Crytek CEO says Graphics are "60% of the game"

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Originally Posted by GDB

I really don't think audio is that important. Plenty of people play handhelds muted so they can either not disturb others or listen to others/the TV while they play.

You kidding? Audio can make or break a good game. Sure in something like WoW i can see why people may not listen to the in game music, but other single player stuff, like say... Return to Kharak stage from Homeworld. That scene is utterly heart wrenching, and the music makes it so.

[NorthernFallout]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

Does anybody remember the days in video games when you really could get knee deep in the dead of your enemies? So many games now a days seem hung up about having corpses die seconds after falling to the ground.

Good ol' STALKER. PIC

OT: Regarding the audio, it overtakes graphics for me. Nowadays I focus on immersion more than anything else (together with gameplay) and while graphics don't have to be good, audio has to be.

Still, graphics IS still important (the arguable thing being how much). It might have more to do with stupid executives and bloat within huge companies than the graphic cost itself.

[Kyral]

What can I say? Yerli at his best... He and Crytek once were the pride of all German gamers. Since Crysis 2 not so much anymore and it's getting worse and worse with him. *sigh*

I do understand people liking games for thier graphics. But just graphics alone never made an awesome game, only cool tech demos... it needs more than that.

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

Sure in something like WoW i can see why people may not listen to the in game music,

Funny... that was one of the very few things I still liked with WoW... The music in WotLK was quite gorgeous.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

You kidding? Audio can make or break a good game. Sure in something like WoW i can see why people may not listen to the in game music, but other single player stuff, like say... Return to Kharak stage from Homeworld. That scene is utterly heart wrenching, and the music makes it so.

A recent proving point for the importance if audio in my own opinion is Bioshock infinite.

There are many notable points in the game where audio really makes an impact but one of the less obvious ones is the musical audio Que you get when you kill an enemy using the skyhooks finishing move, its a purposefully unpleasant and there came a point where I actually felt bad using it on anybody...

[Chaos2Frozen]

Metal Gear Rising; the soundtrack makes up for half of the boss fights enjoyment.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Originally Posted by Kyral

Funny... that was one of the very few things I still liked with WoW... The music in WotLK was quite gorgeous.

I liked it as well, even Pandaria has some great stuff. Personally I've always let it run, but I know most my guildies listen to their own music when we raid.

[Folenfant]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Metal Gear Rising; the soundtrack makes up for half of the boss fights enjoyment.

The music just makes me laugh. Its so "crawling in my skin".

[Folenfant]

You know I think there's something to this backlash against Triple A gaming. Lately I find myself and a good friend of mine playing almost exclusively JRPGs strategy and indie pc puzzle games with longevity and replayability like Alchemy Meister, Persona and Civ 4 where I can just sink myself into the games mechanics for hours yet I just get really bored with games like Diablo III and Call of Duty incredibly quickly.

Lately I just haven't been gaming much at all though save for some wii stuff and I think I know why. There're increasingly larger and more conditional hoops to jump through for new games these days that I just find it easier and honestly more fun to just fire up a game of Dr. Mario or kill time in Just Cause 2 than to sign into battle net wait for a bunch of updates to start and then finally get to do shit maybe. Its the increasing a
hassles, TOS and constant downloads for something that used to be plug and play that are leading me to either play non Triple A titles exclusively (usually they're more engrossing and fun anyway and not streamlined and canned experiences like the CoD model) or just fire up Netflix or Crunchyroll instead of going to my games tab/folder on my PC/PS3.

[Child_of_Sierra]

@Folenfant
agreed, these days my overall criteria for getting a game is based on how difficult it would be for me to play it and how much upkeep I have to do just to "keep playing it". Battlenet killed my interest for SC2 after WOL.

On topic:
good graphics are nice to have but I'll still only buy the game if I like the premise and/or story.

[Sides]

OMG, Monster Hunter Online powered by Cryengine 3! Crytek CEO redeemed, 60% graphics and 40% hunting monsters, do i really need any othee game.
http://mho.qq.com/main.shtml

[Chase]

No wonder why the Crysis games are so mediocre

[SoldierOfDarkness]

If games truly make 60% of a game then why are their games sucking so bad that even official reviewers are panning the game in other aspects?

[Benoit]

I would have been fine with graphics staying as good as a Wii's.

