FINAL BLOG

I have been saving this blog topic for a special occasion, and this is the perfect time to use it. When most people think of art, they think of oil paintings, sculptures, or portraits of famous people. Many people would also immediately think of music, which is like art for our ears. Still others might call a chef’s dish a culinary masterpiece and the combinations of flavors and aromas as a work of art for our taste buds and noses. However, I bet not many people would ever consider video games as possible art form. I am going to argue that video games have transcended their original kiddie nature, and transformed into something that can captivate our senses and our imagination. In the end, that is what art is all about.

Game developers have had their own progression of artistic design over time, just like any other art form. Not only have they had to improve graphics, but they have had to improve interactiveness in the form of controllers, as well as creating innovations in the story lines. These new techniques and technologies have the potential to transport people into a totally different world. I will concentrate this blog entry on the development of graphics, as it is the most closely related to the topic of art as it was presented in class.

Game developers have always been limited by technology when it comes to visuals. Unlike artists from the past even if they know how to present a three dimensional image on paper, it is another story entirely when it comes to making that image appear on screen with movements coordinated to a players commands. I will now present what I consider to be a time line of
gaming in relation to the graphics becoming more and more realistic.

We will start at the beginning with the game that started it all, which was Pong. I would relate Pong to the ancient stick figure drawings found on cave walls. Below, I have posted a comparison between Pong, a cave painting, and another game that was developed shortly after pong. You can tell what everything is if you look hard enough, but it isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty. In the picture on the right, a man is about to use a rope hanging from a tree to jump over a pit.

As new gaming systems have been released, developers have been able to upgrade their visuals. Again, just like the traditional artists, they had to learn to depict their characters and environments that would greater please their audience. On the left I show a picture of everyone’s favorite plumber, Mario, from the original Nintendo gaming system. On the right, I show a piece of art from the middle ages. Both are certainly better than their predecessors, but they are still relying on the likes of occlusion to depict depth

And then there was a revolution, know as the Renaissance, and art took on a whole new perspective. The artwork during this time period took advantage of new techniques that allowed artists to show depth with amazing clarity. The next generation of gaming consoles allowed developers to do the same thing. On the left I show a game from the Dreamcast system, which came after the Nintendo console and was made by Sega. On the right I show a classic painting from the Renaissance that everyone should recognize. Notice the amazing ability to perceive depth in these two dimensional images.

Finally, I will fast forward to today’s consoles and today’s artists. I think that it would be unfair to compare today’s games with their painting counterparts. Games and art have come a long way, but with the computers we have now, it is quite amazing how realistic we can make a two dimensional screen look. Below I have posted two pictures from a game that is coming out very soon, and could be one of the most beautiful games ever.