Some of my biggest gaming tragedies (often bringing tears to my eyes as I shout the names of the fallen and weep for their deaths) have been in Dwarf Fortress.
I'll let that sink in.
I'll let that sink in.
Art managed to not be photorealistic for a very long time, and when photography came around, other art worked on separating from it as much as possible.-|- said:Anyone who would tell a developer they are full of shit for wanting photo-realistic graphics is somebody that doesn't think games are art.
Edit: Ignore that. Apparently the quote button is at the TOP of the post now >.> what the hell.Alterego-X said:I'll just leave this there from the previous topic on that issue:
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.Alterego-X said: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.
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.
My view is that the gaming industry needs photo-realism as a stylistic choice open to developers. Also, a corollary of this is that this ability also implies that any graphical effect imaginable can be achieved.Denamic said:There's a big difference between "I want photorealism to convey emotions" and "You need photorealism to convey emotions."-|- said:What I mean is that it's not up to us to decide what artistic style they should use to convey the meaning they intend to convey. If they say they need photorealism then they need it.
Is what the 2K actually guy said and I mostly agree with him apart from the final console bit."Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country... it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies," he said. "Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now."
He continued, "To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console."