When you consider the look and feel of a game and think of visual flaws, which games come to mind? Most likely the games you think of immediately are a couple of games that try to be realistic.
In my opinion this is their biggest flaw. They try to be so realistic that it becomes terribly hard to make. With that comes criticism. The game may look better, but the flaws are way more noticeable. They pop right out of the screen into the eyes of everyone in the room. Gamers and non-gamers alike get a little disappointed at it and if there are more, they may cease to take the game environment seriously. It breaks the suspension of disbelief.
With stylized or cartoon games we can live on with those flaws because they don't actually matter most of the time. You'll think "Ok, he's laying there like a board even with half his body off the set. Ok he just got up. It's Super Smash Bros, who cares? Now let me try this...(mumble mumble)". The whole environment is cartoon and we don't expect the same level of realism. It just draws you away from all the fun.
Some of these games try to be so accurate in their mechanics in order to achieve realism that it becomes rather hard to play even a simple game. Comparing racer titles, Burnout titles are fun and rewarding and GT games are visually pleasant but ultimately boring to me.
To resume, I think full realism is only useful for accurate simulations. If you want to shoot people and have the whole environment in Full HD, perfect physics and all that...try AirSoft. If you want a racer, try karting and if you want realistic football play it with friends, far away from the TV screen.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Realistic vs Stylized
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3 comments:
Excelent post, but...
I think in the last two paragraphs you are confusing the flaws of game simulations with your own personal taste for some games.
For instance, I prefer PES over FIFA, meaning, simulation over experience in football games. On the other hand I prefer NFS over GT, so I prefer overall experience over simulation in racing games.
Although I fully agree with you that photo realistic graphics make flaws pop out, it is also true that when the production is at least enough to smooth those corners, a photo realistic game does have its punch and can hold pretty well suspension of disbelief.
All around I think that you started writting this post on a technical design perspective and ended up on a more personal note, which actually is a design flaw if you were actually design a game with this post (so don't take it hard :D)
I am aware of that and actually I tried to do as you said. I tried to leave my opinions to the end. I felt that I was going to get asked about it somewhere in the comments or out of here, so I included it here.
I think the main flaw is that resuming part because that's loaded with my opinion. My main objective was to raise the question of the looks and graphic flaws.
I'm still trying to nail this blog thing down.
And you are doing well dude. Keep it up.
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