Nz17
09-04-2004, 01:20 AM
The other day, while deep in thought, I reached an apithany - videogames' evolution mirrors that of fine art!
To wit, the art world started out very basic, but artists still had the need to create. Though the tools were crude, art began. At first, with the limited experience and tools at their exposal, the works were primitive, such as cave paintings and haphazard figures made of fur and sticks. Eventually, however, technology advanced, and soon pottery, paints, charcoal, and a plethoria of other options opened up. Artists began to make their work a true art, learning from each other, inventing new techniques and new ways to spread ideas.
After a time, we reach the realism movement. With all the advanced techniques developed, oil painters and line artists could create unbelievably realistic imagery. While breathtaking in a fashion, the work was painstaking and took a great deal of time to produce, with even the smallest inaccuracies completely ruining a painting for an audiance.
Then, the photograph was invented. This freed artists from having to slave over a canvas to produce a photorealistic image, for those people who wanted that could now have it simple and quickly. Artists could finally create art once again!
This spawned a new era in fine arts, the impressionist era. Now freed from the easel, artists could once again experiment, creating new and imaginitive scenary and visuals to feed the mind's higher functions.
All this is perfectly mirrored in the game world. The early technology was very limited, so highly simplistic, symbolic imagery was used. Pitfall Harry looked nothing like a real human, but the interpretive elements were all there to tell us that yes, he is a man, with arms and legs, a torso, and a head. These early 8-bit graphics can be likened to cave paintings.
Then games evolved alongside technology into the 16 and 32 bit eras, where new techiques were produced to create more artistic, enjoyable graphics, and, in some cases, more realism.
Now we have passed the early and middle stages of our evolution, and have reached the realism era, the era where the controlling populous (i.e. the casual gamer) has a say in what is produced in our art. And this populous wants realism.
Soon, however, I believe the technology to produce this realism will reach its "height." Of course, improvements will always occur, but they will become even more marginal with each generation of hardware. Quite soon, we will reach the point where things can't look anymore realistic than they feasibly can. Somewhere around this time a fast, easy to reproduce method of creating these highly believeable worlds will come just as the photographic camera came before.
After this happens, the game developers will be free once again to innovate, to invent, to have fanciful thoughts and designs, and a new golden era of gaming will be among us. And just as those higher-thinking individuals who were bored with the low-level thought necessary to interpret the realism era's paintings, we too shall have our shackles lifted by entering a realm where the right, fanciful brain lobe shall be just as active when playing games as the left, logical brain lobe. Then again, in this new time, perhaps the right lobe shall be even moreso stimulated than the left; one can only hope.
To wit, the art world started out very basic, but artists still had the need to create. Though the tools were crude, art began. At first, with the limited experience and tools at their exposal, the works were primitive, such as cave paintings and haphazard figures made of fur and sticks. Eventually, however, technology advanced, and soon pottery, paints, charcoal, and a plethoria of other options opened up. Artists began to make their work a true art, learning from each other, inventing new techniques and new ways to spread ideas.
After a time, we reach the realism movement. With all the advanced techniques developed, oil painters and line artists could create unbelievably realistic imagery. While breathtaking in a fashion, the work was painstaking and took a great deal of time to produce, with even the smallest inaccuracies completely ruining a painting for an audiance.
Then, the photograph was invented. This freed artists from having to slave over a canvas to produce a photorealistic image, for those people who wanted that could now have it simple and quickly. Artists could finally create art once again!
This spawned a new era in fine arts, the impressionist era. Now freed from the easel, artists could once again experiment, creating new and imaginitive scenary and visuals to feed the mind's higher functions.
All this is perfectly mirrored in the game world. The early technology was very limited, so highly simplistic, symbolic imagery was used. Pitfall Harry looked nothing like a real human, but the interpretive elements were all there to tell us that yes, he is a man, with arms and legs, a torso, and a head. These early 8-bit graphics can be likened to cave paintings.
Then games evolved alongside technology into the 16 and 32 bit eras, where new techiques were produced to create more artistic, enjoyable graphics, and, in some cases, more realism.
Now we have passed the early and middle stages of our evolution, and have reached the realism era, the era where the controlling populous (i.e. the casual gamer) has a say in what is produced in our art. And this populous wants realism.
Soon, however, I believe the technology to produce this realism will reach its "height." Of course, improvements will always occur, but they will become even more marginal with each generation of hardware. Quite soon, we will reach the point where things can't look anymore realistic than they feasibly can. Somewhere around this time a fast, easy to reproduce method of creating these highly believeable worlds will come just as the photographic camera came before.
After this happens, the game developers will be free once again to innovate, to invent, to have fanciful thoughts and designs, and a new golden era of gaming will be among us. And just as those higher-thinking individuals who were bored with the low-level thought necessary to interpret the realism era's paintings, we too shall have our shackles lifted by entering a realm where the right, fanciful brain lobe shall be just as active when playing games as the left, logical brain lobe. Then again, in this new time, perhaps the right lobe shall be even moreso stimulated than the left; one can only hope.