Does pretty always mean dumb?

Chris over at The Artful Gamer posted an essay the other day that got me thinking. It turns out, a piece I wrote a few weeks ago got him thinking, which provoked his post, which has me thinking again, and...well, you get the picture. Back in the old days we used to call this a conversation.

In an essay on Planescape: Torment I lamented the fact that its graphics engine hadn't aged well and tried to imagine a game with the narrative and thematic richness of Planescape inside a Mass Effect or Oblivion engine. Chris tried to imagine it too, and he didn't like what he saw:

Photorealism in games ultimately detracts from immersion and gives players the feeling that the story and characters are contrived and un-real. I suggest that immersion and dramatic investment aren’t a product of good technologies, they are a product of good artisanship.

When I play Mass Effect and Oblivion, I often find myself paying more attention to the technical feats of the 3D engines than the story itself. The first time I experienced this kind of technical distraction was when I watched one of the new Star Wars films. Gone were the Jim Henson puppets and scaled miniatures, and in their place were high-poly renderings of space ships and Jabba the Hutt. The 3D “photorealism” that George Lucas attempted failed miserably for me, and I spent most of my time distracted by imperfections in the animation and the rather stilted ways in which living and non-living characters interacted.

On the evidence of games like Mass Effect and Oblivion--and the woeful "Lucas has lost it" Star Wars episodes--I think Chris is certainly right. All these experiences take us on an awkward trip to Uncanny Valley, and it's easy to see how our imaginative evocations of 2-D sprite characters are more satisfying and less jarring than the wrinkled masses of polygonal tissue representing human faces in Oblivion.

I also agree with Chris' contention that real engagement is the product of solid dramaturgy. Tell a good story with compelling characters, and you're at least halfway there. As games like Planescape, Baldur's Gate, and Fallout have shown, we are more than willing to accept graphical limitations if they are in service of a role-playing narrative experience that hooks us. And as Steve Meretzky's brilliant interactive fiction games demonstrate, we actually don't need graphics at all.

But when I say "we," whom am I really talking about? My guess is that I'm talking about gamers like me and Chris - gamers who go back a ways to an earlier era of games, or avid young gamers who have taken the time to acquaint themselves with these classic foundational titles. Such gamers are essential--and they make blogs like mine viable--but they are a tiny fraction of the people around the world who play games.

This matters because we are not going to stop the photorealism train from barreling down the tracks. In fact, that train has already run guys like Chris and me over. Though we may agree it's a shame, game designers will continue to strive for ever increasing degrees of realism--particularly in narrative games--because that's what the vast majority of gamers want. But that's not the only reason.

Every form of visual art has seen a general trajectory towards realism. As long as it's possible to increase verisimilitude, artists will increase it. As long as consumers continue to translate "more realistic" as "more better," developers will continue to serve up the realism. Despite what reviewers say about next-gen graphics and games, we are still so far away from what people generally accept as realistic that I think it will be many years before video games reach the threshold that cinema crossed decades ago. But clearly, the video game industry's chronic case of film-envy only makes that realism train go faster.

History, however, is on our side. As we have seen in painting, sculpture, theater, and film, realism is not a final destination. Ultimately, it's just stop on the road. In the theater, when we proved we could tear down a real butcher shop and reconstruct it on stage complete with chunks of real meat (as Antoine did at the turn of the 20th century), there really wasn't anywhere left to go with realism. It's no wonder that this style of presentation was soon seen as passé, and experiments in expressionism and other forms of abstract theater emerged.

History has also shown that realism is hard to fake--it does require a lot of expertise, both technical and artistic, to film those spectacular car chases--but eventually we get very good at it. Today's films are extraordinarily effective at creating special effects driven sci-fi realism (an oxymoron if there ever was one), and video games will get there eventually, for better or worse. I would say games like Mass Effect lie somewhere on the realism scale near treasures like the 1950s drive-in B-movie classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. I don't mean that as an insult to Mass Effect. In fact, quite the opposite.

So I see your point, Chris, and I share your deep admiration for the richly immersive and imaginative worlds of text-driven games like Planescape: Torment. I also happen to think Chaplin's City Lights is the most perfectly sublime 87 minutes in the history of the cinema. But silent movies are gone forever...and so are games like Planescape: Torment.

