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How Much Detail Is Too Much For Games?

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-don't-need-to-see-mario's-pores dept.

jones_supa writes "Gamasutra editor Eric Schwarz gives thought to the constantly increasing amount of graphical detail in computer games. He notes how the cues leading the player can be hindered too much if they drown in the surroundings, making it harder for the game to hint whether the player is making progress. Consistent visual language helps to categorize various objects, making their meaning more obvious. Paths through the game world can be difficult to read simply due to dense vegetation. For some cases 'obfuscation through detail' can also actually work really well. Schwarz challenges us to ponder how the amount of detail makes a game either more or less enjoyable."

32 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. As ususal, the answer is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...it depends.

    1. Re:As ususal, the answer is... by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Precisely.

      As Steve Hollasch famously noted, computer graphics is the only area of science where if it looks right, it is right. The correct amount of detail is whatever the tradeoff between artistry and gameplay demands. Your goal as a game designer is to have the audience say "what a great game", not "what great detail". Unfortunately, it's sometimes easier to optimise for high detail than it is to optimise for great gameplay.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    2. Re:As ususal, the answer is... by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't think it depends at all. I think that there is no such thing as too much detail. That said, don't equate detail to 'more stuff'. Just because you have extremely realistic vegetation doesn't mean you should place a hundred branches of a bush in front of the path the player is supposed to take.

      You can make everything extremely detailed without any issues, however, it is up to the level editor and layout artists to make sure that extremely detailed art doesn't interfere with gameplay. Maybe your tree needs shorter vines or branches so you can see the path through the woods, or the extremely detailed grass should be trampled in a certain area to delineate the way you should go, or that waterfall needs a little less glare so you can see the hidden entrance behind it. Those aren't matters of detail, but matters of design.

      --
      If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
    3. Re:As ususal, the answer is... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      True. Unfortunately, 'looks right' lands you straight on the tender mercy of the whiny bastards who play your games...

      As one such, something I've found myself running into is that sometimes more detail makes me more aware of the remaining missing details.

      I've been bitten hard a couple of times by this while playing Skyrim lately. A couple of examples: Unlike Oblivion and earlier where all water was still, water now has a 'current' associated with it, so you behave more realistically if you try to cross a swift-flowing river or the like, or drop an object into one. Unfortunately, the 'current' value assignment isn't very granular, so you are constantly running into situations where your intuition expects the flow to change in response to an obstacle or bit of terrain and it just... doesn't. Having no current at all was even less realistic; but you got over it quickly. Now that you have current, every deviation from your intuitions about fluid dynamics just smacks you in the face.

      The improved weapon animation detail seems to have suffered a similar fate. They are much more visceral and kinetic this time around; but that makes the fact that the animations for a given weapon type(eg. all one-handed swords, all warhammers, etc.) are the same, despite the in-game weights of items within a given type varying 50-300%. They are markedly less stiff and anemic than prior animations; but that just makes watching a character handle a weight '9' sword and a weight '16' sword exactly identically weirder(and let's not even start on how different sorts of targets should probably result in more and less elastic collisions...)

    4. Re:As ususal, the answer is... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      You're beautiful examples succinctly summarize the problem! The two phrases you are looking for are:

      * The Red Herring of Realism
      * Suspension of Disbelief, or Immersion

      Sadly, too many gamers and game designers cry for more realism not understanding the tradeoffs associated with it. As soon as players start noticing "the physics are not 'quite' right" you've broken the first rule of game design: immersion.

      This was less of an issue with 2D because players "knew" it was only a game; the move to 3D now has a lot of gamers-armchair-designers crying "that's not realistic" -- Um, buddy, when was the last time you saw a dragon flying to go whining about how its not moving realistic?" Why do players do that?

