How and why did we become so obsessed with graphics?

[freeagent]

We didn’t. But fanboys who spend way too much money on their GPUs feel the need to defend every aspect of their purchase, even if it means putting down the other guy because he bought a competitors product. Pretty dumb if you ask me.

 

[lowrider_05]

"Just my Opinion on this matter"

I think this all came along with PC Gaming becoming more mainstream. The earlier enthusiasts knew about the limitations from one brand over another and accepted it. Also in many but not all 10+ Year old games, the graphics techniques were almost the same so a new game wasn´t sold on this one new feature.

 

[Sithaer]

No idea, I can only share my personal experience/view on this.

I've grew up with budget-mid range hardware since thats all my family and then later on myself could afford and thats still the case till this day so its what I'm used to.
For a long time I never even bothered with what the ingame settings are and just fired up my games and gamed on.

I've only started to care about such stuff after I've built my first own PC in 2008 after my high school graduation with a 8800 GT in it.
Thats when I could finally play current-ish games on fairly high/maxed settings but even then it wasn't that important to me and I was also playing older games too with dated graphics.

Don't get me wrong I do like some nice graphics 'heck I even like RT' + had a modded Oblivion/Skyrim for years on my PC but if the core game is not interesting to me then I don't care what graphics it has I'm not playing it or at most use it as a benchmark tool.

For example I've put around 800 hours into Borderlands 3 with my RX 570 on a mix of medium-high settings and on avearge 50 FPS with some drops when things heated up in end game content and that was perfectly enjoyable for me. '40-75 Hz Freesync monitor so that did help'
Now with my 3060 Ti I can max that game out with no real drops and the game feels/plays all the same to me and it offers me the same fun.

Just because I can't max a game out or play at high refresh/resolution or whatever it doesn't matter to me cause at the end of the day we are playing the same game one way or another.
What did work for me personally is switching to an Ultrawide monitor, I know its not everyone's cup of tea but its what gave me the biggest immersion upgrade in the past years.

 

[sLowEnd]

The spectacle of ever increasing visual complexity is neat, but ultimately it’s the gameplay and writing that dictates whether or not I end up getting absorbed into a game.

 

[pavle]

Simple, because there's no real story anymore in these new games and of course, there's always the Shiny™ factor.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

That's actually a good question, few ideas:

- It is easier to show a beautiful game than gameplay or story.
- Marketing e.g. nVidia paid handsomely to add the useless RT.
- More gamers, and lots of them don't care about how deep the games are but how shinny they are, a bit like films now.

 

[Kapone33]

Simple, because there's no real story anymore in these new games and of course, there's always the Shiny™ factor.

Everspace 2 had a pretty good story and so did Outriders.

 

[Chry]

The spectacle of ever increasing visual complexity

Just a tiny correction - the visual complexity (in the sense of detailedness) has not necessarily improved over the years. Very high resolution textures do not necessarily have that much attention given to each pixel. And in old games very low resolution textures sometimes had been basically handcrafted to push the maximum out of the poor graphics that were. In the end the complexity depends on how much of artist's touch and thoughtfulness is in there. Mass produced grass-spraying brush everywhere is not much complexity compared to some old game's handcrafter 2D foliage that had artist's signature in each and every pixel. I guess it's a philosophical question of sorts.

- More gamers, and lots of them don't care about how deep the games are but how shinny they are, a bit like films now.

I think this plays a huge role actually.
Before, computers were used mostly by the rich and/or educated people almost exclusively. Now they they are used by the masses. The masses want bread and games, so to speak, not much sophistication, so the industry naturally tries to meet that demand.

 

[Eskimonster]

My first thought is this forum may be a bit biased /s, nxt thing on my mind is that steam survey says 1060 is the most used card.
Me personally uses a 1080, so i would not count me in as specially obsessed with GPU.

 

[AsRock]

Very true!

But if we assume that we all agree on this, then why do games get marketed by graphics features? I mean, we get trailers and screenshots showing the pretty reflections and high-tech blah-blah thingies by courtesy of <insert any GPU design company here>, and barely any gameplay most of the time. We also get articles stating that "X game will support XYZ GPU feature" like our lives depended on it.

I partly believe it's due to dev's not being able to freely express them self's in worry it might offend some people because today people are not free to speak their minds, mainly goes for the larger company's.

The other is that people like to see improvements were you cannot advertise story without possibly breaking the surprise that would of been. Like what if you did not know the 2 actors were in say Cyberpunk and what a total surprise it would of been if you just did not know when you started to play the game, if you did not hear some of the witty or what ever line's before playing.

Maybe with longer story game it's possible but still giving stuff away and actually spoiling the fun in the end.

Like turn based games with guns like commando's how used to be way back then for example play JA3 and hopefully you have not watched any video's on the game and end up having fun with it.

