The Brown Argument

[Dirty Hipsters]

5) What would you prefer? A game where the ground is bright purple with floral patterns against a backdrop of luminous pink whilst you're fighting blue enemies? Because that's a headache waiting to happen.

This is the inside of a Covenant ship in Halo. While the ground may not have a floral pattern, it is purple and pink, and you do fight blue enemies. I have yet to find anyone who gets headaches from the color scheme while playing this.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

CoD may be a lot of things, but I wouldn't exactly call it "brown". Hell, MW2 has got some EXTREMELY colorful levels. To the point of eye strain sometimes.

The last game I played where the lack of color was really noticeable was Gears of War 1, and that was more of a predominant grey. Though I didn't really mind, it worked with the art style and really contributed to the overall moody atmosphere. However, then Gears of War 2 rolled around and got all Bob Ross up in that ish and slung color around like it was going out of style.

Actually, you wanna know a REALLY brown game?

BA GAWD, 1998 was a brown year.

 

[SideSmash]

I WOULD prefer a nice colorful world, because at least I realize then that video game are supposed to look fucking IMAGINATIVE.

 

[Syzygy23]

1) People are affected by colour. Bright vivid colours help stimulate the mind while non stop greys and browns are depressing.

2) I do. Does not mean all shooters get a free pass to be smeared in poop.

3) And back then there were also more games that were other colours. Now, everythings brown.
Besides, Mario had other vivid colours to break up the brown.

4) Must just be because you are english since I see a vivid blue sky, green grass, different colour cars, flowers, hedges, some asshole down the street has a candy floss pink house...
If I wanted the "brown real life" experience I would move to a big city and do boring real life shit.

5) Viva Piñata! I want some fucking variety. Even a fantastic steak needs some mash and greens to complete the experience.

Just ask yourself what you would rather have.

Spoiler: This

Spoiler: Or this.

You win, argument over, case closed. I cannot disagree with the photos you provided.

 

[aashell13]

We've all seen it:

5) What would you prefer? A game where the ground is bright purple with floral patterns against a backdrop of luminous pink whilst you're fighting blue enemies? Because that's a headache waiting to happen.

Gee. That reminds me of the first Halo.

EDIT: damn ninjas

 

[burningdragoon]

1) Do you honestly place zero value on visual aesthetics? What about variety in that aesthetic? If no, then fine, but a lot of people do.

2) This more or less irrelevant. Why should someone have to choose a different genre if they want a different visual style? Genres primarily determine gameplay, not how pretty something is. Also, what if FPS is your favorite genre and you want to play mostly them?

3) Fair enough really. There's a difference between 'has brown in it' and 'is brown' but yeah, this is not entirely a new problem.

4) Some people want gritty realism, some people don't. That's pretty simple. Brown being the appropriate color for the setting is fine, but that shouldn't be a shield to hide behind.

5) That there is what you call a false dichotomy. What a lot people want is variety, not all brown or all some other color. Interesting worlds, with good visuals which include things like contrast and a bunch of stuff I am not well versed enough to explain.

 

[poppabaggins]

1) How is a colour affecting your enjoyment?

Ummm, aesthetics? People like pretty things. Science agrees. I like pretty things. Game companies spend millions of dollars on increasingly realistic graphics, so graphics apparently matter to a large portion of gamers today.

I like brown. Brown is a good color. But when everything is desaturated and varying shades of brown/red/muted green, nothing really pops out. In Dragon Age, I occasionally can't find what I need to click on because everything just blends together.

On the other hand, look at Borderlands. There's a hell of a lot of brown there, but everything that needs to stand out DOES stand out.

Also, I'm going to going to say that Half-Life 2 was shit, and it's desaturated environments didn't help make it any better.

 

[madmatt]

1) How is a colour affecting your enjoyment?

2)A majority of the predominately brown games are shooters, there are plenty of other genres out there that don't use the colour so much, so why not go play them?

3) Games have been brown for years Half Life 2 had a lot of it [and is regarded as a masterpiece by some, even some anti brown people, [should I just call them racists?] figure that one out.] Even the first Mario had a hell of a lot of brown, every gosh darned brick was brown, so were the goombas, and the floor. Did that make you rage?

4) A majority of games emulate at least some semblance of the real world. Now take a look out of your window at the scary outdoors, if you live somewhere urbanised you'll see a lot of grey [which is one of the main colours in Half Life and Doom and other very early shooters, is grey OK but brown not? That's definitely racist] but if you live somewhere a bit more rural, you'll see what? A fuck load of brown things, trees and dirt mainly, which are both usually very brown. Also, a lot of modern shooters are set in the Middle East, where everything is brown, even the buildings and grass and people.

5) What would you prefer? A game where the ground is bright purple with floral patterns against a backdrop of luminous pink whilst you're fighting blue enemies? Because that's a headache waiting to happen.