      The most important issue in 3D worlds are:

      * consistency
      * expectations

      Players "import" into the meta-game the rules and behavior of the Real World into the virtual one. It is OK to have a different set of physics as long as you follow the above 2 guidelines. i.e. If everyone can fly in your game players will "buy into" it as long as you introduce the concept, and are consistent with it in the game design. The indie games "Braid", or "Shift" are good example of "alternative" physics.

      Similar to how we have an "Uncanny Valley" for graphics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ) we also have an "Unexpected Physics" as we better approximate the real-world physics in computer games.

  2. It's not detail, it's contrast by narcc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I tried to play that "New Super Mario Brothers" game not long ago. I couldn't see a damn thing.

    Contrast, people. Contrast is important. The challenge should be playing the game, not seeing the game.

    --
    Required reading for internet skeptics
    1. Re:It's not detail, it's contrast by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd prefer monitors that can work without a hugely contrasting image.

      Take a game like Quake. It plays perfectly, in all its dark, murky, brown palette, on CRTs. Throw it on an LCD without boosting the game's brightness and it can be quite difficult to pick out the details. Reacting to this, mappers seemed to go between one of two paths

      The first option, they'll make a game nearly fullbright, then add shadows in for contrast. Dark colors other than shadows are delegated for things you shouldn't be paying attention to -- mainly extraneous paths.

      The second option is that the mapper significantly increases the brightness setting in the game, designing a level that is actually quite dark and very difficult to see at a normal brightness level on a calibrated monitor.

    2. Re:It's not detail, it's contrast by butalearner · · Score: 2

      I've never had trouble with that, but I tried playing split-screen multiplayer Modern Warfare or one of its ilk at a party last year on a 55" Plasma. Now it's not exactly my bailiwick but back in the Halo 2 days I used to be a fairly decent console FPS player even with split-screen limitations. But with MW I seriously could barely see anything, and most often I died without ever seeing any of the people I was fighting. I even tried the old "watch the other guy's screen" cheat and it didn't help at all.

      Before this article I couldn't put my finger on it, but I think this was exactly the problem. There may have been plenty of detail, but I couldn't make out the actual enemies. I guess the other players were just used to it.

    3. Re:It's not detail, it's contrast by Darkness404 · · Score: 2

      Really? I've found that less realistic games tend to have much better contrast than "ultra-realistic" games, NSMB has posed no problem, on the other hand, I've played several FPS and even first adventure games that were nearly impossible to see due to the color selection only being steel grey, gun grey, dirt grey, camo grey, and muzzle flash orange.

      Call of Duty has always been the worst offender for me.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  3. Depends on the Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For FPS, most benefit from the additional graphics making the game look more 'real' vs. in the past when the levels could be memorized effectively (SOCOM comes to mind) and people instantly killed for stepping out into the open. For games like Raiden Project or DYAD, graphics are designed to overwhelm the player, hiding enemies or incoming fire. Limbo takes the other end of the spectrum, where graphics are nearly nonexistent, but places more emphasis on what is there. It just depends on what the designers decide to emphasize.

  4. uncanny valley? by technosaurus · · Score: 2

    Similar to robots, I would assume. Anything more than the necessary data and you get diminishing or negative returns up until it begins to be indistinguishable from reality.

    1. Re:uncanny valley? by grumbel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem isn't in the looks, but in the interaction. In highly detailed games you often have tons of stuff that looks like you should be able to interact with it, but you cannot. So while the graphics have gotten more detailed, the interactivity has not. It drives me nuts when I run into doors I can not open, "walls" I can not jump over, holes I can not duck through, items I cannot pickup and all that stuff. With simpler graphics there was a much clearer communication as what is interactive and was is not, as there simply wasn't the computing power available to little the rooms with tons of uninteractive decal.

    2. Re:uncanny valley? by Haoie · · Score: 2

      If I see a toilet, I should be able to use it!

      Now that's interaction!

