MA Games Design - Project 1 Development & Research

Project 1

    
    "From all our senses, vision is the most dominating one. It is estimated that it contributes up to 70% of the information humans perceive." This quote is an excerpt from a paper by Maic Masuch and Niklas Röber titled 'Game Graphics Beyond Realism: Then, Now, and Tomorrow'. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252486461_Game_Graphics_Beyond_Realism_Then_Now_and_Tomorrow

    I paused reading through the entirety of this paper as I read that specific sentence in order to note down this idea of thinking and the question of realism in video games, and whether that directly correlates to players having fun or not. If 70% of the information that we perceive is based on vision/visuals does this then mean that how something looks in a video game is one of the most important aspects of a player understanding the world in which they play and take control, and is this why so many game developers are striving for photorealism in their games? In order to provide as much visual information as possible or are there other reasonings behind this?

    As you can probably tell, I am very much interested in the realism aspect of video games, why? Well because I have caught myself purchasing a game before purely based on the visual fidelity of screenshots or trailers, and how 'realistic' it looks. Saying this though, I have found myself disappointed in some player experiences after having tried a game out and realised that the substance is not there or a game has the 'Uncanny Valley' effect, where the photorealistic nature that the developers were striving for has been achieved but only to a certain level, in which some aspects are very jarring and take you out of the experience completely, reminding the player they are in fact just playing a game.

Brief Idea

    Since I am a weapons artist, I want to tackle this idea of realism through the lens of video game weapons and trying to answer the question of whether realism equals fun or if it reaches a point where it detracts from the overall experience and becomes a distraction.

    To begin I would approach a weapon, and render/model it in a variety of ways I would like to compare aspects such as low poly models vs high poly models (Realistic vs Non realistic), Silhouette design and finally rendering/texturing. This exercise is to help me consider what visual information goes into the model itself and what is presented in the texturing, as well as the difficulty of modelling something specifically to it's real world counter part vs being a little looser with the overall design of something.


Kevin Walter - Low Poly Colt 1873
https://kevinw.artstation.com/projects/N5mbKN


Roma Emerson - Photorealistic Colt 1873
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0nK81V


Elena Kuchalskaya - Stylised Colt 1873
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nQQyGr



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