Comments

[Corvus]

Designers with little to say have photo-realism. Designers with a lot to say have art direction.

[Michael Abbott]

Well said, Corvus. Wish I'd said it so well in my post. I think the same sentiment can be applied to film too. Art direction requires a sense of style, taste, and visual acumen. Photorealism just requires a camera. I'm not certain, however, how much these things matter to most users. Team Fortress 2 is miles ahead of Halo in terms of art direction, but it seems most players prefer Halo. Wind Waker took a beating from players for similar reasons...most unfairly in my view.

[L.B. Jeffries]

Fully agree, the huge increase in processing power for the PS3 and X-box 360 seems to have done very little except make the games shiny.

Processor limitations was one of the main reasons I decided to buy a Wii, actually. I realize it also kept costs down, but from an art perspective Nintendo seemed to be saying: You're not going to make great games by spending all your budget on pretty graphics. In fact, you're mostly just going to waste a ton of cash. You are going to have to get creative with design, art, and plot to win people over on this console.

You can see the way that pushes game designers and artists to get more creative just by examining 'Metroid Prime 3'. I'll never forget the moment I was in Sky Town as Morph Ball, holding the Z button for dear life while I wove in and out of the collapsing bridge structures. The game's not just pretty, it's aesthetically creative while combining it with game design. Or 'No More Heroes' to see how refreshing that console can be on just pure art direction being experimented with.

There was an interview I read with Chris DeLay (guy who helped make Darwinia and DEFCON) where he recounted touring a major game publisher and meeting their art staff. It was about a dozen guys whose job it was to map textures onto guns. It took maybe 4 weeks to do one X-box 360 quality gun. The game had 4 armies, with 4 soldier types, that each had their own special set of guns and this had been their job for a couple of years.

Several four and five letter words come to mind when I hear something like that.

[Michael Abbott]

In retrospect, it certainly seems like Nintendo made a wise decision staying out of the hardware shooting match between Sony and Microsoft, and they are apparently still riding big momentum with both Wii and DS. Their holiday sales numbers were amazing.

It's easy to credit them now, but I do recall the dire predictions from nearly every corner, including most of the major game media outlets, claiming Nintendo's strategy was doomed to fail.

We'll see how long they can stay on the graphical power sidelines. My guess is that they focused all their attention on the new control scheme with the Wii, and next they will upgrade that console to enable HD graphics.

I didn't mention it in my post, but that's another factor forcing game-makers to push more polygons. If we've all got widescreen HD TVs in our homes, they must make games that comply with those specs. Nintendo knew it would take a couple of years for HD penetration to take hold, and the Wii is filling that gap. I'm sure their next system will be fully HD. So my question is: what will their designers do with all those pixels?

[JV Andres]

Why are the graphical limitations in earlier games much more easily accepted than the 'realistic' limitations of today's modern games?

Realism comes with inherent expectations which are very difficult to fulfill, but, just as you say, the medium will progress to meet more and more of these expectations.

When realism becomes a non-issue, the player interface will have a much more prominent focus. Ushering in the WiiHD Brain Scanner, perhaps? (WiiHD-BS?)

[Ben Abraham]

Michael Abbott said:

"But silent movies are gone forever...and so are games like Planescape: Torment."

Wow, isn't that a bit of a dire prediction! :P

Interesting concept, but I think you're over-generalising a bit. Maybe in the mainstream gaming channels there's a trend towards photorealism, but I'd dispute that it's *at all* present in Indie. I would also question wether it is not more a driving force behind the 'blockbuster' games. I mean, sure, no one wants to be left behind bet there must be some examples of games being developed under older or again engines rather than the latest version of unreal.

I also don't quite see what's so wrong with the mainstream continuing as it has (much like you illustrated the parallels to film history) by aiming for gradual, perhaps even iterative, improvements (Sounds like some alternative, almost idie, game development ideas I've heard touted recently).

Is it possibly that perhaps an element of our acceptance of the cinema (and what you claim as a threshold that it crossed long ago) is more simply an enlarged cultural acceptance and development of the ability to suspend our disbelief? I think that we have just come to accept that, as an audience, we have to overlook certain things in viewing media, otherwise how could we possibly accept such mistakes? I think we would be turned off every time we noticed something we knew to be wrong or impossible, much like the uncanny valley experienced by near photo-realism. Do you think it's possible that we just haven't yet had time to, as a culture, society, and even individuals, develop an ability to "suspend disbelief" for our video games yet? Many people still regard the medium as being in its infancy (Leigh Alexander recently said it was more 'early teenager'!), and I wonder if you know of any similar parallels and comments made in the early history of cinema? I'm sure there would have to have been some, at least.