It is why i have not watched any video's to the next AC because it will only spoil it to some degree, i just know the main character and the games like Origins, that's all i want to know for the most part. Main problem is if you can trust company's like UBISoft which still today what they did back with Ghost Recon and what they promised and then came out with GRAW which was a totally different game that the community were asking for.

How i get around that is to buy 1 or more years later, CDPR used to have a respect for them but showing there as back as others in my eye's saved me $30, i just knew i be playing it and just waiting until a more positive vibe was happening without spoiling the game.

As always looks mean more to people, more so the younger people. People cry about any thing these days and some just join in for the sake of it.

People like a pretty face, it is really why people need to mellow out and stop being controlled about having humor.

Don't like it F off and do some thing else and stop f ing with others enjoy as they not harming you.

 

[Jacky_BEL]

E-sports

More realism in competitive games like shooters or racing , for special effects and damage and so on.
Better graphics can give an advantage here, this becomes important when you can win prizes in these e-sport competitions.
So the "pro" players will invest in better graphics , to get to the top.
Whereas before games were much more like arcade style games for fun.

And for (flight) simulation games ofcourse.

 

[freeagent]

It’s the same thing that draws people to VLT’s..

Those shiny, flashy, spinny lights

 

[Solaris17]

Meh I don’t really see this as complex at all?

Graphics look good.

People play old game remasters because they are playing there memories not the game.

People are at each others throats because well they aren’t really mature.

We didn’t. But fanboys who spend way too much money on their GPUs feel the need to defend every aspect of their purchase, even if it means putting down the other guy because he bought a competitors product. Pretty dumb if you ask me.

This really isn’t appropriate is it? Who’s to say what too much is? If anything this kind of comment is what ignites these arguments. You don’t need to be a “fanboy” of anything to buy a card you really like. Not to mention the circumstances in that purchase are invisible to you the viewer. Someone with a 7900XTX could be coming off AGP for all you know.

Do better with your bias.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

Ever since games have been made, developers (of the software and the hardware) have been pushing and competing for whoever can have "better" graphics. It has always been the case.

There are of course exceptions where game developers (or Nintendo consoles) have just said "you know what? that's too hard. We're going to focus on "fun" instead". So you end up with Valheim, Battlebit Remastered, Wii, etc.

Other than those outliers, I think about games like CoD4:MW that really made a huge jump in visual fidelity, the Battlefield series that pushed destruction and graphics with every title (ray tracing in BF:V was really good at the time...sad that they've regressed since then), Crysis, even if you go farther back to when they thought Turok or Tomb Raider had the best graphics ever (there are of course older examples yet).

What I find funny about your post is the current state of games. Competitive FPS games have pushed frame rate and response time over everything else and the gaming community at large has seemingly decided they want 120FPS on potato hardware no matter what the graphics settings are. This has caused quite a bit of regression in graphics quality and has been exacerbated by bloat in game engines and inefficient game development. I'm not suggesting game dev is easy, I'm just saying the focus has shifted and that has been more to the detriment of graphics than to the enhancement. Back to Battlefield, 2042 was supposed to be on a new version of Frostbite, but they couldn't get it to work right so it's on some half-level where they can't even get their story right about what the engine is, it doesn't have ray tracing (other than ambient occlusion), they didn't do photogrammetry so the textures look like trash compared to previous titles and the game still has ran like garbage...so what happened? I think answering that would derail this thread lol.

I think overall, many gamers have looked at Ray Tracing and path tracing as the next step of improving graphics and it is exciting, but every time a dev includes it, half the community is now mad they can't max out the settings on affordable hardware. I remember BF2 bringing most hardware to its knees and the whole benefit of PC gaming is that you can tune the settings to run on your particular hardware. Not everyone can run maximum settings...and that's ok (or it should be). This is what allowed game developers and hardware companies to keep pushing graphics quality and hardware capabilities. Also, newer game engines with newer graphical capabilities allow more creativity and more possibilities in game development.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I don't even see the visual quality thing as gaming, it's life and progress in general, take TV's for example, a few years back HD was a thing, then 4k .... OLED, people want visual clarity, phone screen resolutions, tablets etc, it's been moving in that direction for years, why would gaming be any different. I mean when 4k TV's first came out in the UK people were flocking to the stores to get this new tech, not even thinking that there was, at the time little to no 4k source material to watch

 

[thesmokingman]

Looks matter?

 

[neatfeatguy]

I think the issue really came to focus when consoles - specifically the Xbox 360 and PS3 - were able to show they can push decent graphics and nip at the heels of mid ranged gaming PCs.

