“Gameplay is a holistic experience involving graphics, player agency, animation, sound, ludic and spatial design – it’s the meshing together of these in compelling and well-integrated ways that I think invites interest for a player. Not just graphics alone.” Yet Tracy Fullerton, professor and director of the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, says it’s also easy to understand why some gamers might be feeling somewhat overwhelmed by big-budget games’ recent graphical leaps.
“Sometimes I want to play with characters that look just like the real life sports stars. Isn’t there a kind of magic in that?” she explains, “but [blockbuster] games have also created a cycle of greater and greater expectations for players around graphic technology that is quite different and has a very different price tag associated with it. Sometimes that rising level of [visuals] does feel like magic, and sometimes it feels unnecessary, and possibly even too much.”
Rasheed Abudeideh, the Palestinian developer of upcoming indie game Dreams on a Pillow, worries that games like GTA 6 will create a moment where gaming violence becomes uncomfortably close to acts of real-life terrorism, war, and murder. “I think we already live in a very dark and chaotic world, and in that context, it feels even more disturbing to develop games that revolve primarily around realistic acts of killing,” he explains.
Games, he believes, should “ultimately [be] about fun, about engaging the player and keeping them in a ‘flow state'” – a meditative frame of mind which he says “can be achieved with very simple, even basic technology. What truly makes the difference is creativity in game design, not visual fidelity. Realism can be a powerful tool to increase immersion, but it’s not the goal in itself.”
Indeed, over recent years, there have been signs that gamers care less about graphical fidelity than about uniquely lo-fi art styles. Big-budget gaming studios (including Electronic Arts) have suffered mass redundancies, and often struggled to get their blockbuster games finished or off the ground: GTA 6, for example, is arriving 14 years after GTA 5. Conversely, independent gaming studios have flourished, putting out innovative games which aren’t defined by lifelike graphics and have more of a through-line with the 8- and 16-bit eras of 2D gaming.
