Graphics Are Not Aesthetics

[Monster_user]

What you people mean is... ...that you'd rather they spend more time just considering some form of aesthetic choices instead of relying entirely on the reach for realism.

Higher graphical fidelity allows more freedom to explore different aesthetic values, it doesn't hinder it.

I'd say, that is what I'm trying to say here. The problem is that the industry that makes games believes that the reach for realism is the only way. If only they would consider other, less tired, options.

"Polished Turd" has become an increasingly common phrase in recent years for a reason.
For the sake of avoiding redundancy, that's all I'll say on the matter.

Then a developer comes along and actually renders a polished turd you can fling at a rendered wall to see if it sticks.
I think they are just laughing at us.

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[Anti-American Eagle]

Planescape torment and Bastion. So all I have to say beyond that is graphics only matter if you attach value to them. Graphics are merely a bonus.

 

[spartan231490]

How about books? They create one of the most powerful emotional connections in all of artistic expression and they don't even have images. Graphics are irrelevant to emotional power of a story. No one ever cried because of how real a piece of art looked.

Graphics are irrelevant to emotional power of story....

I think there are few museums with paintings that may disagree.

Plenty of people have seen the benefit improving graphical techniques in order to make paintings look more like the world. You never heard of 3 point perspective?

what? Paintings and video games are completely different. I'm talking about games, which carry emotional weight through the story. You could carry emotion with a series of images or a single image, but that's not much of a game. Now, I would also argue that the emotional weight in painting is carried by the subject matter, not the realism of the image, but as painting has many fewer tools to work with to impact the viewer than games, more realistic images are much more important. Still not necessary, but not completely irrelevant as in games.

You were the one who went "no one has ever cried because of ho real a piece of art looked". You were the one who pulled paintings in as well by going a general statement of "art" unlees you will argue paintings dont go into that category.

Fact of the matter is that games are a visual medium so graphical fidelity is important. It is not the be all end all that some (thou I find it hard to find them) may argue. However going to the other side of the spectrum and go "completely irrelevant as in games" then you are just as bad as the other side.

And I stand by that. no one ever cried because of how realistic a painting was. The most realistic painting in the world won't reach anyone if it's just an apple. Even if I am wrong, the conversation is about games, not paintings, it should have been obvious from the context that I was talking about games, and only discussing paintings as a correlary. Graphical fidelity is irrelevant to the artistic/emotional side of games, though it may and often does enhance gameplay.

 

[Altefforr]

I think of graphics as just the symbol for what is to be imagined. If a games graphics are so photorealistic that you can't change the image in your head; the immersion goes down because often - the game focuses on graphics, and not gameplay/immersion.

For example, Ocarina of Time, and Hexen, on the Nintendo 64 were some of the most awesome emotional games I played. Hexen, I was scared shitless as a kid just because of the atmosphere. Ocarina of Time was heartwarming. Neither of these games had the best graphics, but they didn't need to; because the developers were able to convey feeling and emotion through dialog, environment, and tone; they didn't need photo-realism to achieve this.

Same with Morrowind, that game had some pretty standard graphics for its time; yet the atmosphere and tone set by the environment and depth was not achieved by its "successors". The reason being, they lacked depth, tact, and well; substance.

I agree with the title of this thread; Graphics are NOT Aesthetics.

 

[LordLundar]

The problem I have with his statement is that he's saying that the only way to convey emotions is with real life style emotions but it doesn't work in largely well, any artistic medium. Books, paintings, sculptures, pictures, radio, film, TV, games, I could go on forever, all convey emotions more intense than peace and serenity through exaggeration. You could have a character in a game look completely indistinguishable from real life but if the character can't convey emotions in the first place then the fidelity is wasted. A lot of developers who call for "more graphics, more graphics" miss that concept. So the end result is games that are of high fidelity but emotionally blank.

 

[Dys]

So, I was watching old episodes of the Jimquisition tonight (because I've been in work all day and need to watch a fat countryman ranting to unwind) and the 'Photorealistic Sociopathy' episode got me thinking. 2K's assertion that we need photorealistic graphics to create emotional connection with games struck me as really dumb, and Crytek's claim about graphics being the key to further advance video games struck me as even dumber.

For me, games can be truly emotional as they are, and beautiful aesthetics can be achieved without thousands of dollars worth of graphics cards.

As an example, Shadow of the Colossus, with its PS2 graphics, is one of the most emotional games I've ever experienced, and Okami is probably the most beautiful game I've ever played from an aesthetic standpoint.

