Switch Owners Aren't Worried About Visual Presentation, According To Crashlands Dev

I think that is kind of a niche thing to be honest.

For me:

1. Is it fun?

2. Is the frame rate/performance stable?

3. Is it aesthetically pleasing?

4. Is there bad voice acting/writing?

Generally speaking, that’s all I look for. Funny because the Crashlands game doesn’t hit any of those checkboxes for me. I found it to be another vapid piece of iPhone shovelware.

I agree, I think some developers focus a little too much on hyper-realistic graphics and physics for the most unnecessary things (RDR2 horse genitalia). Art style is way more important to me, just look at Wind Waker. The original game is still nice on the eyes today, whereas MW1 looks pretty ugly compared to the more recent games in its series. Don't get me wrong, I was floored with The Witcher 3 when it released and it still looks good, but if you're going to put such a big emphasis on your game's graphics the gameplay better be top notch, or it'll just feel like you wasted too much time and resources focusing on visuals.

In the next decade? We already have that now.

Ya. I mean... at the end of the day, does the game hold up?

I was playing Guacamelee earlier today, and I was amazed at how fun that game is. It’s really good. Better than the vast majority of 3D AAA out there. I do think that’s the exception more than the rule- most indies and 2D games are mediocre at best. But the few that rise and bubble up to the top- those games are often as good as any game out there.

And for the record- DKC Tropical Freeze is one of my fave games of all time... a 2D platformer. I like it every bit as much as Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter, Red Dead, Pokémon Let’s Go, Civilization VI, etc. This is also why I enjoyed Monster Hunter Generations more than MH World- the gorgeous graphics and lush environments weren’t enough to make up for changing the unique skill system into that of every other dime a dozen game, and the overwhelming content with nearly 100 awesome monsters, of which Ahtal-Ka was my fave in the entire series to date, etc. Its substance that matters. For the record though, MH World is still one of my faves of all time

This is just an extreme generalization of Switch gamers, as there definitely will be people that want 3D models in the games they play. It’s actually kind of funny how Coster states the next decade will set 2D games apart from 3D, when in reality there is already a great amount of oversaturation in the “2D pixel art” style of games, especially on the eShop. This doesn’t mean all of them are bad, just that the style is starting to get a little tired and unoriginal.

I just played Gacha Force on the GCN literally yesterday. And compared to Eternal Darkness, the game held up amazingly well.

The problem I notice with realism and realistic graphic pushing games is that it's often solely focused on it, which ages the game increasingly every year when the next tech comes in and squats all over it.

@goggles789 I found Crashlands to be one of the better pieces of phone shovelware. It has more going on for it than a lot of mobile games, but it still has a really obvious and repetitive gameplay loop that wasnt interesting for very long.

I mean both would be nice, but gameplay is always the most important thing. There's no point in a pretty game if it's boring to play, we have animated movies for a reason

As long as the game:

1.) Doesn’t hurt to looks at

2.) Is fun and can keep my attention

I’m good. 😃👍 2D and 3D don’t matter to me, as long as the game looks good and is an enjoyable experience.

@Other-Brother He talks as if he was in the 80s.

Gameplay first for me, THEN everything else. I can forgive some shortcomings on the rest, but I can't forgive bad gameplay-- That's how I identify with a game.

@JayJ Still, it's a niche that earns a living.

I don't think he's wrong about the way 2D games will go, myself. I think the pixel art will last for a long time but diminish, but 2D artwork has never lost its appeal over centuries.

I don't necessarily agree with the characterization of Switch owners and mobile gamers and what they want, and how the other consoles aren't a great home for stuff... but it is interesting how some of these games thrive so strongly on the Switch.

@MeloMan Me too, but sales don't necessarily work that way, unfortunately. Plus, I've been turned off by a game because of its aesthetics before. I mean, I do have to stare at it while I play.

It's a bit ridiculous that he speculates that the future will bring detailed 2D games when it is a reality. Hand-drawn visuals? Does he know that games like Wario Land The Shake Dimension exist?

It sounds like cheap PR so Switch owners feel praised and buy their game and letting people believe that he is a visionary in the process.

