The direction of the medium.

[Alex]

When i look at the newest games on the market, I can clearly see the steady evolution of graphical technology as playing a large part in the way a game is recieved, and to what degree we can allow ourselves to become "immersed" in it.

Half Life 2 shows us Valve's take on an alternate world that is so lifelike and detailed we often find ourselves emotionally tied to our surroundings and the characters which inhabit them.

Certainly, as new engines are developed and play host to a series of new graphical bells and whistles alot of developers are going to be pushing the envelope on simulation and further blurring the line between the "Real" and the "Sim".

But in my opinion, game art , like painting will eventually double back on itself, or evolve into something entirely set apart from what we might now view as a natural evolution toward digital "hyper reality"

During the Renaissance we had a fascination with attention to detail and reality which can be seen at first in the works of the Flemish masters such as Jan Van Eyck and later the numerous painters who chose to depict the "Vanitas" scenes in so realistic a fashion that the objects they rendered could easily have been a window into another world.

Art has gone through numerous rebellions and upheavals as we have progressed, and often reflecting soci political climates or serving as as visual manifestos...but it has always been in flux, and with each movement came a separate one to counter it.

Will this be the same in video games? Or are we moving in a linear path in search of the "Real" ... Do we even want to get there? Will it remove the enjoyment if we find ourselves looking at a carbon copy of what we see outside our window. There are now, and will no doubt always be those developers who have their own defined style ... Blizzard seems to have chosen a vibrant, somewhat simplistic and cartoon -like palette to express themselves in their art...and it is doubtful that they will suddenly throw aside everything that has worked for them in the past and start making characters with hyper realistic anatomy or scenery with macabre or monotonous color schemes.

So I'm just throwing this out there so I can spark a bit of a debate. I'm interested and perhaps a little apprehensive about this push towards the total simulation in the video game, because it undermines the fundamental concept of it as being a "game" and not a substitute for real life....But i'm sure that other people will have different opinions.




;D

[franklyn]

well the art in games will keep moving into forms that will imerse people into the game playing on their emotion ..likes and dislikes.
this doesnt necessarily mean that it will be heading toward realism as stylised pieces manage to imerse people into the story aswell ..however i tihnk we will definitely be seeing a trend of games and game makers stretching the limits of vide cards to produce realism .
also i doubt u will see a diverse range style in gaming ....it will probably the cartoony the cell shaded and the hyper realistic.

[Jack]

To be honest, I feel that games will go back on themselves as u say.

When they've reached the limits of things, and it is literally like looking with ur own eyes, its going to go back on itself.

Maybe not even go as far as when it becomes almost perfect.

I find (even like games now) that, im tending to turn back to the classics.... The classic gameplay styles in the games like baldurs gate, and the "simple" graphics become more and more attractive.

I personally also feel that the FPS Genre will decay. Games like Morrowind (oblivion) will become the new most popular genre. You can't experience the hyper realistic world of ... the world, in a fps... U want to do stuff like trade will people and travel the world, and do stuff....
Not only that, but i think they'd pretty much all be MMORPGs.


Jack

[SirBob1701]

I think the evolution of engines will grow exponetially. People will want to 1.) push there computers as hard as possible 2.) Kill the most lifelike people they can. and 3.) interact with a completely realistic enviroment. Not to mention what will happen when holographic technology comes out.

[Alex]

Yeah but i was saying that while some nerds will be fine for throwing away existence in a "matrix" scenario so they can be plugged full of wires and to forfeit reality...other people treat games as acessories to living, like Turtle neck sweaters or shreddies the breakfast cereal.

Hmm...The plot thickens.

[SirBob1701]

Hey either way dont matter to me as long as i got a job which i will for those "jacked in" fags

[ChickenRibsCombo]

I think games will be more inclined to achieve the whole 'realism' aspect for quite a while longer. A couple things we have to keep in mind:

1: Game companies are there to make money. Why risk doing something different when the tried and true works and brings in the cash flow? Look at how many sequels, expansion packs and cookie-cutter games are out there. Post screens of one World War 2, Vietnam or Tactical shooter next to another. It's difficult to tell them apart just because they all adapt the same 'safe' style. Next time you're in a video store, spot how many of these games take up shelf space. It's crazy. Very few games nowadays stand out as being artistic endevours simply because art is usually created out of the love of a certain style, a point is being made or if you're a big company, you have some sort of backup title(s) and/or you have enough financial leeway to go in another direction.

