The Onslaught of Photorealism

Ant writes "Shacknews mentioned an article entitled 'Videogame Aesthetics: We're All Going to Die!'. In it, the author considers the pros and cons of the neverending push toward absolute reality in video game graphics (or at least the weird plastic look that people get confused with reality), and comes to the conclusion that all in all it's probably worthwhile. In the process, the author takes a look at several games that employ unique visual styles that are extremely successful without attempting any sort of photorealism." From the article: "The photo-real push is obviously important to many people within and surrounding the game industry, as demonstrated not only by the persistent trend in commercial development, but also by work such as the System Shock 2 mod Rebirth, which replaced some of the models with curvier versions, designed for more powerful machines than the original game."

Comments

Re:I don't think it's the programmers

[thegrassyknowl]

Well, I never said you didn't have a point there. Just that it's not the programmers who are to blame for it.

I'll take your point there; I won't (and I don't believe I originally did) blame the programmers directly.

The management are to blame for thinking in pure dollar terms. This is yet another thing that rings true of the fundamentalist capatilism that America is trying to spread to the world (fuck this democracy shit, they just don't want communism becase then the people at the top of the US wouldn't be rich or "superior" anymore).

Game companies (like the music and movie industries) are spending more and more time inventing creative ways to deter, but never stop, people from copying their software. If they invested all of that effort into innovation, simplified the games back to basics to cut on development costs and made their games cheaper people might start buying them again. I don't pay for games anymore because they're all the same as games I've already paid for with the exception of a different map or a different actor doing the voiceover or some crap like that.

It's just like the RIAA and MPAA; they make crap, overpriced shit based around the "how to make infinite profits off of morons" formula and then wonder why people don't pay for the junk they're selling. Of course, then they claim that one song is worth $15,000 when they take you to court for not paying.

Enough is enough people. Stop buying games. Boycott the industry (and while we're at it, stop paying for music and movies) to stop these assholes treating us like we're stupid and effectively stealing from us!!!!!!