Blizzard just announced that their number of subscribers finally has creeped up to 7 million. And it is already clear that in the year 2006, just like in 2005, World of Warcraft is the best-selling PC game of the year. But if you compare screenshots of WoW with the other top contenders in PC games from this year and last, you will notice that it is miles behind them in terms of graphics. Why are game developers pushing technical advances in graphics so much, if it seems obvious that the customers prefer a less good looking game with better gameplay?
I'm not saying that games like Prey, Oblivion, or Half-Life 2 : Episode One aren't pretty. But is "pretty" really attracting the customers? Or does it end up driving potential buyers away, because a good number of them have a PC which is over 2 years old, and just has a budget graphics card, on which the new games would either not run at all, have impossible frame rates, or not look pretty any more.
Another possibility is that the top edge of current graphics is just falling into the Uncanny Valley, where game characters are too realistic to just appear like game icons, and not real enough to appear human.
But whatever the graphics, in the end people buy games for the gameplay. Whatever I thought of the graphics of Oblivion, the reason I didn't play it was that I didn't like the controls. The reason why especially first-person shooter games have to tout their graphics that much is that their gameplay is all the same (althoug Prey stands out for being innovative). So the upcoming Crysis will top the chart for a few weeks, and than drop quickly and be forgotten. If you want your game to be in the charts still after 2 years, you need to have better gameplay than that.
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