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Interestingly, something of a reverse effect is happening in the game development space. I think the driver of the above pattern is mainly economic; as a techno
by _bxg1 8y ago
Interestingly, something of a reverse effect is happening in the game development space. I think the driver of the above pattern is mainly economic; as a technology becomes more and more commercialized, it gets less personal and more streamlined. This is aided by the technology itself improving to allow it to be more efficient. With games, though, the barrier to entry was always (since the 90s, at least) so high that only corporations could participate. So in recent years, the technological strides that have been made have actually allowed the space to become less commercialized, and therefore more personal and diversified.
- sarcasmic 8y agoConsequently, game development these days is more limited by art assets than by programming or game systems design. The difficulty and complexity of producing good-looking, stylistically consistent, original 3D assets has led to sprite-based games, mock pixel art "8-bit" games, and games where form follows function. However, game engines companies now offer asset stores. To OP's point, it's not hard to see a future where some successful indie games are made by stitching together assets and mechanics sourced entirely from others. Would it cheapen the result, despite the talent and effort put into those components none the less grand? Perhaps. Technology and popularity move the goalposts. It increases the amount and/or changes the nature of effort required to attain acclaim.
- _bxg1 8y agoI agree that art is becoming the bottleneck, but I feel the need to point out that pixel-art as a style is not chosen because it's easy. Quite the opposite; it takes more artistic talent to create something abstract that's still expressive than to create something detailed. Asset stores are definitely used to fill gaps in artistic talent/man-hours, though. In fact there's a term for games made out of nothing but hastily slapped-together assets: "asset flips".
- earenndil 8y agoTo a point. I think, however, as the technology increases and gets better, the trend towards realism will overpower. Consider: as assets get more and more complex, the uniqueness of an individual asset will actually decrease. I can easily point out the difference between a tree in the witness and mario 64, because they're both low poly games that do their own thing _instead_ of emulating the real world. If, instead, you ask me to differentiate between a tree in skyrim and one in the last of us, well, they both just look like trees. At this stage, what matters is the visual aesthetic that you're able to create with lighting, with combination of different assets. Whether you happened to make an individual asset yourself will matter increasingly less as time goes on.
- _bxg1 8y agoWhy would people abandon unique styles just because it gets easier to implement a realistic one? An artist's goal isn't just to make something that doesn't look like crap; it's to make something that expresses a certain feeling. Stylism isn't just a band-aid for lack of realism.
- earenndil 8y agoI'm not saying that they'll abandon it, I'm saying that as publicly available art trends towards realism, being an 'asset flip' won't be such a bad thing anymore.
- archagon 8y agoI can speak only for myself, but it feels like the "rules" were still more lax in the 90s. So much of my time was spent toying around with the original Half-Life: making sprays, importing custom models, playing half-finished maps, exploring whatever bizarre mods were trending on Fileplanet. And everyone else was doing the same thing! There might be tons of zany games out there today, but that comfortable feeling of loose, collective exploration is missing. (Well, maybe the Minecraft kids have similar experiences.) Even the user-generated content is overly polished and unsurprising. I miss existing in that collective weird space.
- oblio 8y agoYou just miss your childhood. Those things still exist if you dig a bit. Furthermore, it could have been just your group. Most people I know from back in the 90’s were just playing games.
- digi_owl 8y agoI'd say HL was the beginning of the end of "quirky" mods. Making content for that game was so much more time consuming than grandaddy Quake 1.
- archagon 8y agoI can only imagine; glad I caught the tail end of it!