The Graphics, Part 3: No Free Lunch.

How many things must go into a game for it to be a fun, enjoyable game?

I would like you to imagine a delicious golden flaky pie. Do you like apple pie? Okay, a slice of it is apple pie. Do you prefer peach pie? Okay, a slice of it is made of delicious peaches.

Do you want more apple pie? Okay, but that means the peach part slice has to be smaller. If you want more peach, then you have to make the apple part smaller. If you want some blueberry filling in there, then you gotta take some slices away from the peach and the apple. Want more crust on the outside? Then you have to have less filling.

You can't make the pie bigger.

For any game that's produced these days, they do have set budget. A time constraint. A fundamental limitations to how many resources they have. This is the size of their pie. They can't make their pie bigger. If you want prettier graphics, they need more artists. If you want shinier visual effects, they need more graphic programmers.

Bioshock had 2 or 3 dedicated programmers working on water effects, which kind of makes sense, seeing as how the entirety of the game took place under water.

So we have these pretty graphics. The high-flung visuals. The dramatic displays of absolutely stunning photo-realistic effects. And it's awesome to look at and feel.

But at what cost?

The more graphically stunning a game has to be, the less time there is to go into game-play. Or balance. Or design. Story. Direction. You can't reasonably expect to get a perfect game if you insist on having the pie consist of 95% graphics and 5% everything else. What could the game have been if you had 10% less graphics and 10% more focused on game-play, balance, bug testing, engine.

What is the cost of your graphics?

I've heard tales of graphical demands, inflated to such a scale, that if one were request say.. a model for a jeep in the game, that after all the artwork, texturing, rendering and animation, the Jeep would cost somewhere around 500,000 to a million dollars to be developed.

Hundreds of thousands in budget for a Jeep model. ONE JEEP.

And here's what happens:

I want to have player drive-able vehicles. Oh, but the artwork will take an enormous amount of time to perfect? And the animations will set us behind schedule and over budget? Oh well. Scratch that idea.

And the game now goes vehicle-less. Players can't drive vehicles. Oh well.

And that amazing, pre-rendered cut-scene? Well, that took so much money to produce, that we can't hire that many level designers.

And the game now goes down a few levels in scale. Instead of 18 levels, we can cut it down to 12.

Was that shiny lightning effect worth it? Will you even notice it six hours into the game?

What is the benefit of your graphics?

Can you be awed by the same laser gun the 60th time you fire it? Can you be awe'ed at the mean looking giant, when it's the 10,000th one you've slain?

Or would you rather be impressed by a stunningly designed level? A clever convoluted boss battle? A nice, balanced, game? How about monster A.I. that offers you a real challenge?

Was the subtle lightning arcs off the side of your gun worth the loss of a level? Maybe a boss fight? Is it worth it to give up some game-play balance? Or how about having your cinematic epic storyline being cut off?

But that's unfair! Why can't I have my gorgeous screenshots AND a great game?

Because the pie is always the same size. They don't have infinite budgets. They don't have infinite time. If you keep your expectations for gaming graphics to such ridiculous levels that they push all other content, you can feel free to do so. But at the same time, I believe you fundamentally lose the right to whine if the difficulty curve is a bit off, or the monster A.I. is a bit... shall we say... retarded.

They simply don't have the time to do all that in a finite amount of time.

But those huge companies have all the money in the world to throw at us. Look at how much they're charging! SIXTY DOLLARS A GAME! Surely I could have my awesome graphics and great AI and balance and...

Even if they had infinite sums of money, they have a finite amount of time. A year and half to develop the game when 90% of the time was spent on making it look pretty will still be a horrible game. Even if you had a quadrillion dollars to spend on a game, if you try to iron out all the game-play issues in the span of a month, that's still not enough time to iterate the gameplay to perfection.

The best case scenario? Delays.
The worst case scenario? A bad game.

That is BS. Those programmers are smart guys. And they could always hire more of them...

Even if they had infinite programmers, the system that you're playing on doesn't have infinite processing power. If you're going to make your XBox blow chunks trying to create photorealistic water, you lose the right to bitch that your controls are irresponsive, or that your camera isn't intelligent enough, or that your A.I. comrades in arms can't seem to hit a brick wall with a nuclear bomb.

It all takes processing power. And if 99% of the processing power is devoted to giving you a fully cinematic view, your AI will frankly suck as the best it can do is "Walk, Walk, Shoot!" It can't think that hard, otherwise your XBox will skip a frame, and you'll lose out on that AMAZING lighting effect that you've seen for the 37th time straight.

At the end of the day, why do we play games?

We play games because they are fun. We play games because they are challenging and engage us. We play game because they have masterfully told stories. And yes, we do play games because they are beautiful pieces of art that are dazzling to the eyes.

But everything has it's cost. For every model, beautiful light effect, dazzling texture or beautiful cinematic, just ask yourself...

If they didn't have to spend so much of their money and time on this artwork... what else could they have done? Would I have been able to play more levels? Have bigger, better boss fights? Could they have spent more time on balance? Could they have shipped the game without delaying it for months? Sound? Music?

Just ask yourself...

What could the game have been?