      --
      If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
    3. Re:uncanny valley? by grumbel · · Score: 2

      I understand but that has always been there because having absolute open levels DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

      It am not arguing about the actual level design, just about it's presentation. When you had a door in Doom, you could walk into it. If you see a door in a modern game, there is like a 80% chance that you can't walk into it. The reason for that is simply that when Doom needed a wall, the designers used a wall. In modern games that try to present realistic locations however the developers don't use walls, as that would look unrealistic, instead they use houses, cars, trashcans or any other object they can think of. Houses however have doors that I expect to open and cars and trashcans are small enough that I expect to be able to jump onto them, yet when I try I bounce off. With using real world objects come real world expectations on how those objects should behave.

      Games of course try to work around that. SciFi games always have green lights above doors that can open, real world games often remove the doorknobs or make the windows of a house opaque to signal that it's a non-interactive location. Sometimes that works reasonably well, but oftentimes you still end up with a something that looks like you should be able to crawl under or jump over, but simply can't. One get used to it, but it's still annoying.

  5. I agree by oakgrove · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used to play a lot of games when I was younger and cut my teeth on titles like Doom, Quake, Half-Life, on up to Far Cry and Half-Life 2 where I kind of got away from the whole thing. Recently I made a Windows install and decided to see what state the industry was in these days. My God was I blown away by the lighting and effects in Crysis Warhead. But equally I came away puzzled that it just didn't seem like I could "see" anything. It all just looked the same to me. Enemies blended into the background and everything just seemed to be running together. I thought maybe I was getting old so its nice to see somebody else agrees with my sentiments.

    --
    The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    1. Re:I agree by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Modern games, especially when camouflaging of some form is involved (which usually is in shooters) it's motion that will give them away, if your eyes are not adapted to spotting things.

      So:
      1. Pattern and antipattern detection/recognition (hey that grass looks diff... oh that's an enemy!)
      2. Fine motion detection/recognition (something just moved in those trees)

      These very same "skills" are trainable - the more you play, the better you get. This has actual real-world impact, especially in the realm of soldiers, hunters etc. Likewise if you've done a lot of that kind of thing, you'll find you pick up these games a bit easier since there's something to build on.

      Here's another study, though this one's some news report with no links.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    2. Re:I agree by gman003 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Crysis does that deliberately, trying to make camouflage an important gameplay element. It somewhat succeeds - the AI gets confused by camouflage sometimes, and that's not including your magic invisibility thing. So if you play it right, you can turn it into a weapon for you, instead of against you.

      Other games do it simply to look "cinematic". Doesn't work well.

      If you read some of the developer's papers on Team Fortress 2, you'll note that they were obsessed with visual identification. Every class was identifiable by silhouette alone, they used special lighting algorithms to emphasis object edges, and they maintained consistent color schemes, with players and important items being both high-saturation and high-contrast compared to backgrounds.

      That all went out the window somewhere around the time the first promo items were released, but it's still something more developers should learn from.

    3. Re:I agree by Cederic · · Score: 3, Informative

      Millitary training in the 80s taught me that static camouflage is hard to see, but movement leaps out at you.

      It _should_ be hard to see the stationary sniper.

    4. Re:I agree by mjwx · · Score: 2

      I used to play a lot of games when I was younger and cut my teeth on titles like Doom, Quake, Half-Life, on up to Far Cry and Half-Life 2 where I kind of got away from the whole thing. Recently I made a Windows install and decided to see what state the industry was in these days. My God was I blown away by the lighting and effects in Crysis Warhead. But equally I came away puzzled that it just didn't seem like I could "see" anything. It all just looked the same to me. Enemies blended into the background and everything just seemed to be running together. I thought maybe I was getting old so its nice to see somebody else agrees with my sentiments.

      Crysis Warhead would not be a good example, it was designed to be visually disorienting and that was used very well in its gameplay (same with FarCry and Crysis). I understand what you're saying, a lot of modern games are like that unintentionally.