Crysis has amazing graphical fidelity, but for me the game is rather uninteresting aesthetically. I actually think Skyrim is a better looking game.

I'd be curious to hear anyone else's thoughts on graphics/emotion and graphics/aesthetics.

I strongly- as in absolutely, disagree with your defining thought on this. I don't see how aesthetics cannot be considered a part of [link-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics]graphics[/link]. If a graphic is an image, then surely it follows that graphics are a grouping of images, which in the case of video games, is how the game world is presented to the gamer. By definition "Graphics can be functional or artistic", which really means that Crytek claiming graphics being the key to further advance video games is dumb only in that it is inescapably obvious....it goes without saying. As an art form video games has been consistently improving, and there's (hopefully) no argument that as computing power has increased, and developers have had more tools to create their worlds, they have been more free to explore more exciting concepts. There's no way a game like skyrim could have ever worked in the 8bit era, simply because the game was built around a huge, open world and such a thing is fundamentally built off of 3d. Something like mirrors edge would never have been immersive without the 'real' feel of that worlds physics (and again, the physics system is only designed so that it can be presented to the user through visuals, you don't taste a bad guy falling off a roof). So while the ever popular notion (at least on this forum) that high pixel count[footnote]Which is often, wrongly, refereed to as "graphics"[/footnote] does not mean a good game, it does guarantee more developer freedom in how they create a good game, which can never be a bad thing. Even 2Ks comment about creating emotional connections relies upon photo realism can be true in some ways, a game like L.A Noire based around expressions and cues of characters relies upon more realistic looking faces, and in that sense photo realism, or at least incredibly detailed caricatures are necessary (though obviously more cartoon esque wind walker type graphics can convey basic emotion better).

TL;DR
All these people claiming that art or visual style are more important than the "graphics" don't actually know the definition of the world "graphics", and hence they're criticizing some developers for saying exactly the same thing they are arguing against them

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

Extra Credits had already covered this topic thoroughly back when they were still with the Escapist, settling the graphics vs aesthetics argument beautifully.


(soz if this has already been posted)


I feel one of the exceptions to this argument so far has been Crysis 1 (and Warhead, which was equivalent to an expansion). I still believe it is one of the most BEAUTIFUL games today, and I recently just finished Crysis 3.
The aesthetics (sprawling non-linear tropical island) REALLY fit well with the ridiculously detailed foliage and photo-realistic visuals, bringing the world alive and making it immersive. Giving you a nanosuit/vehicles to zip around this huge world just made the game fit together really well, basically graphics and aesthetics came together beautifully.
Set to maximum settings the game can still bring today's graphics cards to their knees, which is mind-blowing considering it released in 2008.
I still have to slap myself out of my dumbfounded awe when I'm running through one of it's forests, seeing the shadows and foliage and the rays of sunlight beaming through individual leaves through the canopy. Or when the level gives me a cliff-top view of a beautiful tropical beach with crazy far draw distances.

 

[Jingle Fett]

I think of graphics as just the symbol for what is to be imagined. If a games graphics are so photorealistic that you can't change the image in your head; the immersion goes down because often - the game focuses on graphics, and not gameplay/immersion.

For example, Ocarina of Time, and Hexen, on the Nintendo 64 were some of the most awesome emotional games I played. Hexen, I was scared shitless as a kid just because of the atmosphere. Ocarina of Time was heartwarming. Neither of these games had the best graphics, but they didn't need to; because the developers were able to convey feeling and emotion through dialog, environment, and tone; they didn't need photo-realism to achieve this.

Same with Morrowind, that game had some pretty standard graphics for its time; yet the atmosphere and tone set by the environment and depth was not achieved by its "successors". The reason being, they lacked depth, tact, and well; substance.

I agree with the title of this thread; Graphics are NOT Aesthetics.

Except remember though, Ocarina of Time did have some of the best graphics. For its time. At the time that was about as photo-realistic games could get.

It's true that graphics aren't aesthetics in and of themselves, but graphics are most certainly a huge part of the aesthetics since if you don't have graphics, or the processing power to handle them, the aesthetics can't exist. Or to put it another way, a game like Ocarina of Time would not have been possible had the N64 not had the processing power to handle full 3d environments, sound effects, and everything else, all at the same time.

This is why the quest for better graphics is so crucial and why it's actually a really good thing. Sure there will be plenty of games that aim for photo-realism and have poor aesthetics, but that's not the hardware's fault, that's the developers fault. In that case we need to get mad at the art directors. If the same hardware that allows for photo-realism also allows developers to make the next big Ocarina of Time-type gem to be made then that can only be a good thing. After all, the same hardware that allowed Call of Duty to be made also brought us Bioshock, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, and countless others.

