Game graphics: should anyone care anymore?
Roe
Always to the EastRegistered User regular
Always to the EastRegistered User regular
Recently I've started playing games with very high quality video settings. I just started playing Crysis 2 demo, which on my machine, was the best graphics I have seen in a game so far.
With graphics not set on maximum, I still get the best eye-candy in any game so far... Which leads me to the point that I really just didn't give a damn about graphics any more. Sure their great, but the idea of someone taking a break from playing just to look around and see the better graphics only happens once. The rest of the time you are playing the game.
The pc game market hasn't seen much outside of games that run well on a console, so do we really need to upgrade graphic cards for games like skyrim or games like it?
With graphics not set on maximum, I still get the best eye-candy in any game so far... Which leads me to the point that I really just didn't give a damn about graphics any more. Sure their great, but the idea of someone taking a break from playing just to look around and see the better graphics only happens once. The rest of the time you are playing the game.
The pc game market hasn't seen much outside of games that run well on a console, so do we really need to upgrade graphic cards for games like skyrim or games like it?
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We're at a place where most games do all of these things (except for the multiple monitor support... grrrr....) and at that point I care less about technical merit and more about artistry.
For example, I prefer looking at WoW than some of the recent MMOs that have come out, because the artistry is better. I don't really care that the graphics engine is several years old. When WoW does bother me, it's because of some of the stupid artistic decisions (like shoulderpads the size of a small pony).
Past the point where we've overcome obvious visual artifacts, I'd rather have a lower-resolution rendering of the Mona Lisa than a higher-resolution rendering of an ugly photograph.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What I am curious about, is when games attain 100% realistic graphics, will we find it as impressive and awe inspiring?
I totally 100% agree with this.
I'm assuming we'll reach a point where we take the technology for granted but not necessarily the talent behind it. Just like today... anybody can take a photograph, but a particularly good photograph will still give you pause.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We're reaching the limits of what can be done with conventional gaming, which has long been dominated by a chase for hardware performance, and I think that we're seeing that mentality come to an end. If consoles are to have a future, it's going to be dictated by craftsmanship and innovation, not rote graphical capability.
For example, Perfect Dark was made on the same engine as Goldeneye on the N64, but boasted improved graphical performance and a convoluted sci-fi story. Yet it failed, while Goldeneye didn't just flourish, but even got a sequel and a re-release on the Wii this year.
The future of gaming is in providing new and enriching gaming experiences. Innovative mechanics, deep stories and characters, and expanded user choice are the steps in that direction.
You know.
Futurecops in plastic killzone masks with paramilitary gear.
A grunting protagonist in a plastic trenchcoat that wasn't even remotely designed with anything in mind how a trench-coat actually looks in the real world. You know, an article of clothing that exists and can be studied with your eyes, they just flubbed learning about stitching and seams and the way a real thing with no moving parts actually is assembled. Let's not forget a horribly un-unique face on that guy.
Generic-ass future crap with random neon all over it, like a C+ version of Bladerunner.
Now, the method of the work was well done. But the content of the graphics, namely, what the graphics were there to represent, was ass-piss-poor, and nothing that hasn't been fucking seen dozens of times in a 3d world since the late Playstation 1 era. Yes, yes, higher polycount, articulation, dynamic lighting, rah rah rah. A dark future city with masked police brutes where it's always raining. Man in a trench coat. It's a million dollar brain fart on bleeding edge technology, because the people who design the best engines known to man are incapable of learning costume design, or the difference in fabrics, and fall back on a movie from 29 years ago, and they don't even study that, just make a weak, obvious shallow casting of the basics that anyone who'd seen the trailer or part of it at a party could've seen.
Game graphics have a hell of a long way to go, quality-wise. They're about as good, generally speaking, as the writing in games, or the adaptations of movies from games. We have the technology, but we sure as shit don't have the skill.
Yeah, this. Modern games are afforded a level of graphic quality such that you can pretty much do what you want. We're still not quite at photorealism in living creatures, there could be a lot more done with improving lighting and shadows, but these sorts of things aren't all that noticeable during actual gameplay.