Gameplay is always the most important thing, but a smooth 60 fps performance is always wonderful and sometimes necessary. I absolutely love Kingdom New Lands, but it never runs at 60 fps. I had no idea I would like such a simple 2D "strategy" game. I don't know how to ask for and advocate for awesome creative gameplay, but I know I always want games to run at 60 fps, so that's what I argue in favor of. I don't care about resolution. 1080p is nice,4k is nice, but unless it runs perfectly at 60 fps like Wipeout Omega Collection, I'd rather have a lower resolution. Many, many PS2 and GameCube games look better than PS4, Switch, and Xbox one games to me purely because they run smoothly. (I think that's my favorite game console generation because the power of the consoles was at a relatively high level considering the target resolutions of TVs back then). Anyways, gameplay is number 1, but 60 fps is a dividing line, and if a game falls short of that I might not play it enough to discover if it is fun.

I agree to a point. When I buy a game I need to know are the controls tight, is the game fair (I don’t mind hard but not Nintendo hard which was a deliberate design style due to arcade games heading to the nes with devs not changing their quarter eating style of design), is it fun (yep this is seperate from is it fair), if it has story is the story well written and if it is in a series, does it follow lore? If those needs are met I am about 75 percent ready to buy.

After that is the artstyle aesthetically pleasing (which is a broad range to me and can go from 8 bit to games that make my gpu scream. although I admit the 8 bit has to look really nice) and then what system is it on.

Before the switch I would go where the game is in general and usually the best or most comfortable place to play (often either or) but the switch has opened up my game playing when before I was almost just a game horader. I would buy games and they would go in a pile. Wiiu started me off in that direction as I could take the game pad pretty far in my apartment ... but switch made a game being released somewhere else a negative. I am a huge dq fan. Yet aside from the 3ds version (which I am not playing because I have switch games to play) I am patiently waiting the S version just because that is my platform of choice.

I am not vetoing non switch games but if I think it has a chance... I am waiting. So far it works out. If I am wrong I get the game bargin bin. If I am right.... I actually beat the game.

All that being said I think some of that is the curator mindset (good games, many genres, no brand loyalty - or the Nintendo brand loyalty bred by the snes/n64) that many Nintendo and multisystem gamers have and the time filler (easy to pickup and put down but still fun) mindset many mobile and portable gamers have. The switch by design is good at feeding both subgroups.

@Zelda79 sadly it is. Not knocking RDR2, I've heard that it's a great game, but it seems like they've spent a lot of time working on things that really don't impress me all that much.

The original had a great story/characters, but I wasn't in love with the gameplay. Rockstar can't seem to get down good third person shooter mechanics, the reliance on lock on was always a turn off for me and the cover mechanics weren't great because the control felt so stiff. Rockstar games are always entertaining for their stories, but I have yet to really have a lot of fun with the actual gameplay.

One word. Fun. That's all I care about and is still all I care for. Although, a good story every now and then is always good too.

I care about visual presentation. Video -VIDEO- juegos, people.

There is quite a big difference between "Not caring about visual presentation" and "being okay with 2D or retro or other art styles that differ from high level realism"

I would argue that the visual presentation of Octopath Traveller, a game which sold out repeatedly, was one of the biggest draws of the game.

If you define "good graphics" only by the level of realism they impart, I pity you. If you define hardcore games only by the shooters and horror games they play, I also pity you. You really know very little about large swaths of the gaming community.

@Heavyarms55

Exactly this, Octopath might be 2D, but man I really feel like it's the best-looking game to come out this year. The art style is GORGEOUS and artistic/creative visuals will always trump realism imo

I could have told you ten years ago, 2D games will always be fun and we will always want to play them. Its deeply sad that they stopped making 2D Castlevania games. Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclessia are some of my all time fav games.

Additionally, what really matters across the board, 3D games or not is that things are playable and look at least acceptable on the switch. Honestly I dont care at all if you can play a fancier version on another console. If you can make it playable on the Switch, do it. I will happily take a cut in graphics that I will never notice or care about cause otherwise I will probably never play your fancy new game.

I wouldn't say it's so much that they don't care. But, Nintendo Switch isn't a platform most people go to for "graphics and realism". I understand the compromises needed to get some games on there and I'm okay with that. But, that doesn't mean I always like the tons of random 2D games I pass by on the eShop.