 

[Andrew_C]

Photorealism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorealism] is actually an aesthetic and art movement, but I'm not sure its one which would suit many computer games. That being said, I think that it's obvious that kickass graphics without a strong aesthetic will at best look bland and boring in a computer game.

To address an earlier point that appears to have been misunderstood, Yes many a work of art has moved many people to tears due to its impact. Not necessarily it's beauty. I wouldn't call Guernica [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)] particularly beautiful, would you? And that is a perfect example of an artwork with a strong impact which has a strong aesthetic and non-realistic style (Abstract Expressionism, IIRC). The only people who are moved to tears by advances in artistic technique are art critics.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

2K's assertion that we need photorealistic graphics to create emotional connection with games struck me as really dumb, and Crytek's claim about graphics being the key to further advance video games struck me as even dumber.

For me, games can be truly emotional as they are, and beautiful aesthetics can be achieved without thousands of dollars worth of graphics cards.

As an example, Shadow of the Colossus, with its PS2 graphics, is one of the most emotional games I've ever experienced, and Okami is probably the most beautiful game I've ever played from an aesthetic standpoint.

I strongly disagree with 2K and Crytek as well. I know this argument probably won't earn me many brownie points but there have been a lot of really excellent games out on the Wii and Gamecube that don't look all that great by today's standards. That being said though, to augment your Okami-of-the-Colossus examples, Wind Waker is one of the most beautiful Nintendo games I've seen in a long time. I still love the way it looks and feels when I pop it in these days what with PS4 tech demos out and about.

I bought Crysis 2 on the 360 out of a clearance bin and while it is beautiful to look at, I can't say I care too much for the game itself. When I say it's beautiful to look at, I'm talking more about the scenery and level design. Character design (for the first few levels anyway) hasn't really done anything to sell me either and (once again, my brownie points are about to disappear) I think the suit of armor you use in Crysis is absolutely hideous.

That's getting away from emotional context though...Look, if graphics were so important to establishing an emotional link between game and player there would be far fewer gamers out there who bought a Super Nintendo from Amazon because of how much they loved playing those games when they were a kid.

 

[Altefforr]

Except remember though, Ocarina of Time did have some of the best graphics. For its time. At the time that was about as photo-realistic games could get.

Yes, at the time OoT did have very excellent graphics in terms of the hardware capability and requirements; but the graphics were not the focus of the game. The developers did use the graphics capabilities of the N64 very well to convey the environment; but in no way did they focus on this being the main driving factor of the games aesthetics. I remember, even as a kid thinking that certain parts of the games graphics could've been immensely better.

It's true that graphics aren't aesthetics in and of themselves, but graphics are most certainly a huge part of the aesthetics since if you don't have graphics, or the processing power to handle them, the aesthetics can't exist. Or to put it another way, a game like Ocarina of Time would not have been possible had the N64 not had the processing power to handle full 3d environments, sound effects, and everything else, all at the same time.

I do not need eyes to appreciate the beauty of a rose.

This is why the quest for better graphics is so crucial and why it's actually a really good thing. Sure there will be plenty of games that aim for photo-realism and have poor aesthetics, but that's not the hardware's fault, that's the developers fault. In that case we need to get mad at the art directors. If the same hardware that allows for photo-realism also allows developers to make the next big Ocarina of Time-type gem to be made then that can only be a good thing. After all, the same hardware that allowed Call of Duty to be made also brought us Bioshock, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, and countless others.

When did the discussion diverge to hardware?

The argument trying to be made in this thread, is that while graphics can be integral to the way objects, characters, and environment is conveyed to the player; they are not the driving factor. I can recall several games as a child with terrible graphics where I felt that the character was real, it could've jumped out of the screen. I can also recall much newer games with incredibly good graphics, with terrible aesthetics where all the objects and characters are plastic, scripted, and predefined.

You made a good post, but; I disagree that better graphics are a requirement to the progression of aesthetics. As I've already said, I've played a ton of games with very low quality graphics that had better aesthetics and atmosphere than; well, reality in some cases.