Heck I like brown, but:

1) It sets the atmosphere - this is especially important in FPS's where the combat is often short, and setting also is important for immersion. More importantly brown on brown shows a lack of imagination on effort on the part of developers - it may be an attempt to be gritty and realistic, but it looks uniform and lacking in thought, as no, the world is not just various browns. But the laziness in not attempting variation makes gamers feel short changed.

2)Saying if you don't like it so much, don't buy it isn't a very good argument because it precludes improvement. The intended goal is to improve the game, but excluding a major complaint by throwing your toys out of the pram and screaming go buy something else is a poor way to respond to a criticism of one aspect of a game. In any case it is a common problems of many games as it is cheap and easy.

3)Doing something wrong for a long time doesn't make it better. And we now have the capacity to not by necessity rely on it like may have happened in the past. Again, this is just one aspect of a game - it can still be great, but can be improved. It isn't even necessarily brown that is the problem, but the lack of effort and imagination in settings and as a result resorting to block colours.

4) The real world involves a lot of variation, often in small details which cumulatively make a big difference to how you feel about the game. Very few places are "all brown". Many involve a complex array of similar colours. You won't see this often, as it is a level of detail which is expensive and it is often thought not worth the effort. Urban areas are a small part of the world's land mass, but if you are looking out of your window in the middle of a city even, and just seeing brown or grey, you are either living in a adaptation 1984, or are just glossing over the palette in your mind.

5) More imagination, attention to detail, and effort over easy, cheap and short-cut taking uniform blocks of colour which indicate a lack of concern, or time, or effort about the setting of a game which directly impacts on your immersion or feelings from the game, but most importantly make you feel valued by the producers of games, rather than treated as too foolish to notice. There are other ways to get gritty, with imagination, and many games achieve this and with colour, even if it is subtle. But many others could improve on this, which could for small effort, improve the game greatly, and it is right to point that out.

Now cue the people who are impressed that I "Have an opinion" and feel the need to post that.

Well done for having an opinion though. Even if it was only sporadically thought through/deliberately trying to rile people

 

[TheAceTheOne]

Man, it doesn't matter if it's brown or not. Even filters (Like Fallout 3's kind of green filter or Deus Ex: Human Revolution's yellow filter) are cool in my book. If the game plays and runs well, and there's some detail in the world (not color wise, but texture-wise), I don't care if it's brown.

Also... Real is brown...

 

[Thundero13]

1) Colour adds to the atmosphere of the game, making it presented nicer, etc.

2) There are plenty of genres but FPS's are dominating the markets so the games in those genres are few

3) I have no problem having a few brown games but it used to be that most games did have colour, Mario wasn't very capable but it had green hills, blue sky, it's much better then a lot of modern FPS's

4) See, I don't really care for games to be realistic, realism is boring and i'd gladly sacrifice realism for a nicer looking game

5) Well yes, but it's still better then brown, I just think things should show all the colours vividly, Zelda Wind Waker is a nice example of how to do colour well

Those are my arguments ^-^

 

[pyrosaw]

I don't really mind, it's a little overboard, but I still want the game to be actually entertaining.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I wouldn't consider Southern California rural by any stretch of the imagination. Looking at the area at night leaves no considerable dark spot for hundreds of miles around my house, yet a street away there's lavender in the trees, and just outside my window there are regular green trees and a bush with white flowers and red fruit. Whenever I got to work (at Target) I'm greeted by a rainbow of towels Colors are good, and a lot of greys and browns lend themselves to a heavy, depressing atmosphere.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

My biggest problem with "The Brown Arugment" is that most of the games subjected to it AREN'T FUCKING BROWN.

Seriously, if these people had actually PLAYED a Killzone game, a Call of Duty game, a Halo game, or a Gears of War game, they'd realize that each of these games has plenty of color and variety in the environments.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

It's

Spoiler

Compared to

Spoiler

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand Fallout and Enslaved are two very different takes on a wasteland, but if you're going to spend a notable amount of time in a game, having it visually appealing helps. It never needs to be a neon rave, but having a bit of greenery or even people with colourful clothing helps. Honestly, games with colour are an utter relief after many games these days that take the 'dead zone' to the extreme.

And as for Half Life, I've never heard it called a brown game. When I think brown, Fallout is what comes to mind, and of course that will be a picky example, because it's suppose to be a dead wasteland, thus the brown suits it. I don't hate the game because it's brown, it's just that beyond all else that's what comes to mind. Brown. But Half Life? Half Life had loads of colour, I honestly can't fathom what people claim was brown about it.

I think you're taking this out of proportion though OP. I don't know who you've gotten opinions from, but stating that because people don't mind grey buildings we're simply racist against brown.... If you want to make a point, lay out your views without belittling those with alternate view points.

 

[Superior Mind]

The argument isn't against brown it's against monotony and for variety.

