The Future of Videogame Aesthetics 359
daniil writes "Here's another look at the 'Realism vs Style' debate. David Hayward, a level designer involved with UT2004 mod Alien Swarm, among others, has written an interesting essay on the aesthetics of videogames, suggesting that, similar to other art forms, the peak of realism in computer games might also be a plateau that acts as precursor to wider experimentation: "We've come a long way since the flint-carved figures of early 3D games, but there's still progress to make before we're producing the game equivalent of sixteenth century marbles. Though it makes for a myopic obsession when compared to the vastness of the picture plane, photo-realism is nonetheless a worthwhile technological achievement to aim for, because it is through this that games will attain the sensation of a lucid dream.""
Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:5, Funny)
a) I am a "water baron" in India. (not sure what that means)
OR
b) I'm back in high school as an adult going for my second diploma as if it were a bachelor's degree.
I don't think I would want to play those types of video games.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:5, Funny)
The predator killed my sorry ass.
A lesson was learned.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Funny)
Was it: "Enough of the Star Trek crap, it's too early in the mornin!
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Informative)
Is this the human value you call friendship!?"
"Spare me the Star Trek crap will you Kryten, it's too early in the morning."
- Red Dwarf, The Last Day
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Funny)
It's also a good idea to find out which way your friends swing...BEFORE you invite them out to a bar.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
I live in my dreams because they are more real
Now if only I could hit the Powerball* and change my quit message to:
I live my dreams because I have the money
* Yes, I'm aware of the ridiculous chance of me actually winning but it's my money and I'll do with it what I want. You spend more on your coffee/soda every day than I spend on lottery tickets in a month.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Funny)
Are you sure you're not just dreaming that you can control them?
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Insightful)
I. You are aware of the fact you're dreaming, but can't seem to control even your own actions in the dream ;)
II. You are aware that you're dreaming, can't control your actions within the dream, but you are able to wake up at will (I have these quite often)
III. You are able to control your own actions within the dream
IV. You are able to control your own actions, aswell as the entire dream environment. Very fun
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Interesting)
It often happens when I've been up late into the night and bright lights wake me up before I'm done sleeping.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2, Funny)
What a horrible comment!
But it's my only line!
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, it is my humble opinion that [and I am still *eagerly* waiting for it] that the genere that really needs to be exploited is the adult genere. Of course at first it will look terrible for the society (as when the porno movie industry started) but I am SURE there is a real market there waiting to be cashed.
I know a lot of jokes will arise from this, but at least, I enjoyed a lot playing the "larry" games back in the old days, although they were pixel based, but they actually had some "mature" content.
After watching at the "hot coffee" mod videos, I told, WTF, why not do a complete game about that, of course, first it would need to be done by an independent studio but I can bet my ass that it would get a lot of money (if it was commercialized).
Or better yet why not start an OpenSource project for an Adult Game?! (interesting what are going to be the implications of having a sourceforge download link, and how do you make sure kids wont download it =oP).
Anyway, THIS, is the place were "realistic graphics" could have a deffinite effect, and certainly the more realistic the better it would be.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
Has anybody played the Adult tetris clone? [whocutthecheez.com]
The first time I played it I found it hilarious, and it is certainly entertaining.
That means, there can be fun games based in adult material, AND I do not find that tetris game shocking, do you?
Adult games? Go to Japan. (Score:3, Informative)
I stayed with relatives who had been to Japan. I ran across some of their games while using their computer. Boy, was I surprised! There are games where you go around as a big octopus tentacle ripping the cloths off of people in the street. Then you proceed to tentacle rape them. In one of the games, for instance, you rape people up the ass. Then, for whatever reason, you were able to control their limbs. Now if that's not absurd enough, you can go to dance competitions. You have to make the person embedded anally on your tentacle dance.
They were addicting games, that's for sure. And challenging. Real mind-benders, too.
