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The Future of Videogame Aesthetics
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.""
The only lucid dreams I have are where either
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.
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
Perhaps after we reach true photorealism game companies will actually start to sell their products based on good gameplay instead of the latest flashy graphics.
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.
A long winded story but here goes: Went up to a yard sale at a neighbours place a few days ago. Her son, probably 14 or 15, comes over to me and *immediately* starts describing to me a scene in Grant Theft Auto (not sure what version). At first I just listened along, agreeing with him, as I had played games like that previously. But after a while I realized he was talking about BEING (hard to describe what I mean) in the scene. He was talking about characters like Sanchez and police officers like they had really spoken to him. It was a tad creepy. "Sanchez was looking at me like I had done something wrong, but then I could tell by his expression that what I said had really upset him". I came home and immediately tried to look up what kind of condition the boy might have to no avail. It was like he was living the video game, and that people in the real world should understand because they're watching in on it too (game as reality). I'm going to try and chat with his mom about his video gaming habits. At the very least he's spent one too many hours in the game. Anyway I was always against the anti-video gaming nuts since they were blaming Columbine on video gaming (at least it was mentioned as a contributing factor along with marilyn manson and the kitchen sing), but this is the first time I've seen a real scary example of kids being absorbed by the medium.
~jennifer.k~
Here's the problem - the people who buy games - lots of games, not just once every few months, are teenaged boys. They're insecure, hormonal, and rather stupid. So, games must market to them.
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.
I'm so sick of this. Style and realism are not opposites. Realism is just one of many visual styles that a game could adopt.
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.
Photo-realistic graphics will only go so far toward immersing a player in the game, when those graphics are displayed on a flat screen several feet/inches in front of the gamer's face. Looking at pictures on my computer rarely, if ever, makes me feel like I am in that place where the photo was taken.
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.
Well, I'm still waiting for a post-modern abstractist style FPS
I 100% agree with your statement. While visually the game may be amazing it still won't be worth playing if the gameplay itself is poor. How many video games have we seem come out that have taken extraordinary efforts to make them look graphically superb, but then you play it and it is just boring.
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...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I look at it this way, if your trying to sell a flight sim, racing sim, or Army-Sim then yet photo realism is going to be a good feature to have.
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Here's another look at the 'Realism vs Style' debate. David Hayward, a level designer involved with UT2004 mod Alien Swarm... I don't see how you guys can call it a dupe when the first sentance clearly states that it is "another look" at the realism vs. style debate. Just because something is on the same subject does not make it a dupe!
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
I will be very glad when photorealism is actually EASILY possible in games. Then, maybe game companies will stop dedicating all of their resources to making their games 'pretty.'
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.
http://www.tomandemily.com
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 if you're interested in more. See also this blog for speculation on why The Incredibles did so well while The Polar Express just creeped people out.
I hate "debates" like this. I really do. They all make the exact same mistake. They assume that the games industry is some kind of ultra-homogenised body, that's going to inevitably move in one direction, and one direction only, with regard to aesthetics. This is simply not true. Looking at my games-shelves, I can see any number of styles represented. There's the ultra-realism (yes, realism is a style too) of Doom 3, Resident Evil 4 and Farcry. There's the comic-book look of Guilty Gear X and most of the first-party Nintendo titles. There's the exaggerated, "epic" style of Halo 2 and Final Fantasy X. And there's the deliberately retro look of Disgaea. To cut a long story short, developers are *always* going to know that there's a market for titles which look "different", so we're never going to see a move towards a single consistent style.
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.
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)
Besides, a good style is a form of visual branding. People don't forget the earliest Mario games, partly because everyone remembers what they looked like.
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
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?
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
a post-modern abstractist style FPS
Actually, it's already been done. At a show called INSTALL.EXE a few years back at the Eyebeam Gallery 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.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who