Jimquisition: Photorealistic Sociopathy

[eltonborges]

There is not a single game that have a mandatory rule about graphics in order to work, but nothing worked so well in gaming history as a FPS with "realistic graphics of manly man doing manly things" with MW in the cover. But in order to that happen, we needed Doom guy, Wolfenstein guy, Blood guy, Outlaw guy, Duke guy, Unreal guys and girls, 007 guys and girls, XIII guy and girl, Quake and Timesplitters guys, girls, robots, fish tanks, monsters, carcasses and the list can go on. Realistic graphics are the new tool at disposal of the developers, but if to get here so much have happened before. That 2K guy had forget about all the other games that happened before, that created and shaped the genre. I just can't understand how someone who make games can just ignore all the history and legacy that is behind the modern shooters.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Hilarious ending.

I totally agree with most things said, but I'm just wondering whether we've recently had a bunch of devs say things like they have in order to try and push the likes of Microsoft and Sony to push out their new consoles?

Not the best way to go about it, no doubt I just wonder if that was maybe their ulterior motive.

 

[irmasterlol]

I disagree; I think gaming is primarily an interactive medium, and the interaction can make up for flaws absolutely anywhere else, especially on the visual end. Good graphics are probably second-to-last on my list of priorities in a video game.

There's no excuse not to have good art direction and aesthetics regardless of the quality of your graphics, though, and I think that's much more important as a result; low quality graphics can still be very pleasant to look at as long as they're presented well.

Ok, I'll grant you that it's largely interactive, but the game still tells its story visually. Musical cues can adjust the tone of some actions, but we still predominantly see the actions of the characters and how they impact the world and characters around them.

The Power of Flight featured article on the main page may have made me a bit biased towards visual storytelling today.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Ok, I'll grant you that it's largely interactive, but the game still tells its story visually. Musical cues can adjust the tone of some actions, but we still predominantly see the actions of the characters and how they impact the world and characters around them.

It doesn't have to, though; a game can be based entirely on, say, sound, with no visuals whatsoever and as long as it's done correctly, it could still be a riveting, if extremely difficult to pull off, experience.

Visuals are only a vehicle for the gameplay, as everything else is, to give shape to it and attempt to make you feel apart of the action. Graphics are merely the only method thusfar successfully employed to show us what the action is.

Of course, because so many game developers would have rather been movie directors, or just aren't very creative - usually both - that's usually what we get: interactive movies, sometimes barely interactive ones. But their lack of creativity isn't a flaw of the medium itself, nor does it represent what video games as a whole are capable of.

 

[gamejunkiey69]

Playing a game just for it's graphics is like watching porn for it's plot.

 

[AJax_21]

It's really weird for Crytek to be spouting this bullcrap especially since I thought Crysis 2 shined more through its art direction and scene composition. Yeah, I know they're tech-savvies and they wanna push the latest hardware to its limits but I honestly thought they learned a lesson on with Crysis 2 with it focusing more on art direction in contrary to its predecessor.

 

[Scrustle]

I've always thought that the characters in Minecraft actually do a pretty good job of conveying emotion. There's hardly any detail to them, but if you watch an LP of the game and see people convey in-game body language along with their voice, a surprising amount comes across.

 

[snowfi6916]

"I think no religious statement has any place in something that isn?t a church or a religious topic." - Jim Sterling

Golly gee Jim. Maybe you should go and try to do some more of that actual Journalism you were talking about earlier. Do you even know where Dan Cathy made his statement concerning his personal opinion on gay marriage? Of course not. You're too busy stroking your outrage in defense of your liberal opinions. Here, I've done it for you since you were too busy to bother:

http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=38271

Here, I'll even reference some of your fellow liberals:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/dan-cathy-chick-fil-a-president-anti-gay_n_1680984.html

He said it in an interview with "The Baptist Press: News With A Christian Perspective". A relevant place for one to speak his mind on religious opinion? Have some crow to go with that side fat you'll be scooping out and eating. Maybe you can open an episode with you stuffing some Chick Fil A into your maw.

I don't think the outrage about Chick Fil A is about the fact that their CEO (or whatever) is against gay marriage. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

The problem is that he stated that he is using the money WE give him to support anti-gay marriage groups. Which pisses people who do support gay marriage and eat at Chick Fil A off, because they don't want their money going to something they don't support.

If you want to give money to those groups, use your own money, not the company money.

 

[Alterego-X]

I'll just leave this there from the previous topic on that issue:

I think the quote was misconstructed as "we" won't care about games until they are photorealistic, while it was intended to talk about expanding the market. "We" might love abstract games until our face is blue, but that won't magically make them more accepted.

All the counterexamples about non-photorealistic emotional things are either tiny niches, or seen as childish.

There is western animation for children, and anime for otaku.
Garfield Comic strips in newspapers, and Superhero comics for nerds.
Cartoonish party games for casuals, and arthouse indie games for hardcore gamers.

Paintings themselves are made by and for conisseours, while the rest of us couldn't tell a Van Gogh from a Hitler. As soon as we invented photography, ordinary people started to use that everywhere from portraits to landscapes, simply becase photorealistic is seen as superior.

