Photo realism with no artistic direction is pointless.

I care about art direction. Graphical capability can give digital artists more freedom especially for photorealistic styles. But few games actually make good use of such artistic freedom.

My favourite 3D game graphics is Super Mario Galaxy. Other than that I mostly prefer game graphics from 16-bit consoles.

I'm on the same boat. Photorealism only gets you so far, and pixel-art like graphics have their own charm. .

i think stardew valley is itself proof that detailed graphics are not a requirement for good game play.

It's becoming ever more obvious as graphics improve that it doesn't really matter what the game looks like as long as the game is fun.

Companies better have a damn good reason to spend production resources on high end graphics given how little they matter compared with thematic harmony, creativity and originality.

"Function over form" is a mantra I live by. This is reflected in the software I use/make, as well as the games I play.

Speaking as a story-heavy RPG enthusiast, so my focus is more on story-telling and exploration. I don't think it's the graphics that's holding back the exploration potential, but rather the complexity of actually creating huge game worlds. You tend to end up with either a procedural generated world without a lot of cohesion, or one that's a mile wide but an inch deep in interactivity.
Just look at Baldur's Gate 3. It's a hugely complex and reactive game world, but it's locations and the way you are allowed to explore them are reduced to three linear chapters. Even if you switched to, say Baldur's Gate 2 era graphics, it would still not be possible to create a game in a single huge explorable world with the same level of complexity and story telling.

Though I'm definitely with you on scaling down the graphics in exchange for richer and more interactive worlds, I do think there's a hard limit on how much better those worlds would get.

I'm with you. I think "peak graphics" for me was around XBox 360. I'd much rather have resources used for better gameplay, larger worlds, more expansive story, etc. Also, just less resource usage in general; I stopped PC gaming forever ago because I got sick of chasing the GPU dragon.

Not sure I'd want to go all the way back to 8-bit, but somewhere between there and XB360 would be fine. That said, I do like seeing new "retro" games that are 8-bit era appropriate.

I want a Fun game. Art (graphics) can help and be supplementary towards making a game fun, but it is not the end all be all. Some fun games I've played use intentionally shitty graphics to add to it, other games are so unfun because all they do is try to wow you with the images.

I've found lately the indie Dev sphere has been more focused on fun games and AAA studios have more focused on graphics alone. I think this mostly happened because early on when (video) games where becoming popularized hardware was increasing at such a rapid pace and graphics genuinely could be made better, not necessarily as just a stylistic choice. You could show off the new hardware capabilities with good story for more appeal. This also made them lazier over the years as those big hardware and software leap allowed them to focus on the consumer draw utilizing showcase imagry over story. As hardware advances slowed and graphic leaps became smaller the gains just aren't there. And you've left many consumers with nostalgia over the fight for when graphic improvements meant something, in a time when good story/gameplay was also pretty necessary.

Too realistic graphics take me out of the game, are visually overwhelming, and make it hard to see certain important details.

If I have to pick up a quest item, I don't want it's stone texture blending into the dirt floor. I want it highlighted so I can see the damn thing is interactable.

You should play Nethack

I care about the art on an individual level and as a whole when compared to how it adds to the game. Applying a strict criteria of detail and other metrics is pointless when games are meant to be works of art and passion. Its too subjective to judge it. Like judging Salt & Sanctuary solely on its Dishwasher inspired art would be a misstep. The art adds to the bleakness of the world while also maintaining the studio's style

Graphics are important. Polygon count is not. There is no real value in being able to see each individual eyelash, but I also don't think there's much benefit to making every game look like the original Lode Runner.

I care -- all else held equal, I'd rather have snazzier graphics -- but I feel like there's pretty strongly diminishing returns.

And because resources are finite, all else isn't held equal. You're giving up time spent working on gameplay or whatever to stick fancier graphic assets in.

Some of my favorite games don't have much by way of graphics.

I do kind of wish that I could get upscaled versions of a number of games that I enjoy with low-resolution pixel graphics, though -- I'd like "high-resolution DLC" to be a thing for successful games like that. Think Caves of Qud or something like that. IIRC Cave Story did that, along with a handful of other games. Would like to have higher-res versions of Balatro. Same for Noita, though there I guess the resolution hooks into the game mechanics, so have to be careful how to deal with that.

I've also seen some games with untextured polygons that have worked out pretty well. Star Fox for the Super Nintendo and Avara and Flying Nightmares for the classic Mac came from an era when texturing wasn't always possible. Carrier Command 2 is much newer, and uses only limited texturing.

Minecraft went a long way with very technically-limited graphics.

There are a lot of good roguelikes that just use text.

You are not alone. I do have a lower threshold that is above 8 bit, but I want enough of a difference from real life that I don't constantly think I'm watching a real person through the eyes of a drone.

I think there are possibilities for games that are 8bit, depending on what the game style is. Some simple games and side scrollers wouldn't need to be much higher that that.

Edit: but anything that has the depth as part of the gameplay should have at least PS2 level graphics. In driving games, first person shooters, open world games need that clarity to see where I'm going and what I can explore over there

A game can only give you so many hours before it becomes boring. Sandbox games aside, most are done after 100 to 200 hours. More content wouldn't really revive them as you already know the gameplay loop.

Graphics isn't as important as art style, however I'd rather play a game with realistic graphics but lack of distinguishing art direction, than one with art direction but overall being too basic with their graphics. Graphics is a huge part of immersion to me.

I play a lot of indie games with poor graphics. Best example Minecraft, but when I can install higher resolution textures, realistic lighting and animated foliage, it is eye candy. I can just stand there and look at the beautiful world and relax. I do need zero gameplay at this point and am still entertained.

Gameplay is overrated, give me pretty graphics. Be it realistic or not.

Personally, I've never been particularly wowed by good graphics. I'm perfectly happy to play a game with crunchy graphics from decades ago if the gameplay is fun, or a modern indie title with low poly or pixel art graphics. There are plenty of great games out there where the graphics are nothing special.

Don't feel bad, I don't even care about video games

I only care so far as if they can make it look good, I'd like it to.

My favorite game of all time is Dwarf Fortress. But if someone made the exact same game but with modern 3D graphics, I'd be more likely to play the one that looks nice.

Nobody is making games like that, though. Most modern games have less than half of the depth in mechanics of games I grew up with in the 90's in favor of better graphics and larger worlds. Baldur's Gate 3 is the kind of game I wanna see and it's popularity and why it got so popular show that people want games of the mid to late 90's more than they want modern games that only have great graphics going for them; BG3 takes the same design ideas from back then and just makes it prettier to look at.

I really don’t game. And so yeah. It is odd for me as when I look for a laptop, for example, I want a 16 inch, without a gpu. I do text and VNC. Please sir, may I have more screen?

I feel like people who talk about graphics fundamentally misunderstand what they themselves crave.

People want things that are nice to look at. Some artstyles require more computation than others, but ultimately all of gaming is art, and all of art is a conjuring trick, much like Cinema, how something is accomplished or how "believable" it looks is secondary to how invested you are in what you are consuming, yanno?

I do however have personal opinions, and my personal opinion is that gaming peaked during the PS2/GameCube/Xbox years. Hardware was just about good enough that pretty much anything developers wanted to make, they could achieve. Nothing looked like real life, sure, but it looked good enough. And the more detail you are throwing at the screen, the more expensive it is to make. So back then we had a lot of mid-budget games. That had resources not available to modern Indie studios to do ambitious things, but were also not these insane investments that had to please every executive under the sun and monetise everything in order to break even.

The perfect balance between niceness and feasibility.

sounds like PC gamers should fire up an Amiga emulator and learn what gameplay could be.