Re:Adult games? Go to Japan. (Score:2)
Make me think "things" about the church of the spaggethi monster [venganza.org]
Re:Adult games? Go to Japan. (Score:3, Funny)
They just Think Different [apple.com] over there. [outpostnine.com]
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:4, Funny)
I had them too until I turned 4 or so. Mind you, my mother wasn't too pleased...
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:5, Funny)
Curse you, water baron! We have no money for our daughter's dowry because of your predatory price-gouging!
NOW WE MUST DANCE!
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
I report to class mid year and am forced to sit in the back in kiddie a sized desk and chair. My knees are up to my chest and the teacher won't let me use a pen, giving me a pencil instead.
I get in trouble for not paying attention to the math lesson which consisted of learning +/- fractions. I subsequently fail the following math quiz.
What does this dream mean?
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
My 20th year reunion is next year. Like every other schmuck from the class of '86 I plan on going on a diet/exercise plan (yeah, I'll start NEXT week) and look good. Because I want to...umm...what..impress the ladies? Shit, I'm married, I don't really know why I care. Maybe I want to impress the guys...who knows. Either way, if it were up to me we would just break off into groups of sixteen and play Halo. But unfortunately, the reunion committee doesn't see it that way. Fags...
But either way, whenever I think about high school I think about sex. (MY time in high school, not the girls now...)
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2)
Believe it or not, it had nothing to do with all the electrodes attached to my head.
Does it really make sense to put the least comfortable beds in the entire hospital in the sleep study lab?
Selling Gameplay Over Graphics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Selling Gameplay Over Graphics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Selling Gameplay Over Graphics (Score:2)
Re:Selling Gameplay Over Graphics (Score:3, Insightful)
So when super real graphics become the standard, the focus will shift away from them. It's simply inevitable.
It's not about the publishers selling. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure many of the major game publishers have looked into the possibility of offering games like you describe. But the potential benefits most likely do not outweigh the risks. When you're dealing with millions upon millions of dollars, you usually don't want to go wrong.
Wouldn't that be nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
The more 'photorealistic' the engine can make the game world, the more art and design is needed to take advantage of that. You might not spend those dev dollars on stretching every last polygon out of the engine, but you will spent them making those polygons look good. If you have 2GiB of video memory availible for textures and associated maps, you'd better make good use of it. No more repeating the same box image over and over in every level.
Honestly I think graphcis are an adivsary to game play; and probalby will continue to be after we reach a point where more graphics rendering power is of no benifit. (Which I doubt will be anytime soon) The simple fact is there is generally a limited budget to do everything, and right now limited CPU / GPU cycles. If you have to develope tons of super high quality and complex models and textures to take advantage of Really super fast rendering engine(TM) then the AI, the story, ect suffer. If you have to optimize out every last CPU cycle of waste in the Really pretty slow and boring rendering engine(TM) then the AI, story ect suffer.
I think the fact is, graphics sell games, gameplay keeps you playing. Only one of those is useful for a companies bottom line. (Unless you're making The Sims and have 457 expansion packs you need to sell)
Realism IS a style! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:5, Insightful)
And just because you choose realism, that doesn't say much about the visual style or flair of your game. The vast majority of photography is realistic, and no one would argue that all photographers have the same style.
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:2)
On a slightly related note, I was playing SSX On Tour, and they did a great job with their menu presentation. The entire menu system looks like it was pulled straight from a bored high school students notebook. Quite neat, and im (very) suprised an EA developer could pull something so... creative off.
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's already been done. At a show called INSTALL.EXE a few years back at the Eyebeam Gallery [eyebeam.org] in NYC, they had a number of abstract interactive installations (to call them 'games' might be stretching the term a bit) based on the source for Wolfenstein-3D and Quake. Here's a review. [findarticles.com]
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:2)
Joust and Marble madness were less strange, but ok.
Asteroids Pong and Qix were the most stylized ones.
Pacman? the guy eats up pills, starts seeing ghosts, and when he eats the bigger pill he thinks he is invincible and eats them. It's not abstract but a junkie's nightmare all right.
