• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What do you think the youth of today thinks of the graphics?

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Im taking about kids that are just getting into gaming.

My first console was a gameboy, I must of been about 6-8 and I did not really care about graphics, I didnt start to think about graphics until I got an N64 A few years later. I understood that better visuals provided more immersive and interesting games and have been looking forward to and appreciating better visuals ever since.

It got me thinking though I wonder what it must be like grouwing up with videogames on the present, for a start peoole getting into gaming now are at a far visually higher starting point, I wonder if the majority of youth care as much about visuals as older gamers do?
 
I understood that better visuals provided more immersive and interesting games and have been looking forward to and appreciating better visuals ever since.
Man, I wish that was true. Pretty much all non-indie releases coming out these days look about a million times better than titles like Thief, System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, but almost none of them are as immersive or interesting.
 
Last edited:

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Man, I wish that was true. Pretty much all non-indie releases coming out these days look about a million times better than titles like Thief, System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, but almost none of them are as immersive or interesting.

I think you have definitions mixed up here.
If u think thief remade in UE5 would not be more imersive and visually interesting there something is wrong with you.
 
I think you have definitions mixed up here.
If u think thief remade in UE5 would not be more imersive and visually interesting there something is wrong with you.
If better graphics tended to made games more immersive and interesting, then the amount of immersive and interesting games as a percentage of overall game releases should have grown by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years. I know it's subjective, but I don't really think that has happened. If anything, I think better visuals have probably made games more boring overall.

Development costs have absolutely exploded over the past two decades, and visuals carry a large part of the blame for that. Developers and publishers with the budget to deliver top-of-the-line graphics are much more likely to play it safe and stick to what has worked (i.e. sold) in the past in order to maximize their chances of making their money back.

Oh, and I don't think Thief in UE5 would necessarily be any better than the original. To name a more recent example, the Demon's Souls remake looks absolutely stunning, but it didn't really add to my enjoyment of the game at all. I actually found myself preferring the original game in terms of the art direction and overall atmosphere, and if there was a way to play it at 60 FPS I'd pick it over the remake anytime.
 
Last edited:

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
If better graphics tended to made games more immersive and interesting, then the amount of immersive and interesting games as a percentage of overall game releases should have grown by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years. I know it's subjective, but I don't really think that has happened. If anything, I think better visuals have probably made games more boring overall.

Development costs have absolutely exploded over the past two decades, and visuals carry a large part of the blame for that. Developers and publishers with the budget to deliver top-of-the-line graphics are much more likely to play it safe and stick to what has worked (i.e. sold) in the past in order to maximize their chances of making their money back.

I think your in a minority here.

If better visuals dont make a game more imersive and visually interesting, what else do they do?
 

Yoboman

Member
Probably don't care

Kind of like you could sell a movie on VFX back in the day but now you only really notice if its bad
 

G-Bus

Banned
My two nephews who are 9 and 14. They have a switch and PS4. I'm currently trying to get them a ps5. Sometimes I'll show them game trailers of games coming out.

They don't ever comment on graphics. Stuff looks cool and that's as far as that goes

They play Roblox more than anything I've seen. The younger one seems more interested in watching people play games than playing himself. Always on Twitch or watching his older brother play.
 
I think your in a minority here.

If better visuals dont make a game more imersive and visually interesting, what else do they do?
They make them look better, especially at first glance. Having your game make a great first impression is one of the easiest ways to get someone to buy it. But that's pretty much it. Once people get into a game, they mostly stop focusing on the graphics. If the game sucks, they won't keep playing because it looks good. If the game is great, they won't stop because it looks bad.

It's all relative anyway. A graphics whore losing their shit over the latest super high production value Sony or Microsoft blockbuster isn't any more hyped or excited than his equivalent 15 years ago seeing Crysis for the first time. Someone who enjoys current AAA games with amazing visuals isn't having any more fun than someone who did the same thing in 2008.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
They take them for granted
And lot of them don't know the difference between 30fps or 60fps.
They just know higher is better
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
If better visuals dont make a game more imersive and visually interesting, what else do they do?
Usually when people talking about "immersive" visuals they talking about hyper realistic graphics, which most cases like RDR2 gameplay take a back sit for more simulation gameplay or cinematic experience.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Usually when people talking about "immersive" visuals they talking about hyper realistic graphics, which most cases like RDR2 gameplay take a back sit for more simulation gameplay or cinematic experience.

