When I think about the way that a game is made up I classify it into two categories

Category A: Gameplay

• genre
  
• level design
  
• difficulty
  
• consistency of difficulty
  
• depth of combat/puzzles if present
  
• enemy placement (platformers only)
  
• general game mechanics/physics
  
• ease of controls
  
• re-playability
  
• length

Category B: Atmosphere

• graphics
  
• art style
  
• music
  
• story
  
• tone
  
• theme
  
• cinematic cutscenes
  
• character development

Both categories are very important but for me gameplay is more important. I'm never going to buy a game to experience a story (I read books and watch movies for that).

Jamy wrote Antichamber needs both
Call of duty 4 would be gameplay
Dear Esther would be aesthetic

tl;dr Depends on the game

/thread

Call of duty 4 for it's time had amazing Graphics and gameplay

I think it depends mostly on the person playing the game. Some people love to have really good graphics and don't really care for game play and vise versa. But to answer the question, I'd personally say game play is what sells games.

I prefer both. As a PC gamer, I like the settings to be as high as possible as:

To get as close to the game-play which the creators made so i can play it how it is supposed to look

To fully make use of my rig

But game-play is important to. For example, I play Battlefield 4, I could run it on ultra and be like "Nice background, buildings and just looks amazing" but I wouldn't be able to play a decent game.

I mean whats the point of having a nice to look at game but bad game-play?

A game's mechanics and overall performance will always be more important to me than the graphics.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see games on full settings and see what some engines are capable of, such as Frostbite and Snowdrop..

But as far as personal preference, all the games I've found favor in didn't necessarily have the best graphics. It's far more frustrating to me to deal with frame lag and latency issues than to deal with looking at a game that isn't visually orgasmic.

I believe this next generation may bring a better balance of both to the table.