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One big issue I never understood is why do we need photorealism in games at all. They seem to benefit card manufacturers and graphic programmers, but other than

One big issue I never understood is why do we need photorealism in games at all. They seem to benefit card manufacturers and graphic programmers, but other than that I feel it has nothing to do — and in fact may have negative impact on game quality.

bre1010 1y ago
Completely agree. People lament the death of the RTS genre for all kinds of reasons but I think the biggest one was the early-2000s switch to 3D. Performance considerations meant you have way fewer units. The only exception was that Supreme Commander was somehow able to get around this, but suffered heavily from the second big problem with 3D RTSes: the tiny unit models are so much harder to tell apart in 3D compared to 2D. The RTS switch to 3D was a mistake and I think RTSes will continue to fail until their developers realize what actually makes them fun is actively hindered by this technology.
- nntwozz 1y ago
  I'm on the gameplay > graphics bandwagon too but StarCraft II and Age of Empires IV are proof that 3D is not the problem.
smt88 1y ago
I agree it doesn't benefit most games, but it's still genuinely amazing to see sometimes. I suspect part of the challenge with making a hit game with last-gen graphics (like Breath of the Wild) is that you need actual artists to make it look good.
eviks 1y ago
How do you understand other human desires? That is, what is different about the desire to match reality in other mediums is different from other more understandable desires?
senko 1y ago
This, in a nutshell, is why Nintendo is doing so well. Their hardware is underpowered, games look like cheap cartoons, but the effort spent into gameplay more than compensates.
- pjerem 1y ago
  I don't agree here. Nintendo games don't look like cheap cartoons at all. They are absolutely not photorealistic but they do put a lot of work on the aesthetics/art and it's most of the time relly impressive once you take the hardware limitations into account. Mario 64 ran on the same console that was known for its 3D blur. Mario Galaxy 1&2 (which are still totally modern in terms of aesthetics) ran on what was basically an overclocked gamecube. Mario Kart 8 which is still more beautiful than a lot of modern games ran on the Switch, which is itself based on a 2015 mid-range smartphone hardware.
  - ascagnel_ 1y ago
    I think it's more that Nintendo's choice of hardware (and its relative lack of horsepower) force them into more stylized visuals because it means photo-realism is basically off the table to start with. We the audience tend not to care, because Nintendo has capable artists who can create something aesthetically pleasing outside of "realistic" graphics.
    - immibis 1y ago
      I think they don't want to make games that need more graphics power. Even back to the Wii, it was an enhanced GameCube GPU.
- dartharva 1y ago
  There are tens (if not hundreds) of indie and B-games that offer the same experience as most current Nintendo titles. Nintendo is doing well more because of nostalgia - it's the parents buying those consoles for their kids because they have very fond memories with Nintendo from their own childhoods.
rendaw 1y ago
I think, like polygon count, resolution, FPS, etc, realism is very easy to objectively assess and compare even with no artistic background, which makes it a target both for gamers (who want to explain why they like a game, or debate which game is better) and studios who want something they can point to. IMO it leads to really stilted experiences, like where now you have some photo realistic person with their foot hovering slightly in space, or all that but you still see leaves clipping through eachother, or the unanny valley of a super realistic human whose eyes have a robotic lock on your face, etc. Physical interaction with game worlds (wasd and a single pivot, or maybe a joystick and a couple buttons) hasn't increased in depth in 20 years which only emphasizes the disjointedness.
- ehnto 1y ago
  I totally agree with your last paragraph except to add: there has actually been some great advances in interaction, but people vote with their playtime, and I think the reality is that the "median gamer" is totally content with WASD + mouse/the typical controller thumbstick movement. In the same way that so many are content that many game mechanics boil down to combat and health bars. I am personally not content with that and I explore all I can, and am trying to make games that skirt the trends a little bit. But that stark contrast between visual fidelity but a lack of interactivity has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. You can even do so much more with just mouse and keyboard interactions, but I think it's overshadowed by the much lower risk visual fidelity goals.
glimshe 1y ago
We don't need photorealism in games, but it does help with immersion. Many people, like me, feel like they are inside the game world, rather than playing a game with a TV/monitor in front of them. Photorealism is essential for this feeling - at least for me . The most amazing gaming experience I've ever had was walking around the city at night in Cyberpunk 2077. For the first time in my life, I felt I was actually in the future. Zelda can't pull that off with me, despite being a great game from other perspectives.
