How much do people here care about how visually appealing the game is? Does Art and Animations matter at all? Would you play Angry Birds if the art,sounds and animations sucked?
it is a balance. If the game mechanic is really great, then who cares about Art. If there is not much to the game then cool Art can help. AB would not be as cool if the art sucked. It is all in the balance.
Problem is if a games art sucks, no one will likely play it in the first place to be able to even see if it has good game play. One of the reasons Angry Birds is so successful is because of its art, theme, and character designs. Graphics lure people in, game play keeps them playing and gets people to actually recommend the game. Keep in mind though that the visual appeal of a game is very subjective, so its not so black and white whether a game looks like crap or not, especially on the app store where old school pixel art, hand made graphics, and other styles that would ordinarily be perceived as "garbage" (thats not to say that they ARE garbage mind you) on any other console, is often regarded as cute and novel on an idevice.
It's important, mostly because of the first impression it gives. If an icon has a bad art, I will not want to look further as to what it looks like. If the graphics are bad, it makes it really unappealing to play.
To me the art is extremely important. Not that it has to be super artistic, even some simple good looking blocks can be appealing. It has to be polished however. The theme is also important to me. I really dislike military themes and I am not a big fan of science fiction either. I also get annoyed at those typical "sexy" scantily clad females who are not dressed for the role they have in the game, but are just there to somehow appeal to guys. With so many games to pick from, there is no reason for me to buy a game I don't like looking at.
As long as the art doesn't think it's good when it's not, or become bad after starting out good, then everything else depends on gameplay.
The artwork really matters if you want to draw people in, but gameplay can definitely win people over. I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I'm dying over in the Mission Europa thread right now because my iPod's being repaired and I can't play it. At first I merely glanced over the screenshots, thought "looks ancient" and left, but after more research it sounds fantastic and I'll be grabbing that baby the minute my iPod returns and my funds allow it.
well, I have read an article about this, you may have a check. Jaffe: Call developers out on artistic pretension Twisted Metal and God of War designer David Jaffe has said developers, gamers and especially games journalists should stop pandering to gamings artistic pretensions, so the industry is forced to shit or get off the pot. These are all surface elements that while challenging as anything else in games to produce well do not speak to the maturation of the medium one iota, Jaffe wrote in a blog post, speaking of mature themes and post-modern aesthetics. Im tired of seeing gamers and game journalists especially falling for this. Game journalists of all people need to be calling us developers out on our smoke and mirrors bullshit. If we really want to get to the top of the mountain we have to be honest about the current state of the art. Just because your game wears the trappings of relevancy does not make it relevant. Jaffe explained that giving gamers and developers an unrealistic sense of the mediums achievement is like telling a child their art couldnt be improved encouraging complacency. The very nature of something being artistic and important means that except in rare cases its power is evident without anyone having to tell you that it is, he added. And the sooner the people who write about games for a living start reporting on this angle of the story, the sooner us developers will be forced to shit or get off the pot. Responding to comments, Jaffe went on to explain his chain of thought. Tell us game makers weve arrived and before you know it, well think we really have (some of us already do), he said. As will the fans and the press. But we really havent arrived at all and it all just seems like this bullshit, backroom, secret-handshake kind of club where we tell the press how important and meaningful weve become in order to stroke our own egos, and then the press (SOME, certainly not all) goes off and writes about how important games have become in order to convince themselves they are doing important work and not just writing about the number of guns in the latest shooter or the size of the levels in a hit games expansion pak (sic).
Like others have said its a first impression thing. If a games art looks bad i want to go look at other apps right away. But if for someone reason i download a app with horrible art as long as the gameplay is good i can look past the art.
Abviously the answer is short and simple, no. But on other hand, if a game is developed with exellent gameplay, story and every aspect is perfect except the art design, why the developer makes a bit more efforts to perfect the art design?
For me, art is definitely an important point. It will be taken into consideration when I choose a game based on the first impression. A good graphic and nice character design will sure attract more players. If we even don't want to try a game because of its bad art how can we find whether it's good or not?
Art is not the most important part of a game, but it still does matter much to the game. The first impression a game gives to players is its art, and then graphics, gameplay and storyline. If a game has bad art, i think there will be less players hooked on it than those who are hooked on another game that has a better art.