 

[TehCookie]

1) Colours affect emotions and have meanings. Yellow is an energetic colour, blue tends to be more relaxed, and colours like black are depressing so you wear it to funerals, red/orange is usually a warning etc. Brown is a very poopy colour.

2) I do, and I enjoy them more. What's wrong with wanting genres to mix it up a little?

3) Never played either, I was a Sega kid.

4) Outside my window is mostly green, lots of trees, a green swamp a blue lake beyond that. To my other side is a farmer's field which often had hills of flowers earlier this spring it was a carpet of yellow dandelions and now it's a deep green with purple flowers scattered in it. The sky is a lovely light blue and the sun is a bright yellow. The only brown is the road and the mulch in the flowerbeds that have brightly coloured flowers in them.

5) That sounds awesome, I'd play it.

 

[Bento Box]

I usually spend time being pedantic in the more philosophical/religious threads, but what the hell. this is a gaming forum, and from time to time I should talk about games.

We've all seen it:
*Game anti thinker voice*
"Argh I hate shooters these days, everythings so brown and shitty, I can't stand it anymore! Why are things like the good old days where every spectrum of the rainbow was involved. Boo hoo"
Yea..these idiots. Now this isn't a major thing to get annoyed by, but I do, it's my duty as an Englishman to find flaws and administer them back to people, so here's my beef with the anti brown whingers.

1) How is a colour affecting your enjoyment?

2)A majority of the predominately brown games are shooters, there are plenty of other genres out there that don't use the colour so much, so why not go play them?

3) Games have been brown for years Half Life 2 had a lot of it [and is regarded as a masterpiece by some, even some anti brown people, [should I just call them racists?] figure that one out.] Even the first Mario had a hell of a lot of brown, every gosh darned brick was brown, so were the goombas, and the floor. Did that make you rage?

4) A majority of games emulate at least some semblance of the real world. Now take a look out of your window at the scary outdoors, if you live somewhere urbanised you'll see a lot of grey [which is one of the main colours in Half Life and Doom and other very early shooters, is grey OK but brown not? That's definitely racist] but if you live somewhere a bit more rural, you'll see what? A fuck load of brown things, trees and dirt mainly, which are both usually very brown. Also, a lot of modern shooters are set in the Middle East, where everything is brown, even the buildings and grass and people.

5) What would you prefer? A game where the ground is bright purple with floral patterns against a backdrop of luminous pink whilst you're fighting blue enemies? Because that's a headache waiting to happen.

Ooh, this was needlessly long for a vent, oh well. If you got this far thanks for reading, if not then I guessed you missed the bit where I horribly insulted you in part 3, so I guess you're better off not knowing what I said about you. Yes you

Now cue the people who are impressed that I "Have an opinion" and feel the need to post that.

1) I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself and I suspect that I'm speaking for lots of others. Clearly you have an opinion, right? And I'd venture to say that you have a favorite color. Cool. So here's what you do: imagine that you were colorblind -- not just red/green colorblind, but the whole spectrum. Do you think you'd experience less joy in life? Never mind the practical things like traffic lights. All the cool blue LED's that probably adorn your computer, every angry bird, and everything else would have, I bet, a lot of the fun removed from it because it all looks so damn much the same. You can even bring this into the real world; go to Hot Topic or, preferably, a proper indie shop - anywhere that sells cool hipster glasses with off-color lenses. Get a pair of red or green ones since those will filter out the rest of the spectrum the best. Now wear them for a whole day, and at the end of the day when you take them off, be amazed at just how elated you are, just to be able to see colors again.

2) You really seem to enjoy misapplying the word 'racism' incorrectly -- more on that later -- but let's have some fun with this question, and shift the perspective. A majority of the predominately cute, date-able Israeli girls are Jewish. There are plenty of other countries that have fewer Jews per capita, so why not go on dates in those countries? My point here is that you're effectively saying, "Instead of trying to change the circumstances of the thing you want to do, force yourself to want to do something else." The civil rights and suffrage movements would like a word with you.

3) Games have had a predominate palette, practically since the medium moved onto the screen -- hell, since games moved onto print. Many of them have still enjoyed a splash of color. Fine, a red cacodemon with blue blood, a purple energy ball and a big green eye is overkill, and even cartoony nowadays,but unless you're trying to pull some artsy shit like Limbo, or be truly oppressive like the end of Drakengard or something, a splash of color helps keep things visually interesting. This is coming from a man whose damn-near-favorite game of all time was Fallout 3. This is an argument about monotony, not actually one about colors.

Although it's out of order, I feel your crack about HL2 deserves its own little segment. Half-Life 2 was not a festival of monochrome. There is color all over that game, and still it managed what I would call a comparable level of 'grit' against modern shooters.