- ehnto 1y ago
  You're not alone, Cyberpunk's blend of near-future with realism whilst maintaining a clear art style that is not total realism is very immersive. I have spent countless hours wandering around Night City, not even playing the main gameplay.
  - XorNot 1y ago
    CP2077 was the game I drove most carefully in when not on a mission, just coz it felt right that V wouldn't be hooning around his home turf. The immersion was incredible.
- Nicook 1y ago
  Out of curiosity do you not get immersed in books?
  - dostick 1y ago
    You can get immersed in anything. With games or VR realism, it’s like extra depth of immersion when your brain switch to think in same way as you think in real world rather than adapting to physics or terrain of fake world.
  - glimshe 1y ago
    I do, but not like cyberpunk. I like to both read and watch movies, but I feel a lot more immersed with images than I do with words. It's not a binary rating (immersed vs not immersed), it's a gradient that makes things resonate more strongly with photorealism. This is one reason, I believe, why some people can't stand animated cartoons. I like them but I know many people who won't even consider watching animation.
ryukoposting 1y ago
My take is that video game devs learn to aspire to cinema, since they're both making "entertainment art that exists on a screen" and cinema is more widely accepted as art among the intelligentsia (not that I agree).
Tade0 1y ago
This. To me one of the reasons why Coffee Stain Studios is such a successful publisher is that its games typically don't push for visual realism for the sake of it (hardly possible anyway when they feature dwarves, alien species and the like).
simiones 1y ago
For the same reason it was searched for in painting for so long, and for the same reason movies and plays often meticulously recreate (or film in) real locales and use period-appropriate attire: people, by and large, love looking at reality way more than stylized images. There are exceptions, but the general public will almost always prefer a photo-realistic renaissance painting to a Picasso portrait, a lavish period piece like Titanic to an experimental set design like Dogville.
windward 1y ago
Some games are sold just so the end user can enjoy exercising their new GPU and monitor. Crysis and Control come to mind.
- Arainach 1y ago
  >Control Did we play the same game? Some of the best lore-building and environmental theming around, paired with some cool mechanics? Sure, the combat got repetitive but this was hardly something to "just sell GPUs"
  - windward 1y ago
    Nevertheless, it was commonly used for showing off (cloudy, particle-y) raytracing.
    - badsectoracula 1y ago
      Yes but Control isn't sold "just so the end user can enjoy exercising their new GPU and monitor", it is sold for gamers to play a great game. And IMO it is Remedy's best game since Max Payne 2 (i haven't played Alan Wake 2 though) because of its gameplay and atmosphere, not because of its visuals (which, do not get me wrong, are great, but that is largely because of the art direction and visual design, not because of raytracing -- in fact personally i first played and finished the game on an RX 5700 XT which has no raytracing at all and had to tone down a few visual effects, but still found the visuals great).
      - windward 1y ago
        I don't really see your point. It was used by benchmarking youtubers for that benchmarking, so it at least sold to them for that reason. It's also the reason I bought it: any later enjoyment is unrelated.
        Arainach 1y ago
        Lots of things are used for benchmarking. Very few are made with it in mind. Crysis' system requirements at launch were so far above what most people had that I'll give you that. Control wasn't that way at all.
tmtvl 1y ago
Photorealism is a bad idea if your movement engine isn't good enough to handle the character walking around on uneven terrain. For racing games or flight simulators or such it is less of a problem, but seeing a regular person being absolutely flummoxed by a knee-high wall is massively immersion breaking. It's something I really noticed when playing Disaster Report 4, where the people look amazingly realistic but some restrictions are clearly just 'developers didn't make this bit walkable'.
- glitchc 1y ago
  This is true in Wukong too, which is otherwise a very good-looking game. There are various points where rocks and scaffolds look just as climbable as those in the game area, yet the game engine places an invisible wall in your way. It breaks immersion instantly.
  - Tyr42 1y ago
    I think it's more that they didn't have the display language to mark those inaccessible parts of the world as "boring", and prevent the player from wanting the walk into that invisible wall in the first place. Or placing the invisible wall 1m infront of a real wall for NO REASON. While also expecting you to go around searching for hidden goodies nd secret paths. I swear, the invisible walls are the only thing pushing it to a 9/10 from a 10/10 for me.
