Recently Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games estimated that within 10 to 15 years video games will be photo-realistic. Whether or not he is right is not the question we should be asking ourselves. What we should be asking is, is it truly possible at all and is that what we want?
Videogames and CG movies have always had a hard time creating convincing human characters. For those of you not familiar to the Uncanny Valley, click here to read more about. In essence there is only so far humans will accept a nonhuman entity to look human. Here’s an example of what humans will accept:
Notice that all though all of these are either human or human-esque, they do not go for complete realism. Now lets look at when things going horribly wrong.
As for the first picture from Oblivion, I’m not sure what they were going for, but whatever it is…it’s disturbing. The other two, in an attempt to cross the Uncanny Valley and make their animation look real, they have successfully warded off all watchers. Why? Because there’s something built inside of us that makes us feel uneasy about what we are seeing. We know that what we see isn’t human. It’s missing something. My guess is we know it’s not real because it doesn’t have that breath of life…it doesn’t have a soul, like we do, and for some reason we can instinctually point that out whether we realize it or not.
Part of me believes we will never be able to cross the Uncanny Valley. The other part of me is praying that we don’t. What happens when we go into complete realism and say we are playing a war game? What happens when the people we are killing look like real people? How will that effect us in the real world? Will it desensitize us? Or will we be able to play it at all without feeling sick?
Why do we strive for complete realism? Right now some video games look real enough so that we are separated from the real world while playing, though our minds still process it like a game. Take Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The characters certainly look human but they are in no way photo-realistic. Would you play that game if it looked like real people? I don’t think I would.
Instead of striving for something that is either impossible to achieve or something that will inevitably be like opening Pandora’s box, why not use the graphic engines we have and play around in different art styles? It certainly doesn’t work for every game but look below at some great games that shy away from realism yet the games are incredibly fun and the graphics are nice ta boot!
Little Big Planet
Team Fortress 2
Zelda: Windwaker
Okami