So yes, I could actually agree with him, that if gaming wants to be recognized in the mainstream as an art form, it needs photorealistic dramas, romances, epics, and mysteries, not even more 2D platformers that look like expressionist paintings.

I'm not saying that pursuing photrealism is a GOOD THING for gaming as an art form, or that any of these things that the people above me are wrong.

Yes, minimalistic games can be expressive, animated films can make us cry, it's all about technique, etc.

But does the public see it that way, too? The people who sneer at the omnopoteia of comic books, and at the "bug-eyed" anime characters? Because that's what a studio cares about. 2K couldn't give a shit about the artistic merit of Braid and Bioshock, if CoD sells more, and that is what will make more people to be more invested in gaming.

And for the normal people that we call "casual gamers", this might very well be the way to connect them to gaming beyond flashy childish party games.

Given how they prefer live action entertainment over books, animation, and every other medium, it very well might be true that more identifiable facial expressions are a part of the Lowest Common Denominator for them.

 

[irmasterlol]

It doesn't have to, though; a game can be based entirely on, say, sound, with no visuals whatsoever and as long as it's done correctly, it could still be a riveting, if extremely difficult to pull off, experience.

Visuals are only a vehicle for the gameplay, as everything else is, to give shape to it and attempt to make you feel apart of the action. Graphics are merely the only method thusfar successfully employed to show us what the action is.

Of course, because so many game developers would have rather been movie directors, or just aren't very creative - usually both - that's usually what we get: interactive movies, sometimes barely interactive ones. But their lack of creativity isn't a flaw of the medium itself, nor does it represent what video games as a whole are capable of.

That seems like something that would have to fail miserably several times before anyone managed to pull it off. I'm certainly not here to sing the praises of the interactive movie crowd, the best stories merge seamlessly with the gameplay etc. etc.

I concede your point, but only in theory. I'm struggling to imagine a context in which it would actually be possible, but I guess that's why I'm not an innovative game designer pushing the limits of the medium.

 

[Ukomba]

Chrono Trigger - one of the best games of all time, full of emotion, with graphics that still holds up.

Final Fantasy 6 - More moving than FF12 FF13 combined... Final Fantasy 4 was more moving too.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

...You know, I look at that guy and think he's talking out of his arse. Something I'm surprised Jim didn't pick up on is that the man has double standards - Borderlands 2 comes out very soon, and both that and it's predecessor use a Cel-Shaded look. It may not be as bright and cartoony as Zelda (If anyone remembers XIII, that may work as a better comparison), but Cell Shaded is Cell Shaded and Hypocrisy is Hypocrisy.

 

[octafish]

Graphics Shmaphics, current gen consoles are starved for RAM, bring on the next gen.

 

[shadowmagus]

Anyone that says you need photorealistic graphics for empotional investment, I have two words for you:

Aerith Gainsbourough

Came here to say this. We're done here.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

That seems like something that would have to fail miserably several times before anyone managed to pull it off. I'm certainly not here to sing the praises of the interactive movie crowd, the best stories merge seamlessly with the gameplay etc. etc.

Video games using a visual medium didn't start out very well either, if you remember, and it wasn't the graphics' fault; it was because what was being done hadn't been tried and true yet. It took a few years for video games that thrilled and engrossed people to really come along, and even a lot of those don't stand up so well today because what they started has since been improved in some way or another.

I concede your point, but only in theory. I'm struggling to imagine a context in which it would actually be possible, but I guess that's why I'm not an innovative game designer pushing the limits of the medium.

I'm not saying I am either, but the thing that makes people interesting is that we can make that which was not there before; we can make the unfeasible feasible, in the right hands. Video games themselves are an example of that, and as I've said before, we're wasting their potential, and by extension our own, by trying to make them emulate life.

 

[Lunar Templar]

well Crytek is on my list of 'devs that don't know how to do they're jobs' now.

fucking morons ....

photo realism can help, but only if the story is there to support it, it will not, and cannot achieve any connection with the target audience if the characters and story are all crap.

case in point, Vindictus, the game it self looks very good, but you get all the story bits from

Spoiler: stills like this one

[sub]pictured: one badass mofo[/sub]

riveting no? well, yes actually, the writing of the game is actually good enough that i actually cared, and subsequently felt rage and sadness when characters i liked died (in a fully voiced cut-scene, they aren't that cheap) or, in one characters case, inspired raw hatred.

no, i don't get to kill the son of a *****

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I remember nothing of Crysis except thinking "well, it looks nice." At one point, there might have been an alien ship, but don't hold me to that. I couldn't sit through an hour of L.A.Noire, because it's uncanny valley effect hit me harder than anything else ever has, and it creeped me the fuck out. Photorealism does nothing if you don't have anything worth showing, and even fails if it's just shy of it. I'll take stylized any day, since it provides something extremely memorable.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I think someone said it before on this forum; look at the body language and facial animations possible in the Source engine, how old is the Source engine?
Jeez even LA Noire is, what, 2 or three years old (and therefore outdated technology, apparently), and I don't think it's really necessary to advance beyond that in terms of attempted photorealism.

Some of the statements from developers sound like they're standing in front of an unlocked door, and waiting for the development of perfect animatronics in order to open it.