[JC Barnett]

As a developer as well as a gamer I am firmly in the "art direction" camp. The aforementioned Team Fortress 2 does indeed look amazing but also has art direction that serves the gameplay rather than just paint a pretty picture. This is where photorealism has a hard time. In an interactive world it's much harder to guide the player without breaking the suspension of disbelief than it is in a designed world. A flashing plane in a photoreal world breaks the visuals. Not quite photorealistic but the start of Zelda on the Wii had be confused because I just didn't see that dark path off the side of the map for a while.

Though art direction is very difficult and time consuming, with photoreal the resoruces of the team are wasted focussing on irrelevant (to the gameplay) details, like realistically wavy grass or nicely reflecting water, that could better be spent on other things that make the gameplay better.

Yet it's inevitable. The drive to realism is what has spurred gaming technology (and other technologies following it) onwards, and that is a good thing. We can expect more PC spec-busting titles like Crysis steam ahead and drive technology forward and have smaller, better designed titles benefitting from its wake, being dragged along.

In the end it comes down to personal preference as well, and that is something you can't really dictate. In the same way there are still people who enjoy silent films there are "Abandonware" groups an amateurs creating new titles that look and play like old ones just for the love of it.

Our industry isn't a one trick pony, but it's that one showjumper that gets all the media attention.

[Michael Abbott]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, everyone. I'll respond to a couple of the issues you've raised, but I don't mean to suggest I'm claiming special insight here. Chris at The Artful Gamer engaged me on this issue, and my essay was an attempt to bring my background to bear on the essay he wrote. I will also note that since I'm not a designer (nor do I play one on TV), I'm especially grateful when people like Corvus, Ben, and JC add that perspective to the conversation. I'm aware that bloggers like me tend to have all kinds of opinions on game design...and none of the skills to implement them.

Ben, I think people are actually more willing to suspend disbelief with video games than they are with films. I find that my students can be very harsh critics when they detect a continuity error in a film scene, or some other "error" that defeats a straight ahead depiction of realism. Even in films that aren't stylistically based in realism--The Matrix, for example--these students can be very unforgiving when it comes to breaking the rules established within the logic of the film. Abstraction troubles them. I find that people must be taught to appreciate conscious deviations from realism in art.

Not everybody, of course, and I don't mean to over-generalize, but I think it's generally true that abstraction is not warmly embraced unless it has some recognizable style that people can wrap their arms around, like anime for example. Do you recall how excited the audience in the room was when the new Legend of Zelda game was announced featuring a more realistically drawn Link? People went nuts! And that was without the first word about new gameplay elements, story, or anything else. They were pumped up about Link simply because he looked more "real."

JC wrote "Our industry isn't a one trick pony, but it's that one showjumper that gets all the media attention." Nice turn of phrase, eh? Wish I'd said that! It occurs to me that I ought to have mentioned in my post that indie games--like indie films--are the place where much of the alternative stuff happens, and as indie games gain a higher profile and (I hope) exert more influence on mainstream titles, perhaps we'll see more deviation in the art styles games adopt. We don't yet have a Murnau or Warhol among video game designers - artists who destroyed mainstream conventions, but also became wildly popular and influential on their own for many years.

Thanks, as always, for your responses. There''s always more to say...but I need to finish my podcast. :-)

[Dennis G. Jerz]

Great thread. Note that "photorealistic" means "simulating photography," which is a bit like evaluating a horseless carriage on how horseless it is -- not needing to be fed when it's in the garage, that sort of thing. Same goes for praising "cinematics" in games.

[Michael Abbott]

Good point, Dennis. I've found that the very point you make is a difficult one to communicate to students...until that moment when it snaps into focus, and they get it. It's often difficult to notice the things we're not supposed to notice, eh?

Visited your blog today. LOTS of interesting stuff there with keen observations. Thank you. I wish I could mount a hearty defense of Fatworld, but alas...

Thanks for dropping by.