I believe that I said this in the last thread as well, but allow me to reiterate. I think it is important in this discussion to define your terms, because the word "graphics" has a wide array of applications, including-
- The aesthetic personality of the game. Animal Crossing is a cute, colorful game, whereas Resident Evil is a dark, horror game, which naturally is going to dictate how the graphics are presented as well as provide context for the tasks you're doing.
- The graphical fidelity of the game, or how advanced the graphics appear by modern standards.
- The actual in-game art assets, which obviously is going to serve as a functional prop for the first two.
I'm of the opinion that graphics and gameplay are not entirely separate entities. They are largely interwoven. In an ideal scenario I do believe that "gameplay" should come first, but that doing so entails a certain amount of graphical prowess in its own right. NES games may be dated by today's standards, but the ones that are largely remembered today still hold true to certain graphical perimeters that keep them from being a complete eyesore. In addition, graphics can impact gameplay by either enhancing or obscuring important details. If players don't understand what an object is and how it functions because the graphics don't convey it very well, that will inevitably lead to missing out on important advantages or a multitude of unfair deaths.
In addition, details such as animation also play a role in how in-game movement is perceived, which will largely dictate how the game is played and how it feels to play. For example, it is often argued that
Balan Wonderworld's sluggish movement speed is largely attributed to the fact that the animation used for running is considerably faster than the speed of the character. Neither of which are really bad, but the disconnect creates a feeling of sluggishness. Another example would be the SNES game,
Plok compared to... well, any platformer game. When you defeat an enemy in
Plok, they simply disappear, which makes the game feel broken, like something unintentional happened. When you defeat an enemy in Mario, they have a specific death animation that offers a sense of feedback to reward you for your efforts.
Also consider that visuals are not the sole representation of a game's experience. The audio department is equally important and in some cases more so. FPS games are the most easy to explain due to their simplicity, but this isn't exclusive to them. If you take the sounds of realistic gunfire away and replace them with clown horns honking, that is going to have a noticeable, tangible impact on the quality of the game, even if everything else remains the same. One need only look at the various YouTube videos showcasing the workarounds some games have had to perform in order to appease the draconian standards of German media legislation to see how even the tiny details can change how a game feels to play.
In my opinion,
aesthetic personality and
in-game assets are very important to a game's overall feel and largely dictate how the game actually plays. The area of graphics I think is of slightly less importance would be
graphical fidelity. It doesn't matter to me if the game is a little dated looking. I mean, I'm something of a Nintendo loyalist, and Nintendo has always been the worst choice if you cared to have an engaging, cinematic experience. The framerates for most third-party Nintendo games are always notably lower than their PlayStation, Xbox, and especially PC counterparts, and the textures are usually--sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically--downscaled or changed altogether in order to fit whatever ridiculously low standards Nintendo usually has for them.
That being said, if there is a problem with graphical fidelity, the game should still be programmed with those limitations in mind. The worst-looking games and by no coincidence the worst games to play are often those that seem to be aware that they can't fit certain elements within the limitations of the hardware, so they'll try to jam them in anyway, resulting in some rather abysmal-looking games. And of course, where older games are concerned, if anyone has ever attempted to play an older game on a modern TV or computer and watched as the game is morphed into a barely legible mess, then the importance of updating the graphics to fit modern resolutions can not be understated.
So the answer, I suppose, is that gameplay is more important. I would rather a game be a little ugly but still offer a fun and engaging experience than be a beautiful, cutting edge, state-of-the-art exercise is misery. But graphics are not merely something that is added on top of gameplay; they intrinsically inform one another in a number of different ways. So to categorize them as something entirely divorced from gameplay or as something of only secondary or tertiary importance is, in my opinion, a slightly uninformed view of how games are developed as well as how they are played and experienced.
I can't remember where I heard this but a good game can survive bad graphics but a bad game isn't saved by good graphics. Although I do think a game can be taken down a bit in "fun value" if it's just really horrendous looking but even then it's also affected by personal style preferences.
