It certainly doesn't hurt.

Graphics in video games, like special effects in movies, are expected to be better with each release.It doesn't matter how good the story or game play is if the visuals aren't equal to or improved over simular releases people feel like they've been ripped. How much of a role visuals play is dependant on the genre but nothing can tank a gaming experience like sub par visuals.

Your always going to have a certain segment of people that look at pretty screenshots and buy games based off of that. Usually they are of the younger persuation and will usually be hopping to the next big game in a few weeks anyway, so lasting gameplay is not their biggest concern. As we get older we learn to look past the graphics and find out if it has worthwhile and lasting gameplay.

Even at 35 I'll ooo and ahhh over a nice looking game, but I won't buy them without seeing if it's backed up by enough fun to make it a worthwhile purchase anymore like I did when younger.

Sins does look nice. I like to lock the camera on to a fighter and zoom into a large battle with a fighters-eye view. Just awesome looking   

In a game most important thing is always playabilty, how good it works,if its funny doing it or boring..
The graphics have a 2nd role but also very important. Special effects, visuals, sounds etc. is always the sugar in the cake. Nobody eats cakes without sugar, and definitely these days with so many impressive graphics in other game genres like Crysis, everybody wants graphics.
Like I have said many times in previous posts a game is funny when you see something you created. Why ship design in GC2 has gone so succesful? Because people create something they can see and they can be proud of.
The game Spore still under development but it has been extremely popular. Of course the concept is ingenious but do you think it would have so popular with crappy graphics?
I always dream the day that games will be so realistic that we can see simulated galaxies, planets, worlds.. holodeck something..  

Graphics are important to the RTS crowd, which is driving the bulk of sales for Sins. You made it look like Homeworld, so that brought a certain built-in fanbase along for the ride. Add to that the GC2 customers that you've served so well and who will buy most anything you put out (myself included) and you've got some excellent sales numbers. How's word of mouth, though? It seems like there's a fair amount of negativity over on the Sins boards, and I know I myself am not particularly happy with the game. Are the sales figures dropping, or am is that strain of thought largely contained to the post-purchase crowd?

Graphics, especially high quality graphics, really just make the game unplayable by more computers than if they had normal quality graphics. I won't play a game that drops down to 1 FPS. I would rather play a crummy looking game that works.

But GC2 or Sins are not so heavy, Crysis yes. Games that demand new expensive hardware to be at least playable I think is a bad joke. Who wants to spend 400-500$ to play a game?

Analogy, then -
Slick fire-red tough neck Ford-Mustang overloaded with gizmos and heavy gear zooms right by the clickety two-pistons mid-80's smally scooter.
Power and flash! Speed & Beauty. Morning breeze or Thunderstorms?


- Zyxpsilon.

This post makes me dream of the day when graphics hit the ceiling, because on that day gameplay, story, and art design will be prosper !!!

Couldn't agree more bro

Have to third this one.

Graphics don't necessarily have to be teh awesome.. I think consistancy is much more important. If it's fairly low tech but fits in with the overall style of the game, then it often benefits the game more from a piece of art point of view. Unfortunately since games are now designed to appeal to everyone at once (in order to create the largest possible market) it results in being dumbed down overall and made to look more flashy.

As a game designer myself if I hear someone in management call for accessibility one more time I think I'm going to scream - all attention has been moved from supporting the games current userbase and loyal following who generate good word of mouth to trying to please 'teh graphicz are awesomez' crowd which is only a) going to piss of the current customer base, by resulting in a sequel that offers less than the original with a greatly shallower version and not going to meet the expectations of the apparantly and i quote 'massive market that exists for more accessible games'.. equating accessibility with whiz bang graphics.

I think Sins is popular due to positive word of mouth.. it's where I heard about it first, and I think that's worth more than anything else (provided you don't blow a huge budget on a super niche genre game - but I have a feeling you guys are quite good with managing that side of things)

I don't put graphics as being the most important part of the game, but I still expect them to be functional and attractive otherwise I am completely put off. I tried Dwarf Fortress, for example, knowing full well that the graphics are awful, but it seems to have such a dedicated following I was interested anyway. I could only handle staring at it for 5 minutes, the graphics were so butt-ugly that I could not figure out what information was trying to be conveyed. However, I do enjoy Armageddon Empires: the graphics are not anywhere near state of the art, but the artistic style of the playing cards makes it an attractive game anyway. It's not difficult to have an old fashioned 2d game and still have attractive graphics.

I didn't really appreciate the graphics until just recently. It's so awesome. I never noticed the nebulae. I was too busy frantically building, until recently.

Hey, that Firefox logo is pretty similar to the Phoenix probe mission on Mars stuff (can't remember which thread... but someone was comparing Impulse with DaemonTools).

Now, that IS some important graphics, too.

That's about how I'd put it, except maybe swapping "attractive" for "not ugly."

I *like* pretty graphics very much, but at least for the 4X genre, I want the dev budget to make clear that at most they are first-among-equals and preferably they should be definite supporting actors.