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Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

allegory-of-the-game.com

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Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#31

Post by randallsquared »

ajuc wrote: post #9

This photorealism makes new games very boring artistic-wise. Old games with hand-drawn graphic had some artistic value in them, they made pepole imagine other worlds etc. Now it's just photorealism everywhere. I wonder, when game graphic dadaism and cubism will appear. Art is not about making more realistic copies.

I don't think most games are intended as "art" in any high sense, but only as "entertainment". Personally, I'd find it awesome if WoW looked more realistic. (If you're not familiar with the graphic style of World of Warcraft, it's very cartoony, even crayony).

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#32

Post by elai »

miloshh wrote: post #20
dgallagher wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if art directors purposefully choose darkness, or maybe they simply stumbled upon it by experimenting? "We this game to look realistic, and out of all of our mock-ups, darkness wins." Many Sega games have a very specific look to them that's colorful. Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox) was an extremely vibrant game. Most Nintendo games are too. Though some of those types of games tend to be more cartoonist-looking t…

Exactly,movie studios use pretty much the same lighting tricks as games - direct illumination with some ambient occlusion and color bleeding hacks here and there. Yet they do not look brown/gray. I think it might be because they have armies of artists (they call them "technical directors") that tweak the materials and lighting for thousands of man-hours until it looks good. Game companies probably invest much less in…

And aren't not limited by "must work in realtime" and can use all the computationally expensive visual effects?

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#33

Post by pchristensen »

ajuc wrote: post #9

This photorealism makes new games very boring artistic-wise. Old games with hand-drawn graphic had some artistic value in them, they made pepole imagine other worlds etc. Now it's just photorealism everywhere. I wonder, when game graphic dadaism and cubism will appear. Art is not about making more realistic copies.

"Art is not about making more realistic copies."

No, but entertainment is about creating a convincing, immersive experience.

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#34

Post by miloshh »

elai wrote: post #32
miloshh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly,movie studios use pretty much the same lighting tricks as games - direct illumination with some ambient occlusion and color bleeding hacks here and there. Yet they do not look brown/gray. I think it might be because they have armies of artists (they call them "technical directors") that tweak the materials and lighting for thousands of man-hours until it looks good. Game companies probably invest much less in…

And aren't not limited by "must work in realtime" and can use all the computationally expensive visual effects?

Oh yes, absolutely, but there's no reason why real-time would imply brown/gray color hues...

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#35

Post by arakyd »

ChrisXYZ wrote: post #30

Saw this on reddit the other day and the link was to: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PhilippeRinguetteAngrignon/20... I can't tell if the link posted here is to the gamasutra article author's personal blog, or if it's just ripped off content.

Note the [Originally posted at http://www.allegory-of-the-game.com/] at the bottom of that post.

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#36

Post by lutorm »

Immersion-wise, I find that realistic sound, a la EAX5 with accurate direction, occlusion, reflections, etc, are much more important than the quality of the graphics. Something about the fact that I look at a monitor makes it clear that I'm not in the environment, but sound does not have that limitation. (Relatedly, if you've ever seen the effect of using Fresnel lenses to project the monitor at infinity, that makes the immersion much more deep. Then you're essentially looking through a window, into another reality.)

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#37

Post by ewiethoff »

miloshh wrote: post #20
dgallagher wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if art directors purposefully choose darkness, or maybe they simply stumbled upon it by experimenting? "We this game to look realistic, and out of all of our mock-ups, darkness wins." Many Sega games have a very specific look to them that's colorful. Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox) was an extremely vibrant game. Most Nintendo games are too. Though some of those types of games tend to be more cartoonist-looking t…

Exactly,movie studios use pretty much the same lighting tricks as games - direct illumination with some ambient occlusion and color bleeding hacks here and there. Yet they do not look brown/gray. I think it might be because they have armies of artists (they call them "technical directors") that tweak the materials and lighting for thousands of man-hours until it looks good. Game companies probably invest much less in…

Nevertheless, I've gotten so bored by the sight of movie CGI. There's just too much texture or not enough light or something. Please, someone, make a physical model, shine some lights on it, and do some stop motion.

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#38

Post by sgibat »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #8
thras wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One means that you've got a President and the other means you have a Queen.

...and the author's point in using both? That he lives in Iceland, and is trying to straddle the fence?

I think he is emphasizing how dull the modern videogame palette really is; there is no third color.

Re: Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey.

#39

Post by george_morgan »

tjic wrote: post #11

It's long been the case that we invent tools, and then tend to do the things that the tools make easy. You can see that the distribution of furniture varieties changed a lot when machine tools were introduced. Furniture got a lot cheaper, but because table saws make straight cuts a lot easier than curved cuts, even in higher end furniture, we ended up get a lot more style choices that utilized what was easier. I'm lo…

This is something the industrial designer Ross Lovegrove has been exploring for a while, here's the obligatory TED link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ross_lovegrove_shares_org...

He talks about early modernist design being dictated by the machining processes of the time, lathes and extrusion etc. producing the characteristic geometric work.

Tangentially linked to the OP...

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