Why today graphics are brown.

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It will seem that the current (depressive...) trend for brown graphics come from technical limitations.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PhilippeRinguetteAngrignon/20090606/1708/Why_quotNextGen_Gamesquot_Went_Gray_Brown_And_Grey.php

That article is so full of s**t, I have no words.

Quake 1 was brown in 1996, and that WAS because of technological limitations of a breakthrough engine that still had to reconcile 8-bit color palette with next-gen visuals featuring realtime lightsourcing.

That was 1996.

1996.

Today, games are brown because they rip each other off, and because amateur level designers believe "darkness" to be cool. Look at the games, they're not just dark in color, they're dark in content. The so-called "mature" content, which is actually mostly juvenile crap aimed at basest male desires, recycled over and over in different skins.

Games that want to stay colorful, do so. There's more room for that technologically now than ever before.

I agree. The reason we have games that look brown is simply because they are aiming for "realism", and try to get something more gritty. Which I agree is a load of crap, because those games that try to be gritty and realistic aren't all that realistic anyway.

Brown is used because they want to give the feeling of gritty realism. Unlike what others have said here though think of it like this: they aren't trying to make a true gritty, realistic setting, they are trying to give the *feeling* of a gritty, realistic setting. Cinema does this too, various lighting techniques. Think of what The Thing Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, or even the old war movies. They all have a tendency to brown colours.

Sure it is cheap and overused but it is also effective. You just notice it more because so many games fit into the type where that lighting style is effective, where few movies use it. Crysis is a good example of a military/combat style game that didn't use a brown palette.

As for technical limitations, that article talks about consoles lack of ability to render ambient light. Sort of like shadows that add a solid layer of black pigment over the surface, rather than realistic shadows that are uneven in darkness and how bright colours light up objects around them with reflected light. Actually that article is saying how games (on console) are only now just stating to get really nice lighting effects as well as saying the reason why some games, especially older ones would use stylised graphics was to avoid awkward lighting. Where did you get browns from in that article?

Heh will also say that this is getting realistic, or not fake looking, lighting with real mapping and polygon counts so high no one bothers to count em any more. Older games may have had good lighting but not with millions/billions of polygons on screen with real mapped objects.

In gams that let you freely switch out weapons, I laugh when someone mentions realism.

I recently read in my paper an article about the new upcoming "Post Apocolyptic" games. I read it, and it was all the same crap over and over again. Why do we want to shoot zombies again? How does this help us?

Today's graphic are nearly perfect.

Blizzard got a lot of hate mail from fans when the first Diablo 3 play video was released. Fans claimed it was too colorful and demanded Blizzard re-do the game in a darker tone. I'm not kidding.

The development team even made a public statement saying they were happy with the current design, and not to fear--or rather, do, because Diablo 3 is going to be creepier and darker than either of it's predecessors.

When that didn't quiet them, Blizzard made mockups of new D3 monsters; a unicorn that craps rainbows, and a bright blue and white exploding Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Honestly, who wants to limit the denizens of hell to brown, grey, and red? I want all the colors of the rainbow raking my Barbarian's face off.

when you think of it, your going to hell you prepare yourself for the darkness, what would really trip people up is if it were brightly colored, no one would know what to expect. like candy mountain massacre on adult swim

Diablo 1 and even 2 looked less colorful (more monosaturated or whatnot) than a number of areas in Diablo 3.

The people who signed the petition made some very reasonable photoshops of what they'd like Diablo 3 to look like, but their side of the argument has been exaggerated so they could be laughed at.

"Oh noes, they want everything to be dark and monochrome !"

That was not the point. The point was that Warcraft used to have its own graphics style, Diablo used to have its own, and Starcraft - one of its own. For some reason, Blizzard chose to listen to Starcraft fans when they pointed out that it looked too much like Warcraft, but when it came to Diablo, they chose to mock them.

Unfortunately on the Internet everything is black and white. Shades of gray are lost, because most people are either too ignorant or too stupid to care.

That Blizzard T-shirt with the clouds was a sign of the new, arrogant Blizzard. They've become a greedy company. They want to implement microtransactions in Battle.Net 2.0. They divided Starcraft II into 3 separate, full-priced games - nevermind that the elephant's dose of the sound and graphics resources in them is the same, so you are buying half the same sh** you already have !

This "can do no wrong" attitude will eventually be their downfall. Starcraft II, for all its enhancements, is still a rehash of a 12-year-old game that represents a dying genre. Most of today's RTS games that are taken seriously no longer mimic the old Warcraft/C&C mechanics, except of course for the C&C/RA series themselves, which nobody takes seriously anymore.

