What's Up?
Well, when talking games with my colleagues, online or with my students, I often find myself in discussions about realism. The funny thing is, that everybody, especially in regards to gaming has a different understanding on what realism actually is. The fact, that the people who write about games professionally and those who sell them, don't treat realism properly and elevate it to some sort of key quality, is not helping either. Games get hyped for realism, while it is in fact believable idealization what makes them so much fun. Games get dismissed for a lack of realism, while it is a unique style what makes them different. And on and on and on.
Time to get things straight!
How Realism Became Dominant, When Talking About The Art Of Video Games.
The Thesaurus defines realism as (art, literature) the ability to represent things as they really are.
Various websites also (including thefreedictionary.com) describe it as the representation in art or literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form.
So bottom line, we end up with three approaches to creating art: Realism, Abstraction and Idealization. You probably are already familiar with Scott McCloud's famous triangle, where he mapped comic art characters in relation to Reality (realism), Meaning (idealization) and The Picture Plane (abstraction) from his book Understanding Comics. If not, stop reading and go here immediately. (I will prepare a full book review soon. This one is a must read!)
Anyway, the three approaches displayed in McCloud's triangle represent art styles. As a comic production company, you could end up on this map, wherever you want to be. You would just need to hire an artist with the necessary skills and artistic vision. In arts, finding your place on this map, is a matter of skill and choice for centuries now.
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