Graphics Are Not Aesthetics

[leeprice133]

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.

 

[Weaver]

I don't think anyone is going to contest you on this point.

Did 2K and Crytek really claim these things? Generally, sources should be inlined when you make claims like this. If they did, 2K's in particular is rather absurd. To The Moon was far more impactful than anything 2K has ever produced, in terms of "emotional connection".

 

[sanquin]

Okami will still look good 10 years from now, because it went from aesthetics instead of realistic graphics. aesthetics are 'timeless' you could say, while graphics age. And they usually age pretty poorly.

I'd say that aesthetics are far more important than graphics. First you should make your game look GOOD. After that you can think of making your game look REALISTIC.

 

[tippy2k2]

I don't think anyone is going to contest you on this point.

Did 2K and Crytek really claim these things? Generally, sources should be inlined when you make claims like this. If they did, 2K's in particular is rather absurd. To The Moon was far more impactful than anything 2K has ever produced, in terms of "emotional connection".

I can't guarantee Crytek but I know 2K stated this:

"Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country ... it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies," the 2K boss told GI. "Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.

Source [http://www.destructoid.com/2k-games-says-photorealism-is-needed-for-innovation-232382.phtml]

Let me be the first to go ahead and stick up for the 2K guy (Crytek guy is on his own):

I don't think he was saying what everyone implied at the time (graphics or GTFO). What he was saying to me was that better graphics would open up new gateways for gaming and (most importantly), gaming story. Now yes you can have a powerful story without great graphics but would a game like Heavy Rain work without looking like it did?

You could make the argument that the action would but what about the slow parts?
MILD SPOILERS INCOMING! I will be vague with my descriptions:

Would the scenes of Ethan and his kids playing have felt so...good if they were pixelated boxes?
Would the chopping scene had felt as powerful if it was a pixelated box being attacked?
Would the club scene felt as dirty if it was a pixelated box being victimized?

THAT's what I think the 2K boss was going for, not "get better graphics or the industry will die".

*EDIT: Just a quick note, I do agree that aesthetics are more important than shiny graphics but to pretend that graphics don't matter is silly...

Second EDIT: I know it's long but please see my extended thoughts on this in post #7, #9, and #45. A lot of people are debating points in this post that I've already responded to.

 

[Doom972]

I agree with that notion as well. I think that the graphics are good enough as they are.
I would rather that developers stop making a big deal out of realistic graphics - I get way more attached to the paperdoll skeletons in Grim Fandango, than the characters of any of the "ultra realistic" games of today.
It's about aesthetics, writing and voice acting - not graphics.

 

[sanquin]

--snip--

Not true. You can create emotional responses from your audience in other ways than showing that emotion in facial expressions on your character. Take wall-e. Not the best example, but wall-e didn't have detailed facial expressions and hardly used any words. Yet certain scenes were very emotional.

 

[tippy2k2]

snip

That's a fair point but I think that Wall-E is the exception and not the rule.

You can create emotional stories without great graphics but it's really hard. Like....really really really hard. Even then, Wall-E looked incredible (Eve had minimal facial movements but Wall-E's faced moved constantly). If it was created with sock puppets, would it have worked? I don't think it would have. Now I certainly could be wrong...do you know of any examples of powerfully emotional works that don't look incredible?

Example:


Now this is the trailer for Wall-E. Look at him...look at his body language as he rummages through the garbage from :30-:40. Watch the way his eyes change focus in :41 when he goes into the "cute puppy" mode. Look at 1:20 when he tries to hold Eve's hand. The way he goes from "I love you" to "FUCK MY HAND IS BEING CRUSHED!!!!" all goes through his body language. His face isn't detailed like a humans but the detail put into his eyes/body make Wall-E work. This is due to him looking so incredible and he looks so incredible thanks to the advanced graphics.

 

[sanquin]

-snip-

For TLR people an episode of extra credits explains this as well. Much better than me most likely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oK8UTRgvJU

Like I said, not the best example. My point with wall-e was that facial expressions and tens of thousands of polygons and moving 'muscles' aren't needed to portray emotion. I agree that it's hard to do so. A lot harder than using facial expressions. But that's what sets apart a good animator/artist and a bad or average animator/artist to me.

Anyway, another example... Take the companion cube from portal 1. It was just a motionless cube with hearts on it. But look at how loved that simple cube is. Why? Because of how the cube is presented in the game. Not because of what movements or emotions it shows. The companion cube only brought forth one or maybe two emotions in people, but it did so quite effectively.

Or an example that has more human-like characters. Take toy story 3. It doesn't have photo-realism at all. It's very cartoony, in fact. Boy did scenes in that movie tug at the heart strings of many a viewer. Yet it didn't need highly realistic graphics for that at all.

