Despite all of the graphical advances, increasingly life-like CG in games has also brought with it some surprising realizations.
The most troubling of these is 'The Uncanny Valley', or the sharp drop in emotional response from an audience as character subtleties and likenesses improve. As is the case with characters in many current Xbox 360 games, our attraction has turned to revulsion. We get creeped out. Is this the result of all our time, money, and hard work? All the per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows, normal maps, and motion capture of Madden '07 has actually degraded the emotional connection players had with previous versions of the game -- 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
...
In the quest for this immersive photo-real environment, creativity has died on the operating table. Given all these fantastic tools, the best we can do is attempt to duplicate our own environment on the same regurgitated topics and themes. In an interview with Tomek Bagiński on his recent CG film 'Fallen Art,' Tomek states that he doesn't see any reason to do photo-real 3d graphics unless you are working for the SFX film industry. His reasoning is that stylized art is far more interesting to look at than just another attempt at reality. The photo-real painting movement ended after a brief period in the late 1960's for exactly the same reason - it was boring to look at. Guess what? So are the majority of today's video games.
My User Contributions master list - my initial post links are down but scroll down page to find list to active links