In fact, we seem to be moving back towards the trend of pre-rendered cut scenes in games, but with a lot more grace. During the advent of the first 3D games, you would have beautiful cut scenes that transitioned into (comparatively) ass-ugly real-time visuals. It was distracting and retarded. But as an example, I'm playing Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time right now, and they use pre-rendered cut scenes. But rather than make something of radically different quality than the gameplay graphics, they use mostly the same models and just add a bit of extra gloss to the lighting and a few of the materials and throw in some nicer shadows. The result is gorgeous cut-scenes that segue into gorgeous gameplay that is close enough in quality that you don't really notice the shift unless you're looking for it.
Mostly, though, as Feral says, we're at a point where that sort of thing doesn't matter much. If you want to create a certain look, you're not limited by hardware, but rather by your own artistic capacity. And now that this is the case, games that might have looked beautiful years ago are sort of bland. I recently finished Alan Wake, and it had some really high-quality photorealistic vistas and some good character models and whatnot. But the visuals were, overall, still kinda meh, because the artistry wasn't really there.
Basically, if you have a ginormous budget and good degree of talent, it's a great time to be a game artist.
I would love better AI and better world simulation.
I imagine games where an NPC isn't just standing around waiting for you to talk to himm, nor merely looping through a predictable cycle of finite actions, but wandering through a complex decision tree giving the appearance of a living entity with its own motivations.
Or games where your actions have indirect effects on the game world. Imagine a non-MMO RPG where the goods you buy from shops undergo algorithmically-simulated supply-and-demand cycles, for instance.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
dammit
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's not what I care about the most, but that goes for a lot of things. Voice-acting isn't the most important part of a game to me either, but I'd still take Portal's GLaDOS over RE's Barry "Master of Unlocking" Burton in a heartbeat.
It's sort of funny. The companies that used to give us the very best looking games back in the late 90s are now giving us some pretty crappy visuals. Back then, good visuals was all about pushing polys and doing fancy stuff with your materials. You didn't have to be an artist to put out something impressive, because we were impressed just to see something that cast a proper shadow.
I think I first noticed the new trend when Doom 3 came out. It was technically impressive, but the art design was shit, because it was basically designed by tech monkeys with no artistic imagination. The Unreal games and their ilk suffer the same problems, though not quite as badly. The really awesome looking games now are coming from those with some real artistic chops. They're the games like Eco and Shadow of the Colossus and Limbo and other things that aren't technically impressive, but have really good (and often haunting) art design.
Oh, we absolutely have the skill. There are some brilliant artists working on games. There are just also a lot of mediocre artists. It's not much different than the film industry. For every great looking movie, you have five that have no thought put into the visuals at all, or ignore proper aesthetics in favor of spectacle. Why bother making something subtly beautiful when you can just make the entirety of LA devoured by a giant CG earthquake?
I think I would love more than anything to have decision trees that led your character to radically different outcomes, and that accumulated, wildly altering your game's plot and story.
Most games, even ones I like, tend to only reward positive interpersonal relationships, and do so with unlocking extra abilities, adding new characters to your party, blah blah blah.
I've got a serious "light side of the Force" block on me now when I play games, because I know if my character is anything less than saintly, I'm going to get everyone killed or not get all my doo-dads and extra bits and miss out on collecting something.
Decision trees are getting more sophisticated, but the end results haven't changed much. And that's what needs to change. The game needs to truly reflect your character's personality, not just keep rollicking on no matter how good or bad or apathetic your character is..
So far the only game that even comes close to this level of design is Dragon Age, and it's still not completely there.
I dunno. A lot of those things sound cool, but would likely be frustrating in an actual game. Imagine you're going up against a giant monster and you suspect you need a bigger gun. You go to the weapon's store to buy something with some real stopping power oh too bad the proprietor's daughter has a touch of flu and he won't be back for awhile, try again in a few days. Or he's open, but oh shit, the National Crossbow Association has been stirring up the Ogrepublicans again and there's been a run on weapons, sorry he's all out. Most people aren't going to be thinking "Wow, such awesome realism!"
A certain degree of realism is good, but you also need some predictability. Actually, you need a lot of predictability. If a player needs something critical for continuation of the story, he needs to know when and where to get it. And that requires the AI be dumbed down a bit in order to comply.
Basically, people want something that feels real while being absolutely not real at all. I think games like Fallout, where people operate on regular (and very predictable) cycles are not as close as we can get to realism, but rather as close as we want to get.
How many people do you really think would be happy to find that they spent too long on side quests and now the world has been destroyed, and now they have to scrap 20 hours of play and start over again if they want to not be killed by a nuclear holocaust?