And since ALL of the current Starcraft fanbase is located in Korea, Starcraft II will have to mimic it very closely.

Starcraft II: The Search For More Money

In a way Blizzard are trapped in regards to SC2. They can't make it even a small bit different, they are reduced to marginal differences. If they did make it different the fan backlash would be like the infuriated flames of hell thrashing at the doors. I agree that the industry relies too much on sequels, most games are either sequels or knock-offs of popular games. At the same time the reason for this is the consumer. SC2 *will* sell more copies than a new RTS setting. SC2 that is very similar to the original *will* sell more copies than an SC2 that went in a new direction.

Say the game Psychonauts. After reading really good reviews about this and enjoying the demo I wanted to buy it. The EB stores didn't stock the PC version, in fact didn't even know it was on PC (this is Aus btw). None of the large shopping chains stocked copies. Not even the small computers stores had it. Thus there really was no way for me to buy it. Now this is because the consumers just didn't want to buy something different, they wanted something they knew was awesome, usually sequels that are over-hyped and under-innovative. Publishers know this too, this is why more sequels and knock-offs get deals and innovative ideas are delegated to the indie scene.

So really you can b***h all you want about what game companies are doing. The real problem though is the consumer. Perhaps not many here but the gamer tard teenagers that want to be Captain Awesome Man and blow stuff up and be told how awesome they are while they are fed gameplay so easy a 7 year old can play as good as them. Its the same with the Twilight movies. They are stupid movies, have stupid plots, the most bland, stereotypical characters and story, they are abominations of film. Yet they appeal to legions of the angsty, emo, self-delusional-feelings-of-difference afflicted teenagers so much so that the franchise is a massive hit.

Beyond that graphics are getting amazing. As the article in the OP's post said even consoles are catching up to PCs and putting out some great graphics. I would think perhaps ~DVD quality graphics in games is not too far away. Pity that as the cost of providing ever increasing graphics rises so too does the chance that innovative AAA title games will not be made.


As I said, its not about realism but rather the feeling of realism. Games of course aren't realistic but a more realistic game would have you carrying say 3 or 4 weapons and a less realistic one would have you with 6 or more weapons. Another aspect is fluidity, as important as realism. Most games now have really limited inventory systems rather than give you weight and carry w/e within that limit. Limited inventory removes the weight juggling hassle and allows for more fluid gameplay.

So what if useing browns allows them to avoid the fact they have not yet matered ilumination of ligjht bouncing off from different colloured surfaces, they should use more collourful palets like the last generation's which didn't bother with useing darker colours because they were better at light and shadows.

Really a great deal of games like to use dark tones becaus if it is too bright it feels too juvenile, just look at how many might be turned from Viva Pinata (which was a good game) because oit was too colourfull. Also with how technology is going with the current gen, a more realistic setting can feel more real with concealing some of the limits rather then making it in the face. Maybe you will get better lighting in the next one, it has not improved.

I am not "bitching about what game companies are doing", but pointing out the de-evolution of Blizzard specifically, and their growing arrogance as part of it.

Most other game companies are design-by-committee dollar printing machines, and so they always were. Blizzard used to be different.

I will agree with you about StarCraft 2's three-package release cycle. Even though they're including multiplayer from the getgo and claim packages 2 and 3 will only contain the campaigns, I don't believe it. They are going to make the Zerg and Protoss games into full expansions, which will be optional, but still include plenty of new content we'll want to shell out money for. Competitive players will have to buy them.

I'll be forgiving if the second and third games are good and also priced at 30 bucks, but if they try to charge us 150$ for the complete game, that's one jerk move.

I'll agree there. Till before WoW Blizzard's highest value was on quality. The polish, balance, style, etc of their games was always right up there. They also do listen to fans but are smart enough to filter out the "fanboy" buzz. SC2 is going to be very similar to SC1 and so there is not much negative comment on it, they are delivering what the fans want. D3 is where they are changing the art style to a degree. Of course I can't help feel that this is motivated by making the game "more marketable". SC2 well, If the second and third instalments are more than AU$45 then either they are doing a blatant rip off or they are going to contain the most god damn amazing story ever.

Also I sometimes write quite belligerently. No offence meant to anyone, I do without realising

Maybe it has something to do with being bought out by Activision.

After reading that article, it's kind of misleading in a few ways...we've actually had radiosity lighting for a very long time (Quake 2 and Half-Life popularized it), but the surging popularity of real-time lighting kind of killed that off.

Having that rad lighting actually reflect the colors of the objects it bounces off, though...I've only seen that in one game ever (and I really want to see it in other games). It was some procedurally generated space sim, heck if I can remember what it was called, and searching for it isn't bringing anything up.