Photo Realism Sucks

johnny_ultimate

nyarlothothep wrote: »

It took a while for film to develop as an artform too.

Not too long at all, actually! Passion of Joan of Arc, Metropolis, Man With a Movie Camera, Sunrise and the other timeless works of the great silent masters would have been a good ten years old or more at a comparable time in the lifecycle of cinema. People like Jean Renoir and Kenji Mizoguchi were also making some of their most interesting films three or four decades after the birth of the moving image.

Again, I've had some amazing experiences with gaming. But I eagerly anticipate the day I put down a controller feeling the same immensity I experienced watching Tokyo Story, 2001, Diving Bell and the Butterfly or Lost in Translation for the first time, or finishing up reading Kafka on the Shore, Infinite Jest or Freedom. It's happened to me a couple of times with games - but I think the true potential is yet to be achieved.

nesf

o1s1n wrote: »

Games and film seem to be going the same direction with regard to quality. Big, blockbuster ventures with absolutely zero artistic or creative merit and then smaller projects with lower budgets but far more heart.

Books went that way first. It's just not as noticeable because so many more books are published each year than games or films. Also books have the advantage that the cost of making them hasn't increased enormously compared to games recently and film from perhaps the 70s onwards.

nyarlothothep

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Not too long at all, actually! Passion of Joan of Arc, Metropolis, Man With a Movie Camera, Sunrise and the other timeless works of the great silent masters would have been a good ten years old or more at a comparable time in the lifecycle of cinema. People like Jean Renoir and Kenji Mizoguchi were also making some of their most interesting films three or four decades after the birth of the moving image.

Again, I've had some amazing experiences with gaming. But I eagerly anticipate the day I put down a controller feeling the same immensity I experienced watching Tokyo Story, 2001, Diving Bell and the Butterfly or Lost in Translation for the first time, or finishing up reading Kafka on the Shore, Infinite Jest or Freedom. It's happened to me a couple of times with games - but I think the true potential is yet to be achieved.

I've seen some old movies like Metropolis that are regarded as classics and rightfully they are...however I feel that film didn't reach its maturity until the end of the 60s/70s. Before then you would have oddly stilted performances from the actors, the plots were constrained by taboo, also the colour resolution was a bit dry compared to the vivid hues of certain 70s films. I think film is now in a decadent phase, audiences are too knowing, everything is far too ironic and cynical. A film as entertaining as Superman 2 with its cheesy campness would never get made today.

Retr0gamer

Some would argue that great art comes from working within restrictions like the ones you mention. In the same way something like the 8-bit Megaman 2 is better than nearly all the dross released lately despite the restrictions it was made under.

nyarlothothep

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Some would argue that great art comes from working within restrictions like the ones you mention. In the same way something like the 8-bit Megaman 2 is better than nearly all the dross released lately despite the restrictions it was made under.

I agree with this, BTTF would never have been the same film without the De Lorean and they were forced to use that due to budget restrictions. Necessity is the mother of invention!

Kiith

Great art comes from great ideas (or so i've heard :pac:)

Great games come from great ideas and proper implementation of those ideas. Doesn't matter is it's graphically realistic or 8-bit text. You don't need to have restrictions in place for something to be great.

krudler

nyarlothothep wrote: »

I agree with this, BTTF would never have been the same film without the De Lorean and they were forced to use that due to budget restrictions. Necessity is the mother of invention!

Or low budget (or relatively low) special effects which have way more charm than the CGI riddled remakes going around. look at Star Wars, a bunch of guys in a warehouse with models and basic (by today's standards) bluescreen effects changed visual effects forever by working within the constraints of the tech and funds available to them.

Hercule

borderlands, bioshock and dishonored - those worlds are photo-realistic if you are on LSD

ScumLord

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

That's nonsense, absolute nonsense. If more games had worlds as deeply realised and immersive as those of great films and literature, well we'd have a much richer medium.

I don't see it that way, there are very few types of story, the majority are the same story told over and over again using different locations and characters. Fiction just doesn't do it for me anymore. Everything in books and film has become very regimented, they know what works and what doesn't work to the point most stories are predictable enough.

nesf

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't see it that way, there are very few types of story, the majority are the same story told over and over again using different locations and characters. Fiction just doesn't do it for me anymore. Everything in books and film has become very regimented, they know what works and what doesn't work to the point most stories are predictable enough.