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:3, Informative)
I think this particular article, rather, is indicating that "style" is a pretty complex thing, of which "realism" is only one aspect. Therefore, realism is not the end-all-be-all, nor need it be the chief goal. (I wouldn't say that this is a summary of the essay, but just one point I drew from what the author wrote)
Re:Realism IS a style! (Score:2)
But what he's talking about is sylized grahpics (like cartoons)
It's almost like you didn't read the article.... but we know that can't be.
what about game play? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:what about game play? (Score:5, Interesting)
Visual stimulation is nice, but if the game itself is crap I'm not gonna buy it... Thats why I loved Fable. It was a great concept (character grows as you play it and the world around you is effected by your actions) and it was visually pleasing, but I believe they made the game with gameplay weighing heavier than graphics... Additionally you need to consider the market you are trying to sell to as well. If you make a game that has unbelievably great visuals, but requires a high end video card and massive amount of PC power then you wind up not being able to sell the game to a large part of your targeted audience who don't have the PC to play it...
Re:what about game play? (Score:2)
To each his own I guess. Fable was a complete bore IMHO. I played it for 3 or 4 hours and just couldn't take anymore.
That's just my opinion though, and I think that a lot of us need to realize that others have differing opinions. I can't stand FPS games, and a REALLY can't stand MMORPG's. There are a lot of people who think they're wonderful though, and game makers are going to try and cater to that. What one person considers bad gameplay will be great to another. Don't assume that just because it has good graphics and you find it boring that they didn't concentrate on the gameplay: it might just not be your type of game.
Personally, about all I play these days are single player RPG's (or story-driven games are whatever the pen-and-paper guys feeling like calling them), RTS, and flight sims (well, I'll play Mechwarrior as well).
How should they reinvent the genre? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just not sure that there's really any way to reinvent the killing of people and monsters. Unless you want to transition to virtual reality suits and holodecks, there probably isn't much more that could be done. Such games are already in 3D, and thus already at the level of reality. And if they add more environmental/story interaction to the basic DooM-esque theme, you end up with an RPG. Many people play shooters because they don't want the hassle of an RPG storyline.
Re:How should they reinvent the genre? (Score:3, Informative)
1. Coordination games (Dance Dance Revolution)- but needed special hardware
2. Team-sports games (Hockey, Soccer, Football,
3. God games (Sim-whatever)
4. Puzzle games (Tetris variants)
5. 3D Platform games (collecting coins/stars - Super Mario)
(although the use of bad characters made these killing games)
7. Card/Board games (Poker, Blackjack)- but why play a machine when you can play against real people?
8. Adventure (Leisure Suit Larry, SpaceQuest)
9. Camera based games (EyeToy)
10. Simulations (Flying, Racing)
The tricky part is for each of these genre's to be a successful game, it has to be
easy to learn to play, but requires a gradually increasing level of difficulty in order
to keep the player interested . It really depends if the players want something that
organises their time for them, or something that gives them the chance to do whatever
they want to do. Pilot Wings 64, Super Mario 64, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time allowed you
to do both. Some puzzles within each level had a time limit, or required you to compete
against a virtual character, but at other times, you could explore the level at your own
leisure and just enjoy the view.
Re:what about game play? (Score:2)
Say hello to Nintendo's business plan.
Why not both? (Score:3, Informative)
Dreamfall != Photorealistic (Score:2)
DUPE! (Score:2, Informative)
Waxing Intellectual (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Waxing Intellectual (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking of dreams and video games (Score:5, Funny)
The all time low was definitely when I got into nethack. You've never had a nightmare until you've had a nightmare in ASCII.
Re:Speaking of dreams and video games (Score:2)
What is truly terrifying is not so much that you've dreamed this scenario but that as it is happening it seems entirely normal and plausible.
For a brief period in my early childhood, I was able to achieve lucidity in dreams, and say, hey, this is just a dream, and I can do anything. Sadly this never came back.
