Graphics or Gameplay?

Competition is what drives most sports video gamers to sit in a room 12 hours a day figuring out ways to dominate opponents. It's all we know. It's in our blood. However, what aspect of sports video games in particular would most competitive gamers say is more important? Is it graphics or gameplay? These are the two biggest factors that people begin asking questions about every time a new game is released. What does it look like and how does it feel?

There's no doubt that the sports games that are released now have far better graphics than those of the past. Game publishers make a yearly effort to thoroughly check all the different stadiums and arenas across the country to make sure that they are completely identical to what we see on television. Also, player's faces and body sizes are so detailed now that if we can't see sweat coming off their faces when playing we're disappointed. All of these additions look great, but are they really necessary? In my opinion, the graphics for almost every sports video game is good enough for me to enjoy that all I want the developers to focus on every year is gameplay.

Don't get me wrong, I still want developers to put some thought into improving the graphics because I love looking at a detailed picture as much as anyone. However, if I'm not going to be able to enjoy playing the game then what's the point? We've all come to accept the fact that every game that's released is going to have minor glitches and little nuances that everyone finds annoying. My problem is when I see something about an upcoming game that says "now users will be able to see each individual blade of grass on the field", or "player's now have over 200 facial expressions on the court" it makes me start to worry. The reason it makes me worry is because I get this feeling that when I actually get my hands on the game I'm going to run into the same glitchy-type of errors that we saw in the previous version a year ago. Then I have to ask myself why the game developers spent so much time on improving the graphics, while overlooking obvious game flaws.

When I think back to Nintendo games like Tecmo Bowl and RBI Baseball it's obvious that the graphics needed some serious improvement. However, even to this day almost anyone you talk to who is familiar with one of these games will tell you that they were a blast to play. Of course these games had plenty of flaws, but overall the gameplay was very good for what it was. In fact, these games are so well-liked that even to this day people continue to update the rosters and play them with regularity. I'm not trying to suggest that this is what developers should go back to, but the fact that so many people loved these games clearly shows that if a game has great gameplay it will succeed.