How much should be left to your imagination, and when?

[J T]

As someone that plays games from all different time periods, I notice that a lot of early games with simple graphics have a certain charm that comes from them being symbolic representations of something that you are otherwise left to imagine. Modern games have some eyepopping visuals though that don't require imagination, just observation. I like both, but sometimes I complain new games are too realistic, and other times I complain old games have overly simplistic graphics.

There is a time and a place for everything. When do you think it is best for a game to simplify visuals and leave it to your imagination, and when should they go for a sensory overload?

[Original_Name]

Y'know, I've been eying this thread for awhile because I find it a very interesting subject, but was waiting for someone else to post so I could bounce off of them... it's such a wide-open aspect of games and art in general and if I tried to dissect the entirety of artistic presentation in video games, I'd be sitting here at this computer monitor until my vision was 2,000/2,000, so I'll just talk about hyper-realism for now.

For the most part, I find hyper-realism to be largely unappealing because it usually has that nagging feeling of, "Couldn't they have used all these resources to make something with STYLE?" BUT, there are times in which it has been used in order to shake things up in ways which I find highly commendable.

I think that using the current technology in order to produce as hyper-realistic a world as is currently possible is a thing that is most respectable when it is used to portray or emphasize a certain aspect of the game, particularly if that aspect is more phantastical than one would expect from the real world. I think that Yu Suzuki is probably the most compelling developer in this school of design (or at least he's the one who pops out most prominently when I think of it). Y'see, speaking purely in terms of pure gameplay, OutRun would be no different if it were represented in the fairly cutting-edge way it had or if it had looked like Pole Position. For the time, it was very realistic and believable -- lots of attention paid to the detail of the Testa Rossa and those riding it, believable patterns in the traffic, down-to-earth environments with realistic detail, and physics which were very intricate... but as you crash into a billboard and watch your Ferrari do insane, violent cork-screwing flips in the air as though someone suddenly flipped an anti-gravity switch, sending its hapless riders skidding ass-first onto the sand, your suspension of disbelief is completely shattered in an instant... which is what makes the crash so much more exciting. If everything was already crazy, that crash wouldn't have as much of an impact on the player. So although it's a psychologically simple trick to use on the player to make that crash seem like the coolest thing he's ever seen in his life for that instant, it's still a legitimate use of the realism.

That is to say, I'm a fan of hyper-realism if it is used to create some effect other than "Look how realistic it is." You don't have to go and break the realism on a whim in order to use it well, though. Certain games wouldn't be the same experience without the incredible realism... games which attempt to genuinely simulate the real world should be applauded for picking realism over style so long as there's some purpose for it. Shenmue, a game which was attempting to make you feel as though you were living an actual factual life, highly benefited from using the highest-fidelity graphics possible at the time... it didn't look like a video game, so you treated it as something else... I think that now that it does look like a video game people will therefore treat it like a video game -- and expect the things they're used to seeing in video games being prevalent -- and those who didn't play it at the time won't get all that they should out of it. They'll never understand how those graphics were once the game's greatest asset in making you believe the world as your own and accept its pacing and intentionally-mundane aspects... it conditioned you to something that mirrored a life as normal as your own so that when the sensational things (which were more exciting than most anything that would happen in your own life) happened they gained infinitely more weight. That's the double-edged sword of games and art in general... do you work in the present for those fleeting moments in which you completely change the audience's perception and expectations of the form, or do you go for something which will be less affective but will not age so quickly?

Personally, being a fan of Sega and punk and so forth, I have an immense respect for those "OH MY GOD, IN YOUR FACE," bursts of energy which can only last so long before dissipating once more into obscurity as the cutting-edge dulls. To me there's something very compelling about bringing the future to people in a way that is so intrinsically tied to the present. Perhaps in a way it's masochistic, but only nostalgia can save such experiences once they've reached antiquity... so you live to recreate those nostalgic moments created by the then-new movement, but the familiar nostalgic is never as powerful as the startling sensation of sudden change.

[SpaceBooger]

I had a lengthy response to this, but instead I'll refer to someone much smarter than I:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Albert Einstein

How many times have you heard, or realized, that the book is better than a movie. The reason is that our imagination is just that - ours. With the older games we took more ownership of the character and story because we warp the simple graphics into what ever our imagination wants.
As to Original_Name's gameplay statement. I agree that the graphics in Outrun didn't make it as fun as the gameplay, but I worry that developers put more resources into the graphics than gameplay.
Super Meat Boy is a great example of how I feel. The story is there but bland. The gameplay and level design is phenomenal and the graphics are simple. I don't know for a fact, but it feels like the developer put more into making a "good" game not a "good looking" game.

[ZeroAX]

But the thing is, with modern systems, even if a game doesn't have super detailed graphics (like TF2) the subject still has a form. In old games, everything was badly defined, so you needed to imagine it a bit more detailed. But not anymore. Heck Ever since the Mega Drive/SNES generation games where detailed enough not to need the players imagination to portray a world.


Now if the subject matter is realistic graphics making a game better......very very very rarely. If a game had absolutely realistic gameplay as well, and tried to make the player experience emotions he could only experience in the real world (like how easy it is to die in a war) then yeah go for it.

But most "realistic" shooters are not really realistic. They look real, but they don't play real at all. So imo the graphic resources are better spend on creating a better gameplay experience.

[SpaceBooger]

Heck Ever since the Mega Drive/SNES generation games where detailed enough not to need the players imagination to portray a world.

I disagree to some extent. Look at the fan art of the 16bit era. Link doesn't look like a short pudgy big headed elf like his sprite in LTTP.
I still say that the 16bit era left a lot to the imagination.

[Anapan]

I would not have even imagined this... but it's what came to mind when I read the topic.
Something I found on a zophar.net hosted site

[Limewater]

I've never really felt like games left stuff to my imagination. When I play Adventure, for instance, I don't imagine that the duck-looking dragons are really detailed and move in a realistic way. I see the duck, accept that it is a dragon, and proceed accordingly. Similarly for the hero, he's a dot. I don't imagine some more detailed appearance for him. I accept that he's a dot and proceed to enjoy the game mechanics.

Similarly, I don't think about the view from Mario's eyes while I'm playing Super Mario Bros. If you do that, 2-D platformers don't make a whole lot of sense. Additionally, Mario wouldn't be able to see necessary things, like the flower sticking out of the top of the question box above his head.

I don't get this idea. I mean, if I look at a Picasso painting like this:

http://www.abcgallery.com/P/picasso/picasso21.html,

I'm not just supposed to imagine that it looks like a violin, am I?

I accept that older games and simpler graphics have charm that is lacking in more modern games, but, at least for me, imagination is not the difference.