What are game developers doing?

Developers go where the money is ... CONSOLES. Piracy is lower and profits are significantly better. Some of us buying games for pc suffer because of the majority.90% them concentrate on graphics and the WOW effect. Most of the story lines and game play suck more than a vampire .

Quote:

I agree Crysis is a work of art but it has everything else. Storyline, gameplay and keeps you on your toes. Take another example ... NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT. Graphics are amazing, sounds are super, best NFS game out, but ... it is missing something. You don't have a certain goal or feel that man, i gotta finish it. Level 50 ... you can attain that whenever. With the previous NFS games, you had to get your M3 back, you had to get the baddie reputation, etc. Those had poor graphics compared to SHIFT but ... had something else.

Quote:
Well said

A good example are the KOTOR games. Storyline was simply stunning. Gameplay had a few kinks but where solved by the KOTOR community. OSIDIAN did not really care that there were more bugs in the game than piece of software a 5 year old can write . Graphics were not bad but the games were very enjoyable. It made you forget your were hungry or that you had to take out to dinner the missus .

The graphics in the Diablo games were great for their time.

And I could point to Dragon Age here too. The game has ok graphics, but Bioware obviously spent time developing the storyline, gameplay and user experience. It depends on what titles you play.

And its not just games. Music, television, culture, its all lowest common denominator entertainment and most (80% +) of the people making it aren't interested with providing you with a decent experience.

They want to make a product that you will buy with money.

Half the crap getting pushed out as "Art" and "entertainment" is pure redundant drivel that is slapped together without the slightest consideration of thematic elements and style. Then its marketed appropriately and people buy it.

Take a look at Twilight, or any other of the multitude of embarrassingly trite movie titles that are being released. Its marketing. Quantity over quality.

I hate it.

Consumers keep this cycle going because they are too lazy to wake up and realize that what they are being sold are shallow products instead of interesting experiences, because they are too stuck to their computers and televisions to realize that they are being marketed and segmented like cattle.

I attempt to sift through these cultural offerings for the quality. And because of this, I don't play a LOT of titles, and don't see a LOT of movies, and don't read a LOT of books. But of the ones I do take in, there are truly amazing pieces of work available.

I'm going to vote that they balance them, to give the developers who DO this credit in a situation where it obviously pays to not worry about it and keep pushing crap onto the shelves.

Quote:
Define great
I think a lot of people would say 2d sprites are not great graphics,
because at the time Quake games obviously were 3d.

Would people say that 3d graphics are "better" than 2d? I think, yes.
With that being said, I think that I would rather have a 2d Diablo game, that features
remarkable sprite design over a 3d Diablo game with wrong artistic direction.

Quote:
Meh.

I'm sure the Diablo sprites were designed in 3D and exported to sprites. Either way, everything on a monitor is 2D anyway. The only real difference is that 3D models have discrete geometry that can interact with physics and allow multiple viewpoint renderings.

Personally, I think Diablo is much more pleasant looking than Quake.

Its a dangerous attitude to assume that since its 3D its automatically better than 2D static art. It probably true more often than not, but its not inherent.