One of the things that we talk about at work when we talk about the remarkable success that World of Warcraft has had is that it is going to age well. The reason why? It’s not ‘realistic’, and so it sidesteps that entire arms race of everyone else trying to figure out how to draw elves with more polys in each pointy ear.

Ultima Online had this advantage, too. Yeah, the art is old, but since few MMOs share that perspective in the US marketplace, their art style has managed to survive better. 3D games inherently have it rougher – my old game, Meridian 59 looked old when Everquest came out. Everquest looked obsolete when EQ2 came out. One can expect this trend to continue for future realistic games as well. Meridian takes some very interesting and innovative design risks, and Everquest has something like 6 years more content than EQ2 does, but that’s not what you think when you glance at screenshots on the back of the box.

Great games need two things, in my mind. First off, they need a strong visual identity. Consider World of Warcraft, Parappa the Rapper, Starcraft, Katamari Damacy, the Sims, Diablo, and Civilization. In each of these cases, you can immediately tell what game a screenshot is from, with just a glance. Hell, people who haven’t ever even played the game probably can. That should be the acid test for any visual style you put in a game.

If your team is chasing the tail of the realism tiger, though, your game will always risk looking like everyone else whose trying to do the same thing.

The second thing is that your game needs to look good. There are those who say that graphics aren’t important, or shouldn’t be important. Lies, I say! All games that have escaped niche success have looked good. This doesn’t mean they’ve spent millions of dollars on art and music (though some have). Parappa looks good. Diner Dash looks good. Hell, Bejeweled looks good. You Don’t Know Jack looks good. Looking unique isn’t going to get you anywhere if it’s also not memorable and striking. The problem is that, in some genres, ‘looks good’ is a moving target.

I read a book once where the author made a simple point about providing what the customer wants. He said that many people starting out their own fast-food restaurants claim that it is flat out impossible to provide clean restaurants and still keep prices low, which is why most small-time mom-and-pop hamburger joints you’ll visit feel less clean than the train station. The simple response: McDonald’s does. McDonald’s restaurants are routinely spotlessly clean, and shut down by management if they don’t maintain the McDonald’s level of cleanliness and service. Why? It’s a priority to management because it turns out that that’s what customers, especially parents, make their purchasing decision based upon.

I think the same is true, in our space, for graphics. But don’t think that means that graphics need to be ‘expensive’ or ‘realistic’. But they do need to be striking, memorable, identifiable, self-consistent and, above all, good.

As Andrew Phelps pointed out, everyone agrees that Atari 2600 Pac-man sucked. The ONLY real difference was it was ugly.

Original comments thread is here.