It does it have to be hyper realistic, for example the fog in silent hill definitely made that game more imersive.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
It does it have to be hyper realistic, for example the fog in silent hill definitely made that game more imersive.
For me personally I don't need realism or high tech graphic to get immersed in video game, I just need to love the world and that to me has less to do with tech more to do skill of the designer.
 
Last edited:

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
When Kids of today are adults gaming won’t even resemble what it is today. It will be like ready player one or something. They will look back on this current gen the way we look at NES games

Yeah in 20yrs shits gonna be crazy, we will have like 1000tflop GPUs, i think games of today will age better though.

Games today (even realistic ones) will look stylised and 2042 games will look like real life.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
For me personally I dont realism or high tech graphic to get immersed in video game, I just need to love the world and that to me has less to do with tech more to do skill of the designer.
What modern games do u find imersive and why do u find them imersive?
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
Yeah in 20yrs shits gonna be crazy, we will have like 1000tflop GPUs, i think games of today will age better though.

Games today (even realistic ones) will look stylised and 2042 games will look like real life.
Games today still look like cartoons. Even "realistic" style ones. We thought GTA 3 was 'realistic' back then. We still haven't found a way to make faces look real. Even the matrix demo looked fake/weird.

My friends son is 5 and plays mostly iOS games. I don't think he really cares.
 
Last edited:

Kilau

Member
My 6 year old son doesn't care about graphics. He only cares if the games are fun or funny. I've asked him if he thought a game looked good and he just doesn't notice.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
What modern games do u find imersive and why do u find them imersive?
For example I found Dragon Quest XI very immersive even tho the game had very cartoony artstyle simply because I just loved the world and characters. Horizon Zero Dawn in other hand it’s world felt so fake and uninteresting to me, its open world felt like window dressing to show off its graphics more than trying to be fun to explore.

Another one is Sekiro, it has giant monsters and it has very fantasy elements but I felt like was much more true its Sengoku period compare to Ghost of Tsushima's Tsushima island invasion because how FROM designed its world.

That simply my personal opinion.
 
Last edited:

nemiroff

Gold Member
My kid's current favorite game is Dying Light which he plays on the XSX. We were briefly talking Dying Light #2 today and his first response right out of the blue was that he wish for the new game to have better graphics.. He noted that the textures in the "old" game is low res, pointing at f.ex. the characters arms and building textures.

He also is also picky about framerates and can easily notice the difference between 30 vs 60+ as he usually doesn't like to play at 30fps.
 
Last edited:

Hunnybun

Member
Yeah in 20yrs shits gonna be crazy, we will have like 1000tflop GPUs, i think games of today will age better though.

Games today (even realistic ones) will look stylised and 2042 games will look like real life.

I played the remastered Lost Legacy last night, and was thinking: has the first game already been released that will ALWAYS look good? Not that it would always look cutting edge, but that it will never really look bad in an absolute sense.

Certainly parts of that game SEEM like that. It's hard to imagine some of those areas ever really looking primitive in the way that early 3d games now do, but who knows? Generally this type of thinking is quickly debunked as graphics improve, but at some point that standard will be reached.

Of course something like R&C on the PS5 is an even stronger candidate. I'm talking 3d games by the way - we've certainly reached that point with 2d games already.
 
Last edited:
Young kids are looking to have fun, simple as that. My 11 year old is all about Roblox Kaiju Universe. That game is shit ugly to me, but my son can play hours of it. As long as he's enjoying it, I'm not going to talk shit about it or tell him to stop.
 

