Do you judge on looks?

For the sake of this article the title refers simply to gaming. The above picture is from a recent demo, utilising new technology used by the latest version of the Unreal engine. At present it takes about three top of the range Nvidia GTX 580’s to produce an image like this.However, the way technology is advancing, in 12 months time this may be achievable on a single card. In 18 months plus, this may well be within the capabilities of a mid-range card. Of course Epic games is not the only company developing in this field. There's plenty of competition. Check out the picture below from the forthcoming "Battlefield 3", which uses the Frostbite 2 engine. Impressive may not be an adequate word.

Now I won't dispute the argument that the most important aspect of any title is the quality of the gameplay itself. I still play some old SNES console games such as "Mario Kart", 20 years on, because Nintendo made something inherently engaging and entertaining. However, the technical restrictions of the 8 bit days have long gone. There is no excuse for a game to look lacklustre these days. No matter what the intellectual arguments may be against, as humans we still judge much on first impressions and this still hold true with games.I've been playing LOTRO for over two years but the game itself is double that age. A bit of research gleaned the following technical specifications of it's game engine and other sundry development tools.

LOTRO uses the G3 engine made by Turbine, an updated version of the G2 engine used for "Asheron's Call 2". Turbine is also a listed user of "Havok", an engine to create realistic physics, and "Granny", a tool for creating avatars.

Now, all things considered, for a game that is relatively old within industry terms, it still produces some impressive vistas and action shots. This and its innovative production design really helps capture the atmosphere of Middle Earth.

However, when you cross reference against new MMOs such as "Rift", then you begin to see difference that a few years can make. Now LOTRO's recent transition to F2P has certainly re-invogorated the games player base and Turbine are reaping the financial rewards accordingly. Yet despite the new found profitability, I do not see the game getting any major graphical overhaul beyond the recent support for DX11. Replacing the very game engine it runs on would be extremely costly and may well disenfranchise some of the current player base.

I would truly love to see the graphical potential of the certain genres such as the FPS or driving games transferred over to MMOs. I am not aware of any technical issues as to why this cannot be the case. Perhaps it is more an issue of time, as so many major titles take so long to produce these days. SWTOR for example being over two years plus in development. It is conceivable that a finished product is ultimately going to be running on superseded technology, although this is not immediately noticeable to the end user.After considering all these points, what is your position on this matter. Are you oblivious to graphics considering them nothing more that an additional embellishment? Are you content to play older game with simpler interfaces but solid gameplay? Or do you lust and drool over bleeding edge visuals and dream of the day that games become virtually photorealistic? Have you ever considered stop playing a game, purely because it had become dated in its look?