Re:Speaking of dreams and video games (Score:3, Funny)
My wife tells it better since she was conscious during the whole ordeal, but I'll try to recap it as she did. It started after a night of Counter-strike and Enemy Territory. Normally I go to sleep first since i have to wake up ealier. Anyway, my wife came into the room after I'd been asleep for about an hour or two. Suddenly, I launched myself out of bed and screamed "Go! Go! Go!". Next I proceeded to sneak through the living room (hiding behind certain objects like chairs, then scrurrying behind another) and approached the kitchen where I intended to "plant the dynamite". I kept looking back at my wife, saying things like "What are you doing?! Get down or u might get hit!". All the while she's just looking at me trying not to burst out laughing. It was close to this point where my dream started to fade and consciousness started to set in. "Oh man, did I just act out that whole senario?", I thought to myself...
I took a break from FPSs after that episode.
Nethack dreams (Score:3, Interesting)
In my nightmares, I was once chased by a giant yellow lowercase 'c'...
Re:Speaking of dreams and video games (Score:2)
Re:Speaking of dreams and video games (Score:3, Funny)
Deus Ex did this to me after I played through it on one of the higher difficulty levels.
On more than one occasion, I stopped dead in my tracks and had to fight the urge to dive sideways when I caught something that looked even remotely like a green or red ring shape in my peripheral vision. The worst time was between classes at college, when I was going up some stairs and thought I saw something... there was a crowd and all. Man, am I glad I stopped myself from dodging. Would have been embarrassing as hell. The dirty looks from the people behind me when I stopped were bad enough
Also, DO NOT drive within an hour or two of playing lots of GTA 3 or higher. It is VERY VERY BAD. As in, you'll see cop cars and some part of your brain will be telling you to run into them. WTF?
Video Games as Reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Video Games as Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Your anecdotal evidence also doesn't hold true for the majority of the game-playing audience.
Re:Video Games as Reality (Score:5, Interesting)
E.g. "The ghost killed me just the second after the power pill ran out!"
That wouldn't be considered delusional. I think it's just the violent subject matter is freaking you out.
Re:Video Games as Reality (Score:3, Informative)
A real one that is, not a fake one like many geeks who like to claim the title for some damn reason.
The problem is the fanbase (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, they violently object to anything stylized as being "kiddy" and "stupid faggy crap" - witness the reaction to "celda". Second, they don't have very complicated tastes.
Also, as costs go up the game industry will become increasingly risk-averse.
So, the games of the future are $200 million titles that feature photorealistic graphics, voices provided by pop artists, and lots and lots of explosions and tits. Plus, since the market grows up in roughly 8 years (assume they start on hardcore action games at 12, and grow out of them in college when they can chase RL tits and beer) then they don't need to worry about rehashing - it doesn't matter if your gameplay has been done 1000 times, these kids never played the original Doom and all it's ripoffs.
Yay future.
Re:The problem is the fanbase (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The problem is the fanbase (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, your last point is the real problem. What happens to game production costs when photorealism is the standard. Do we reach the point where a game costs as much to produce and develop as a high-end Hollywood production? If so, then we'll likely see the same stagnation and lack of creativity that we see in the film industry.
Except it will be even worse, since technology has actually brought production costs for film and video down while the production costs for video/computer games have skyrocketed. Yes there are still a lot of great independent titles for the PC, but the consoles are pretty stagnant.
Re:The problem is the fanbase (Score:2)
When photorealism is the standard, only the standards will have photorealism.
Seriously, photorealism will never become the standard until production costs are much lower. The reason that more photorealistic games make a profit is, besides gameplay, because of the Wow! factor. When the Wow! factor is taken away (because everyone's got it) then the sales will be much lower, and photorealism ceases to be profitable... unless production costs are also low.
I think what we'll see is most games are produced to the JGE (just good enough) standard, with very few games pushing the envelope towards photrealism... which means that the standard will be JGE.
