kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
The thread about Syntax era, and digging around for loads of old screen shots, got me to thinking about graphics, especially 3D, between then and now.
Now don't get me wrong, I think the 3D available today is outstanding - motion captured characters etc, depth of play areas, realistic texture mapping and all that stuff...
However...
There's a part of me that thinks that videogames had more of an identity as a genuinely separate entertainment medium when they were stripped down to the bare bones. I'm thinking of games like Sentinel, Zarch/Virus, Elite etc. Like the CGi in Tron, it makes me think that the early stuff was trying to do the same thing as Kraftwerk and modernist architecture - honesty in materials, in the case of architecture, and trying to make electronic music that sounded like electronic music, instead of trying to make it sound like guitars/violins whatever.
I think videogame graphics have gone the same way - in trying to make realistic representations of reality, videogames have lost a certain aesthetic, and with it a certain approach to game design (perhaps).
Like I said, I'm not dissing modern graphics - stuff like Crysis, Assasin's Creed etc are actually genuinely beautiful IMO; but when I compare them to something like Ico, they seem to not lack something but seem more separated from a certain aesthetic feel.
It's one of the reasons I love Tron so much - maybe it's my age or something, but it actually created what I imagined computers to look like as it were. A similar, but updated thing happens in the intros to Matric Rev and Reloaded - when they do the whole fractal creation thing.
I'm starting to ramble now so I'll shut up, but what do others thinK? Am I simply being nostaligic, or is there a genuine aesthetic argument to be made here?
Now don't get me wrong, I think the 3D available today is outstanding - motion captured characters etc, depth of play areas, realistic texture mapping and all that stuff...
However...
There's a part of me that thinks that videogames had more of an identity as a genuinely separate entertainment medium when they were stripped down to the bare bones. I'm thinking of games like Sentinel, Zarch/Virus, Elite etc. Like the CGi in Tron, it makes me think that the early stuff was trying to do the same thing as Kraftwerk and modernist architecture - honesty in materials, in the case of architecture, and trying to make electronic music that sounded like electronic music, instead of trying to make it sound like guitars/violins whatever.
I think videogame graphics have gone the same way - in trying to make realistic representations of reality, videogames have lost a certain aesthetic, and with it a certain approach to game design (perhaps).
Like I said, I'm not dissing modern graphics - stuff like Crysis, Assasin's Creed etc are actually genuinely beautiful IMO; but when I compare them to something like Ico, they seem to not lack something but seem more separated from a certain aesthetic feel.
It's one of the reasons I love Tron so much - maybe it's my age or something, but it actually created what I imagined computers to look like as it were. A similar, but updated thing happens in the intros to Matric Rev and Reloaded - when they do the whole fractal creation thing.
I'm starting to ramble now so I'll shut up, but what do others thinK? Am I simply being nostaligic, or is there a genuine aesthetic argument to be made here?
