical benchmark, that no one will remember in two years?

So why do we still focus on graphics?

Its all about journalistic reality – as I talked about earlier.

You would be well advised to put on your tin-foils hats for this theory, but my belief is that the continued concern about visuals in games is largely the result of a journalistic 'conspiracy' that has been on-going since video games began. Conspiracy is, of course, to strong a word, because it implies that those participating came together and made plans to create a specific result. That isn't what I'm saying. What I am saying is that, planning or no, it is beneficial for corporate game journalism to insist on the importance of visuals, because their business is largely a visual one, based as much on having the latest screen-shots and exclusive game-play videos as anything else. And hell – we, as consumers of game journalism, are on on it too, because those screen shots and videos are what we respond to. It is a cycle; gaming journalism provides us with visuals because that is what we want, and its what we want because its some of the most compelling content gaming journalism provides.

I see no evidence that this cycle will be broken. So the phrase will likely exist. But here, in summary, his my suggestion; the next time the tired phrase comes up, stop and think about it. Stop and think about what it actually means. More likely then not, you'll realize that the visuals of whatever game you're excited to play are far less important than your gut may want you to believe.