There is a general consensus among gamers now, that art style matters more than graphics.
The screenshot above is of a 2001 game known as Empire Earth. It looks rather crude now, but it has a unique style that no other game can replicate.
We have seen this with independent games, which replicate the simpler and colorful graphics of older generations. Photorealism is great in Chatbots if one is attempting to brainstorm how a character appears but there is a place for all sorts of artistic styles. The Japanese have shown this in many of their games. Some games aim for photorealism, but they also show that they want to continue their tradition of having many art styles, especially their homegrown anime. Japanese games often have a reputation for being more stylistic and it’s not surprising that Nintendo did not give up on their original IPs in favor of more mature ideas. They sometimes did have more mature games in their earlier consoles, but this was to compete with Sega and after Sega was beaten, they began to focus on their generally cozy game reputation here.
Style matters more than graphics. I remember that in the 1990s, graphics cards companies had managed to change this idea. Graphics were more important than style as many programmers wanted to showcase the power of their inhouse engines. This was the age of graphics growing every year here. It was truly an exciting age where every game seemed like a foreign country with its own rules.
Now every game seems to have the same GPS navigation and isn’t really interesting here. Unreal Engine is used heavily in many games now, but it is also getting in the way of helping games to distinguish their styles from one another.
It isn’t just in the graphics. It is also in the interfaces also. The interfaces in earlier games were art styles that were peculiar to that one game. Now, too much of it is optimized to be interchangeable between genres and games.
We need to have friction once again. That may make things some what more uncomfortable to use but it will allow for a greater variety of games to made.
The independents are often cited as an example of creativity. However, they cannot carry the industry alone here. They need to work in synergy with middle budget and high budget games. The independents are often works of passion, but they lack the ability to get a product out to the gamers within a reasonable time before they have their attention going to somewhere else.
Style is what companies should be chasing now. We have enough photorealistic games. With generative AI, photorealism is available in a way that surpasses even the best camera.
What we need now is way to encourage the creation of new styles instead of just attempting to outcompete on the issue of photorealistic graphics.
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