Dont care is a big word, I dont care for graphics because they dont make the gameplay.

2D games has a Nice story element and most of the time a uniqe view on gameplay

@Zelda79

Yeah, I finished the game because I was invested in John Marston and his story, but I just can't seem to get all that excited for the sequel. They went so in-depth with side content such as hunting that they actually made it a bit of a chore, and then they lessened the efficiency of fast travel. The idea I guess was to immerse the player, and I'll give them credit because the game is definitely gorgeous, well built, and immersive, but all of the things they've added actually took me out of it a little. I can appreciate a good RPG or a narrative-focused game, but I still want it to feel like a game. Sometimes you can overdo it and actually make your realistic game a little boring and I think after reading reviews for RDR2, that's what I'm worried about.

Truth. I still play Goldeneye regularly. I just want fun games.

If a game tales 8 years to make just for some real time ray casting, eh I'm good.

2D is fine for turn based RPGs and platformers. 3d everything else though.

One of the main reasons I love both PSVR and Switch is that it's like going back to the old days of creativity in video games instead of this lets just make it prettier generation that's just full of open worlds and shooters. RDR2 is a great example of a game which has pushed animation and realism to new heights but at the cost of gameplay as these animations negatively affect how the main character controls and you spend far too much time simply riding a horse doing nothing. Ironically I stopped playing it so that I could play the 2D Castlevania games that had just come out on PS4 at the time in Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood which were instantly more fun to play.

That's the thing these days after playing games for 30 years I just want games that are fun to control such as swinging with Spider-Man or platforming with Mario and games like The Messenger or Astro Bot in VR, unfortunately the majority outside of Switch just want to shoot each other online so this creativity of old is dampened somewhat in favour of making yet another battle royale or online shooting gallery riddled with microtransactions

I play 2D pixel art games generally in portable mode mainly because they look gorgeous on that delicious screen and I don’t much like the look on my huge 50whatever inch TV. Obviously PSBox owners don’t get this option. This and being able to play them anywhere must be huge factors in why these games do so well on Switch. Now, I must go finish Golf Story. Awesome little RPG

Visual presentation != 3d

So much saltiness among the comments against this developer simply because he had the temerity to create games for mobile phones. Ugh. Gamer elitism. Gameplay is king - it's pretty much the only thing that matters.

Why play a game with great controls and fluid movement when you can buy that other game with super-realistic shrinking horse balls??

Performance is a bigger concern of mine. Sure, games on PS4/Xbox/PC are prettier but I've often found that is at the detriment of the games stability. Take Shadow of the Tomb Raider for example, the game is beautiful but suffers horrendously in certain areas as they have clearly been overzealous and built something the platform can't handle. Granted, you could always argue this is down to the amount of effort the developer wants to put in. Panic Button are constantly proving that games can look fantastic on the Switch and be stable.

I don't agree that the Switch is for more casual gamers either (...this isn't the Wii). I also don't agree that Switch owners don't care about graphics. I think it's less of a concern but I do feel that the demand for and scrutiny over any ports of next gen games backs that up.

Poor graphics or good graphics, matters not to me.

It really winds me up when developers use the Switch's power as an excuse for deciding not to develop for it simply because they can't make the aesthetic match other consoles.

I'd love something like Red Dead on Switch. If to make it work it means sacrificing a lot of details and a few rough edges then so be it. As long as the game still plays well then why not just go for it.

If all a game has going for it are the visuals then there's something wrong.

"Poor graphics" don't matter to me as long as the art style is suited to the game. I like a game to look good, but the pixel count has little to do with that.

Controls and fluidity of character movement is something that's really important to me I would say.

Of course, great graphics are great. But there are levels. A game doesn't have to look photorealistic or be shown in 4K resolution to have quality visuals. A game can be in 3D like MHWorld or in pixels like NeuroVoider; both look great in their own way and both are fun in their own way. If the game is technically solid and you can tell what's happening onscreen, it comes down to art direction.

RDR2 doesn't interest me in the slightest. I don't care how nice it looks, I hate the western theme and won't play a game based on it. Meanwhile I'm headed to my 400th or so hour of playing the visually inferior MHGU on Switch and loving every minute of it.

With the resurgence of 2D NES and SNES style games, could N64 and PS1 style games make a comeback? I would be interested in somethingblike that.

