@tmu I get what you're saying and I basically agree. I think it is more of just a case of semantics. The game / demo has to look
good... I just consider good to actually mean
interesting (or even exciting) in this context.
Awesome graphics in and of themselves sure I think they can get a lot of attention and rightly so. BUT... there is no meaning to that beyond hey that looks awesome. If it were in a gallery it would make more sense. In a game graphics are not meant to simply be looked at. In fact doing so may well result in the player's death. In this way even awesome graphics can actually be at odds with the game itself.
I see graphics in games as having two goals... primary goal is to communicate with the player. This is where you are now, this is the situation, this is what you need to know right now at this moment. Feedback. That is the primary purpose. And secondary goal I think is to create an interesting looking game world. But again that doesn't necessarily mean absolute graphics quality; instead it can mean energy / life / motion / color / animation etc.
Look at a professional nature photograph... a scene... that is the best as far as realistic graphics... and sure we can appreciate the beauty of the scene and skill of the photographer. But imagine now that is the game world and all the player can do is walk around. And there is nothing in there actually doing anything. No motion. No "life" so to speak. Nothing to interact with. It would be a very boring game.
Contrast that with a game that had everything built out of colored rectangles or cubes. And the world feels very much "alive". There is a lot of subtle motion. And color. And although simple rectangle / cube based objects nearly everything can be interacted with to some degree. I think this would be a far more visually interesting and certainly much better game experience.
Of course a lot of it depends on the goal... the mood of the game. Limbo would have a very different style for example. But still is a great example. Simple silhouettes made for a superb looking game.... or did it? I think it made for a very interesting looking game.
All
just my opinion but I think many people focus solely on raw graphics quality and that shouldn't be the goal. As far as graphics are concerned the goal should be to create a
visually interesting game. Not make a game with awesome graphics. They
can be the same thing but many times they are not.
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