I know, I know...but, I'd go so far as to say the 'brilliant' artists don't statistically exist right now. I guess I've grown tired of a lot of the archetypes that dictate design ideas in games, namely the power fantasy stuff that's overgrown the conventions of most major titles. A lot of the time I don't even see the game anymore, which is to say, all I see is the game's pieces and seams. I want the illusion back.
Me neither, and I'm thrilled about that. I really like that my 360 is likely to see several more years of use, with games makers pushed to develop more creatively instead of just wanting more RAM, more polys, more whatever.
I would offer that such an outcome might be a bit drastic for a game. Still, that's coercing your player-character into behaving a certain way, and I wouldn't want that.
"Sandbox" should mean more than just, "Hey, let's dick around doing meaningless sidequests for 10 hours before we actually progress the game."
As fun as Red Dead Redemption was, I'm not sure killing bears on horseback to earn a special hat is in any way an enriching experience. And man, roaming the countryside for hours on end looking for specific flowers or a white horse isn't a game, that's chore. There might as well have been a mini-game where I had to eat all my vegetables before I got my dessert, or finished my algebra homework before I could go play baseball with the neighbor kids.
HD consoles have outsold the Wii, which seems to suggest the reverse actually (I don't think you can meaningfully compare handhelds to home consoles).
Realism is also a form of artistry.
And asthetic design only goes so far. You can talk about how beautifully Mario 64 was from that standpoint, but you can't really call it a pretty game anymore. So I'm all for the next upgrade. It's not like we're in a binary better polygons/good art design.
The fact that you still see the game is largely by design. If, for example, there is a certain gameplay element that has to do with a garbage dumpster, it's important that every dumpster in the game look the same (or be part of some small sample of dumpster archetypes). And you probably want it to stand out a little, maybe be a little brighter than the surrounding area. Because if you're in the heat of gameplay and you need whatever's in that dumpster, you're not going to be worrying about how impressive it is that every dumpster in the game is special and unique. You're going to want the dumpster to be flashing in fucking neon because you really, really need to find it.
Graphics in games are largely standardized and dumbed down because at the end of the day, the gameplay is more important than the graphics. The gameplay needs to be accessible, and the environments need to reinforce this. It generally needs to look like a game because it is a game.
And the mechanic applies between games, as well. What do you do when you see a barrel in a fantasy game? You search it or smash it, because barrels contain important things. Having barrels be standardized makes the gameplay more intuitive, because you see one and you know what to do.
Really great games don't offer you unbridled freedom. Unbridled freedom generally means you're wandering around wondering what to do. Really great games provide you with a very clear set of rules and then stick to it and get you to internalize it so that you're not thinking about the rules anymore, you're just acting on them.
No, but the Nintendo approach has always been one of gameplay and originality over graphics. Mario64 is still a very good game, in keeping with a tradition dating back to the original Super Mario Brothers way back when. As long as it's fun, the graphics are given a pass for being outdated.
As well, Realism for realism's sake isn't any more artistic than making the world's most authentic fake vomit.
In any kind of realistic world, though, the consequence for not doing what needs to be done in a timely fashion would be that you lose your chance really frickin' quick. If you want true freedom, then you're looking at a game without any real plot, or else one with ridiculously harsh penalties for deviating from the proper sequence of actions.
Maybe that's something you would actually like, but I think it's safe to say the vast majority of people wouldn't. So if you want a true sandbox, you might want to become wealthy and fund its creation yourself. ;-)
I kinda think being completely lost at the start of a game might be kind of cool.
To be fair, Mario 64 was the equivalent of a 3D pong. Developers needed to concern themselves with making art that was vaguely recognizable as whatever object it was supposed to be first and foremost.
We're not really at that place anymore, and haven't been for awhile.
And when a new generation of hardware comes out, the majority of the first games are glorified tech demos trying to justify why you need the new hardware. I would much rather have another Dragon Age or Mario Galaxy than another Lair with some totally bitchin' lighting effects.
How is art style not part of a game's graphics?
That's like saying that the specific songs chosen for a game aren't part of the game's "sound".
You seem to be focused on the chronology issue, and I'm not all that worried.
My gripe comes stems from experiences like in GTA4 or RRR where so much of your experience has little-to-no bearing on the outcome of the game or your character, and the actual missions that advance the plot account for only 10-20% of the possible gameplay.
