We agree that for at least a decade, adventure games had better graphics than any other genre.
No, I did not agree with that. I agreed that in general, adventure games had aesthetically pleasing visuals. That does not mean they had 'better graphics' than other genres. And it only applies to backgrounds. They definitely did not have better animations than other genres, at least not obviously so.
Usually, if graphics are a defining quality of a genre, that means the player base cares about graphics. Since adventure games were defined by their graphics during the golden age of adventure games
I don't understand how the goalposts ended up on the other side of the field here.
Aesthetically pleasing/good graphics != defined by graphics though
We went from acknowledging something that was generally done well to somehow assuming its the most defining feature ? How and by what virtue ? This is a logical leap that I cannot follow, sorry - and as you can guess, I do not agree with it at all. Even during the brief FMV craze, games like Pandora Directive or X-Files: The Game were not defined by graphics.
I assume that, compared to fans of other genres, adventure gamers actually care more about visuals. My response to your post was based on the suggestion that adventure game players care less about visuals, which would certainly be a surprise to all the saps at Lucas, Sierra, Daedelic, etc. who spent the majority of their games' budgets on the visuals.
Well, the budget thing is funny. Like I've mentioned before, adventure games are generally static, have a well-defined state machine, and not reactive, so programming and QA'ing them obviously doesnt take a genius or a huge team.
I'm sure people can do great adventures using wintermute or adventure game engine or whatever is popular right now. Adventure games are low-cost if you don't do graphics/animation. or voice acting.
Sure, big studios spent most of their budget on making good graphics because they could and those games were in demand back then. So obviously good graphics will cost the most in making an adventure game.
Simply because for most of those other (ie, non graphics) things they had things in place. Listening to Schafer talk about GF, they had lots of problems moving to the new engine, yet they still had tons of things in-house to help them with that. And that's with a very risky move to improve graphics which ultimately probably cost them in mainstream as it was a market flop.
I would like to think (again, Im not one, so obviously it's just speculation) the modern day indie adventure developer spends more time thinking about dialogues, setting, story, characters, puzzles, etc. They are easier to make than great graphics, so I would hope priority is placed there and we'd have a gem on our hands moreso than games where priority is placed on graphics. Graphics can be updated at some point, but the rest cannot.
If you take atmosphere away from adventure games, there's really very little left.
atmosphere != graphics. graphics is a subset of atmosphere.
if I can get 'atmosphere' reading a book or playing a text adventure game, then atmosphere can surely exist on its own. no doubt graphics contribute to it, but it's not a dependency.
It's puzzle solving, but the puzzles aren't particularly interesting without atmosphere.
that's arguable and probably subjective. I would disagree, but I am a puzzle lover though, so I am biased and I will not argue here.
Of course some adventure games can construct that atmosphere with text alone (e.g., Anchorhead or Metamorphoses) or with minimalist graphics, but that's usually because some other non-gameplay aspect (like the writing) is pulled off masterfully.
So you agree, the less you are forced to DEPEND on graphics, the better you have to make other components ? That's precisely what I want from adventure games. Other components. I can replace the background with my imagination if everything else is great. Sure, in some cases, it'd be tough - it would be tough to replace Blade Runner or TLJ cyberpunk visuals with ugly pixels, but I would think it's more than possible due to strength of them as games first and not photoalbums with interactivity. If a picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of relying on that picture to say only 10 words, if every developer and designer uses their skills to the maximum and produces 1000 words for that picture (and if thats the tradeoff, make the picture worse), the picture's worth would be less and at some point it would be replaceable.
Since Dave was lurking in this thread, I want to say there were thousand times in the Blackwell series things where I wish things would be
just more complex - from dialogues to puzzles and to characters - and while graphics certainly contributed to the atmosphere, if there was an option to make graphics 10 times worse and those games have more details and be less linear interactive novel narrative, I would take it every day, and 7 times on a Sunday.
By contrast, you can have an RPG that has nothing but a gameplay loop -- crap graphics, crap writing, crap sound, etc., and yet still be addictive and engaging. Same with strategy games, sim games, many kinds of action games, etc.
I see your point, but I'm not sure it's true for the majority - since you talked about majority beforehand. There is a reason why Microsoft Flight sim was cancelled once consoles took over. They would have to make graphics much better and it seemed the mainstream console gamers didnt care for a flight sim whose main asset was not graphics but sim immersion. Before indie games burst on a scene with the digital distro age, there were very little games that had shit graphics but amazing gameplay, in general. And those games from big devs/publishers eventually became almost extinct.
Maybe we're just trying to say the same thing with different words. What I would say is that the aesthetics in a game represent an interaction of managerial judgment and resources. As long as the judgment isn't at 0%, you can make up for bad judgment with more resources, to be sure. But often visuals in a game look bad because someone wanted the visuals to look like that in the first (or second, or third) instance. It's not because they didn't have resources to get it right the first time, they just used those resources incorrectly. God knows that happens with me all the time because I'm an idiot.
That's fair.
Also. Thanks for constructive dialogue, it's a pleasure arguing with you