[ReaperxKingx]

Crytec really does make good graphics, probably the best. Though to say that it is 60 percent of a game is just them fooling themselves with their mistakes. Take for example Mine Craft whose graphics look like it was made in the 80s or 90s. It is one of the heaviest played games in this generation (may be a bit of a stretch statement, though you get what I am saying). Minecraft won its players with gameplay. Other games such as the Call of Duty series could never compete with graphics like Battlefield and Crysis yet it beats both in terms of players by its multiplayer which is highly competitive that is a part of Major League Gaming. Halo is another example. Games who had probably the best of graphics but horrible replay ability were games like Medal of Honor Warfighter, sure beautiful though story and gameplay fell short.

[Ithekro]

Music is also a large part of an experiance. I recall playing Guild Wars years ago, and while I didn't care for its music, I was able to play a CD at the same time. I listened to the main theme from Revenge of the Sith for that game as well as "Battle of the Heroes" repeatedly while running around in Guild Wars.

I did that for several of the LucasArts World War II flight sims as well. Imagine dive bombing a Japanese aircraft carrier to an instramental version of the theme song from "Goldfinger" or "Dr. No". I didn't do that for their X-wing games because, well Star Wars music.

[creb]

I'm far too snobby to even consider Minecraft a game. I felt the same about the Sims as well, and there was a time when it was the most sold game on the planet.

Obviously, it's too simplistic to take one factor and say it is why you buy/play a game. Real life is more complicated than that, and it's going to be a confluence of factors.

Now, I've been playing video games since they were text-based and/or consisted of square blocks interacting with other square blocks. Every generation (even in the days of square blocks), I was always wowed by the "graphics". Generally speaking, if I return to previous generations of games, I can go back maybe 2 generations before the graphics on a large screen are a complete turn off-regardless of the gameplay. Though, I shouldn't gloss over how gameplay has changed over the decades either.

Would I have enjoyed the heck out of Minecraft if it had been released in say.....1992? Possibly. It wasn't though.

If I look at the games I enjoyed the most over say...the last six years, none of them fell in the indie, hip, low-graphics department, but none of them had quality graphics as their only redeeming quality either, so I have to say that yes, graphics are of some importance to me (more important than not), but hardly the only quality. Is it 60%? I'm not even sure how one goes about quantifying the percent something makes up of making a determination of whether I'm going to play a game or not, but since none of my favorite games of the past six years falls in the low-quality graphics department, I suppose it has to be more than 50%, except that's just an ass-backwards way of quantifying things. A far more accurate way would be using a ten point scale for each "part" that one thinks contributes to one's enjoyment of a video game, which doesn't try to shoehorn a specific part as a specific percent of the whole, but lets them each stand alone on their own merits.

[saravis]

Originally Posted by ReaperxKingx

Take for example Mine Craft whose graphics look like it was made in the 80s or 90s. It is one of the heaviest played games in this generation (may be a bit of a stretch statement, though you get what I am saying). Minecraft won its players with gameplay.

People like to use Minecraft as an example of a game that is the antithesis to the importance of graphics. However what people don't get is that, while the graphics of Minecraft may look like that from the 90s, the scope of their use would not have been possible then. So Minecraft is evidence of the need for graphical evolution as much as a game like Crysis. Graphical evolution isn't just about what a game looks like, but the limitations of what you can do within the confines of the way it looks.

A recent game that is the evidence of this confinement is Hitman Absolution. Its a game that looks pretty darn good, but to prevent it from being over-demanding they had to fragment the chapters into smaller segments. Hopefully years down the line we can get another Hitman game that looks as good, if not better, but can present the chapters seamlessly and completely open.

[T-6000]

The CEO of Crytech may want to...redact that statement. In my experience in the gaming industry, from a gamer's point of view, a game that focuses too much on great graphics & special effects tend to lack in gameplay. The earliest example I know of is Doom 3. People were blown away with the graphics during it's first E3 presentation. And even when it was released, it still had one of the best graphics (if not the best) for a video game at the time. But the gameplay was admittingly lacking, with half-hearted level design, repeated cliches, and gameplay that felt a bit too tame. Then there was the first Crysis. The Graphics, effects, and physics were phenomenal and arguably years head of everyone else (even Unreal Engine 3, though the engine was great at the time too) and arguably the second best) but the gameplay didn't feel too spectacular. I did like the idea of placing on different attachments onto your weapons but the guns and gunplay felt a bit.....lacking. And there is also Unreal Tournament 3. The graphics, effects, and physics were phenomenal (in some ways, almost as good as Crysis). But the gameplay just felt the same as past UT games. And many complained that it lacked gameplay modes (as well as other features) from UT2004.

