Same word, different meanings. It may not be the technically correct definition of the word, but typically when people talk about “good graphics,” they’re talking about photorealism. In MrMobius’s comment, “graphics” = high resolution, photorealism, the kind of thing the comic we’re commenting under is talking about, and “design” = art direction, aesthetic.
ETA: That said, higher resolution can make already strong art direction even better. I think a large part of what makes Clair Obscur look so pretty is the juxtaposition of the surreal elements with the photorealistic graphics. Esquie sticks out to me in particular, because he looks so physically real, and also so alien.
I’m not trained in media criticism, so I’m sure someone else can phrase that better than I can
ETA more: Also, games that are designed to look as real as possible also take a lot of effort and talent. Just because Bodycam doesn’t look like a comic book or a surreal painting doesn’t mean it doesn’t have strong art direction. It cannot be easy to make a game that looks so indistinguishable from actual body cam footage.
Yeah, I can’t tell whether they mean aesthetics > graphics or everything else that goes into a game trumps good graphics.
With the latter, I generally say that good graphics can’t save a bad game, while the former I refer to as the Wind Waker effect. People complained about how cartoony Wind Waker looked after the GameCube graphics demo showed off a realistic-looking fight between Link and Ganon, but today Wind Waker is looked back on fondly for its art style that defined many Zelda games after it while many of the “realistic” FPS games from the time are looked back on as the “real = brown” era.
Oh, yeah, that’s a branch of this argument I had almost forgotten. Such violent swings in the stylization wars.
I think these days it’s less aesthetics/graphics and it’s more photorealistic graphics/minimalist graphics, except minimalist graphics don’t register as graphics at all in some cases.
In the middle there we also have the “graphics haven’t improved since the Xbox 360” crowd. I think remembering that we spent like a decade playing games in black and white will become the new “PSOne games looked terrible and we didn’t realize” in a minute. It’s due, because now we’re in the wave of “PSOne games looked awesome, here’s a lo-fi stylized game people think took no effort to make for some reason” after people stopped referring to pixel art as “retro”.
I have to say I wasn’t ready for how much getting old makes these nerdy arguments start to pile up in sediment layers. It’s been a long trip.
Same word, different meanings. It may not be the technically correct definition of the word, but typically when people talk about “good graphics,” they’re talking about photorealism. In MrMobius’s comment, “graphics” = high resolution, photorealism, the kind of thing the comic we’re commenting under is talking about, and “design” = art direction, aesthetic.
ETA: That said, higher resolution can make already strong art direction even better. I think a large part of what makes Clair Obscur look so pretty is the juxtaposition of the surreal elements with the photorealistic graphics. Esquie sticks out to me in particular, because he looks so physically real, and also so alien.
I’m not trained in media criticism, so I’m sure someone else can phrase that better than I can
ETA more: Also, games that are designed to look as real as possible also take a lot of effort and talent. Just because Bodycam doesn’t look like a comic book or a surreal painting doesn’t mean it doesn’t have strong art direction. It cannot be easy to make a game that looks so indistinguishable from actual body cam footage.
Well, I assume most people splitting things this way typically think of design as gameplay design or systems design.
Either way I’d argue it’s a bit of a misunderstanding of both what goes into good non-photoreal visuals and of the concept of game design.
Yeah, I can’t tell whether they mean aesthetics > graphics or everything else that goes into a game trumps good graphics.
With the latter, I generally say that good graphics can’t save a bad game, while the former I refer to as the Wind Waker effect. People complained about how cartoony Wind Waker looked after the GameCube graphics demo showed off a realistic-looking fight between Link and Ganon, but today Wind Waker is looked back on fondly for its art style that defined many Zelda games after it while many of the “realistic” FPS games from the time are looked back on as the “real = brown” era.
Oh, yeah, that’s a branch of this argument I had almost forgotten. Such violent swings in the stylization wars.
I think these days it’s less aesthetics/graphics and it’s more photorealistic graphics/minimalist graphics, except minimalist graphics don’t register as graphics at all in some cases.
In the middle there we also have the “graphics haven’t improved since the Xbox 360” crowd. I think remembering that we spent like a decade playing games in black and white will become the new “PSOne games looked terrible and we didn’t realize” in a minute. It’s due, because now we’re in the wave of “PSOne games looked awesome, here’s a lo-fi stylized game people think took no effort to make for some reason” after people stopped referring to pixel art as “retro”.
I have to say I wasn’t ready for how much getting old makes these nerdy arguments start to pile up in sediment layers. It’s been a long trip.