You may be familiar with the uncanny valley. It’s the name of the phenomenon where almost, but not quite, real-looking characters appear creepy to viewers. The gap between the almost real and the real makes the character look repulsive.
As game graphics improve, we’re reaching this point. The characters in Mass Effect looked quite strange at times, for example. The makers of animated movies understand this principle — Pixar’s stylish graphics are much more attractive (and popular) than those of The Polar Express.
I’m surprised there are so few western games with stylized graphics. Manga-looking Japanese games are popular here and so was the cartoony Team Fortress 2. Why must so-called next-gen games always look more realistic?
March 26th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Maybe games developpers have a highly scientific approach into testing this uncanny valley theory
March 26th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
There definitely seems to be some ways to avoid the uncanny valley problems. The Final Fantasy XIII trailers released so far are pretty realistic, while still being stylized enough to avoid the uncanny valley. So yeah, more research into this would be good, and video games are the perfect platform to do it.