Irrlicht Engine

I just wanted to ask, is it possible for 3D game with no spectacular graphics, pretty bad & stupid art, with low or no budget, can beat a game with really nice graphics, stunning 3D art and with fairly high budget (I'm not talking about AAA titles, I'm talking about games created by individuals and small teams, like you can see on this forum) only if it has really nice atmosphere, gamplay and story, or the gap is too big?

Possible? Yes. Likely? no.

pacman, space invaders, solitare and mine sweeper are still popular, and still re-released commercially in some form every other month.

so... yes.

right, and don't forget Tetris, almost no graphics (beside some collored and rotating squares) and it was a real hype and still an adictive game !!!

These examples i don't think are good because are for casual games, a casual gamer play tetris instead of crysis, however, a real gamer will never do this.

Anyway, a pretty nice example is Braid. Braid is not-so-simple, however i think a good programmer and artist could easily make something similar.

A lot of hardcore gamers love it, Braid is the best example i know of a game no spetacular graphics, simple gameplay, nice atmosphere and low budget that can rival (at least for the first days ) "big" games.

Another good example is World of Goo.

If you can make something similar, i'm sure it will at least rival big games.

However, you asked if it's possible for a game wit bad graphics and good gameplay to beat a game with good graphics and good gameplay... i think it's impossible. If the compared game has good graphics and bad gameplay, in this case i think it's easy to beat it.

These examples i don't think are good because are for casual games, a casual gamer play tetris instead of crysis, however, a real gamer will never do this.

Ahahahah. I have over 180 games on Steam alone. I clock above 10 hours of L4D every week. I also play UT, TF2, CS, Cities XL, Disciples 2, and plenty of other "real game". I devellop games for a living. I entered the profession as a game tester and a pretty good one at that. Worked with both huge studios and indy startup. And yet, more than half the games I play are "casual". I have lots of fun on those, as they allow me to unwind. My wife also enjoy those. So anyone still defending that stupid idea of "real gamers" should go take a walk and not come back for a while. It's been discredited in terms of attendance to events, in terms of sales, in terms of profit and in terms of hours played by week.

I don't think any gamer would play tetris, minesweeper, solitaire, or space invaders for fun... i mean, they can play to wait popcorn in microwave, but i doubt any would actually pay to have such kind of game.

You know, there are plenty of simple (in gameplay and graphics) games that are free, if someone want to sell his game, it can even have poor graphics, but it need a different and nice gameplay.

Anyway, it's just my opinion. I never saw any pro gamer playing those poor indie games, however, some indie games are really good and even if uncomparable with big games, some of them are good enough to have some hours of fun and worth the price.

Yeah, pro gamers, like my friend Louis who do Street Fighter tournaments in Las Vegas, they'd never play casuals like bejewel or such, hmmm, oh, wait... Go away. Your opinion is nothing more than that, an opinion, which has been countered by multiple statistics in the last 10 years. Casual, Indy, even those words are starting to get blurred, since some casual sink above 40 hours a week and some indy are huge company with simply no publisher. The world changes everyday, so don't stay at the same place too long, else it'll pass you by.

Easy man!
I just know that 100% of whom i know will never pay not even 5 cent for a pacman or space invaders game.

Geomaster asked about games created by individuals and small teams, some people said pacman and tetris could beat games with stunning 3d art and high budget, i can't agree, however, some games that are simple, but not so simple as pacman and tetris, like Braid and WOG can not only beat indie games that has stunning graphics but also can someway rival even big games. But it has to be a really nice and different gameplay, i doubt any old-school game remake for example would be good without nice graphics and sound.

I found Roguelike games nice to play in this case may be player imagination could overcome the lack of graphics
anyway when you use 3D is to obtain a realistic image of the world to take away work to imagination
may be like reading a book or seeing a movie
so in my opinion the low graphic/ special effects game to have success would have a good story or at least bee original / new.

cheers

Credentials
Ok, I represent Casual Game developers. I have personally worked on 2 Casual titles that have netted close to 1/2 a million dollars each. This is a drop in the bucket compared to what other casual games have made.

History Lesson
Back in the day, we (as kids) only had PacMan, Tetris, Space Invaders, Solitaire, and Minesweeper to play. We'd pump our quarters into these machines ... the original form of micropayments. Now-a-days, companies like Zygna give their games away for free in the hopes that a percentage of the players will make small micropayments in order to buy stuff in-game.

Fast forward 30+ years and you have a ton of people who grew up on Casual Titles and who are now in a position to pay for new games.

As an aside, Solitaire and Minesweeper weren't created to make money directly. They were written to teach people how to use the mouse (left click, right click, drag and drop, etc...). Those games helped springboard the Operating Systems they ran on. More on cross-subsidies later...

Repgahroll wrote:Easy man!
I just know that 100% of whom i know will never pay not even 5 cent for a pacman or space invaders game.

Cross-Subsidies
Absolutely. While it is possible to make direct money from Casual Game titles using tired mechanics, there's a whole other market devoted to GenX/Y/Z who either don't have the money to pay for premium casual games or are simply used to the idea they can play a game for free.

These 'free' casual games can (and still are) be subsidized. Cross-Subsidies have been around for ages. Most free, online Flash games come with Mochi-Ads that pay between 0,02 - 2,00 USD. Others have ads built in around the pages and others offer in-game purchases. When 1 person makes a purchase in Farmville, they are paying for a handful of other people to play the game.

Repgahroll wrote:... i doubt any old-school game remake for example would be good without nice graphics and sound.

10 years ago there were so many Brick Buster clones and tetris rip offs it wasn't funny. They had terrible graphics and kids shouting into microphones for effects. Then came the Match-3 games like Bejeweled and Zuma and their subsequent clones. Next (5 years ago) was Time Management games like Diner Dash and Hidden Object Games like Mystery Case Files.

Now, we are heading towards Click Adventure hybrids, like ... The Secret of Monkey Island? Wait, isn't that game 20 years old?

Conclusion
So to try to end the discussion, it's not that people don't pay for casual games. It's that YOU and your friends (a market in and of itself) don't directly pay for casual games. It's like saying that NO ONE pays for perfume because none of your friends buy perfume. This logically fallacy is called Hasty Generalization.

Go to Bigfishgames.com where a new game is released everyday and tell me how many of them have really great graphics, sound or original game play. Most of these games matke a pittance, but anything that makes the top ten gets a descent return. Top 5 and the game is profitable. No Ads, no micropayments, no subsidies of any kind. Direct selling.

Check this game out it's an old game and still addictive,
I'd love see indie games like that (maybe a bit more modern in the save/load/story and so on).

Beating a top end graphics game might be hard though, if you have the money
to make these fancy graphics come alive, you'll surely have some nice coders too right...