      However graphics have not improved since Crysis (Crysis and Warhead had the same engine, it just ran a hell of a lot better in Warhead) and that was 2008 IIRC. I played Deus Ex:HR recently and couldn't notice a single improvement, in fact they covered up a lot with bloom. I found a lot of textures in DX:HR to be too low resolution for most monitors (I run a 24" 1920x1200, considering a lot of PC's now run 1920x1080 it's not that far off from the average) and it became extremely obvious they were not designed to be veiwed on PC monitors. Most notably the posters which had the titles in letters but the actual text was scribblings.

      But DX:HR's problem was not the textures, rather the bloom which is why a lot of games tend to have to highlight objects the player can interact with. Rather than creating proper detail, they use the graphical equivalent of cheap parlor tricks (like trying to kill the player with bloom). Reading the article they point out the level of detail in older games like System Shock 2 or the original Deus Ex where there was a lot of detail in the background but it did not overwhelm what the player was doing in the foreground. A lot of little things in DX I didn't notice until the 2nd or 3rd play through and I thought this was a nice touch.

      I dont think games have too much detail, in fact I don't think they have enough detail but modern games have too much of the wrong detail, bloom, dirt/dust effects and so on used too much or incorrectly so developers have to compensate by coating interact-able objects in bright yellow highlight so the player knows they are there.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  6. can't tell where I am by themushroom · · Score: 3, Funny

    I used to play this adventure game by Scott Adams on a VIC=20. All text, no detail, and I could never tell if I was making progress either.

    --
    Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
  7. NES vs. Sega Genesis by bigjarom · · Score: 5, Funny

    I used to use this exact same argument to tell my friend why his 16-bit Sega Genesis was worse than my 8-bit NES. Really I was just jealous.

  8. cursory analysis by Sebastopol · · Score: 2

    Heh, reminds me of playing tomb raider back in 1997 on a voodoo/3dfx and not being able to find all the secrets because the texture maps all looked the same.

    I didn't find enough depth in the article to really understand his point. Sounds like he's saying: the more detail in-game, the more hand-holding for the player to make the game 'fun'. Sure, color palettes, collaterals, space, and the actual path to follow vary, but I expected him to go back at least more than 5 years to talk about level design.

    Personally, I LOVE all the eye candy on high end games: shadows, grass blades, dust, wind, lots of material shaders, cloth physics, but I think too much of the budget goes into collaterals and shaders, and not enough goes into actual plot and motivation. BioShock looked effing gorgeous, but holy cats did I find it boring.

    I haven't really played a game yet where the detail was too distracting, but I have played many games where it was so boring and repetitive I just didn't care enough to finish, regardless of how pretty it was.

    Anyone who's ever planed Monkey Island or Grim Fandango and then plays any of the modern first-person games knows what I mean about opportunity cost and reward for working hard at solving a game.

    Heh, and I didn't mention Infocom once. /pats self on back/

    --
    https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
  9. Re:Betteridge's Law by i_ate_god · · Score: 2

    No, the point is to spark discussion, not make a point.

    --
    I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
  10. There's a reason... by julesh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...why there's a trend to retro gaming. Indie developers are putting out more and more titles with retro-styled graphics, and games such as Fantasy Online (an orthographic projection 16x16 tile-based MMORPG with graphics that would have looked old-hat in 1990) draw in millions of players.

    1. Re:There's a reason... by Hentes · · Score: 2

      They have their own reasons. Indie developers can't hire enough artists for more detailed graphics, and MMO games have to be able to run on cheap old computers if they want to get into the Asian market.

  11. Re:Skyrim by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is there more detail than "reality"?

    -AI

    I was thinking that, too...




    That is, until I took an arrow to the knee...


    *ducks*

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  12. If More Detail = More Difficulty by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

    Then Eric Schwarz must find reality damn-near impossible to navigate.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  13. Can make for more fun games too by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A problem in games has always been one of stealth. When you talk low rez stuff, characters stand out from the environment real well. So stealth is always done through artificial means. Characters become invisible or the like.