01011001

Banned
I understood that better visuals provided more immersive games

strongly disagree there... like not even remotely, it's sometimes even the exact opposite tbh.

but back to the topic: I guess kids these days also don't really care about graphics? I mean look at what they play... Roblox, which looks like utter shit let's not beat around the bush... like not even in terms of fidelity alone but also the artstyle is garbage tier shit

and they play Minecraft, which has a good artstyle but is super simple in terms of presentation.

or Fortnite, which looks nice enough but isn't the craziest either, and most kids play that on a phone or a Switch, on which the game looks way worse than on a decent PC or Console.

edit:
I think your in a minority here.

If better visuals dont make a game more imersive and visually interesting, what else do they do?

better graphics only add more possibilities for developers to express themselves but do not guarantee immersion.

it's all about
gameplay, leveldesign, game design + atmosphere. to date the most immersive game to me was maybe Breath of the Wild. Player agency is everything when it comes to immersion.
if you have a lot of control and interactivity you also feel way more connected to the world.
the exact opposite of immersion I would say would be a game like Uncharted 4, where all of the above is limited to an extreme and so highly context sensitive and scripted that you lose all connection with the player character
 
Last edited:

Tschumi

Member
They don't have any adults telling them it's shallow to obsess about graphics anymore, because most of the adults have bought in to the console graphics minmaxing, so they're growing up with a distorted sense of game worth.
 
Last edited:

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
strongly disagree there... like not even remotely, it's sometimes even the exact opposite tbh.
Especially the games with hyper realistic graphics, you would notice the flaws and imperfections much more compare to more stylize visuals.
 

BigBooper

Member
My kids do not generally care about the story. They want gameplay that they can experiment with. They skip cutscenes. Things like Minecraft, Minecraft Dungeons, Totally Reliable Delivery Service, and Forza Horizon 5.

I've never heard them say anything about the graphics. Not that they look good or cool or realistic. Except they do complain if a game looks "old."
 
Last edited:

01011001

Banned
Especially the games with hyper realistic graphics, you would notice the flaws and imperfections much more compare to more stylize visuals.

agreed. our brain is trained to notice if something is wrong in our environment, but if the environment is abstract enough you stop to care and just take it for what it is after a while
 
When people talk about "gud Graphix" here, it seems as if what they mean is "most photorealistic graphics". Photorealism doesn't impress me, and I doubt it impresses the youth either. I prefer painting to photography, and art over documentaries. What is the sense in trying to recreate our world in pixels and polygons, when the goal of playing video games is to escape reality? There is nothing inherently impressive about our reality that makes me want to see it in a "stunning" recreation on my screen. Miyamoto's kooky and surreal Mario worlds are far more interesting to me.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Something I noticed playing with a 1080p set and after a 4k set.

Some PS5 games doesn’t look good on the 4k compared to 1080p set because the resolution of the game is too low.

So I don’t like 1080p games on PS5… I can play them but I see the picles or blurry in a 4k TV… that is the case of Returnal for example.

Others games with higher resolution setups like 4k DRS or even 1600p or 1440p looks fine.

After start to play on 4k TV it is graphics > framerate… I will choose higher resolution with 30fps whatever I have the option.

I should love to devs to focus more in graphics and less in big number framerates.
 
Last edited:
They don't understand, don't mind, don't care, about the underlying tech or presentation. If it's playable they play. My nephew (8yo) plays Switch and PS4 interchangeably, mainly Fortnite. I've never once heard him talk about resolution or FPS.
 

ethomaz

Banned
They don't understand, don't mind, don't care, about the underlying tech or presentation. If it's playable they play. My nephew (8yo) plays Switch and PS4 interchangeably, mainly Fortnite. I've never once heard him talk about resolution or FPS.
My 8yo nephew play this game but he likes to play on PS4 instead mobile just because it looks better.
It is the same with mobile phones… mostly Fortnite and Freefire… he prefer to play on my wife’s phone (Mi 9) than his mother’s phone (S9) because it looks better for him.

But of course he plays whatever his mother or his aunt (my wife) allow him… he has no choice at all lol
 
Last edited:

onQ123

Member
Im taking about kids that are just getting into gaming.

