Sometimes I get the sense that people have started to consider video game graphics a “problem” that has been largely “solved,” and that any further development is an exercise in diminishing marginal returns. Like a skyscraper, after too many stories have been added the building becomes too expensive and simply not worth the effort to construct. It is then usually suggested that now we can finally stop worrying about graphics and go on to begin making the great, innovative gameplay we’ve all been waiting for (even though we do not really seem to agree on what that actually is).
However, just the opposite is true: the more development that has taken place in this area, the more that is possible to expand upon. Instead of a single skyscraper, the development of graphics technology is more like the construction of roads: the more development that takes place, the more valuable the resultant network as a whole, and the more further development becomes possible. The next generation consoles have opened the way to all kinds of new territory– areas of which we are really only beginning to scratch the surface in shipping products. There is a huge amount of work still to be done: a myriad of problems to be solved, and plenty of opportunity to seize.
Comments (3)
Short and sweet, but surely missing a lot of interesting stuff.
What are these myriad problems ?
Is it important that we solve them ?
Personally I don't think there is a need for more advanced graphics, but there is always a need to make better use of what you have, if for no other reason that to make worlds which have more going on in them.
Once you have reached the stage where you cannot immediately see that everything is fake, what more do you need ? Sometimes more is less - more detail and more polygons and texture may mean you cannot have as many enemies in a game - so sometimes you will see a next-gen game which has no more than the previous gen incarnations of the same game had. Why ? Because somebody said "we have to make the graphics even more impressive" rather than "we have to make the game even more impressive".
Many of the best games - critically and commercially - have graphics which isn't that special, but is surpassed by the game itself.
Posted by RobertD | April 30, 2007 12:10 PM
Posted on April 30, 2007 12:10
Yes, I didn’t really go on to talk about some of the areas that still have many fruitful avenues of development ahead. Here are a couple examples: shaders and character animation systems.
Shaders are under-exploited in most current next-gen titles. The power is in the hardware, but what’s missing are mature tools to author them and a solid pipeline to get them into the game. Character animation is still a dark art, although recently some promising approaches towards integrating some procedural methodology have been announced.
Of course, it’s quite possible to argue that better shaders and more advanced character animation won’t necessarily make better games, and that’s true. Better lenses and fancier cameras don’t necessarily take better photographs, either. But what they do do is expand the range of the medium by making things possible that weren’t before. And features that many initially disparaged as not improving gameplay (physics, motion capture, even 3D itself) have gone on to become the fundamental elements upon which some truly great games are built.
Games are still very much a new medium, so I believe it behooves us to experiment with all of the possibilities – in every discipline.
Posted by Matthew | April 30, 2007 11:44 PM
Posted on April 30, 2007 23:44
Sorry I'm so late to this discussion, I just found this blog and have found its content excellent.
As a designer I'm usually very quick to sound off against tech-for-tech's sake, but Matthew's argument is one I can easily get behind. The ultimate measure of any technology is what it enables people to do with it, and the two examples you bring up are exactly that sort of tech.
Shaders have the potential to expand the aesthetic range of games immensely, so it's doubly frustrating that AAA games are so homogeneous visually.
Character animation systems are something that I've always seen as being pure software innovations - it's less about needing more cycles and more about trying to write more powerful and robust code - and thus the usual Moore's Law cart-drives-horse problem seldom applies directly. One needs only to look at current game characters to see that we still have many miles to go in this area.
In short, I think those two avenues are absolutely worthy of further exploration because, unlike other tech innovations, they actually enable creativity and thus broaden our palette.
Posted by JP | September 10, 2007 9:01 AM
Posted on September 10, 2007 09:01