That article pisses me off.
GRAPHICS MATTER. Get over it guys, it is a GRAPHICAL MEDIUM. Videogames are not art, and never will be art until you guys get past the "LOL GAMEPLAAY ONLY! I HAT UR BROWN GAME" stage. Photographs, paintings, movies-- they use complex lighting and color palletes, which give these peices of art atmosphere and contribute to their meaning/purpose/etc. The games that are brown and grey are brown and grey for a reason-- its contributing to the feeling and atmosphere of the game that was intended by the creator. They didn't want to make some silly happy game about a plumber-- they wanted to create a dark, threatening wasteland, DEAL WITH IT. JUST BECAUSE PEOPLE PUT EFFORT INTO THE ART AND GRAPHICS OF A GAME DOES NOT MEAN TAHT THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE IT "REALISTIC"
Sorry for the mini-rant, I'm just tired of the silly argument that graphics don't matter <_<
But graphics are in many cases, an addition to gameplay. It depends on the quality and design of the game. Nothing graphical can replace the creativity behind the game, and the article sums that up nicely. That's the point it's trying to make with that commandment, not that graphics have no intrinsic value entirely but that their value depends on the quality of the gameplay. Otherwise, they're not a
game. Just like if you look at some POS hollywood big budget movie nowadays, you don't look for lots of explosions and sex and whatnot, you look for a damn
plot. If you're even more of an avid movie fan, you look at the way the camera is handled and angles are used. This is all a facet of art. Games are the same way, I'm not gonna buy another racing game just because it's the same game with better graphics. On the flipside, good graphics can only improve the best games already there, like Shadow of the Colossus, which happens to be one of my favorites. The art direction is fantastic in the game but it took more steps than just that, it made the controls detailed and the enemies interesting and the plot unique/amazing. It even used a fictional language just to make the world more immersive. Same with the Jet Set Radio series, another of my favorites. You can't argue the art direction is great, but the controls and story just make it what it is- playable. Not good looking, not eye candy, but
playable.