Get a console for $400-500 that gives you graphic quality of a gaming PC that could run you a few hundred dollars more? Sign me up (well, not me, I fell out of the console gaming at the PS3 era)! Ever since then it's been what's pushing graphics as needing to be top end and a "look what I can do" mentality from these manufacturer & developers.

Granted, better graphics has always been a thing otherwise you'd still be playing Atari 2600 quality games. Going from 8bit (NES) to 16bit (SNES) was mind blowing! The graphic improvements were amazing. Around these times you'd be hitting up the arcade and seeing some of the cool stuff coming out and there it was (for me at least) Virtua Fighter in all it's 32bit glory! Freaking amazing!

Then as you see progression in the arcade end of gaming, consoles were struggling to keep up with the SNES/Genesis era. SEGA put out the 32X adapter for the Genesis to allow you to play 32bit games and with my hard earned money from paper routes and mowing lawns in the summer and shoveling in the winter, I picked up the 32X adapter and a copy of Virtura Fighter. It didn't look as good as the arcade version, but still, it was fun to have at home.

Eventually we saw the likes of 64bit action on consoles, such as the N64, and now you were bringing home console games that look and run as good as a lot of the arcade games. Arcade games were starting to fall to the wayside as consoles were becoming a lot more main stream and offer similar performance. Why drive out of the way to spend 25 or or 50 cents for every credit when you can just own the games at home?

I never really started to pay attention to graphics when gaming at home and have them play an integral part in gaming until people started boasting about how good games looked on the 360. Gears of War looks so amazing! I enjoyed Gears of War, playing it coop with my brother. I was excited to see MS releasing it on PC (plus adding a whole new level). I would play it on my own and have fun so I got a copy (took some .ini tweaking to get it to play well with a quad core CPU and SLI) and once it was running smooth with all the graphic settings maxed out, the game looked so much better over what the pathetic 360 could do. I told my brother the PC version looks way better than the console and he didn't believe me. He brought over his 360 and we set them up side by side and he couldn't believe how much better the PC version looked. I had to drop all the settings down to medium on my PC to make it look like the 360 version. I think I broke his love for console gaming after that, he got into PC gaming more and that's all he does now for gaming.

With consoles coming around and constantly nipping at the heels of PC gaming systems, there has been a drive out there to continue to push hardware/software for "better graphics" to help sell merchandise. People see it, think they can't live without it and will pay to have it. Now Ray Tracing has become the big thing over the past handful of years that's the current focus and Nvidia is working hard to do whatever they can to keep it at the forefront - they have many people thinking if you can't run RT then you ain't a gamer!

I just want a game that runs well, has good voice acting, a good story and good controls/gameplay. Fancy graphics are not on my list of wants in a game.

 

[xtreemchaos]

two words "digital evolution" i think sums it up i think "the doctor to me i shouldn't" .

 

[Espionage724]

Why are we so obsessed with graphics that we pay huge amounts of money for pretty, but soulless games and remakes of the same game that we already own?

I bought Diablo II Resurrected even though I owned D2 and played it for years I bought it mostly for the graphics, somewhat for the nostliga, and had minor interest in the controller support. I haven't played it anywhere near as-much as I thought I would, but made it through Acts 1-4 completely with the Resurrected graphics and enjoyed it and plan on getting back into it one of these days.

I also have no doubt D2R will continue to be supported for years to come and have a multiplayer backing. And D2R has virtually infinite amounts of things to do and work towards; I was pretty confident in my purchase being worthwhile for a good while and still am content with it today!

There are few games I would consider buying "again" like this, and really I can't think of any other ones off the top of my head aside from D2. I played SWBF2 a lot on PS2, but had no interest in it when it was remade some time ago. I also liked GTA San Andreas on PS2, but haven't considered the remakes or even any real interest in buying it again. Skyrim I only had the privilege of buying twice, and ended up barely playing it on X360 and found it too much a PITA to set-up for PCVR. But Diablo II Resurrected was barely a consideration and I pre-ordered it as soon as I was able

As I wrote that, I realized I also bought AoE2 DE It's possible I have some other remake games in my library, but nothing quite compares to D2 vs D2R for me. If another game ever caught my eye, it needs to be $40 or less (or half of whatever retail games go for), and it needs to run on Linux either native or just with Wine Staging (no Proton, patches, or other wacky stuff).

 

[R-T-B]

Firstly, this is not an AMD vs Nvidia thread.
Secondly, this is not an FSR vs DLSS thread.
Thirdly, this is not an "RT is sooo awesome, woaoah!" thread.

Now that the (to me) obvious is out of the way, let me continue with some observations.

• A lot of (especially AAA) games are being marketed by their graphics these days, like there's not a lot behind it (and a lot of times there really isn't).
• A lot of (even not so old) games are being remade with slightly upgraded graphics, and they seem to be popular for some reason.
• There's way too much fighting in the online community over which graphical feature is important, and what one should or shouldn't use. Some people really seem to make it a crusade for some reason.