- Swizec 1y ago
  > For racing games or flight simulators or such it is less of a problem, Cars are also easier to make photorealistic. Less uncanny valley effect, lots of flat shiny surfaces. What absolutely breaks immersion for me in most AAA car games is the absolute lack of crash, scratch, and dirt mechanics. Cars racing around the track for 2 hours don’t look like showroom pieces! Make ‘em dirty darn it. And when I crash into a wall … I’m really excited to try Wreckfest 2 when I get around to it. Arcade-ish driving, not super photorealistic, they put it all on realistic soft body collision physics instead.
  - 1y ago
ekianjo 1y ago
sales of games say otherwise. 2d pixel games have some occasional hits but the large number of games that make money go for more realism.
braiamp 1y ago
> One big issue I never understood is why do we need photorealism in games at all Because WOW factor sells, specially if it's a new ip. You can see most trailers full of comments "this looks bad".
__s 1y ago
Solar Ash is a good example of a non photorealistic 3d game
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lieks 1y ago
It's a lot easier to get a large team of artists to follow the same artstyle when that artstyle is just "realism". Also, photoscans are convenient.
fleabitdev 1y ago
I've wondered whether photorealism creates its own demand. Players spend hours in high-realism game worlds, their eyes adjust, and game worlds from ten years ago suddenly feel wrong; not just old-fashioned, but fake. This is also true for non-photorealistic 3D games. They benefit from high-tech effects like outline shaders, sharp shadows, anti-aliasing and LoD blending - but all of that tech is improving over time, so older efforts don't look quite right any more, and today's efforts won't look quite right in 2045. When a game developer decides to step off this treadmill, they usually make a retro game. I'd like to see more deliberately low-tech games which aren't retro games. If modern players think your game looks good on downlevel hardware, then it will continue to look good as hardware continues to improve - I think this is one reason why Nintendo games have so much staying power. This has been the norm in 2D game development for ages, but it's much more difficult in 3D. For example, if the player is ever allowed to step outdoors, you'll struggle to meet modern expectations for draw distance and pop-in - and even if your game manages to have cutting-edge draw distance for 2025, who can say whether future players will still find it convincing? The solution is to only put things in the camera frustum when you know you can draw them with full fidelity; everything in the game needs to look as good as it's ever going to look.
energy123 1y ago
There is no "we". Some people like it some of the time.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  Yeah that’s fair.
pradn 1y ago
A large section of the gaming public sees photo-realistic games as serious, and prefers them for high-budget games. It's a rat race for devs though - its just incredibly expensive to create high quality models, textures, maps. I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077, and while the graphics are great, it's clear they could do more in the visual realm. It doesn't use current gen hardware to the maximum, in every way, because they also targeted last-gen consoles. I'm thinking in particular of the PS5s incredibly fast IO engine with specialized decompression hardware. In a game like Rachet and Clank: A Rift Apart, that hardware is used to jump you through multiple worlds incredibly quickly, loading a miraculous amount of assets. In Cyberpunk, you still have to wait around in elevators, which seem like diegetic loading screens. And also the general clunkiness of the animations, the way there's only like two or three body shapes that everyone conforms to - these things would go farther in creating a living/breathing world, in the visual realm. In other realms, the way you can't talk to everyone or go into every building is a bit of a bummer.
- ferguess_k 1y ago
  I think chasing photorealism also hurts the modding community, which hurts the players. No ordinary modding community could push out photorealistic contents in a realistic span of time. I think that's why we are seeing less and less mods nowadays comparing to the late 90s and early 2000s. For FPS, HL2/Doom3 is probably the last generation that enjoys a huge modding community. Anything above it pushes ordinary modders away. I believe it is still quite possible to make mods for say UE4, but it just took such a long time that the projects never got finished. In certain way, I so much wish the graphics froze by the year 2005.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    HL2/Doom3 have built in mod support, so I don't think it's fair to compare it to games that don't have mod support.
    - ferguess_k 1y ago
      I think it's fair to compare games to games though. Spending tons of $$ and time on shiny graphics features while totally ignoring the modding community (but I get that's probably because no one expects people to mod AAA games nowadays, unlike say 20-30 years ago) is a choice made by the developers.