The problem is that the games industry has trained itself to think that it's the fault of the graphics that they can't convey the emotions they want the audience to feel well enough. Instead, the problem is creativity and knowledge of what gets people to feel certain emotions at certain times. Games are still a relatively new, interactive medium. Creativity, true creativity that is, has always been hard. And the knowledge of what gets people to feel certain emotions is still in it's infancy when it comes to interactive media like Games. But instead of researching into the knowledge and trying to find properly creative people, they blame it on the graphics. As they think from a passive media (movie) perspective, rather than an interactive one.

Which brings me back to the original point. Aesthetics are more important than graphics. Terrible graphics but beautiful aesthetics can make a game still look beautiful. Very good graphics but anything of average aesthetics or lower can make a game look muddy, dull or ugly. And if not ugly right away, it will look ugly in 2~3 years.

 

[tippy2k2]

snip

Well I guess either way the bottom line is that we both agree here; I just want to make that clear. Even with the arguments I have presented, I am more defending 2K's boss than defending the "graphics are important". People had been hammering him for saying "Graphics are the most important thing in the world" when I don't believe that was his intention at all.

In fact, I believe that there are very few people who will say that the graphics of a game is most important over aesthetics (and out of the few that DO say that, I would guess that only one actually means it).

With that said (yes...here comes the "graphics ARE important" version of Tippy2k2

I don't think any of the examples you've given work. Toy Story has the same thing as Wall-E in that they don't have the facial muscles but the body language and the way they behave is what informs the viewer. I go back to what I said about Wall-E: Replace Woody and the gang with sock puppets and the movie will suffer for it. The incredible graphics does a lot to push the emotion.

Portal's Companion Cube is a much better example but that wasn't thanks to the aesthetics, the emotion, or anything like that. That worked beautifully because the developers took an absurdly funny game and gave the gamers an absurd thing to play with. The CC works because it was humorous in a humorous game and the gamers embraced the absurdity of loving a chunk of metal because a psychotic computer told them that they should.

In fact, let me sabotage my own argument here with an example: The Walking Dead. Hands up (no one's looking, I promise), how many of you cried at the end? Being the manly man I am, I of course didn't (it must have been dust or something in the house causing my eyes to tear up there...) but TWD tore many gamers hearts out and walked off into the sunset without having to look like LA Noire.

I guess let me bottom line it for the three people who have stuck around long enough to read everything I've written in my three posts:

Graphics are NOT the most important thing and I don't believe that Christoph Hartmann was stating that. HOWEVER, graphics are a very important tool for developers and make telling emotional stories much much easier. Is it possible to tell an emotional story without jaw-dropping graphics? Of course it is and it would be silly for me to tell you no. However, graphics can be a developers greatest tool when it comes to capturing emotion. Making a gunfight work in a game with iffy graphics is easy; making a believable and emotional story without good graphics isn't.

 

[MysticToast]

I always said Minecraft has amazing graphics and no one gets what I mean.

You get me, OP.

 

[nykirnsu]

I always said Minecraft has amazing graphics and no one gets what I mean.

You get me, OP.

That's because it doesn't, it has amazing aesthetics. If you said to them 'Minecaft has an amazing visual style' then you'd definitely be right.

 

[skywolfblue]

snip

That's a fair point but I think that Wall-E is the exception and not the rule.

You can create emotional stories without great graphics but it's really hard. Like....really really really hard. Even then, Wall-E looked incredible (Eve had minimal facial movements but Wall-E's faced moved constantly). If it was created with sock puppets, would it have worked? I don't think it would have. Now I certainly could be wrong...do you know of any examples of powerfully emotional works that don't look incredible?

Example:


Now this is the trailer for Wall-E. Look at him...look at his body language as he rummages through the garbage from :30-:40. Watch the way his eyes change focus in :41 when he goes into the "cute puppy" mode. Look at 1:20 when he tries to hold Eve's hand. The way he goes from "I love you" to "FUCK MY HAND IS BEING CRUSHED!!!!" all goes through his body language. His face isn't detailed like a humans but the detail put into his eyes/body make Wall-E work. This is due to him looking so incredible and he looks so incredible thanks to the advanced graphics.

I'll second this post.

Wall-E, Toy Story and other animated movies have truly exceptional animation. Currently game animation doesn't even come close to holding a candle to that kind of high-quality animation.

Video game protagonists don't display anything beyond rudimentary lip-syncing and some very wooden body language. All those things Wall-e does a far far out of reach of most game engines to perform.

We have a long way to go as far as making better game animation. And improving it will definitely help audience relate to characters better.

 

[xPixelatedx]

The only game that made me teary-eyed was the ending to Megaman 3: An NE-FUCKING-S game. No game before, no game since.

Come at me Crytek.