I assume he means he's indifferent to the technical merit of graphics.
"Graphics" usually refers to a game or system's graphical rendering potential.
"Style" is the concerted aesthetic. A game can have great graphics and still look like mess, and a game can be graphically simple and still have a great style.
I'm unsure what your solution is, then. You think GTA4 would be a better game if all those side missions were stripped out and your only option was to play straight through the plot? Or you want all of those missions to be part of the plot and you have no choice but to complete them? Or... what?
It seems the thrust of your complaint is that games don't model the world with sufficient accuracy. Which seems a bit like criticizing a superhero movie for not being realistic. For most people, realism is boring, which is why they're watching a movie or playing a game in the first place.
It's a game though, and to be honest I prefer the visuals and gameplay of Plants vs Zombies. Fits together better and doesn't have the same issues that making things 3D tends to have (plus the screen is smaller).
However me and the significant other were wondering a while back why we didn't have more Wii games, and the best we could come up with was that the things we'd brought tended to fall into different categories - the Wii and DS are still in the age of computer games, whilst the Xbox and Playstation have always been pushing more towards interactive stories. Traditional platformers have died out on the later whilst are considered the best games on the former, the better graphics encourage you to move out beyond the scope of providing story to a series of puzzles to intergrating the two.
Now obviously we're only talking the best of the each here - there's a ton of really shit games on the more advanced consoles, and even more OK ones that have neglected the story in favour of a game or control system.
But basically, really more graphics tend to follow games that want to be games. Good graphics are all part and parcel of story telling (as it's hard to imagine things whilst you are being shown them happening) and thus a certain level is required almost to really get the point across.
To put it another way, think of the graphics as being the actors in a TV show or movie - they rely on the script as much as the script relies on them or the director to make it a sucess. Only way to avoid this is to intentionally make the game not about the script but about the game itself.
It's really coming down to little things, nowadays. It was impressive how cloth moved in the wind in RDR. Stuff like that. But really, the last big graphical jump that amazed me was playing Half-Life 2 for the first time back in 2004. Anything above that level of detail and realism is totally acceptable to me.
Now, highly stylistic games like Okami or Wind Waker are more impressive, and I hope we see more things like it in the future. It seems like people are always chasing realism, but it's not what you actually want out of a game. You don't want the real world, perfectly recreated. You want something that's either similar to the real world where you can do things that you can't do in the real world, or something completely crazy that's just fun to look at.
Not really "realism" so much, just expanded choice and outcome.
Games tell a story, and stories have motivation. However, games have generally been shit at understanding storytelling, so you're generally left with, "Gordon Freeman kills zombies because he is good and zombies are not so good."
I see story-directed games fitting one of two molds:
1) The "Uncharted" mold, wherein the game is basically a movie where you play all the action scenes, or
2) The "sandbox" mold, where you control everything and dictate outcomes.
For the latter, simply playing mini-games to boost your stats or completing side missions for extra money shouldn't be enough. It needs to go beyond that, and your character should develop based on his/her decisions and actions, and the game should reflect those developments. If you have a plot-point to examine, why not have ten different ways to get there, and then ten different ways to resolve it? Why is everything so binary?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
I don't necessarily ask that a game be realistic per se, but that the environments and AI-controlled actors act in a more sophisticated manner.
For instance, Ross brought up a zombie game. What if there were a zombie game that modeled outbreaks in a more sophisticated way? For instance, if you've played Prototype, there are side missions where you can go destroy what is basically a zombie hive. What if destroying a zombie hive reduced the number of zombies in a region? Alternatively, what if a zombie hive emerged when the number of zombies in a region approached a certain threshold? What if the emergence of a zombie hive caused a panic among the uninfected humans, leading to mass flight or looting? What if using one kind of attack on zombies caused them to evolve into a certain super-zombie? (For instance, using guns created more big burly tank zombies while using flamethrowers created more fast zombies?) Left 4 Dead uses mechanics kind of like this to programmatically determine when certain zombie types emerge, so it's not entirely unprecedented.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Exponential costs to a game unless you render the choice somewhat meaningless or binary and unconnected. If part of the draw is that you get to make choices, you can't expect everyone to then replay your four hour game 10 times to see all the outcomes. Might be one or two they might check out (probably via saves if they can) but otherwise they'll dismiss your game as short - you're making a game that 50% of the people won't see but are still having to pay for all of it.