Our love of graphics may just be psychosomatic, a placebo effect if you will. That’s not to say we don’t have very strong preferences in terms of graphics. Placebo effects are strong.
Look at the case of wi-fi sickness. Many people say they are sensitive to electromagnetic waves that use certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, there is not one study that shows any evidence for this. Instead, people showed symptoms when they thought wi-fi signals were operating in the vicinity. If there was a wi-fi signal but they could see no router or computer and were not told about it, they were fine. Similarly, if there was a fake router with flashing lights that appeared as if it was transmitting wi-fi, they would get violently sick. Even though it was all in their heads, they reacted as if they had a true to life illness.
Of course, no one is getting ill over graphics, but they do have preferences. When you pair up images from three separate platforms, people will usually say that either a) their console of choice looks best or b) their console of choice doesn’t look best but other consoles don’t look better. This is because we already know the numbers. We know that the PS4 runs at 1080p more often than the Xbox One, and we know that PCs are capable of even higher resolutions. But the trick is, we aren’t really responding to the images at all. We are responding to what we THINK the images look like.
To test this, Gamespot’s Cameron Robinson did a miniature study on the last episode of Reality Check. He began by inviting 7 people to Gamespot’s studios in order to play three identical setups of three identical games running on Xbox, Playstaton, or PC. The controllers used were the same, and all signifiers of what console the game might be running on were blacked out, but the graphics were cranked up to high in all circumstances. These participants couldn’t really tell the difference between all three setups, but 7 people does not make for a scientific test.
So to expand the text, Robinson recorded video from the PS4, Xbox One, and PC versions of FarCry 4. He then uploaded those videos both in a compressed and uncompressed format, and asked viewers to tell which one was the PS4, which was the Xbox One, and which was the PC. 2700 people participated, and the results were pretty interesting.
Only 36 percent of people taking the test were able to spot the difference. Note, this is above what random chance would suggest, around 16 to 17%, but still suggests that most people really can’t figure out the difference between the two consoles. For the record, the PS4 version runs in full 1080p while the Xbox One version runs at 1440×1080. What’s interesting is that more than half of the participants could pick out which version was running on a PC, with 58% reporting correctly. While that suggests that higher end PC graphics really do make a difference, that’s still only a little more than half of the subjects getting it right.
Of course, the study wasn’t the greatest. The clips weren’t identical, even though they were taken from the same stage, so participants were exposed to different lighting and environmental effects. But Robinson says this was a purposeful choice. He wanted to test the study under “real world” gaming conditions, just gamers seeing random clips of gameplay.
What do you think this study says about gaming? Do you think graphics actually do matter? Or do you think we see what we want to see? Let us know in the comments.