It's like your argument is to say, that Minecraft can only progress aesthetically if you use high res texture packs. It's simply NOT integral to the games aesthetics. Another example, the default texture pack for Minecraft is rather non-engaging for me, and distracting. The resolution is perfectly fine though, a simple change in the graphic style with a different pack of the same resolution was all that I needed to improve the games aesthetics.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Yes, at the time OoT did have very excellent graphics in terms of the hardware capability and requirements; but the graphics were not the focus of the game. The developers did use the graphics capabilities of the N64 very well to convey the environment; but in no way did they focus on this being the main driving factor of the games aesthetics. I remember, even as a kid thinking that certain parts of the games graphics could've been immensely better.

Well what is your point? Whether that was the focus or not is irrelevant to the fact that the game was still one of the best looking games at the time and that it wouldn't have been the same had it been in 2D or had the graphics been worse. It wouldn't have had the same level of immersion without the attention to all the small details, stuff like water splashes, bugs crawling around, the shadows at Link's feet, the day/night cycle, rain/snow falling, all possible at all due to the advancements in graphics technology.

I do not need eyes to appreciate the beauty of a rose.

What? Umm yes you do. If you've never seen a rose before how can you appreciate its beauty? A person who's been born blind or has been blind their whole life and has never seen a rose can't possibly imagine what a rose looks like. The most you can do is describe it to them. I don't really get how this fits in the topic but whatever.

When did the discussion diverge to hardware?

The argument trying to be made in this thread, is that while graphics can be integral to the way objects, characters, and environment is conveyed to the player; they are not the driving factor. I can recall several games as a child with terrible graphics where I felt that the character was real, it could've jumped out of the screen. I can also recall much newer games with incredibly good graphics, with terrible aesthetics where all the objects and characters are plastic, scripted, and predefined.

You made a good post, but; I disagree that better graphics are a requirement to the progression of aesthetics. As I've already said, I've played a ton of games with very low quality graphics that had better aesthetics and atmosphere than; well, reality in some cases.

It's like your argument is to say, that Minecraft can only progress aesthetically if you use high res texture packs. It's simply NOT integral to the games aesthetics. Another example, the default texture pack for Minecraft is rather non-engaging for me, and distracting. The resolution is perfectly fine though, a simple change in the graphic style with a different pack of the same resolution was all that I needed to improve the games aesthetics.

Some people were talking earlier about how they think graphics are good enough and developers need to focus more on aesthetics, as though it's not worth advancing graphics tech, so I was mainly aiming at that argument (not saying that you were necessarily making that argument).

Graphics are the building blocks for aesthetics. It's how the graphics come together that forms the aesthetics. So yes graphics are what drives the aesthetics.

And it is folly to say that better graphics technology isn't a requirement for the progression of aesthetics. Certain aesthetics are simply impossible without better graphics technology. For example, lets take post-processing effects, which is part of what allows most photorealistic games to look so good. Well without that, stylized games like Antichamber wouldn't be possible. A game like antichamber wouldn't have been possible a generation or two ago because the graphics technology wasn't there, or at least the hardware wasn't. Therefore the progression of graphics technology allowed that game to be made.

As far as Minecraft goes, that is not what I am saying. Adding the high res textures clashes with Minecraft's aesthetics because photorealism is another aesthetic. When you mix these two polar opposite aesthetics, the result probably doesn't look too great since Minecraft wasn't designed with that style in mind.
But as far as what you're saying about improving its aesthetic goes, imagine for a second if for Minecraft 2, Notch suddenly announced he was going to go for a Super Mario Galaxy-esque style combined with high resolution textures and amazing post-processing effects. Lets suppose the game ended up with an amazing aesthetic that works really well and everybody falls in love with it. What then?

Better graphics ultimately means more building blocks for the developer to realize their visions in new ways. That vision may be a realistic game or a stylized game but in either case, certain aesthetics are simply impossible without better graphics tech. Which automatically means the aesthetics depend graphics.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Better graphics ultimately means more building blocks for the developer to realize their visions in new ways. That vision may be a realistic game or a stylized game but in either case, certain aesthetics are simply impossible without better graphics tech. Which automatically means the aesthetics depend graphics.

That is absolutely correct.
I think the problem some others have with graphics stems not from the advancement of graphical tech alone, but why publishers/developers want to keep pushing it.

We've scarcely gone more than skin-deep into aesthetics based on current console tech, with a great number of games revolving around the same technical buzzwords and similar styles (consider how many games use Bloom lighting Vs how many use Bloom lighting EFFECTIVELY)..
..and now the publishers/developers are demanding "Photorealism"??

They're convinced that it's easier to cram more polygons, particles and fancy lightning algorithms into a mediocre/bland aesthetic to make it look "good" than it is to develop a unique style in existing graphical tech.