bre1010 1y ago

Completely agree. People lament the death of the RTS genre for all kinds of reasons but I think the biggest one was the early-2000s switch to 3D. Performance considerations meant you have way fewer units. The only exception was that Supreme Commander was somehow able to get around this, but suffered heavily from the second big problem with 3D RTSes: the tiny unit models are so much harder to tell apart in 3D compared to 2D. The RTS switch to 3D was a mistake and I think RTSes will continue to fail until their developers realize what actually makes them fun is actively hindered by this technology.

nntwozz 1y ago
I'm on the gameplay > graphics bandwagon too but StarCraft II and Age of Empires IV are proof that 3D is not the problem.

smt88 1y ago

I agree it doesn't benefit most games, but it's still genuinely amazing to see sometimes. I suspect part of the challenge with making a hit game with last-gen graphics (like Breath of the Wild) is that you need actual artists to make it look good.

eviks 1y ago

How do you understand other human desires? That is, what is different about the desire to match reality in other mediums is different from other more understandable desires?

senko 1y ago

This, in a nutshell, is why Nintendo is doing so well. Their hardware is underpowered, games look like cheap cartoons, but the effort spent into gameplay more than compensates.

pjerem 1y ago
I don't agree here. Nintendo games don't look like cheap cartoons at all. They are absolutely not photorealistic but they do put a lot of work on the aesthetics/art and it's most of the time relly impressive once you take the hardware limitations into account. Mario 64 ran on the same console that was known for its 3D blur. Mario Galaxy 1&2 (which are still totally modern in terms of aesthetics) ran on what was basically an overclocked gamecube. Mario Kart 8 which is still more beautiful than a lot of modern games ran on the Switch, which is itself based on a 2015 mid-range smartphone hardware.
- ascagnel_ 1y ago
  I think it's more that Nintendo's choice of hardware (and its relative lack of horsepower) force them into more stylized visuals because it means photo-realism is basically off the table to start with. We the audience tend not to care, because Nintendo has capable artists who can create something aesthetically pleasing outside of "realistic" graphics.
  - immibis 1y ago
    I think they don't want to make games that need more graphics power. Even back to the Wii, it was an enhanced GameCube GPU.
dartharva 1y ago
There are tens (if not hundreds) of indie and B-games that offer the same experience as most current Nintendo titles. Nintendo is doing well more because of nostalgia - it's the parents buying those consoles for their kids because they have very fond memories with Nintendo from their own childhoods.

rendaw 1y ago

I think, like polygon count, resolution, FPS, etc, realism is very easy to objectively assess and compare even with no artistic background, which makes it a target both for gamers (who want to explain why they like a game, or debate which game is better) and studios who want something they can point to. IMO it leads to really stilted experiences, like where now you have some photo realistic person with their foot hovering slightly in space, or all that but you still see leaves clipping through eachother, or the unanny valley of a super realistic human whose eyes have a robotic lock on your face, etc. Physical interaction with game worlds (wasd and a single pivot, or maybe a joystick and a couple buttons) hasn't increased in depth in 20 years which only emphasizes the disjointedness.

ehnto 1y ago
I totally agree with your last paragraph except to add: there has actually been some great advances in interaction, but people vote with their playtime, and I think the reality is that the "median gamer" is totally content with WASD + mouse/the typical controller thumbstick movement. In the same way that so many are content that many game mechanics boil down to combat and health bars. I am personally not content with that and I explore all I can, and am trying to make games that skirt the trends a little bit. But that stark contrast between visual fidelity but a lack of interactivity has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. You can even do so much more with just mouse and keyboard interactions, but I think it's overshadowed by the much lower risk visual fidelity goals.

glimshe 1y ago

We don't need photorealism in games, but it does help with immersion. Many people, like me, feel like they are inside the game world, rather than playing a game with a TV/monitor in front of them. Photorealism is essential for this feeling - at least for me . The most amazing gaming experience I've ever had was walking around the city at night in Cyberpunk 2077. For the first time in my life, I felt I was actually in the future. Zelda can't pull that off with me, despite being a great game from other perspectives.

