Tag: reviews

Why Style matters more than graphics in Video Games, especially now

There is a general consensus among gamers now, that art style matters more than graphics.

The screenshot above is of a 2001 game known as Empire Earth. It looks rather crude now, but it has a unique style that no other game can replicate.

We have seen this with independent games, which replicate the simpler and colorful graphics of older generations. Photorealism is great in Chatbots if one is attempting to brainstorm how a character appears but there is a place for all sorts of artistic styles. The Japanese have shown this in many of their games. Some games aim for photorealism, but they also show that they want to continue their tradition of having many art styles, especially their homegrown anime. Japanese games often have a reputation for being more stylistic and it’s not surprising that Nintendo did not give up on their original IPs in favor of more mature ideas. They sometimes did have more mature games in their earlier consoles, but this was to compete with Sega and after Sega was beaten, they began to focus on their generally cozy game reputation here.

Style matters more than graphics. I remember that in the 1990s, graphics cards companies had managed to change this idea. Graphics were more important than style as many programmers wanted to showcase the power of their inhouse engines. This was the age of graphics growing every year here. It was truly an exciting age where every game seemed like a foreign country with its own rules.

Now every game seems to have the same GPS navigation and isn’t really interesting here. Unreal Engine is used heavily in many games now, but it is also getting in the way of helping games to distinguish their styles from one another.

It isn’t just in the graphics. It is also in the interfaces also. The interfaces in earlier games were art styles that were peculiar to that one game. Now, too much of it is optimized to be interchangeable between genres and games.

We need to have friction once again. That may make things some what more uncomfortable to use but it will allow for a greater variety of games to made.

The independents are often cited as an example of creativity. However, they cannot carry the industry alone here. They need to work in synergy with middle budget and high budget games. The independents are often works of passion, but they lack the ability to get a product out to the gamers within a reasonable time before they have their attention going to somewhere else.

Style is what companies should be chasing now. We have enough photorealistic games. With generative AI, photorealism is available in a way that surpasses even the best camera.

What we need now is way to encourage the creation of new styles instead of just attempting to outcompete on the issue of photorealistic graphics.

What Total War Medieval III really needs to thrive

Total War: Medieval III has been announced and this what it really needs in order to be a great game that will surpass the previous titles in the series.

It needs to be fun and interesting.

That’s it. While I will write posts later on about specifics, this is the main part that is most important. I have defended Starfield on here, but I realize that the game is more of a sandbox waiting for gameplay to fill in the gaps. Such a game could have done well in the past but not now. Players have been used to optimized experiences. Games that want you have to explore systems is something that games in the generation from the SNES to about the PS1 could get away with. When the PS1 came out, standardization became the trend and the video game industry we have today is the product of that. There were some exceptions in between the way but the emphasis has on been on making everything optimized and holistic.

Total War: Medieval III has to be a holistic game that is also fun and interesting to play. They need to make sure not to overload with too many features here. Focus on making the game fun to play at first and then attempt to add more features. Many games focus on features at the beginning of making a game rather than the user experience.

Total War: Medieval III needs to make sure its art style also does not get in the way of the experience. Some games think they are being sophisticated with their art but its more important to have good gameplay than great graphics. Great graphics can come in a passive experience, but we still stay for the story not the experience of graphics alone. It needs to service the experience, not the experience just servicing the graphics. This happens too many times in movies and we are also seeing it in video games.

They also need to stick to history but not too tightly that it affects the game. I see Total War: Medieval III having a similar nature to Crusader Kings III here, but with more focus on battles you can control in here. The focus on changing history should make for interesting emergent gameplay, something that Paradox Interactive has pioneered but I feel needs more refinement. I believe that this game can accomplish that here.

The user’s needs are important. This is not productivity software but a game. A game needs to be fun and then expand our minds. Sometimes games get too complex and simplicity is bliss.

Why Netflix is not the new cinema

The box office seems to be coming back to life now. Five at Freddy’s and Zootopia 2 are battling it out with other movies such as Wicked for Good and some other stragglers. It seems that the studios are pulling out the big guns in order to save this year so that they can make up some of the money they didn’t have in the previous parts of the year here.

Netflix has Stranger Things 5, Emily in Paris Season 5, but it seems that the magic isn’t there.

I remember years that Netflix would release new titles and it would garner attention. Now, it seems that they are attempting to hold onto their audience rather build it. This explains why they began punishing people who were sharing passwords and putting ads on the cheapest tier. This is adding to the expense of using Netflix and other streaming services. Instead of having one or two places to watch content, you now have them in so many places.

This is not a great arrangement for people now, especially with the novelty of streaming not as strong as before here.

Netflix’s inablity to make originals which match Hollywood’s early output is telling.

Where is Louise Brookes of Netflix? Simple answer: The culture is simply not there.

The idea of having a Charlie Chaplin or Joan Crawford is not happening in the Netflix age. The people who started Netflix were Silicon Valley who didn’t like Blockbuster’s return policy. They managed to create rental giant which became a streaming giant here. They were just interested in a business more than the art. It wasn’t until they began making originals that the art became more important; it was still subordinate in sense to a third concept, the information and archive culture of our age.

Netflix was more interested in using these shows to sell data back to the people who made the content rather than the artistic quality. A few shows and movies could have been seen to be of classic Hollywood quality, but there are not that many shows that reach the brilliance of Hollywood of many decades ago. Maybe of our age but Netflix is going to have be better than that, not just an addition.

Netflix is simply not the new cinema but more of a upstart which thinks it is. They have had successes but most of these were in the beginning of their time of making originals. They are just pumping out more reality television than ever before. Emily in Paris may appeal to many people but Netflix needs to really start focusing on creating artistic movies which can appeal to their audience.

They have a huge audience and yet they make the same content as one saw on the old broadcast channels.

Netflix will continue to gain subscribers counts but it needs more creativity if it wants to retain that audience.

Investors and tech guys generally do not care about creativity. Only investments. Netflix needs to learn how to treats is originals as something more than images on a screen.