There are relatively few types of games too, nearly all games are just some attempt at a new turn on a few old mechanics. They look different, they feel different just like fiction and films but if you look at what actually goes on they are all doing the same thing in different ways almost always. What is interesting about art (in the broad sense of the word) isn't that they're all doing massively different things but that the artists are working within certain constraints set by the type of art they're making yet still are innovating enough within that story or film/game genre to make it feel fresh. Yes, I'm aware there are areas of art where the above doesn't apply or at least they like to say it doesn't apply but for games/books/films I think it works for the most part.

snausages

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't see it that way, there are very few types of story, the majority are the same story told over and over again using different locations and characters. Fiction just doesn't do it for me anymore. Everything in books and film has become very regimented, they know what works and what doesn't work to the point most stories are predictable enough.

The emboldened bit is pure BS. Literature is about so much more than 'story'. Film too. There is no upper threshold to the types of things that can be put to paper. The type of literary experimentation that's possible with books just doesn't translate well to a medium like games. Imagine Finnegans Wake: The Game. It would be a load of bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur

Gamers need to read more books I think (or maybe I need to play more games).

the_syco

degrassinoel wrote: »

i still have no idea what the fuq this thread is about

New shiny games bad, old 8-bit games good.

TPD wrote: »

Photo-realistic games can look good for a year or two after release, but once the next graphical improvement is widespread they'll look awfully dated by comparison.

Give it 20 years, and people will be saying how cool the 3D games were compared to the 8D games...

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Total immersion will require brain implants.

And that's when Leisure Suit Larry will make a cum back...

corcaigh07 wrote: »

But I don't really read books so only comparing to the movies.

Ah. You're missing out big time, then. When movies get to the present level of books, we'll be watching the movie like we're playing the lead role.

nyarlothothep wrote: »

A film as entertaining as Superman 2 with its cheesy campness would never get made today.

Aye. If something like Nosferatu was made today, it would never get published.

ScumLord wrote: »

Everything in books and film has become very regimented, they know what works and what doesn't work to the point most stories are predictable enough.

IMO, if you're able to predict what is coming next, the book isn't really holding you. If the book is good, you'll be so far in it that you will get the train from Pearse, and end up in NYC.

nesf

snausages wrote: »

Gamers need to read more books I think (or maybe I need to play more games).

Because games aren't limited to the written word they don't innovate in the same way. So it works both ways, if you're not familiar enough with gaming you won't recognise a substantial innovation when you see it. There are indie games out there experimenting with the concept of what is a game, just don't expect it from EA or Activision or whoever (same as don't expect innovative literary fiction from genre imprints in fiction).

Sarky

the_syco wrote: »

New shiny games bad, old 8-bit games good.

That's hardly it. I like shiny new graphics as much as anyone, but if there's no innovation to it, then one photorealistic US military game ends up looking like every other US military game, and nothing stands out, no matter how detailed the textures are.

Okami will always be beautiful and unique, because it took an art direction that nobody has ever used before. It doesn't matter what resolution or how many million colours are on screen at once, because the clear, simple art style doesn't require them.

One can barely tell the difference between a given version of COD and its Medal of Honour equivalent by just looking at the screen.

WoW's visuals aren't the most technically amazing, but the art direction leads to some staggeringly beautiful landscapes and creatures.


That's what the OP is getting at. It doesn't matter how many colours you can display in real time with soft shadows if 90% of those colours are gun-metal and brown, just like every other game trying to tout this as an achievement. Yes, it's an achievement, but it fails to captivate because we've seen it all before. I want to see more games like Viva Pinata and Okami, which sacrifice some technical fidelity to make the graphics they display infinitely more colourful and interesting. 8-bit art is still a huge thing even now, because it has a timeless quality to it, it's willing to do anything to stand out. The sprites look almost like icons, making them, unsurprisingly, iconic.