But in all seriousness I think it was just the music more then anything else. Still, that wasn't graphics.
Also yeah, Shadow of the Colossus had a pretty impacting ending. That's a good one.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

If photorealism were so great, then why do I find paintings so much more compelling than actual photos for the most part? Characters don't have to be human for us to have a human connection.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

I don't think he was saying what everyone implied at the time (graphics or GTFO). What he was saying to me was that better graphics would open up new gateways for gaming and (most importantly), gaming story. Now yes you can have a powerful story without great graphics but would a game like Heavy Rain work without looking like it did?

You could make the argument that the action would but what about the slow parts?
MILD SPOILERS INCOMING! I will be vague with my descriptions:

Would the scenes of Ethan and his kids playing have felt so...good if they were pixelated boxes?
Would the chopping scene had felt as powerful if it was a pixelated box being attacked?
Would the club scene felt as dirty if it was a pixelated box being victimized?

\

The jump from Pixelated Boxes to Photorealistic Humans is a bit too much to really make any kind of point regarding emotional character interactions. I would say Heavy Rain suffered quite a bit from going for full realism when people's mouths had black voids in them or the children and their off-putting faces and voices.

The aesthetics-focused option would be a game like The Walking Dead which gave the characters exaggerated features that fit the art style and drew the eye away from the parts that had to be scaled down to fit the budget/deadline, mainly the body animations and lip sync at times. For having an order of magnitude more polygons and high tech motion capture, the Heavy Rain character models really cant display that much emotion with facial expressions and body language alone, which a game like the Walking Dead can do just fine (hell in episode 3 the main character makes a joke just using body language).

Compare these:

Spoiler

 

[Windcaler]

Photorelism isnt needed to advance gaming into an artistic revelution of expressed emotions. It might help but really to do that the industry needs better writers and art direction to get that across. It reminds me of the original dead space where they kept telling us to feel for Issac but we couldnt because they never characterized him.

Outside of gaming I would pose the question why when people go to a museum we see famous paintings portray more emotion then famous pictures. Certainly both can portray emotion but its the talent used in the artistic method that really makes it come across.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution had such excellent style that it compensated for the graphics. The graphics weren't actually that good, but the game looked a lot better than it should have for sheer art style.

But aside from that, photorealism really isn't needed to convey emotion. I could cite any number of games that are not photorealistic and are known for being emotional. I think emotion could be conveyed a lot better by having more emotional investment - essentially do a better job of making the player care. The Companion Cube was dear to many a Portal player despite having only a superficial indicator that it was anything special at all, and probably not even being sentient. It works because it is unassuming, integral to your goals, and is something different in a world of indifference and objectivity. In fact, it's a bit ridiculous how easily Valve imparts a weighted block with emotional significance when AAA games frequently send NPCs to grisly deaths and provoke no reaction. Even Dragon's Dogma, a game where characterisation is scarce and actual graphical quality isn't that good either, one of the NPCs got me a little in the endgame when they revealed that my actions had inadvertently killed their parents.

Basically, what I'm seeing is high graphical quality being used as an excuse for having no imagination and failing to do what other games are already doing well. It's also a very easy thing to improve without changing the game at all, and tout that as progress. That's why I think AAA games are so drawn to graphics, it allows them to change the game without it being meaningful and sell it again as if it's worth the money.

 

[default]

Well yeah, that's pretty obvious. Aesthetics are the substance of your visuals, graphics are no more than the tools with which you make it. In fact I would prefer a unique, subtle and stylised aesthetic style over realism any day. Not much else to say on this subject.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

To clarify something here: an 'aesthetic' means (basically) a visual style, so OP your title doesn't make sense really.

It's like saying 'sound is not music'... yes, we know, and no one ever said otherwise(not even, might i add, the people who you are 'arguing against'... I'm going to take a guess that mentioning 'aesthetics' came from you, not the quotes you are referring too). Graphics are(/can be) used to form an aesthetic, for instance a photorealistic aesthetic, or a cartoony aesthetic, etc. Like how sounds are(/can be) used to form music such as rock music, or classical music, etc.

Aesthetics are an overarching concept, of some thing's visual 'style' or 'vibe'.


---

But yes photorealism is not required for strong emotional response, good writing and design, just as with books and movies, are what dictate that.

 

[Rad Party God]

Telltale's The Walking Dead made me cry. A lot. Multiple times. That game has one of the shittiest engines I've ever seen and yet, every single character from that game is a thousand times more interesting than the entirety of the Crysis trilogy combined. Also, the characters are WAAAAAAY more expressive than the robotic manequins from any Bioware game.

So yes, aesthetics win every single fucking time.

Also, Wind Waker.

Just LOOK AT THAT!, 10 years since it got released and... JUST LOOK AT THAT!