Video Game Graphics: Do They Matter?

Recently a whole slew of new video games have been released. Among them are Halo 4 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. With these new releases i have been constantly overhearing conversations concerning things like how certain aspects of these games are but one thing always seems to be a serious topic within the discussion. Im talking of course about the graphics. It seems that graphics is one of the most important things to gamers these days. It makes sense. Why wouldn't you want to play a game that has the best graphics around.

While games like Halo and Call of Duty improve there graphics with each new release, there has a computer game released recently that challenges the idea that graphics are one of the most important parts of the game. The game i am referring to is called Minecraft. The concept surrounding this game is very simple. You are a character in an extremely blocky world, mining resources like coal and iron in order to build things. You can build anything from a house to a scale model of the starship enterprise. The graphics in this game are incredibly simple. Everything is made out of blocks and the coloring is very simple. There is no such thing as shading, all of the colors are basic and simple. The most interesting thing about this however is that this game is extremely popular. I found this very interesting because while it is fun to play (albeit extremely time consuming) the graphics look like something that would have been released 15 years ago. However Minecraft is extremely popular. Once released, all over the internet there were forums and screencaps popping up concerning the game and who could build the most ridiculous thing in there chosen world. I really like that this is as popular as it is. It has always bugged me when people get really serious about the graphics in there video games. I personally have never really cared. This shows that there are others out there like me who do not really care that much about graphics and are more concerned with the actual gameplay.