The most important aspect of a game is the gameplay itself. If gameplay is lacking or even feels boring, noone will want to buy and play it no matter how good they make the graphics & engine. And any developer that says otherwise is being naive. But on the flipside of things, I also feel that some developers are pressured to put extra attention (and even divert some resources) to make the PC ports of their games the best they can. Some even digging into Direct X 10 and 11 as much as possible. I can't tell you how often I hear a PC Gamer on an online forum or a comment section that expresses disinterest in a game because the graphics look subpar or unsatisfying, and I think some developers take heart to this. And I have noticed some PC ports that focus on bringing extra attention to graphics (such as exclusive Direct X 11 graphics) tend to more often than not lack in polish (or even stability).

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by T-6000

The CEO of Crytech may want to...redact that statement. In my experience in the gaming industry, from a gamer's point of view, a game that focuses too much on great graphics & special effects tend to lack in gameplay. The earliest example I know of is Doom 3. People were blown away with the graphics during it's first E3 presentation. And even when it was released, it still had one of the best graphics (if not the best) for a video game at the time. But the gameplay was admittingly lacking, with half-hearted level design, repeated cliches, and gameplay that felt a bit too tame. Then there was the first Crysis. The Graphics, effects, and physics were phenomenal and arguably years head of everyone else (even Unreal Engine 3, though the engine was great at the time too) and arguably the second best) but the gameplay didn't feel too spectacular. I did like the idea of placing on different attachments onto your weapons but the guns and gunplay felt a bit.....lacking. And there is also Unreal Tournament 3. The graphics, effects, and physics were phenomenal (in some ways, almost as good as Crysis). But the gameplay just felt the same as past UT games. And many complained that it lacked gameplay modes (as well as other features) from UT2004.

Here's what I remember from Doom 3.

Oh my. I am walking down a corridor with just a flashlight because I can't tape a flashlight to my gun. I have come across a door. I wonder if there will be a single big scary monster behind that door. Oh yes. There is. I better switch to my gun and shoot it. Yes. I've shot it. And before the monster even hits the ground, it evaporates, preventing me from being knee deep in the dad. What a truely riveting and exciting experience this is.

I find it interesting that you mention the gunplay n Crysis. I remember trying it out, and being decidedly unimpressed. I think one thing that got me was that the basic North Korean foot soldiers just weren't as fun to shoot as the enemies in Call of Duty. I just didn't get the sense of verisimilitude.

I think it comes down to Call of Duty games tending to be a bit more *realistic* in terms of how much damage enemies take, and how they react to damage. A burst from a machine gun or a shot from a rifle will usually down an enemy in Call of Duty. Though even a non lethal shot will leave them stumbling toward the ground, trying to get up before being finished off. say what you want about Call of Duty, its very fun to shoot enemies in it. Somewhat similar with Elites in Halo, where they'd recoil after getting their shields dropped.

Compare that to Crysis. I don't recall enemy soldiers in Crysis being nearly as fun to shoot as in Call of Duty. They tended to just fall into ragdolls and get propelled around like tehy were weightless. I don't think they did reacted nearly as much to being shot at as the enemies in Call of Duty. When I think of Crysis games, I don't really think about how fun the shooting feels. I mostly think "well that's pretty" when it comes to the environment.

[Drkz]

Originally Posted by saravis

People like to use Minecraft as an example of a game that is the antithesis to the importance of graphics. However what people don't get is that, while the graphics of Minecraft may look like that from the 90s, the scope of their use would not have been possible then. So Minecraft is evidence of the need for graphical evolution as much as a game like Crysis. Graphical evolution isn't just about what a game looks like, but the limitations of what you can do within the confines of the way it looks.

A recent game that is the evidence of this confinement is Hitman Absolution. Its a game that looks pretty darn good, but to prevent it from being over-demanding they had to fragment the chapters into smaller segments. Hopefully years down the line we can get another Hitman game that looks as good, if not better, but can present the chapters seamlessly and completely open.

Actually I'd use something more like Hotline miami. The reason why minecraft is so popular is because its easily moddable. Its a game for all ages. You can practically build anything. Hotline came out of nowhere.

Graphics aren't everything. Graphics are part of it. But ever since Crysis 1 crytek's been pretty downhill. If they really want to do the graphics argument they better put something out on a crysis like level.