Re:The problem is the fanbase (Score:2)
I bet you'd be surprised at how many gamers are BEYOND their teenage years. We've now entered the first generation of people who grew up playing video games, and thus don't have the stigma that games are 'kids stuff'.
They're insecure, hormonal, and rather stupid. So, games must market to them.Okay, well this applies to both groups. :) But you're wrong about the marketing part. It's a Catch-22. Games market to them because they are the market. But, they are the market because they're the only ones games market to. See the problem?
You make the illogical jump from "XYZ people don't buy games" to "XYZ people don't like games". The reality is that "XYZ people don't like games that are targetted to insecure gamers who need games to massage their ego and assure their manliness." I know women who like playing games quite a bit, but they're not really into FPS and sports titles, though they do like like action/adventure, platformers, sim, and puzzle games, and so practically nothing that comes out on PS2 or XBox targets them; Gamecube, however, has many games in these genres. Because Nintendo markets to a more diverse target audience, and will continue to do so.
Sony and MS (both on consoles and PC) are battling almost completely over one specific target market - teen and adult males who are insecure and have loads of money to burn. It's a fairly nice market, as you don't have to make particularly good games, and people in this market will have "competitions" to see who has the most consoles, games, etc. So it's a status symbol for them to own all the MS/Sony products. It's the market to look at if you're looking to be lazy and still make some good money. But I think they're going to have lower sales with the current gen of consoles than they did with past ones, due to the high price tag and even stronger focus on FPS/sports titles. (Don't get me wrong, sales will be more than decent, but they're going to, more and more, get their money from a small group of people who religiously buy all their stuff rather than casual gamers.)
Nintendo, both with Gamecube and now Revolution, are not targetting (specifically, anyway) the audience you say that "games must market to". And they're doing quite well; in fact, they're the only ones making a profit IIRC. I even saw in EGM recently that Super Mario Sunshine was in the top game sales for the money across consoles! What, 2 years after release? So while I agree with your assessment of what's going on in the market, particularly concerning Sony and MS, I think you fail to see that it doesn't have to be this way. You're confusing "the market" with "one market" that two consoles are agressively targetting. Just because a market is being (largely) ignored doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In fact, often it means that's the market you ought to be targetting - you'll have no competition and all the profits. I think this is Nintendo's plan, actually - let Sony and MS battle over hardcore adult insecure gamers while they get their consoles into living rooms across America (and Japan :).
Re:The problem is the fanbase (Score:2)
Limited Immersion (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that will make games more immersive is holographic technology - when a 3D image can be thrown all around you rather than on a comparatively small rectangle in front of you.
Imersion (Score:2, Insightful)
60/40 Gameplay/Eye Candy (Score:3, Interesting)
I worry about the fate of the up and coming generation console falling on there faces because all they have been touting have been the aesthetics.
I think it'll also be interesting to see when we reach the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley [slashdot.org]"> Uncanny Valley in video games and how video game developers proceed from there as far as photo realism goes.
Hmmm.. (Score:3, Funny)
Context is key to the need. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet for games like the "Sims" there isn't a need. The context of the sims isn't emulating real life in the same sense as the other games.
A lot can be said by adapting a style that is not trying to be realistic to create an environment more beneficial to the story you are telling. World of Warcraft is a great example. While many other MMOPRGs tried harder to look more "realistic" WOW went a whole another direction.
The problem with trying to make realistic appearing models is that the little errors of those models become glaring. Half-Life2 has many examples of approaching a realistic setting but having incosistencies that totally blow it. Examples include objects of a type that are not destructible while others of the same type are. MMORPGs suffer more as they have to meet the limitations imposed by lesser machines. This leads to a game that looks great on the high end machines and downright atrocious on lower end machines.
Context should be the deciding factor. Don't do it just because you can.
Something is deeply wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
A sign of the apocalypse for sure.