Sycopat

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Again, I've had some amazing experiences with gaming. But I eagerly anticipate the day I put down a controller feeling the same immensity I experienced watching Tokyo Story, 2001, Diving Bell and the Butterfly or Lost in Translation for the first time, or finishing up reading Kafka on the Shore, Infinite Jest or Freedom. It's happened to me a couple of times with games - but I think the true potential is yet to be achieved.

I want to take this and run with it, because not only have I had similar experiences with gaming I've had similar experiences with games with little to no plot.

Now I'm not an 'artsy' person, so my language and ability to discuss what I'm going to is limited, but I think there is a fundamental difference between how we interact with the stories in books or movies and how we interact with the stories in games. Our interaction with books and movies is always as observer. We don't interact in the same way with games. The players interaction with the game is what defines the narrative. We take on a more participatory role, maybe a narratory one.
In both movies and books the most basic level of interacting with them is through a passive experiencing of them, but in games the basic level of interaction is the input of the user causing change. In both, the narrative is an emergent property, but in games the narrative may be incidental. Games separate narrative and experience in a way books and movies don't.
In some ways I guess they can be likened to art or sculpture, art forms which can convey a story but which are usually appreciated in terms of the technical mastery taken to create them.

Which isn't to say that movies and books can't be appreciated in this way. In any art form, there are aspects which can only be appreciated by people interested, to a greater or lesser extant, in the craft of creating them. The literary and cinematographic tools and innovations of great movies can be largely unappreciated by the lay person who just enjoys it.

But attempting to experience a game through it's narrative as you would a book or movie is a flawed approach. Games with a good story can let you do it, and these exist. Games with nigh-movie level visuals can do it, and these also exist. They're probably more common because they require less creative effort than they do raw hardware power. But both do it by tricking one into forgetting it's a game. But they won't come to the standard of the media they're aping no matter how hard they try. Despite this, people are conditioned to experience games through their narratives because their used to it from books and movies.

To illustrate the point I'm trying to get at, let's look at bioshock. Now I don't have to spoiler it because I won't mention the spoilers. Anyone who's played it will know what I'm talking about. Anyone who hasn't doesn't really need to. Also it's old enough now that I don't feel any need to.

Bioshock subverts the idea of narrative as game by highlighting how this approach to games takes control from the player and reduces them to the role of observer. It highlights that cutscenes done well are amazing, at the same time as it highlights that cutscenes are not games.

Another game to illustrate what I'm trying to get at is Super Metroid.
That game had a tiny amount of exposition. The vast majority of its plot, the details of it's narrative, almost totally emerged from navigating Samus through the labyrinth. It's narrative is not Tolstoy. It's structure is not Hitchcock. But it's an excellently crafted game, and I got a similar sense of catharsis from finally putting Mother Brain down as I ever got from a book. And I do read. And there is a long list of games from which I had similar experiences. I chose Super Metroid because a lot of games are 'happy', made to be fun. Super Metroid is a trek through a wasteland. An ordeal, but an utterly compelling and rewarding one.

The comparison of books and movies and other art forms to games are not invalid. But we don't judge books by their cinematography. We don't judge paintings by their plots. We don't judge movies by their control schemes.

To complain that one facet of an art form is done better through a different medium is not an invalid complaint, but it ignores the whole of a thing to judge it on the merits of something else, which is unfair to both mediums. A game can give me a more compelling experience than many novels. A deeper experience than that of a movie. Can involve me in a way that a painting can't. None of which make games better. They are just different. And need to be appreciated as such.

All of which combines to me agreeing with the OP that photo realism sucks. I want to experience the game for myself, not watch a movie that makes me press the odd button to prove I'm awake. That's what movies are for.

I like to see more investment in making games games than in making them a poor copy of something else.

Sarky

Worth noting that 2 of the most emotive games in the last year have been Little Inferno and Hotline Miami. They are both many things, but photorealistic certainly isn't one of them. And yet I simply had to sit down and complete Little Inferno in one sitting, I needed to know what happened next, I wanted more messages from the neighbour and more things to burn. Hotline Miami would probably be described as ugly by a lot of gamers out there, but expensive technically impressive visuals would have done nothing for it. Hell, I think it would have made the game unplayable. The emotion is all down to the splashing of blood and the thumping background music, and the subtle little scenes of the protagonist's life falling apart.