2: When something new is available, it will be done to DEATH. The first time they knew how to achieve CG smoke effects, every single game, movie, commercial had this new effect. When they discovered how to do the bullet time effect in games, every fighter had it. When they figured out how to do particle fire, fog, full motion video, claymation, cell shaded animation, reflective mercury cyborgs, smiling animals, morphing faces, talking dogs, that whole thing where everything is black and white except one or two objects on the screen, the matrix camera effect, every single game and commercial applied these in overwhelming amounts in one place or another. Look at ragdoll physics, locational damage, bump mapping etc. People just want to exploit and use every single new piece of technology at their fingertips (mostly in the wrong places) Now with even more believable graphics, next-gen engines with specular animatronic multi-bias real-time ass rendering full screen anti-tilt processing, it's only going to result in an overwhelming influx of the style.

Just my 2 cents.

[Alex]

Touche!

Well i'd like think that there will still be some chance for artistic vision in this jumble of pixelshadeddynamicraytracery

[God's sidekick]

hi

as regards game graphics, if it ever gets to a stage of wireframe without hidden line removel then i'll stop playing.

on a side note half-life 2 was just ok and the emotion it got out of me was fits of rage at the fucking spasticated npc who keeped getting in your way, i mean tring to go up a stares with them was bloody awful.

[Slinky]

Graphics will continue to improve, but right now, we're hitting a situation of "diminishing returns" as we improve graphics- they're pretty much starting to say to themselves, "Until the academics create a new technology that makes it easier to improve this stuff, this is almost as good as it gets." Graphics are going to start taking a backseat and things like AI and physics are going to start being the big improvements. You look at halflife 2, and those were the big selling points, but even the upcoming Unreal 3 engine (if you want to see what the trends will be in gaming over the next "cycle", look at Unreal and Quake, since a lot of the big boys license their engines out) puts a major onus on physics- everything will be touched by the Karma engine, everything will have friction, even the Sound system will be wired into the physics engine. I am halfway wondering if a physics card will be created to do more or less the same thing that our graphics cards do right now- do something very, very quickly in hardware that used to be done slowly in software. If such a thing occurs, then it would very likely give the industry a huge boost, and improve the quality of all our games. Just a thought.

[evachrono]

Graphic's have always been a big thing ....and always will be from now on >_> I should know i'm in computer animation lol this is my life to do movies and games. Also this is reason why games are costing more and more to make every day b/c you can't make a great looking game with amazing music great sound effect and jaw dropping graphic's with a hand full of people now a days.... I know that being in this field isn't the easiest thing in the world but I enjoy it ^_^ games are my life, always enjoy them since I was a lil kid and still hasn't change to this day I just hope one day to be working on games that would hold the title of Game of the year

[Slinky]

evachrono said:

Graphic's have always been a big thing ....and always will be from now on >_> I should know i'm in computer animation lol this is my life to do movies and games. Also this is reason why games are costing more and more to make every day b/c you can't make a great looking game with amazing music great sound effect and jaw dropping graphic's with a hand full of people now a days.... I know that being in this field isn't the easiest thing in the world but I enjoy it ^_^ games are my life, always enjoy them since I was a lil kid and still hasn't change to this day I just hope one day to be working on games that would hold the title of Game of the year

Eh, you might be working on computer animation, but my university's Student Game Developer's Association has direct contact with the industry. In economics, they have what's called the law of diminishing returns- as you put more and more time and energy into a particular area, you start to get less and less back. We're hitting that in graphics development, and after the next generation or so, improvements in the graphics arena will start to quiet down. If you look at the next unreal engine, I think you'll see that the graphics are The Next Step- advancements are still being made. But if I were a publisher and I was given the choice between making graphics better than what's on the Unreal 3 page (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml) or making the AI engine better than what the unreal 3 page brags about, the choice would be pretty clear. Poor AI under such an engine portrays a much greater threat to immersion than the graphics being subpar.

[evachrono]

Slinky said:

Eh, you might be working on computer animation, but my university's Student Game Developer's Association has direct contact with the industry. In economics, they have what's called the law of diminishing returns- as you put more and more time and energy into a particular area, you start to get less and less back. We're hitting that in graphics development, and after the next generation or so, improvements in the graphics arena will start to quiet down. If you look at the next unreal engine, I think you'll see that the graphics are The Next Step- advancements are still being made. But if I were a publisher and I was given the choice between making graphics better than what's on the Unreal 3 page (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml) or making the AI engine better than what the unreal 3 page brags about, the choice would be pretty clear. Poor AI under such an engine portrays a much greater threat to immersion than the graphics being subpar.

But the AI is a totally different thing compare to graphic's and yes I know AI totally important since that what bascially brings the char in the games to life. Still a game needs both to be a great hit....I mean look at Doom 3 AI its crap .....all of its scripted and it hurts the game play at times to the point where even I was bored at times....Unreal 3 engine is amazing looking I must say but i'm sure we are getting closer and closer to CG style graphic's in games, and yah so you maybe in the university's Student Game Developer's Association but my college has had people who moved on to make movies games and cartoon shows ;D

[Slinky]

...which have nothing to do with this conversation.

[evachrono]

well sorry I brought it up sigh ......