ehnto 1y ago
You're not alone, Cyberpunk's blend of near-future with realism whilst maintaining a clear art style that is not total realism is very immersive. I have spent countless hours wandering around Night City, not even playing the main gameplay.
- XorNot 1y ago
  CP2077 was the game I drove most carefully in when not on a mission, just coz it felt right that V wouldn't be hooning around his home turf. The immersion was incredible.
Nicook 1y ago
Out of curiosity do you not get immersed in books?
- dostick 1y ago
  You can get immersed in anything. With games or VR realism, it’s like extra depth of immersion when your brain switch to think in same way as you think in real world rather than adapting to physics or terrain of fake world.
- glimshe 1y ago
  I do, but not like cyberpunk. I like to both read and watch movies, but I feel a lot more immersed with images than I do with words. It's not a binary rating (immersed vs not immersed), it's a gradient that makes things resonate more strongly with photorealism. This is one reason, I believe, why some people can't stand animated cartoons. I like them but I know many people who won't even consider watching animation.

ryukoposting 1y ago

My take is that video game devs learn to aspire to cinema, since they're both making "entertainment art that exists on a screen" and cinema is more widely accepted as art among the intelligentsia (not that I agree).

Tade0 1y ago

This. To me one of the reasons why Coffee Stain Studios is such a successful publisher is that its games typically don't push for visual realism for the sake of it (hardly possible anyway when they feature dwarves, alien species and the like).

simiones 1y ago

For the same reason it was searched for in painting for so long, and for the same reason movies and plays often meticulously recreate (or film in) real locales and use period-appropriate attire: people, by and large, love looking at reality way more than stylized images. There are exceptions, but the general public will almost always prefer a photo-realistic renaissance painting to a Picasso portrait, a lavish period piece like Titanic to an experimental set design like Dogville.

windward 1y ago

Some games are sold just so the end user can enjoy exercising their new GPU and monitor. Crysis and Control come to mind.

Arainach 1y ago
>Control Did we play the same game? Some of the best lore-building and environmental theming around, paired with some cool mechanics? Sure, the combat got repetitive but this was hardly something to "just sell GPUs"
- windward 1y ago
  Nevertheless, it was commonly used for showing off (cloudy, particle-y) raytracing.
  - badsectoracula 1y ago
    Yes but Control isn't sold "just so the end user can enjoy exercising their new GPU and monitor", it is sold for gamers to play a great game. And IMO it is Remedy's best game since Max Payne 2 (i haven't played Alan Wake 2 though) because of its gameplay and atmosphere, not because of its visuals (which, do not get me wrong, are great, but that is largely because of the art direction and visual design, not because of raytracing -- in fact personally i first played and finished the game on an RX 5700 XT which has no raytracing at all and had to tone down a few visual effects, but still found the visuals great).
    - windward 1y ago
      I don't really see your point. It was used by benchmarking youtubers for that benchmarking, so it at least sold to them for that reason. It's also the reason I bought it: any later enjoyment is unrelated.
      - Arainach 1y ago
        Lots of things are used for benchmarking. Very few are made with it in mind. Crysis' system requirements at launch were so far above what most people had that I'll give you that. Control wasn't that way at all.

tmtvl 1y ago

Photorealism is a bad idea if your movement engine isn't good enough to handle the character walking around on uneven terrain. For racing games or flight simulators or such it is less of a problem, but seeing a regular person being absolutely flummoxed by a knee-high wall is massively immersion breaking. It's something I really noticed when playing Disaster Report 4, where the people look amazingly realistic but some restrictions are clearly just 'developers didn't make this bit walkable'.