ScumLord

nesf wrote: »

There are relatively few types of games too,

That's true but the games distracts you enough to allow plots to sneak up on you or distract you from the plot so you're not anticipating the next move.

snausages wrote: »

The emboldened bit is pure BS. Literature is about so much more than 'story'. Film too.

There's the technical aspect of the creative process but it's a widely known fact that there are a few basic types of plot lines, 7 I think. Now you can tart those plot lines up in an unending way but you're essentially telling the same story.

Maybe I've just ruined art for myself. I dropped out of art college because it was too arty, I am currently learning photography, filmography and writing, in my own time. I like art but it's a set of skills that can be broken down into what works and what doesn't. Art as we like to think of it is essentially dead and all that's left is learned skills despite what underlying talents people might have.

nesf

ScumLord wrote: »

That's true but the games distracts you enough to allow plots to sneak up on you or distract you from the plot so you're not anticipating the next move.

And books don't? You need to read better authors.

johnny_ultimate

All art and mediums need to be approached differently - I don't use identical vocabulary to discuss Sans Soleil and Ulysses, even if they both represent steams of consciousness in their own medium. There is a lot inherited as new forms develop - film adapted established techniques of literature, painting and photography, and gaming has undoubtedly been heavily influenced by both the visual and storytelling foundations laid out over 1,000s of years of evolving art. But filmmakers, critics and viewers developed their own cinematic language. I think gaming is still at a crossroads, trying to differentiate themselves more.

Look at a lot of the 'great' games, from Chrono Trigger to Walking Dead - these are widely regarded as important games, but in many ways heavily rely on very literary and cinematic techniques to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Of course, these and other games are also great at being distinctly, well, gamey in countless regards - whether that's the aforementioned lonely world-building of Super Metroid, the devastating isolation of Shadow of the Colossus, the balletic combat of Street Fighter etc etc etc... There's a huge amount of games that involve the player in affecting ways outside text boxes and cutscenes nicked straight from cinema.

I think it's important to remember the role of the creator though - in Super Metroid, we're undoubtedly playing through a painstakingly crafted world. We control our own pace and strategy to a certain degree, but a majority of games see us waltzing through a heavily pre-deterimend experience using pre-deterimened mechanics, figuring out puzzles that have a fixed solution and. It's a little more complicated when it comes to multiplayer or true sandbox games of course - there the player has much more room to shape their own experience, albeit with the basic tools provided (although something like Minecraft has surely evolved well past the original vision of its creator). But when we're talking about most single-player games - the main type discussed throughout this thread - we're interacting with someone else's very purposefully crafted produce. It's a dialogue between player and designer. Even games that provide the illusion of player agency often lead us down strictly pre-decided paths - they just branch here and there.

To me, film and literature also constitute a dialogue - not necessarily mindless blockbusters or pulpy thrillers (although there's fine examples of both), but genuinely great stuff. I love cinema particularly, and I don't consider it a passive experience. A director like Michael Haneke is a great example of one who invites the audience to actively negotiate through the images on screen, not just sit there and wonder what happens next on a purely superficial level.

My own favourite films stimulate not only the heart but the mind - intellectually and emotionally rich creations. Even something like Spring Breakers recently (which many will absolutely despise, I warn you in advance) - the basic story is straightforward, familiar and often absurd, but the presentation was so provocative I got completely wrapped up in its strange mood and blissfully ironic emotional & thematic depths. Those without as much of an interest in cinema probably haven't experienced it, but a great film can leave you absolutely dazed once the lights go up. That is true, electrifying immersion.

To me, gaming is still on its way to achieving its potential - even the basic language of game-making is evolving all the time. There's games I've been absolutely engrossed by, but I'd suggest in the pantheon of truly great art we're still a little off. I love Chrono Trigger and all, but is it really gaming's Vertigo, Mona Lisa or Hamlet? We can't compare them directly as like and like naturally, but I think gaming has a ways to go before achieving its own completely unique and universally resonant identity - the type that demands to be taken completely seriously. The kind that would have easily persuaded even the late Roger Ebert.