It's not that we don't care. We care about graphics and other fancy stuff. We just know that Switch has another purpose. Switch is my "fun family/friends video game", with a few exceptions (like Smash Bros), and the fancy stuff I play on my PC or other console.

I think a lot of people (developpers included) are misinterpreting or mixing up technology and style.

While I agree that (IMO), the fun factor is what matters in the end, the way a game looks is often the first contact anyone has with any title (through images or videos), and so anything that fails to projects a specific "soul" or "personality" is bound to fail. And this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that a game is a 2D or a 3D one. There are magnificient 2D games out there, and there are very bad ones too. Same for 3D games.

This kind of goes along with what I've been saying in previous comments about other news. It's not about the tech, it's more about the art direction. You can have games that get it right, and you can have games that look like someone failed their graphic design course, or look like a lazy pre-made resource collection.

You can have a minimalist style, a cartoon style, a hyper-realistic style, as long as that style grants the game a personality of its own, it's good.

I care DEEPLY about graphics and visual presentation. And I'm pretty sure most Switch owners do, contrary to what the title of this article says (which isn't really what Crashland's dev was saying). Article's title sound like most Switch owners don't care if a game looks like sh!t. That's not true. They probably don't care about a game being 2D or 3D though. But I assure you that "good looking" is important. Which relates to both 2D and 3D games.

@JaxonH DKC:TF is a 3D game though. It has a fixed side camera, and a 2D plane of motion, but it's a fully 3D rendered game.

(BTW I triple dipped and bought it digital on Black Friday....I never load the cart, but would love to play more often. )

@NEStalgia
Traversal is in a 2D plane. That makes it a 2D platformer. Doesn't matter what's rendered. Aside from the select, brief 3D segments, it's all 2D planar traversal

Kinda weird how he says mobile gamers care more about quality, when Clash Of Clans is the top grossing game on Android.

@JaxonH Yeah, as a genre, but based on what Coster is talking about, he means the graphics rather than the genre by traversal. DKC:TF is at least AA with 3D graphics that on occasion does actually use the camera and go full 3D, so it's more the "big" games he's talking about. (Same for Ori on XBox.)

Depend on the price off the game. If it full price. I expect good graphics. That while i was slightly disappointed with pokemon lets go. Great content. Average graphics. Full price.

Well that Seth Coster guy certain doesn't speak for me.
It's pretty negligent to paint all Switch gamers with the same brush, because his assumption most definitely won't be true for all Switch gamers.

2D games with hand painted imagery and fluid animation already exist, so I don't see why this guy is saying that the future of 2D games will be like that. We already have Ori, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Rayman and others that are perfect examples of this.

I agree with the spirit of this developer's commentary in that gameplay is first and foremost the most important element in a video game. I have to point out however that there is a distinction between quality gameplay and 2D titles, and the two are not always linked. In fact, I find that a good majority of lower quality mobile and indie titles are almost always 2D. The way I see it: 3D AAA games are most likely to forego gameplay in favor of presentation and suffer for it, whereas 2D titles are more likely to forego both presentation and gameplay. 2D is seemingly the easier, lazier option for fledgling developers, much like annual releases of interactive movies are the common output of major AAA developers.

You see many more 2D titles with gameplay that can barely be described as anything more than "move the control stick" than 3D games, which will at least have some depth to the product, like a quest system, movement controls like walking, running, and crouching, an item or crafting system, etc. (I say this as a huge long-time fan of 2D games, I've played them all, from the NES to today).

There is a fine balance to be found between marrying fun, intuitive or interesting gameplay with appropriate visuals, and not all 3D game developers are good at finding this balance, certainly not most 2D developers. The industry needs to move away from the current haves vs. have-nots system we've settled into in recent years where the only games that get made are either multi-million dollar interactive movies made by giant conglomerate developers or small two man development teams publishing cookie cutter 2D games from their bedrooms with gameplay that can be boiled down in simplistic terms to some combination of Platformer/RPG/Shooter/Puzzle. There needs to be a stronger middle ground like that of the 90's, where mid-size AA developers can create ambitious games with a Nintendo-esque against-the-grain design philosophy in mind, where fun gameplay is mixed with unique visuals that compliment gameplay.