Yes but some genres are alot more popular than others.
Oh and concerning that “pyramid” : I’m sure there’s something factual in it but self-fulfillment is not the only kind of fulfillment even in a game.I guess there’s some connection between the fact I don’t really indulge myself while playing Sims with the fact that I don’t like Big Brother.
Yes, some genres are more popular than others, but considering that Sims is (supposedly) the best selling game of all time, I think it says something about that.
As for the self-fulfillment thing… well, I don’t think you understand. The pyramid drives everything. It starts with basic needs like food and waste disposal (read: “going to the bathroom”) and sleep… then goes to shelter and sex, etc. It’s the pyramid of needs that drives all human behavior.
Ah ok.Then when you sau he recreated it very well you mean the character sin game?I thought you meant the player’s needs.
That was what I was saying.I can’t understand how the majority of gamers find The Sims fun.It’s success implies that the problem is me here 
One of the keys to the Sims’ success is the sheer number of women gamers who play it. According to marketing research, the Sims has the highest ratio of women to men gamers than almost any other game.
And a lot of that, supposedly, has to do with the universal nature of the motivating techniques used.
To generalize a little bit, male gamers prefer more violent, action-oriented games, whereas there are a lot less women gamers who enjoy shooting and killing. Having a game with more readily identifiable goals allowed them to enjoy the experience more.
Funny you say that because the previous “biggest blockbuster of all time” as far as videogames are concerned (Myst) also appeals to a lot of women.I’d say it’s 50-50 even in terms of Myst fans.
Ironic most people I know disregard Myst claiming it’s boring…
[quote=“Abadd”]On another note, there are those who make “mainstream” titles that simply. just. kick. arse.
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/595/595975p1.html[/quote]
Holy hell. That article had me practically drooling on my keyboard.
Games have already started to imitate the likeness of people, so that’s probably the next step. The Command And Conquer and Wing Commander games used real actors to set the stage for the events that took place in them, but I suppose that simply became too expensive, especially when cheaper in-game animated alternatives were available.
Personally, I’m not sure how I’d feel about game characters and environments becoming almost indistinguishable from reality. I suppose games will eventually veer even closer towards complete realism as the technology becomes available to do so.
I’m perfectly content with the animated facial expressions we see in Shenmue 1-2 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines for some reason that seems to elude me at the moment.
I’m not talking about using photo-realism, or actual FMV. Artistic rendering of actual faces to fit the art style of the game, is closer to it. Instead of making up some random person, you’d use Elijah Wood, to follow my earlier example, to be the model of the face, do the facial animations, etc, but it wouldn’t necessarily be an exact replica (but close enough so that you’d still be able to tell who it was).
Man, I could imagine famous Hollywood actors not only starring in every major blockbuster movie, but characters with their faces showing up in every major video game release too.
I wonder who’d best play the role of Dante, or Snake?
What was that latest Tom Hanks animated movie? Didn’t he play the role of someone who looked exactly like him? Scar… ry.
Ok, I’m just joking. 
Snake? Why, Kurt Russell, of course 
While it wouldn’t be appropriate for every game, do you think it’d lend some credibility to the story if it were emoted properly? Some animators can pull it off without that sort of crutch, but most can’t…
[quote=“Abadd”]Snake? Why, Kurt Russell, of course
While it wouldn’t be appropriate for every game, do you think it’d lend some credibility to the story if it were emoted properly? Some animators can pull it off without that sort of crutch, but most can’t…[/quote]
If by credibility you mean worthiness of belief, then I wouldn’t know. Actors by definition are pretending to be someone they are not. It would probably be best saved for games based on movies.
Taking real faces and tweaking them to fit video game roles sounds like an inevitability to me now that you mention it. Motion captured body movements have been used to animate characters for years, so I can imagine similar technology being employed to capture every nuance of facial movement, too. I suppose it would be possible to overlay faces like masks on a generic model.
I think you’re asking the wrong guy. >:)
Well, I’m just asking in general… In some cases, they already do use facial mo-cap for animations (Enter the Matrix, for example). But, again, that’s simply because it was based on the license.
Sure, actors are exactly what you described, but (most of the time) they’re really good at it. I’d much rather have a professional actor doing the acting, rather than some untrained animator. With CG/animation, the animators are the actors, as they must create the physical reactions and emotions of the characters.
