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.""
what about game play? (Score:4, Interesting)
Waxing Intellectual (Score:3, Interesting)
Video Games as Reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Selling Gameplay Over Graphics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Waxing Intellectual (Score:2, 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If simulation is as good as reality, choose which? (Score:1, Interesting)
Steve
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:2, Interesting)
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: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: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.
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.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:1, Interesting)
To anybody who hasn't experienced lucid dreams, especially the people who are sceptics or people who don't even know what they are, you really, REALLY have to have one. IMO, they are literally the best experience you will ever have. You can do anything you can in real life and you can do anything you can't do in real life, and if you are lucid enough, they will be just as vivid, clear and real as life itself. How can you possibly beat something which includes everything? As far as your body is concerned, you are awake. Your muscles will receive the same signals as they do when awake, but your body has released a hormone which paralyses you, so you don't try to carry your dreams out. This means motor skills can be trained, muscles can be trained, dream sex is physically the same as real sex (except you don't ejaculate), etc. They can be used to overcome fears (you can take on your fears knowing you can stop it at any time, and no harm can possibly come to you), etc. etc. At the risk of sounding obsessed, lucid dreams PWN J00 477.
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.
Re:Video games as lucid dreams. (Score:1, Interesting)
has anyone actually done this? I've heard a number of times that you can and how sweet it is. So I did a little research on it several years back. What I learned as the first step was to go around randomly asking myself "Hey - am I dreaming now?" to build the habit of assesing the possibility so that you would eventually ask yourself and the answer would be "Why, yes!"
So eventually it was. I woke up right away. The stuff I had read listed a number of ways to try not to wake up, but it wasn't like I realized and then woke up. Realizing was the same as waking up. As soon as I knew I was dreaming I was just lying in bed imagining stuff with my eyes closed. It wasn't magically awsome.
But if there's anyone out there living the super awsome second life it'd be neat to hear about it...
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.
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
Language issues (Score:2, Interesting)
What it almost definitely does not mean is that he was confusing his own sense of self with that of the character.
Nethack dreams (Score:3, Interesting)
In my nightmares, I was once chased by a giant yellow lowercase 'c'...
Re:Realistic Videogames? (Score:2, Interesting)
What I wouldn't like to see is realistic knifing and killing with bare hands. I think that would be far too horrible, even to experience in a game. Anyway, combat studies have shown that soldiers are very reluctant to actually kill during combat. Perhaps this will occur in video games. The more reallistic they become, the more uneasy we will become doing bad things.
Hentai and the pube law thing (Score:1, Interesting)