Artistic Styles in Video Games

Sam Gregory-Haigh

Photorealism• Photorealism in games is just what the name suggests. Developers try to create graphics that look so

life-like that it looks like a photo. This has become a more recent trend with games as graphical capabilities have improved so much in recent years. Some good examples of games that try to replicate photorealistic graphics are:

– Far Cry2

– La Noire

– Crysis

Photorealistic graphics have become a musthave for some companies in recent yearsand some believe that this will be the death ofstory and substance in future games.

Cel Shading• Cel Shading is when the texture of an object is made to look like a comic book or

hand drawn image using flat colours to give the impression that it is all hand drawn. It has been made more popular in video games recently after the release of Borderland in 2009. Some examples of cel shaded games include:

– Borderlands/Borderlands 2– Dragonball Budokai 2 onwards– The Walking Dead Game

Abstraction• Abstract art style often employs a lot of lines and geometric shapes that don't

resemble any real-life objects. For example, Geometry Wars, a game which uses nothing but lines and geometric shapes. Some other examples of games that use an abstract art style are:

– Geometry Wars– Tetris– Beautiful Katamari

This art style is mainly used formore arcadey titles, but it is stillused a lot in games today.

Exaggeration• Exaggeration in games is like the style of anime and manga, they exaggerate

features of humans or environments. These games have become more common after the success of series’ such as Final Fantasy and lots of anime tv series’ getting their own video game adaptations, such as Naruto and Dragonball. Some examples include:

– Final Fantasy X– Naruto Ninja Storm Generations