One important part of the Denki Difference is the idea of illusion, not simulation.
Games are, by and large, making a full-tilt rush towards realising the real-world in greater and greater detail. More polygons, more high-resolution models and more complexity in everything.
Yet, is that really necessary? Couldn’t you just hint at that and keep it a little more, you know, abstract? Cartoons don’t succeed or fail based on how realistic they are, after all.
Which makes this gallery (and book) all the more delightful…
It’s New York-centric, as you’ll see, but still… whoa!
- Brian (@flackboy)
That wasabi looks fresh and inviting.
(I bet you stole this off of GPs desk, smackboy)
less abstract, but still fun: http://www.creebobby.com/timestable.html
Well, it really depends on what you’re making though, doesn’t it? Sometimes the simulation is the end and the means. Sometimes it isn’t, and you find shortcuts.
Perhaps a smarter (but less pithy) way to express the same sentiment is “do what is required to achieve the end result you are after, but no more than that”. All video games “simulate” things – the question is just how deep to go with it (the obvious answer being “far enough to get what you need”).
Even that truism doesn’t always work in the real world. Take a game that requires some flappy cloth – do you fake it with key-framed animation, or invest in making some cloth-sim tech? You might immediately say “fake it!”, but that isn’t always the right decision. That approach doesn’t scale so well should you decide later that you’d like a thousand flappy cloths instead of just one.
To summarise: faking absolutely everything with the most base techniques available leads to inflexible design and wasted man-hours. Simulating everything as realistically as possible is clearly pointless too if you barely see 10% of it on-screen. Somewhere in the middle there’s a balance. However, I agree that’s not as catchy as “illusion, not reality”
What that man said is true.
Although personally, for me, when I hear someone say…
“We should design this feature like this, because in real life that’s not how it would work…”
Then I wouldn’t particularly want to work with them. Ever.
Might be appropriate if we were making a flight sim or something. But I’ll be cold in the ground before that happens.
What I’m getting at is the general assumption that games on consoles should be ‘realistic’ – regardless of how appropriate that is. That’s why I was delighted to see Chinatown Wars adopt a more stylised approach. We don’t HAVE to aim for the photorealistic with every single title. 2D, cel-shading and outright cartoonery can be used – in major games – without making anyone (fanboys aside) cry.
To my perspective, it depends on the approach you take on the game itself, storywise. Personally, I consider exhaustive realism truly unnecessary… Specially with so many graphic options that you can take nowadays.
But like I said, depends on the game… “Raving Rabbids” wouldn’t feel half as good with hiper realism (heck… the rabitts looked awful with furm just look at the earlier concepts!), and neither would “Heavy Rain” be half as intense with an “Afro Samurai” look.
It’s a matter of context and storytelling.
I think a ‘live action’ Katamari would be a good thing.
But yes, I take your point. Horses for courses. Cartoon horses. P0wnies indeed.
Live action Katamari…?
…
You might have a winner there, dear sir!
It seems like there are two different arguments here though right?
“Stylised vs Realistic”
seems quite different from
“Illusion vs Reality”
Personally I’m not such a fan of introducing dogma to a creative medium though. There are so many counter-examples and exceptions that it becomes fairly useless fairly quickly.
Of course, as a statement of intent it is perfectly laudable.