My first console was a gameboy, I must of been about 6-8 and I did not really care about graphics, I didnt start to think about graphics until I got an N64 A few years later. I understood that better visuals provided more immersive and interesting games and have been looking forward to and appreciating better visuals ever since.

It got me thinking though I wonder what it must be like grouwing up with videogames on the present, for a start peoole getting into gaming now are at a far visually higher starting point, I wonder if the majority of youth care as much about visuals as older gamers do?

They don't really think much of them because in their minds it's just the way things are but when they get older & start to understand more about the specs of devices that's when the little details will matter.
 
Last edited:
My 8yo nephew play this game but he likes to play on PS4 instead mobile just because it looks better.
It is the same with mobile phones… mostly Fortnite and Freefire… he prefer to play on my wife’s phone (Mi 9) than his mother’s phone (S9) because it looks better for him.

But of course he plays whatever his mother or his aunt (my wife) allow him… he has no choice at all lol
Interesting. I'm not sure my nephew really knows or cares yet. No signs anyway.

When I was 8 I always wondered why Frogger looked better on my Colecovision over Atari 2600. I liked both but noticed. That and Qbert.

I think you need binoculars to see most differences in games nowadays barring the technical masterpieces of the latest generation.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Demon's Souls remake looks absolutely stunning, but it didn't really add to my enjoyment of the game at all. I actually found myself preferring the original game in terms of the art direction and overall atmosphere, and if there was a way to play it at 60 FPS I'd pick it over the remake anytime.
This is why I personally just want "remaster" of Bloodborne I dont need its graphics to be remade. The visuals is already good, people just want to play it in higher FPS thats all, I DONT want Bluepoint redesign enemies and bosses in Bloodborne like they did with Demons Souls.

I dont need another this type of crap.
UZ-wuGyDL0yhckVqMIQhGcydKdxXT-z4vSssfVVxZVI.jpg


Who asked Blupoint to make the officials look like some gross fat guy with skin disease, this is not fucking upgrade in my eyes.
 
Last edited:

ethomaz

Banned
Interesting. I'm not sure my nephew really knows or cares yet. No signs anyway.

When I was 8 I always wondered why Frogger looked better on my Colecovision over Atari 2600. I liked both but noticed. That and Qbert.

I think you need binoculars to see most differences in games nowadays barring the technical masterpieces of the latest generation.
Yeap… when I started to play around that age I have access to games on SNES and Mega Drive and there are several cases the games looked really different graphically.

In most cases I preferred SNES gaming look but some exceptions like Mortal Kombat was the complete opposite with Mega Driver version looking way better.
 
Last edited:

Hunnybun

Member
Something I noticed playing with a 1080p set and after a 4k set.

Some PS5 games doesn’t look good on the 4k compared to 1080p set because the resolution of the game is too low.

So I don’t like 1080p games on PS5… I can play them but I see the picles or blurry in a 4k TV… that is the case of Returnal for example.

Others games with higher resolution setups like 4k DRS or even 1600p or 1440p looks fine.

After start to play on 4k TV it is graphics > framerate… I will choose higher resolution with 30fps whatever I have the option.

I should love to devs to focus more in graphics and less in big number framerates.

How close are you sitting to your 4k tv? I find that at anything like the recommended distance it's pretty hard to even tell the difference between 1440p and 4k, and at resolutions much higher than that I literally can't tell the difference.
 

ethomaz

Banned
How close are you sitting to your 4k tv? I find that at anything like the recommended distance it's pretty hard to even tell the difference between 1440p and 4k, and at resolutions much higher than that I literally can't tell the difference.
From 1 to 2 meters… depends of my position.
Seated at the start of the couch it is like 1 meter… lying on it can reach 2.5 meters.
 
Last edited:
Yeap… when I started to play around that age I have access to games on SNES and Mega Drive and there are several cases the games looked really different graphically.
My 12 year old heart had a heart attack during the 16 bit era.

I just think it's harder to distinguish games these days, for the seasoned, nevermind the new young ones.

I always try to play where it's best, but I even find myself playing a downgraded game on Switch and I'm like "This is actually absolutely fine."

I'm going to ask my nephew some questions lol.
 
Top Bottom