If I sound cynical, I'm actually not - it's an extremely exciting time to be a gamer as these challenges are worked through. Playing Journey last year gave me the same goosebumps I get when watching a favourite film - a response I actually find hard to fully articulate, honestly. Bioshock Infinite recently showed a game that looks at itself and the medium it belongs to, and then asks us to engage with its fascinating ideas and deconstructions of said ideas. There's two games that have provoked very strong emotional and intellectual reactions in a lot of players. There's more too *insert your example here*.

I have no doubt there'll be more worthy achievements - and, hopefully, some of them will give gaming a further boost up the artistic evolutionary ladder. If I compare games with older mediums, it's in a constructive way. It's looking at the mastery of form great artists have achieved. As gamers we can only encourage the developers out there to produce the masterpieces gaming is capable of, and ones that do so in a way other than just another hyper-detailed narrative cutscenes.

K.O.Kiki

Also, this is one of the only games I'm actually really, REALLY looking forward to seeing finished:

Just don't mention Fez to me.
Fez does not have great 2D.

Agricola

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

You say 'indie games' as if it's a genre, as opposed to a massively diverse catalogue of games of countless styles, running a whole graphical range from blocky abstraction to feeble-computer destroying realism.

Personal preference and all, but you've pretty much discounted 80-95% of the greatest games ever made for yourself.

OK Indie is probably a bad term to use. A very diverse range of games exist under that banner alright. In my head Indie relates to games made on a shoestring, by one creator or a very small team. Because of the lack of funds or expertise, the emphasis is put into gameplay as opposed to creating the next cryengine! So these games are retro in style, they are graphical throwbacks to the mid 80s or early 90s. They are all about getting high scores and beating steep learning curves through repetition. Im not saying that this approach and its output is shít compared to big studios and triple A titles, these people can create stuff with amazingly deep gameplay, Im just saying that style isnt my taste. I just prefer getting sucked into a game world and experiencing it at my own pace and that normally relates to graphical advancement.

I have however, played plenty of games which would qualify as Indie in the context that they werent backed with tonnes of publisher money, and enjoyed them immensely. I got Dear Esther in a steam sale a while ago and enjoyed it, as much as you can enjoy a game that isnt really a game at all! Journey on PSN was great and Im putting a lot of hours into Chivalry Medieval warfare.

nesf

Agricola wrote: »

OK Indie is probably a bad term to use. A very diverse range of games exist under that banner alright. In my head Indie relates to games made on a shoestring, by one creator or a very small team. Because of the lack of funds or expertise, the emphasis is put into gameplay as opposed to creating the next cryengine! So these games are retro in style, they are graphical throwbacks to the mid 80s or early 90s. They are all about getting high scores and beating steep learning curves through repetition. Im not saying that this approach and its output is shít compared to big studios and triple A titles, these people can create stuff with amazingly deep gameplay, Im just saying that style isnt my taste. I just prefer getting sucked into a game world and experiencing it at my own pace and that normally relates to graphical advancement.

I have however, played plenty of games which would qualify as Indie in the context that they werent backed with tonnes of publisher money, and enjoyed them immensely. I got Dear Esther in a steam sale a while ago and enjoyed it, as much as you can enjoy a game that isnt really a game at all! Journey on PSN was great and Im putting a lot of hours into Chivalry Medieval warfare.

Could it be the kind of games you play? I can completely understand graphics mattering a lot to someone with first person games and some kinds of third person games but genres like turn based wargames don't really benefit much from 3d graphics, 2d games can be a nicer experience because it's much simpler to distinguish 2d units from each other at a glance than 3d units that are making an effort at realism where unit sizes are similar. Whereas in RTS games there is an immersion effect because you can see the units move around in real time, with turn based games they just move and then stand perfectly still until the next turn when they can move again, so there's little immersion. Similarly a game like SpaceChem (which is one of my absolute favourite puzzle games) works perfectly fine as a 2d game with very simple graphics because it is all about solving a puzzle not world immersion. Tactical roleplaying games are similar, they can work fine as a top down 2d view, though they don't suffer from being 3d. Tower defence games also work perfectly well as 2d and 3d games, 3d is more pleasing here I think but I can enjoy 2d games in this genre just fine.