Yeah, people are like 'yeah, it's kinda slow, but it's not so bad, not so bad' , realising their machine was outdated almost the moment they had bought it but the übercool game 'runs' ...

I know people act this way all the time, most of them don't really have choice, since they won't buy a new pc every 6 months or even every year. But take a look at F.E.A.R for example, you'll need a very good pc to even run it smoothly at lower resolutions. What fun can a game possibly be when it's a freaking slide show? Doom3 did a better job, but the graphics difference between the low spec and high spec settings was very big, Doom3 running with low textures, low effects, and low resolution is not very pretty.

Cheers

This is not a smart approach,
especially not for Indy Developers.

Big games Like FEAR or Gothic3 have a certain Marketingpotential,
and you also know that buying this game it will be a fun gameplay,
even if the game run choppy.

But an indygame will probably not have such a good gamecontent,
and if it runs even slow then, it is no game to purchase.
(Indygames need to present a demo to market, or there will be no interest at all,
- next to some lowprice mixed software basked.)

Take Blizzard, they shure make AAA Games,
but the game also runs on underavarage machines when they come out.

Yes, I definately agree. There's a huge difference between indie game marketing and AAA marketing. Even if one of our games looked like Doom4, we probably couldn't start a big enough buzz to get away with a game that doesn't run reasonably fast on current average machines ...

By the way, a good example for an AAA title having this kind of problem is one of the latest Oddworld games. It was finished but had to be delayed because the current pc's couldn't quite handle that kind of game yet.

Cheers

The same with Duke Nukem Forever,
this game runs too slow for PCs without a 10GH tripplecore
Pentium 8

So they will ship it in 5 years.

yes, agree 100% with you damocles (everything besides the duke nukem forever - we all know it comes on april 2666

one thing though: do you think casual games have a higher market potential if they run on low-end machines? i'm not talking about moorhuhn, it would simply make no sense to use shaders an PP effects for it. let's take foxhound's tower. beside the fact that fairly other people than 3dgs users and casual game site hoppers know about it, would it make a difference if it required a dx8-graphics board and a 2GHz cpu instead of a p3-500 and a 16mb-dx6 board? let's think- p3 500 machines are 6 to 7 years old, even an average bureau machine is about 3 years old. i'd say, casual game development should not be dependent of cpu speed, but on the graphics chip: if you develop for eg. bureau machines, you can bet they have onboard graphics with approx. 32 mb tc/ 128 mb shared memory. developing for machines like this means fallback in shaders or completely avoid them, reduce lighting effects etc. but not a general fallback to 1999 (play fifa 2000 to see what i mean) referring to eg. polygons.

Casual games should be happy for every sell,
so the task is to get it to as many customers as possible,
(to get more than just 100 sales)
And this means keeping the game as compatible as possible.

Iam not really a shader fan, as shaders are often misused,
thrying to get an ugly grafic to have some special effect to improve it.

A very FPS eating watershader looks rediculus, if there is an ugly
terrain without any contrast next to it....

For me good grafix has one major component: Speed.
A grafical display is not just the single Frame, but
the quality the frames are aligned (meaning the FPS they run)

Casual/Indy games, should use what their natural strength is:
using a fresh and new type of gameplay.
AAA Titels are doomed to stick much more to working genres,
to assure their sales.

There's one tragic thing I've found with some of the people I know: They only care about the GFX. It's all they care about. It's almost as if they haven't heard the word gameplay before.

To tell you the truth, it depends on who you're aiming your product for. Casual gamers? Hardcore gamers? People who wanna kill time? People who wanna get involved in some great storyline? Sociopaths? Psychopaths? Toddlers? Pensioners?

The list is endless, but there is no one good game that appeals to everyone. Neither is there an aspect of a game that is most important. People are looking for different things. Some people, like above, only want good gfx, others want a hell of a lot of fun no matter what the game looks like.

Making a good game, I think is a matter of having a clear-cut view of who your product is aimed for.

that is absolutely true.

One thing that makes a good game is that it has all: storyline, gameplay, graphics

The game must keep the player in the game, and not to showcase some ultima Unreal 42 engine that can show 1 trillionbillion polies with shader 50 applied (in 500fps).. I don't care things like that. I want a game that has well planned story, working gameplay that is modiefieable and todays standard graphics (HL2).

@ vartan_s :- You have hit the spot.I too perfectly agree with you that it depends who you target the game.A tomboy may not like an "all pinkish" game and a sissyboy may run miles from a Battlefield game.