glitchc 1y ago
This is true in Wukong too, which is otherwise a very good-looking game. There are various points where rocks and scaffolds look just as climbable as those in the game area, yet the game engine places an invisible wall in your way. It breaks immersion instantly.
- Tyr42 1y ago
  I think it's more that they didn't have the display language to mark those inaccessible parts of the world as "boring", and prevent the player from wanting the walk into that invisible wall in the first place. Or placing the invisible wall 1m infront of a real wall for NO REASON. While also expecting you to go around searching for hidden goodies nd secret paths. I swear, the invisible walls are the only thing pushing it to a 9/10 from a 10/10 for me.
Swizec 1y ago
> For racing games or flight simulators or such it is less of a problem, Cars are also easier to make photorealistic. Less uncanny valley effect, lots of flat shiny surfaces. What absolutely breaks immersion for me in most AAA car games is the absolute lack of crash, scratch, and dirt mechanics. Cars racing around the track for 2 hours don’t look like showroom pieces! Make ‘em dirty darn it. And when I crash into a wall … I’m really excited to try Wreckfest 2 when I get around to it. Arcade-ish driving, not super photorealistic, they put it all on realistic soft body collision physics instead.
- 1y ago

ekianjo 1y ago

sales of games say otherwise. 2d pixel games have some occasional hits but the large number of games that make money go for more realism.

braiamp 1y ago

> One big issue I never understood is why do we need photorealism in games at all Because WOW factor sells, specially if it's a new ip. You can see most trailers full of comments "this looks bad".

__s 1y ago

Solar Ash is a good example of a non photorealistic 3d game

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

lieks 1y ago

It's a lot easier to get a large team of artists to follow the same artstyle when that artstyle is just "realism". Also, photoscans are convenient.

fleabitdev 1y ago

I've wondered whether photorealism creates its own demand. Players spend hours in high-realism game worlds, their eyes adjust, and game worlds from ten years ago suddenly feel wrong; not just old-fashioned, but fake. This is also true for non-photorealistic 3D games. They benefit from high-tech effects like outline shaders, sharp shadows, anti-aliasing and LoD blending - but all of that tech is improving over time, so older efforts don't look quite right any more, and today's efforts won't look quite right in 2045. When a game developer decides to step off this treadmill, they usually make a retro game. I'd like to see more deliberately low-tech games which aren't retro games. If modern players think your game looks good on downlevel hardware, then it will continue to look good as hardware continues to improve - I think this is one reason why Nintendo games have so much staying power. This has been the norm in 2D game development for ages, but it's much more difficult in 3D. For example, if the player is ever allowed to step outdoors, you'll struggle to meet modern expectations for draw distance and pop-in - and even if your game manages to have cutting-edge draw distance for 2025, who can say whether future players will still find it convincing? The solution is to only put things in the camera frustum when you know you can draw them with full fidelity; everything in the game needs to look as good as it's ever going to look.

energy123 1y ago

There is no "we". Some people like it some of the time.

markus_zhang 1y ago
Yeah that’s fair.

pradn 1y ago

A large section of the gaming public sees photo-realistic games as serious, and prefers them for high-budget games. It's a rat race for devs though - its just incredibly expensive to create high quality models, textures, maps. I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077, and while the graphics are great, it's clear they could do more in the visual realm. It doesn't use current gen hardware to the maximum, in every way, because they also targeted last-gen consoles. I'm thinking in particular of the PS5s incredibly fast IO engine with specialized decompression hardware. In a game like Rachet and Clank: A Rift Apart, that hardware is used to jump you through multiple worlds incredibly quickly, loading a miraculous amount of assets. In Cyberpunk, you still have to wait around in elevators, which seem like diegetic loading screens. And also the general clunkiness of the animations, the way there's only like two or three body shapes that everyone conforms to - these things would go farther in creating a living/breathing world, in the visual realm. In other realms, the way you can't talk to everyone or go into every building is a bit of a bummer.

ferguess_k 1y ago
I think chasing photorealism also hurts the modding community, which hurts the players. No ordinary modding community could push out photorealistic contents in a realistic span of time. I think that's why we are seeing less and less mods nowadays comparing to the late 90s and early 2000s. For FPS, HL2/Doom3 is probably the last generation that enjoys a huge modding community. Anything above it pushes ordinary modders away. I believe it is still quite possible to make mods for say UE4, but it just took such a long time that the projects never got finished. In certain way, I so much wish the graphics froze by the year 2005.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  HL2/Doom3 have built in mod support, so I don't think it's fair to compare it to games that don't have mod support.
  - ferguess_k 1y ago
    I think it's fair to compare games to games though. Spending tons of $$ and time on shiny graphics features while totally ignoring the modding community (but I get that's probably because no one expects people to mod AAA games nowadays, unlike say 20-30 years ago) is a choice made by the developers.