On topic, I think many games already express a specific style, even if it often is more subtle. This is unavoidable as long as different people take notice of different things; different people express themselves differently. This is unavoidable as no man is objective in perception.
Conways law [catb.org] is satisfied.
A quick comparison between the releases of gamehouses should show this. It's often striking how varied models of humans can be. Faces especially.
its not really a dupe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:its not really a dupe (Score:2, Funny)
Re:its not really a dupe (Score:2)
Unless there's already been "another look." Unless they use unique identifiers, then "another looks could still be constured as a dupe.
Here's a second look... here's a third look... etc.
At least that way they'd shut up the ACs who think the editors are not keeping track of dupes. I mean, they are keeping track of dupes, right?
What else then?? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the problems that I can see on the horizon is that games will get ALMOST perfect photorealism and start causing nausea when playing. When the brain starts to believe that what it is seeing is real but has problems with certain aspects, angles, reflections or refresh rates, motion sickness like symptoms start to occur. Couple this with larger monitors and TVs that completely occupy your FOV, denying your sense of real world perspective and it gets interesting. Half-Life2 seems to be one of the first mainstream games inwhich this might be starting to occur; the hovercraft level seemed to be particularly troublesome for many.
Re:What else then?? (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, for FPS games, I could play Wolfenstein and Heretic, but not Doom. All of the ones after that made me sick until Dark Forces, and that one still affected me after a while. Then I was pretty much stuck getting sick with all of them until the Unreal Tournament line came out. I don't know why, but the UT line is the only one out of the current lines that doesn't make me ill (even after very long sessions). The Doom engine, Elite Force, etc, all make me sick. Deus Ex made me slightly ill, but was slow paced enough for me to fight through it a couple hours at a time (at most).
To this day, I'll try out about any game, but most FPS games still affect me, though some take longer to make me ill than others. Other people I know have had worse experiences. UT seems to have the least affect on people, and it still kills a few of my friends.
I haven't noticed the realism really helping or hurting. Doom made me sick faster than Dark Forces, and the UT still doesn't make me sick, though games of lesser graphics do. Based on that, I think it's all in how the engine works, not how realistic it looks.
Re:What else then?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Another cause for nausea in 3d games is the changing of a commonly used physical constant within the game world. For instance the nausea problem in Half-Life 2 that you mentioned was probably caused by Valve changing the default FOV to 75 degrees. Most other 3d games use a field of view closer to 90 degrees.
The Uncanny Valley (Score:5, Insightful)
Take Half-Life 2, for example. It has some of the best renditions of humans I've ever seen in any game. But once you look past that, it becomes glaringly obvious that these characters are still missing something. A character finishes talking to you, then goes into a "trance", staring straight ahead. HL2 tries to fix this by having the character "wobble" a bit to give the illusion of a living, breathing, not-perfectly-motionless human, or by having them turn their heads and look around from time to time. But there's still something... just not quite human about them.
Compare that to Mario in (let's say) Super Mario World. He's obviously human, but drawn and animated in such a whimsical way that you don't find it odd at all that he stands perfectly still, never moves a facial muscle, etc.
This isn't the article I was thinking of, but have a look at the Wikipedia article on The Uncanny Valley [wikipedia.org] if you're interested in more. See also this blog [intelligent-artifice.com] for speculation on why The Incredibles did so well while The Polar Express just creeped people out.
photo - realism (Score:2)
I don't think so. Takes Hollywood a roomful of server.
Realism vs "style"? Pointless debate (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, there *is* the related (but slightly different) issue of stylistic trends and bandwagons.
What I'm talking about here is where a particular visual style is successful in one or two games, so a big section of the industry starts shovelling out games that use that style, until it's been done to death and the industry moves on to something else (often swinging too far the other way and abandoning the look in question completely).