    Well, with detailed graphics that isn't necessary. Battlefield 3 does a great job of using visual camouflage. There's no "invisible button", no way to make your character magically disappear. However you can hide in shadows, crawl through the foliage, cove in debris. You can visually hide yourself from your opponents, because the engine has sufficient detail to make that a realistic possibility.

    Now I'm not saying that is the only way to do things. I don't mind games that want to go for bright cartoony graphics (I loved TF2). However it is a cool thing that we can achieve now with better graphics. We can have a setting where you can hide in ways we do in real life.

  14. I offer this by kenp2002 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (Shameless plug of sorts, apologies)

    I DM'ed (Dungeon Mastered) RPGs for many (like 20) years and I learned a very important lesson I mention in some youtube vids I am throwing out there (not a full timer, I'm just documenting some stuff for posterity so-to-speak http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL42823901F978F00D&feature=mh_lolz) but I'll give you a specific relevant quote:

    "Every detail you give a player, is one less detail they can imagine for themselves." Part of limiting graphics is, it allows a viewer or player's imagination more flexability. This is why I preferred Batman TAS' art direction more then say Fist of the North Star or Robot in the Shell anime (not that I disliked either of those). The more minimal art allowed me, mentally, to focus more on the movement, the framing, the scene as a whole, and gave me enough flexibility to flesh out the world without having every rat and piece of eye candy thrown at me.

    --
    -=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
  15. Re:not a crt vs lcd thing by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Consider this: early LCDs had horrible picture quality, and even now it takes a pretty high end LCD to compare to a good CRT.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  16. Re:not a crt vs lcd thing by Smauler · · Score: 2

    So it takes a good LCD to compare to a good CRT?

    Some early LCDs were crap, and I didn't convert until they surpassed my CRT in most ways - that happened more than 5 years ago though.

  17. Nope, it doesn't depend by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Half-Life showed the way, it was the first big game I recall where being told to go to the Boiler room, meant you looked at the wall and followed the arrows marked Boiler room. No more red card for red door or wondering why this room identical to all the others had special significance.

    A mod for Morrowind replaced the default non-sense roadsigns that only had tooltip on mouse over, to readable signs. Made the world a LOT more immersive. So the answer is simple:

    MORE DETAIL == MORE IMMERSION

    Well, unless you are very dimwitted/American and need a HUGE sign to be told a box with a redcross sign on it that looks just like a real word first aid box could be used as a first aid box and restore your health. I suppose some people prefer it to be a blue bottle because everyone knows blue bottles restore magic.... oops wait. Red potions then? Obviously the color for danger heals.

    When they stopped using these non-obvious icons and medpacks looked like first aid boxes instead that people could stop reading the manual.

    For first person shooters, being able to shoot through wooden doors, have realistic collision detection so that an obvious line of fire in the 3D world also is a line of fire in the collesion detection world, just makes these games easier and more fun to play as you are playing the game not an arbitrary set of rules that are never explained.

    Some people claim that Tomb Raider was merely popular for its lead characters assets. They forget that it was the first "platform" game, especially on the PC where pixel perfect precession was not needed. Close enough was good enough meaning you could focus on playing the game and not on finding the exact pixel to jump from.

    Not that everything has to be realistic. For instance the new MMO The Secret World does away with fall damage, you can jump from any height with no effect. Makes going around the world a lot more fun. In Lord of the Rings Online, a simple glitch going down a slope might cause fall damage to occur, slowing you to a crawl for far to long to be fun.

    I am personally convinced that a lot of the failure of SWTOR was due to the ingame graphics not being detailed or realistic enough. A cartoon style can work, I am an anime fan but NOT if the source material is live action movies. And all the trailers give big budget cgi movies a run for their money.

    Make it look "real". Not necessarily realistic but if people go "oh right, so that is what that is supposed to be, who would have thought", you failed.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.