In the recent Future of Strategy Gaming article here at Gamespy, Chris Taylor, who designed "Total Annihilation", espoused his view that continuing improvements in technology will make for better and better games. In this opinion he is not alone, but that belief is not entirely correct. Improvements in technology is sometimes followed by better games, but they do not always go hand in hand.

During the interview, some of the technological improvements Chris referred to were leaps forward in graphics. However, better graphics doesn't necessarily make a better game. When Doom came out, it revolutionized computer gaming with its game play. One of its successors was Terminator 2029, which had better graphics than Doom or Doom 2, but wasn't a game that many remember. Eye of the Beholder was a great series, and the third entry had good graphics for its time. But compared to Ultima Underworld or its sequel, there wasn't much to write home about.

Now that's not to say improvements in graphics don't affect game play at all. The First Person Shooter genre is reliant on graphics. Improvements are noticed at least, and given the red carpet treatment at best. The reason for this is that the games of that genre put you in the game world itself. Since you're seeing through the eyes of your character, a realistic looking world can heighten your experience. The improvements from Doom to Quake are well known.

Then Quake 2 came along and added colored lighting that blew everyone away. Enter Unreal with its breathtaking vistas, and you begin to see how leaps forward in graphics can affect FPS games. This is because graphics is one of the FPS genre's Core Strengths (got that? I'm going to use that phrase again, so watch for it).

Now, look at the effects of graphics improvements on the Strategy genre. The default view of nearly all strategy games is one where you're looking on the world instead of being in the world. Good graphics in situations like this is nice, but only to a point. Settlers, when it came out, was notable for having good graphics in its genre. But it rarely replaced Civilization 2 on many people's hard drives.

And out in space, the very striking Ascendancy failed to make a splash with the people who had loved Master of Orion. This scenario is repeated several more times, which leads us to believe that graphics is not one of the Strategy genre's Core Strengths.

In addition, there are also some situations in which really amazing and breathtaking graphics could theoretically detract from strategy games. By putting more and more individual units on the screen it takes more time and effort to direct your strategies and give orders to different groups. Furthermore, more units on screen firing at the same time makes for lots of projectiles and explosions obscuring your vision. That makes it much more difficult to determine exactly what is going on during battles. On the upside, though, this would only affect games that operate in real time. Turn based strategy games would be unaffected.

Improvements in other areas, though, would benefit strategy games. Heck, they'd benefit any game, as long as they bolster that genre's Core Strengths. Improvements in AI due to faster and more advanced CPUs and RAM are the main advancements that will come through hardware. Other strengths of Strategy games are balanced unit mixes, challenging maps, and innovative missions. Scripted events at key points, deformable terrain, and branching mission structures also bring a lot to a game. Pretty much everything else is just gravy.

If you look at today's gaming market, you'll see that decent graphics are the minimum expected by consumers. Amazing and groundbreaking graphics will always drive up sales, but the effect of graphics tends to vary depending on the genre of the game in question. On the other side, though, bad graphics will kill sales across the board, showing that this area needs to get attention, but the amount is dependent on the whether or not graphics is one of this genre's Core Strengths. Not all improvements in gaming is created equal. They should be balanced against what a genre is known for, and let that dictate the direction of gaming priorities.

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