On a technological rather than stylistic level, look at what happened with the use of full motion video in games when CD-ROMs appeared on the scene. We had a rush of games with vast amounts of FMV, some of which were awful (Rebel Assault, Night Trap, Sewer Shark, to name but a few) and some which were decent (Wing Commanders III and IV, Privateer: The Darkening, Terra Nova), then suddenly, there was a huge backlash (which persists, unfairly, to this day) and FMV vanished almost entirely. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm sure the costs involved made this a relief for a lot of developers, but... erm... let's ignore that for now.
Moving back to the present, I think cel shading is going to be the next victim of this backlash. It was fun the first few times we saw it done and it's produced some cool-looking games, but now that Nintendo have pretty much based an entire generation of games, many of them highly mediocre, that rely on it exclusively, I think the market's thoroughly sick of it and it's going to vanish off the radar soon. Who knows what the next big trend will be...
Photo-realism, while just another style, will, I think be immune to the trend-swing for a while longer. For one thing, it remains the "default" style that people are accustomed to. For another thing, it's as much a technical aspiration as it is a style for the time being. Until we actually get there, I don't see any kind of market backlash against photorealism happening.
Style for me (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to frame the debate as style vs. realism (which is incorrect), give me style any day. If I wanted realism, I'd get a life.
Seriously though, the point of videogames is as escapist fare, like movies. Sure there are movies about ordinary people doing ordinary things, but they are only critically acclaimed, not popular. Some of the most fun video games are unrealistic or just flat out absurd. (see Katamari Damacy [namco.com])
Besides, a good style is a form of visual branding. People don't forget the earliest Mario [emuverse.com] games, partly because everyone remembers what they looked like.
I think not. . . (Score:3, Funny)
it is through this that games will attain the sensation of a lucid dream.
As a side-effect of meditation, I've had quite a few ucid dreams, and can confidently say that mere photo-realism will get you nowhere near to duplicating the LD experience of "Hey, I'm dreaming! This is great, I'm in a world created by my own mind, I can see anything, do anything, be anything. . . Damn, I've woken up!"
Realism is overrated (Score:2, Interesting)
Which brings me to my big idea. "Cartoon-Strike". Counter-Strike, but everything looks something like a G.I. Joe cartoon. Well, better than G.I. Joe, but you get the idea. Flat shading, bright colors, low detail. I'm suprised it hasn't been done yet.
I'm just tired of realism. It's boring.
Reality sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, what the fuck to videogames have to do with reality? Aren't they about escapism, just like almost everything else we spend our money on?
The real problem with photorealism (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a large reason why Pixar had such a small screen-time of humans in Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, etc... because humans are really, really honed in to the visual qualities of other humans. If anything looks wrong, an expression, an animation, the skin folding, the hair, cloth, it all looks wrong. Even Geri's Game was very stylized, instead of trying to mimic the photo-realistic visuals of an old man.
Most artists aren't even capable of it (I guess we should call it "video-realism" instead, since the motion is at least as important as the still image). And for the few that are, it takes a long, long time.
Re:The real problem with photorealism (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, but that just because the technology isn't (Score:2)
One thing the article misses... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the old days of low-poly monsters and low-res textures, any slightly artistic geek could build a model or a level and it would look as good as anybody elses. That is changing as the tools and processing power evolve. The newer games require very high-quality assets that not every artist has the skill to produce. It's no longer enough to be an arty geek, now you need to be a geeky artist.
Imagine you take two people and sit them down with a pencil and a piece of paper. One's just some guy from off the street, the other is a fine arts major from t he local art school. You tell them each to draw a figure using only six lines and in the shortest possible time. They each draw a stick figure, and both look pretty much alike. You then say draw another person, no limit on the number of lines, take a half an hour. You've now removed the limitations that were hiding the disparity of talent, so at the end of that time the first guy has a stick figure (maybe a stick figure with hair) and the art student has a passable portrait of the first guy.
The same thing seems to be happening with game visuals: the improved tools and increased polygon pushing abilities of modern consoles have removed most of the limits that in a way protected less-talented artists, and their limitations are now made more glaring. If you really want to push for photorealism, how long before you get to the point where you need a Francisco Cortina to make your models? There are'nt a whole lot of those guys out there.
