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Videogame Aesthetics: The Future! Tool Use Perhaps a thought tool can be of assistance. The comics creator and analyst Scott McCloud devised an extremely useful one, named the picture plane, for describing visual representations. Though applied explicitly to comics in his book "Understanding Comics", as he explains it "represents the total pictorial vocabulary of comics or of any of the visual arts". A game related equivalent is shown below:
You can read an explanation of the plane by Scott himself, here. Basically, the bottom left is the extreme of absolute photo-realism. In the bottom right are things that are somewhat abstract and semantically meaningful, and at the top is pure abstraction; line and form without any specific symbolic meaning. Games are as easily placed within it as any other visual media, though the development of photo-realism means that if thoroughly charted, games would largely follow a chronological progression from right to left. Being possessed of limitless artistic potential, rules of aethetics such as harmony, rhythm, pattern, contrast, chaos and structure can operate at any point on that plane. The photo-real push, though, seems to have inherited its rules of beauty from chocolate boxes and post-apocalyptic fiction, the net result being that the latest gun renders are as jaded and ubiquitous as any camera club photographs of trains or waterfalls. While developers and publishers race to cram themselves into the bottom left corner of Scott's plane, and are squeezed dry of all the resultant ugly hype, some will continue to work in the largely unexplored territories of visual representation. It's those implementations we need to push game aesthetics outward, but what's been done so far? Current and Recent Work A mod for the original Quake, this replaces the original 3D rendering with various non-photo-realistic visual styles, including pencil sketches and blueprints. All the files necessary to run it can be downloaded from the website.
Rez: A modernised low-poly and wireframe aesthetic inspired by Kandinsky. The visuals and sound effects are synchronised to the music, making it utterly hypnotic.
Darwinia: An intentionally polygonal aesthetic is used here to create a bleak landscape representing a mainframe, which is lathered in pixel-like textures and sprites.
Beyond Good and Evil: This might seem an unusual choice, as it has a fairly typical aesthetic somewhere between photo-real and cartoony. However, blur effects are used several times throughout the game to convey changes in the consciousness and emotional state of the heroine, as opposed to their usual use in conveying world events such as supernatural occurrences or scenery whipping by a speeding vehicle.
Shadow of the Colossus: Currently in production, this uses 3D rendering with a decidedly non-photographic colour palette, often dominated by green and possessing much more harmony than colour contrast.
A UT2004 mod set on the moon, in which the colour palette is restricted entirely to black and white. Sound effects are intentionally omitted, adding to the sense of isolation. The first-person view is mediated by a grimy visor, while the view from vehicles bears a cross pattern reminiscent of Apollo mission photographs.
Evil Genius: A retail game with a deceptively spartan visual aesthetic based on 1960's spy thrillers. Everything is bright, 3D, and minutely yet minimally detailed. This pared down aesthetic serves to accentuate the peerlessly animated myriad actions of your villainous lackeys, such as interrogating enemies, and stealing gold from you then hiding it.
Katamari Damacy: The designers of this faced a problem, in that they needed to populate a scaling world with many hundreds of objects. PS2 poly budgets meant that they could only use simple 3D objects, and this limitation was turned into a strength, infusing the bright, iconic, vaguely cubist aesthetic style at all levels. The aesthetic was retained and explored a bit further in the sequel with an undersea setting and a rather whimsical purple and pink flower garden. Also, the camera was improved in an aesthetically pleasing manner, insofar as any objects that come between the katamari and the camera have a transparency mask applied to them, the shape of which changes from level to level. Arguably, Katamari Damacy is also a good example of the aesthetic being tied more deeply to the game. The simple, almost child-like visual style is a good complement to the basic game mechanics of rolling around collecting stuff, and also the childishly joyous and simple storyline.
Lego Star Wars: Another example of aesthetic integration, this features not only the visually distinct aesthetic of lego, but also has the inseparable mechanics of lego meshed perfectly with the mechanics of Lucas' "Force", both in turn being rolled up into a very efficient and quite delightful game mechanic. The sparse lines of Star Wars sets and Lego sets complement each other well, the lego being constantly present and unselfconsciously blended with more detailed backdrops and world objects.
Mono: Briefly making our way back to 2D games, this is another example of a game aesthetic being tied to mechanics. It looks somewhat like an Asteroids clone, and it is, but the objective is to paint the backdrop by bursting the primary coloured globules to change the colour values in the right places. The goal is to paint 100% of the screen, and if your ship collides with anything it creates a blank spot.
Okami: Work under development, in which you play the Japanese Sun God Amaterasu incarnated as a wolf. The entire 3D game is rendered in the style of Japanese paintings and woodblock prints, making the aesthetic both stunning and thematically relevant.
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