Which sort of graphics in games (regardless of genre) has a
better appeal to casual gamers ?

The cutey character oriented games or the
high-tech oriented/objects look ?

Which is more likely to attract the attention of the
casual gamers ?

Considering a majority of casual gamers are female, I would assume cute shold be the popular choice. Is this sexist? Maybe some female casual gamers like the high-tech. How about mixing the two together and take a 50/50 chance.

John

Honestly either could work. Richochet from Reflexive has a very high tech look and includes a pulsing techno soundtrack. But I doubt they have many female players players though, but there are a lot of males on this planet too.

I suggest letting the game design dictate the style of art. If you're designing a game for teenage boys, your art will probably be different than if you're designing for grandmothers.

Some people are turned off by certain themes, like sci-fi. So it can help to stick with a more neutral art style that will appeal to a wide audience. You might lose the teenage boys, but you'll keep everyone else.

Do not put cart ahead of a horse :) First deside what players you target with your game, then make gameplay, graphix and music which will appeal to this players niche.

BTW take AFlux as example. It seems one of its problems is that gameplay and graphix target different groups of players: interface and graphix are hardcore, while you have to save those little cute furballs with funny names. Game tries to sit at 2 chairs at once, and fall between them.

the point now is, which group of people are more likely you will
see conversion rates from ?

Those who prefer sci-fi oriented themes/graphics or the
cutey graphics types ?

Which segment of the 2 is larger and more willing/able to
use their credit card to purchase the game ?

Originally posted by jcvw75
The cutey character oriented games or the
high-tech oriented/objects look ?


I think its a matter of taste.
When i first came to think about the theme of my game,
i chose the cutsy look while still maintaining some sort
of "coolness". Didn't the ninja turtles had both sci-fi look
and a cute one? (don't tell me it didn't had any high tech
orientation in both the TV series and the computer games),
didn't sonic had Dr. Robotnik's machines as a high tech
influence? should i bother talking about mega man x?

check out my site, you could see tons of cuteness stuff
as it appeals for ALL ages. would you think it will be such a
problem to add high-tech cuteness?

so if you like cute and high tech, why not choose both?

jcvw75, there are no rules here. No right answer. There are both cute & sci-fi games that have done very well indeed. Surely thats evidence enough to suggest that both types 'can' do well.

Concentrate on making your games damn good as well!! As important as choosing the right market for your games is, it dont guarantee your game will be successfull regardless of quality.

Its hard to fathom a term like 'independent' when clearly we allow the market to affect all our decisions, to the point where our target market is the first choice we make, rather than what we 'want' to do, for the sake of our art.

Agreed. How well implemented and polished or how well marketed your game is will have 1000 times the impact of whether your game is cute or techy.

I recently had to ask myself this same quesiton. Some here may not sympathize with your question simply because their ideas may have been more specific in their mind. But with me (and perhaps you), I thought both approaches could be equally rewarding (not just monetarily). I can appreciate both styles, and I'd personally enjoy implementing either one. So it's a toss up. But let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. In my case, I was torn between cartooney appearance vs. realistic/serious appearance. So I'll point out the pros and cons I found for each one:


Cute/Cartoonish:
Pros:
- Might be somewhat easier to do the artwork depending on your game type. Some game types could pull off a cute/cartoonish appearance with extremely simple models or sprites. In my case, I might be able to do most of my characters etc. with simple textured spheres.

- Definitely lends itself to building a character property. Like Mario, for instance. The Mario characters became a VERY valuable property that could be re-used later in other games. You can eventually even make games focused on separate characters in your story. Plus, for many players, these types of cartoonish characters are very endearing and you can find yourself easily attached to them if you make them cute enough. ;) This also opens up the possibility of merchandising in addition to just software.

- Definitely has appeal with a younger audience and the female audience.

- It can free you from having to do too advanced graphical tricks to achieve a good effect. Nobody will expect a cartoon to be bump-mapped, dynamically lit, multi-textured, etc.. So you have alot of creative freedom to make things the way you WANT to make them.

- In addition to creative freedom with regard to visuals, you also have heightened creative freedom with the game mechanics. For instance, a cartoonish game can do things that would simply not be acceptable in a game that is passing itself off as realistic. For certain types of games where you have your character or player doing some outlandish, ridiculous, or maybe a bit abstract, the cartoonish approach may be the best route.

Cons:_________________

- If your target audience is more male (particularly adolescent males), you might avoid making the game TOO cute. Worms I think was a good compromise of cuteness and coolness that made it palletable to pretty much all audiences.

- Some types of games simply don't lend themselves to this very well. But only you can know that since its your game. And I'm confident you can be a good judge if this is the case.

---------------------------------------------
Realistic:
Pros:

- Might also be easy to do realistic artwork, depending on the game type. For instance, a game where you just need some 2D sprites of airplanes would be easy to do as all you'd have to do is to download some pics of planes and then scale them down. EASY! But for other game types, it might be ALOT more challenging to get something to look *real*. Or even marginally realistic.

- Allows you the freedom of doing some cool realistic eye candy that may not be appropriate or look consistent with a cartoonish visual style. In my case, I was thinking about realistic looking clouds, explosions, etc. that probably wouldn't fit well into a simplified, cartoonish theme.

- Allows you to do more adult-themed games that tackle more serious or sobering issues. Although I have started seeing some cross-over of this lately where people will use otherwise cute/cartoonish looking characters but put them in very mature situations.

Cons:_________________

- As stated above, for some game types it might be much more difficult to produce artwork and graphics that are consistent with a ralistic theme. Plus, you may stray into a realm where you'll be pressured to bump-map, multi-texture, shadow, and dynamically light all your objects. Ofcourse, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, but depending on the type of game you're doing, your competitors may have you outclassed in the graphics department if you don't.

- Diminished creative freedom. If you're trying for a very realistic game, realize that you're sacrificing the creative freedom to stretch the laws of nature and do things that are more abstract in nature. Sure, you can still bend reality a bit, but not nearly as much as with a cartoonish style. For example, the Mario games had the character dodging animate and sentient canon balls, and picking up coins that were 3/4ths his own size! These are all acceptable things when you're going with a cartoonish style, but you really can't do this if you're trying to make the game appear realistic.

------------------------

For all of these, many of your considerations are decided for you according to the type of game you want to do. But in my case, the game idea I had in mind consisted more of the gameplay mechanics and flow than it did of characters, story, plot, or target audience. So I can definitely sympathize with you having a good idea for a game but not knowing what sort of visual style to employ. For me one of the pivotal questions I had to answer was, would I want to eventually incorporate more surreal gameplay elements (like in a Mario type of game)? This may or may not be relevant to your game idea.

Anyway, I hope at least some of this applies to your situation as well and that it helped you in some way.

Best wishes!