The question is simple: why?
Why are we so obsessed with graphics that we pay huge amounts of money for pretty, but soulless games and remakes of the same game that we already own?
Why do we jump at each other's throats when someone appears to have different preferences when it comes to graphical features? Why is it so hard to peacefully coexist?
Also: when did it all start and how?

I think of graphics as icing on a cake. They can make an already good product better but they can't fix a shit game.

Fortunately games exist that ARE good, both with and without icing on top.

We didn’t. But fanboys who spend way too much money on their GPUs feel the need to defend every aspect of their purchase, even if it means putting down the other guy because he bought a competitors product. Pretty dumb if you ask me.

Some do. I like my purchase but I never put anyone down for sure. I buy it more to ensure things run well than to worry about next gen pretties.

 

[r9]

When you start with something like pong there is not much to say really.
Went from monochrome to color to more colors to scrolling screens to 3d etc ...
From being there from day 1 really it's really amazing to see the progress.
With that said things have slowed down in the recent years the graphics improvements are not what it used to be like from dx7 to dx9 to dx10. Every new version brought distinctive new eye candy something wasn't possible before.
Now there are older games that I couldn't tell that they were released years ago like Mass Effect Andromeda for example released 2017 you could totally fool me that was just released.
On the other side my son for example nothing amazes him he takes everything for granted.
Live VR for example for him is just thing that you put on and now you are in 3d world in his mind its VR so what do you expect.

 

[R-T-B]

When you start with something like pong there is not much to say really.

To be fair original pongs gameplay isn't exactly a gold standard either. It didn't even have a cool story like space invaders, lol.

Still, I know what you mean. There is a point where lack of graphics can become detrimental, but few games fall this far anymore. And back when pong came out of course it was revolutionary. Hard to remember now, but yeah.

 

[Vayra86]

Question is simple: why?
Why are we so obsessed with graphics that we pay huge amounts of money for pretty, but soulless games and remakes of the same game that we already own?
Why do we jump at each other's throats when someone appears to have different preferences when it comes to graphical features? Why is it so hard to peacefully coexist?
Also: when did it all start and how?

Games hold that promise of a world you haven't seen yet. Escapism. Its never been different and I don't think it matters how bad the games are - the only thing we really trip over is when they simply crash, because that kills our escapism. Another huge factor in that quest into the unknown is how it tickles human curiosity. Its an instinct. A game is like a black box, with a foil around it inviting us to find what's inside. The fact we can't see or grasp it, makes us want to get into it. We want to learn to move around in these new worlds, it speaks to us like learning how to walk. And the hardware? The hardware is like the healthy breakfast before going out on that expedition. More breakfast more better!

I mean way back when the battle was over how many colors you could have on screen. We still cared. A lot. But we paid through the nose back then for what? Two-and-a-half playable game, of extremely limited scope, looking butt ugly and really only with a lot of fantasy could you make out what happened. The amount of absolute junk getting released at that time wasn't much different, in a relative sense, I think. It just takes a lot of talent to really create something great.

It happens with all technological progress. It seems to take us over, or part of us. Technology can create a world that pushes all the right psychological buttons.

As for the peaceful coexistance, that's another topic entirely, but it similarly ties into human instinct/characteristics and how we were raised, plus, of course, The Internet, which is the big equalizer lowering us all to the level of politicians

 

[pavle]

Everspace 2 had a pretty good story and so did Outriders.

That's good, I'm glad there's still anything well made out there.

 

[Vayra86]

Just a tiny correction - the visual complexity (in the sense of detailedness) has not necessarily improved over the years. Very high resolution textures do not necessarily have that much attention given to each pixel. And in old games very low resolution textures sometimes had been basically handcrafted to push the maximum out of the poor graphics that were. In the end the complexity depends on how much of artist's touch and thoughtfulness is in there. Mass produced grass-spraying brush everywhere is not much complexity compared to some old game's handcrafter 2D foliage that had artist's signature in each and every pixel. I guess it's a philosophical question of sorts.

So much this. Talent vs automation. I know I appreciate talent a thousand times more. There are also games that have put great talent to work on automation. Those are the games that have great gameplay systems - Satisfactory and the like, is like the epitome of it. There is a lot of game in there, and your automation in the game is really a creative work. But even a game like Grim Dawn or Diablo, that craft systems that work, scale, and allow the player to get creative with it, kind of have that spirit. Talent in games goes beyond graphics; the best games marry graphics with their gameplay systems seamlessly, the two become more than the sum of their parts.

Everspace 2 had a pretty good story and so did Outriders.

No way... Outriders? You have got to be kidding. My cringe level was at maximum, anyway lol