While watching a Spore video, i heard will wright say that after the CG industry reaches the point where the line between real and 3d is completely erased, Digital Artists will aim more towards expressing emotion and surrealistic things, rather than realism (much in the same way other forms of art evolved). I myself can’t wait for that era to arrive, but what do you think? I personally am attracted to games like Spore, JSRF, and Black and White; What attracts you more, Realism or surrealism?
I vote for realism because it looks cooler and most game that you have to go around killing everyone arent gonna be surrealistic (whatever that means)
SURREALISM of course. For Realism i don’t need computers, just look around yourself. Creating realistic environments is sometimes boring. Both for the player as for the creator. We CAN create more than that. I adore people with the fantasy and the ability to show it to others. To be able to create surrealistic environments is a prove of mental force. Not many can do this.
3D-Penguin,
I am with you on this one. If you want reality, go outside (although you’ll soon find out that it is highly over-rated!).
I would say surrealism, only not if it’s just another “zombie craze”. I think the imagination is wonderful and that people can use it extremely creatively. Besides, I have a hard time making my stuff look real anyways…ha ha.
~~Stu
Hum … surrealism is an art mouvement from europe in the 40/50’s, I think what you’re talking about is “fantasy vs realism” …
both directions are interesting because it question the reality anyway (VR isn’t reality, just an image of it)
I would have added another category : abstract … ex : pong or tetris
although you’ll soon find out that it is highly over-rated!
Good one, it makes me smile everytime i read it. I think even Dali would have liked that remark. It’s a pity that only huge oil paintings or huge sculptures (size matters!:() are considered art. Thats a bit too materialistic for my taste. How could that be changed?
Well coming from the stand point of blender, I would go for surrealism. If you go for a real look, things look cheap. But if you go for a more surreal art style things well look alot better.
I’d say both: for a really good surrealistic effect, you need realism but with something just a little off (see a lot of scenes in Jacobs Ladder- normal everyday settings, but there’s just this little something that’s just not quite “right”). That makes it all feel weird and more dreamlike. Contrast.
(same principal in other applications: if you want a death to be more sad, make the person be doing something happy and lighthearted, and then BAM! kill them quickly. It drives the point home)
while realism is good (IMO) it’s all around you, so you need to put things in that you can’t do in real life. I like flight simulators because it gives you a realistic (although hugely watered down) experience of flying a plane. However, it doesn’t cost (much) money, and you can crash or be crazy all you want with no consequences.
so yeah, a little of both. Although, realism will be a lot less impressive once it’s easy to do.
In my opinion this is a useless discussion. We talking about computer games. They can never be realistic. They can look kind of realistic but they aren’t. So all we do is un-realistic anyway. (Assuming you mean surrealism is the opposide of realism.) Hey games are a good show to entertain you.
Why do games try to give a “realistic” feeling. Because this is the world we are used to. That is what the player knows and where he can interact with the game. Usually the fun part is to translate the experience from the real world (everybody has its own experience here) to the game world. This is a learning process for the player (yes, learning can be fun) as game worlds have its own rules which are different to the real world .
Car simulators might be a tool to learn real world traffic rules without destroying your dad’s car. So you can get experience that can be translated to the real world as well.
On the other hand as the game world is not the real world it can model complete different behaviour to that what we know from real world. (Can you save/load/stop/restart the real world?)
Anyway, this is art. I think we will discover that CG will spread over a wide range of artistic stiles. We already have it and it will become more. It is a question what you want to do and how you want to achive it. CG is a tool that can help you.
Back to the question: What attracts you more, Realism or surrealism? Both are good. Compared to Music it depends on the single song if I like it or not.
And…surrealism to be “efficient” needs to be “realistic” ( ex: Dali or Magritte’s paintings) 
that’s a confusion people make too often : “surrealism” is not “not realistic” but reality transformed by the work of the mind (and in great part inconscient) and the natural use of this “reality” for art content by avoiding the usual “censorship” the conscient mind do at first…
This has nothing to do with cartoonish style and fantasy world we find in the game industry … (althoegh one could make a psychoanalysis of the structure and symbols of games from the industry finding interresting things…)
I suggest you to read the wikipedia article, it adress the problem of translation of the word “surrealism” and the confusion often made in the english talking world …
when I was a kid, I was friend with the grandson of surrealist painter Marcel Delmotte which I seen painting in his workshop when I was playing (in the 80’)… and later made art study in Bruxelles, city of Magritte and still place for surrealist art collectors and gallery (one which I know personnaly), I think I know a little of what it is about …
If you realy find a real “surrealist” game, tell me, I would be happy to discover one …
Definitely surrealism, because as an artist, I like to seek the odd and weird. The reason artists paint is to express their emotions or feeling blah, blah, blah, and if people don’t look at their artwork, they can’t know how the artist felt. People have a natural desire to seek the out-there, so, a painting that cannot be interpreted at a glance makes people look at it for longer. Dali didn’t paint realistic. He metamorphosised or added enigma to realism, which makes it surrealistic (or beyond real.)
Dali’s style is very realistic, it’s the subject matter that makes it surreal. It has already been discussed that the subject here is not surrealism/realism, but I still feel the need to talk about it. The subject under discussion is actually stylized/realistic.
As for where I stand on the issue, I think that both stylization and realism are important, and their importance varies by genre. Some genres are more accepting of stylization than others. Darwinia, for example, is a strategy game which a stylized look suited beautifully. My personal favorite genre of Myst-type games is less accepting of stylization because realism is important to making the worlds seem believable. (Although the original Myst had the word surrealistic in the subtitle, there was actually nothing surrealistic about it at all).
I found Myst 3 to be the worst game I’ve ever seen. It made me cry because that’s what normally happens just before you throw up. I mean seriously guys, the game looked like it was made in Microsoft PowerPoint.
I found Myst 3 to be the worst game I’ve ever seen. It made me cry because that’s what normally happens just before you throw up. I mean seriously guys, the game looked like it was made in Microsoft PowerPoint.
aside from how much I disagree with that (it’s entirely a matter of opinion, after all), relevance please?
Also, I’d say that myst was fairly surrealistic, but in ways that are commonly accepted in games nowadays, so we don’t really think of them as out of place (imagine if people really could write dimensions in books, then travel instantly between them through simple contact with a page- a little unusual, I’d say)
addressing the stylized vs realistic issue, I can’t say one is better than the other- I really have to judge on a case-by-case basis.
I think both can be equally awesome, and equally horrid if done wrong.
I really can’t say which one I like better, as I prefer a mixture of both.
Observe: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?db=dictionary&q=surreal
According to that, it is really a matter of opinion whether something is surreal or not.
BTW In my opinion Myst was quite surreal, then as the series progressed it got more grounded in reality.
If you realy find a real “surrealist” game, tell me, I would be happy to discover one …
What’s getting pretty close:
- Alice (FPS, i mean the game which is using old Q3 engine)
and maybe - Serious Sam games (FPS)
- Realms of Illusion ( Adventure)
Realism. I want my gaming experience to represent the real thing as much as it can. I want to feel like I am really there.