What's the deal with "gamers" these days?

[cambertian]

Oh, how I wish the real world around me could know of Technic Beat's sweet soundtrack... The fine allure of Monster World IV's savory gameplay after a long day...

I want gamers who don't care about brand-names, mostly. Nintendo, while as close to perfection as they come, is actually part of the problem. It's tainted everyone's visions of what is "normal" for a game to have, and I personally don't like it very much...

[wildweasel]

Yeah, at the end of the day, I care more about individual designers and staff than I do about what publisher put their name on a given game. I like reading up on what other works a designer has made, especially in regards to artists and musicians. I've started to be capable of identifying styles (except in extreme cases like Yasunori Mitsuda, who seems to be capable of at least a million different styles).

[MetroidJunkie]

Honestly, I think graphics are extremely important, but I don't mean the technology behind them so much as the art direction. Even a game on a 20-year-old engine can still look fantastic if the art assets are good enough; look at Foreverhood and Urban Brawl.

I meant graphics as in the actual graphics, not what people tend to call graphics. The visual look of a game I call aesthetics and the technical aspects I call graphics. I'll admit, though, it annoys me when I see games with graphics that don't do the system they're on justice, mostly because it makes the developers look lazy.

[NeuralStunner]

I'll admit, though, it annoys me when I see games with graphics that don't do the system they're on justice, mostly because it makes the developers look lazy.

It really depends on what you mean, though. A game with lower-detail models that is yet capable of having dozens of actors onscreen at once? I think that's acceptable.

I put more emphasis on how the game performs overall, myself. Can you have a small city worth of people all going about their daily routine? To me, that's cool. (Skyrim somehow manages this, despite having one of the most boggy scripting engines ever made.)

[MetroidJunkie]

That's understandable, I mean in cases where there's no excuse for games to look as bad as they do, cases where it's clear the developer wasn't really trying all that much.

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For instance, this above is a Wii game. I know the Wii wasn't exactly a powerhouse but it can do a lot better than this. For instance:

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Given the Wii actually has a significantly stronger GPU than the original Xbox did (Albeit with a different architecture), ProStreet looks much more in tune with what it's capable of.

[Jeimuzu73]

Are those 3D models or digitized sprites? Looks more like an arcade racing game to me.

[Reactor]

By the look of it, they can very well be voxels, too. Damn, even the 1999 "Imperium Galactica II" models were better!!!

[MetroidJunkie]

They're very clearly just digitized sprites of actual people. You get my point, though, both of these games came out on the same system but they look like they came from completely different generations from each other. There's no excuse for it to look that terrible when even the previous generation would put it to shame.