What I don’t get is why most RPGs lack realistic animations. RPGs are supposedly the genre that relies on story the most, yet most RPGs have horrid animations. That’s one thing I give the FF series credit for… too bad the stories suck.
[quote=“Abadd”]For example, would you balk at the idea of using, say, Elijah Wood as the main character in a sci-fi action/adventure game? I’m not talking about simply using it as a marketing hook. I’m talking about using real actors to help convey story, dialog, etc.
Yes, this would increase development costs, but would it be worth it? Discuss :)[/quote]
I think this would probably be a success with the more mainstream and casual gaming crowds - though maybe not enough to justify the costs, depending on which actors we’re talking about - but for me I think it’d detract from the experience. Although a real character’s face might convey emotions more believably than an artificial face, it would also be less believeable at the same time: each time I looked at that character, I’d be reminded that they were only a fictional character being acted by Elijah wood, or whoever it may be, so it would defeat the object to some extent. (I have the same sort of problem with big-budget films where the same famous actors are employed over and over and over again; there’s an extra layer of unconvincingness when I can’t help thinking of them as just real-world actors playing their roles. This doesn’t seem to bother people in general, though.)
But, does it break your suspension of disbelief more or less than if it were animated/acted by amateurs?
Like I mentioned earlier, there are very few games in recent history that have come even close to allowing me to suspend my disbelief.
As for using big-name actors, it really depends on who you are talking about, and who is directing them. Take a look at Jim Carrey. He was in Dumb and Dumber, and the Mask… yet, he was fantastic in movies like Man on the Moon, Truman Show, and particularly in Eternal Sunshine.
Like I said… not using the actors as a marketing tool (“OMG, look! It’s Val Kilmer… in a VIDEO GAME!!!1! LOLOMGBBQ!!”), but as a means to add a certain amount of weight to the story.
People complain about a lot of voice over work in video games, yet also complain about the use of big name actors. With the exception of some, there’s a reason why a lot of them are big name actors: because they can act.
I just hope videogames don’t become copy-paste enterprises.Where’s the art in an animation if it wasn’t done by an animator?
It’s actually a tough question to answer, and I guess I’d have to experience several good games that used this technique to be really sure. For voice actors I don’t think I’d ever have a problem with famous voices being used, but for voices and faces in a game I’m not sure how much it would get in the way of the experience for me; how badly it would draw attention to itself, even if it was technically good. To be honest though, I suspect that if most big-budget games started employing actors like this and it became commonplace (as in the film industry itself), I’d probably just get used to it.
So, Gehn, you consider an animator to be an artist but you don’t consider an actor the same?
Unless you mean that if it’s something simple like a guy walking then an actor who walks isn’t doing something artistic. But then again, an animator that simply replicates some generic walking isn’t doing art either, he’s just doing his job, perhaps with knowledge and skill, but not art.
For more complicated things, ie actual acting, I think it’s art just as much if an actor does it. It’s tough enough to act in a proper setting, imagine having to act without actually being in the place you are supposed to and instead just doing it in a random maybe crowded room, with stuff attached to your face, trying to get the right feelings accross so that they then get transfered to the digital character and environment…
It just depends on how well these things are used, you can always end up with some crappy result but that happens with animators too. Very often as well.
So, I think the use of actors WOULD add a lot to story telling when done right. What’s also good is they don’t even have to look exactly like those actors, the digital character can have a completelly different look and simply use the expressions of the real actor. So you wouldn’t have to end up with every game having the same bunch of faces or something at all. Kinda like big CG movies do now (ie the goblin in LOTRilogy).
I think it will be a great new tool that will add a whole new dimension to video game development. It’s up to the company to decide to use it or not anyway, if they think they can do it sufficiently and without extra costs the “traditional” way, they might as well do that. The game may not even need the extra flair a good actor could add anyway, lots of games don’t rely on story telling so I guess they wouldn’t bother trying to show emotions so well therefor being content with the work of a decent animator.
Gollum is the perfect example of what I’m thinking about. Completely done by a real actor, but face and such artistically redone to make it more fitting to the character and style of the movie.
Did anyone have problems with Gollum?
Yeah, he was a creepy little bast who made me wondering for a year who the “she” in “She’ll get them” was.
Plus, the rise in “My precious…” imitations is beyond redemption.
Duh, I typed Goblin instead of Gollum, kill me :anjou_embarassed: