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How Much Detail Is Too Much For Games?
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."
...it depends.
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
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.
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.
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.
...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.
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
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.
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.
(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? ]=-
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.
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.