Re: the larger "stylized vs. realistic" issue, I think overall it's easier to be "Boris" than it is to be "Frazetta". Mimicing real life is always easier than developing a distinctive and original visual style.
The box still looks better than the screenshots (Score:2, Insightful)
Everquest, the screenshots. [everquest-online.com]
We have a long way to go.
Re:The box still looks better than the screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure I get the debate? (Score:2)
The technology for creating photo realistic movies for years, but directors still do animation, claymation, dolls, black and white and other offbeat stuff like for example "Walking life".
I actually think that when game developers get the power to do really near photo-real visuals, they will simply exploit this to do even more surreal/artsy imagery.
And about gameplay.. a quote from TFA:
We'll always stand by gameplay: but it's graphics that will be handcuffing us to the bed during our next "business trip".
I really think the author is wrong here, take counter-strike as an example, until Source popped up and gave it a face-lift its graphics hasn't been up-to-date/state-of-the-art for quite a while. Still, loads of people preferred it over DoD and whatever because they liked the game play in CS better. Graphics play a important role in advertising, as gamers tend to get interested when they see awesome looking realtime graphics, but the handcuffing is done by the "gameplay" aka. is the game actually fun to play.
Oh Wow. (Score:2)
We'll always stand by gameplay: but it's graphics that will be handcuffing us to the bed during our next "business trip".
Um... (Score:2, Insightful)
As technology advanced in other forms of art, the ability of the artist to transform artistic vision into a medium has increased, stylistic variety has increased and (arguably) the tastes of patrons has increased. Think about how many genres of music there are. Think about how many instruments. Think about the variety of painting styles. All of this variety was made possible by technological advances. Is there any reason to think it'll be any different for video games?
Yeah yeah it's about the gameplay (Score:2)
Let *me* control the render settings (Score:3, Interesting)
If I want to cel-render everything so it looks like a cartoon, let me do that. If I want things to look hyper-realistic, let me do that. If I want things to look as if they are made of stained glass, let me do that.
Give me a palette of variables and let me experiment. Let me export those variables so that I can share my settings with other people, and they with me.
A perfect example of a game that could really benefit from on-the-fly changes to the rendering would be City of Heroes. I would *love* to see the game done in a XIII/Zelda: Wind Walker style - but, alas, the developers chose to present it in that "pseudo-reality" style that's become boring to me. There have also been a number of games that I think I might have otherwise enjoyed, but I was just bored to death with the visuals.
Video games are interactive. So let me interact with the renderer.
Photorealism does not equal "real life"! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's really up to the artists to take the capacity for photorealism and run with it, creating something that brings the player out of their reality and into a new one. They've failed if they take photorealism and fill it with parking garages and cubicles and crates and things that people play games to get away from.
Realistic Videogames? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there is fantasy. How realistic can you make a Chimera (sp?) look?
As one poster mentioned GTA, I'll bring it up here. The basic psychologic principle for why we can play violent video games and not be affected by them is because we know they aren't real. However, if the brain can't tell real from video game, it could affect us unconsciously. I have no problem understanding that it is encouraged that I shoot people up in GTA, but discouraged on campus. But if there becomes less and less of a distinction, there could be people who have a problem with it, especially people who already have some violence issues.
Interesting topic (Score:3, Interesting)
The current reasoning is, we'll put someone in a rubber suit full of sensors and make them execute every motion that they could possibly do as a charater, which leaves the billions of other motion possibilites unexplored. A real breakthrough is very close, where we can code out the lives of bots to give them some sense of place (that seems to be what's missing in Uncanny Valley) by allowing for more random movement and activity paths. I think this will be the real breakthrough, since suspension of disbelief is about more than just resolution.
Meandering back to the topic though, I think the 'style vs real' debate is overblown, since by very nature if you can do real, you can do anything (on a screen). Obviously real wins every times, its just noone can do it yet.
-chitlenz