4) Fair enough a lot of games do. But I still think that if I have Deadpool's super healing, which activates every time I duck behind a bulletproof empty wooden crate... OK, I'm beginning to digress. Anyway, fine. You know what? You're right. I do see a lot of grey around here -- and among that grey is an awful lot of color from billboards, painted houses, lawns, neon lights, urban renewal painting all over the graffiti, itself also colorful. Lots of dark brown people live there, and you know what? A lot of them were the folks who decided that color was more fun than grey. Know what they didn't do to the grey, though, is paint it all brown. This is not a matter of racism. Having a favorite color does not make you a racist. I shouldn't even have to explain something that fucking inane. Tell you what's racist? A whole mess of games that have their plots summed up as, "Get over there and kill lots and lots and lots of those fucking Muslims..

I used to live out in the boonies, too. There was a lot of brown. Also a lot of green. Also a lot of pink and blue; flowers have away of growing out there, where people don't mow them. Also some silver or blue from ponds and lakes, and more. There is a smorgasbord of color everywhere, except in the middle east, and you know what? That's a really good segue into...

5) You know what? That might be fun. If nothing else, it would certainly get me the fuck out of the Ethnic Cleansers they've been releasing for the last five years. What you're asking for, is not terribly far off from playing the original Doom games, lots of bright red skies, fairly bright greens and blues adorning rooms, etc. Wolfenstein 3D had blue walls everywhere, for chrissake. As pixelated as those games were, they really are more visually appealing to me than this new generation of Arab-slayers (although in fairness, I can probably chalk a lot of it up to nostalgia).

Anyway, you didn't really insult me with alleged point number three. What you did was frame an entire issue poorly, and then call people racists for enjoying a variety of colors.

Fucking honestly, man...

EDIT: God, the rest of you guys were so much more concise and coherent than I was. I need to make sure to sober up before I type these posts. I mean, damn.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

EDIT: God, the rest of you guys were so much more concise and coherent than I was. I need to make sure to sober up before I type these posts. I mean, damn.

I think you hit the nail pretty damn straight on the head with your post.

 

[FalloutJack]

The thing these complainers be missin' most of the time is that THERE ARE THINGS IN THE WORLD THAT ARE BROWN! And they show up in warfare alot! Dirt and mud? Brown! Tree trunks and wood? Brown! Certain ethnicities? Brown (or close to it)! Some stones and or structures MADE of stone? BROWN BROWN BROWN! This is not some tragic miscarriage of the use of color. There are brown things all over the place. This isn't Joseph and the amazing technicolor wartime FPS. It's not wrong. It's true to form.

 

[Saika Renegade]

I think the problem with the brown isn't that it's the shade of brown itself, so much as the lack of saturation. In theory that'd make things more gray, but thirty seconds of mucking about in Photoshop reveals that a gray multiply layer over something like, say, yellow, or orange, or even red, results in something that looks like a rather muddy shade of brown, while merely desaturating such colors by fifty percent nets much the same effect.

My main concern with brown in a game isn't its presence but its omnipresence. I can accept if, say, the tank I'm hiding behind hoping that I don't eat a fifty-caliber ricochet sandwich is brown, as it has probably been churning up dirt or gotten plenty of propellant smoke blown back onto its hull. This is going to make it look dirty and worn, and that's fine. However, if every surface and texture is desaturated, it really makes it hard to start differentiating things and it lends an air of visual muddiness to the whole affair.

Not to say that this effect can't be played well. Fallout New Vegas, for instance, pretty much has every color of brown and gray thrown right into it from the get go, but it doesn't feel gloomy because the designers wisely spiced up the dusty, dirty atmosphere with genuine spreads of meaningful color. Billboards are recognizable as such, bearing small pristine patches, and gas stations still have tacky green overhangs. It contributes to both the immersion as well as the gameplay, quickly informing you of what you're seeing while also telling you how lousy the world has become in the Mojave. The same can be said for outfits and weapons, which are usually shades of brown, but are distinctly broken up by swaths of intact, bold colors in many cases (standard NCR troops being one of the oddballs, being straight shades of brown from just about any distance). The first raiders you run into wear blue jeans and light blue long sleeve shirts. That says quite a bit. Even the color-on-desaturated-plains arrangement ends up subverted, however, if you have purchased Old World Blues and seen what happens there, at least in regards to how...colorful it is.

I look around in my yard, in an urban neighborhood two minutes from the nearest major inter-state highway, and while there is no lack of brown thanks to heat waves killing everything that's rooted to the spot, there is still plenty of color even in that--sickly yellows and desperate hints of green, both of which stand out pretty starkly with no desaturation, and having seen quite a few games which try to play hard in reality's field, it's all the funnier when reality is more colorful simply because they're not trying to match up. I don't need every last thing to be bright neon, but I would greatly appreciate more splashes of color beyond getting red paint flicked on my screen every time I take a bullet.