What happened to "mature" art direction? Everything is Overwatch now

[luj1]

So these were the games we played as KIDS,

No oversized heads, no big eyes, no white donkey teeth.


And these are the games played by ADULTS now,

What happened?

 

[Bester]

What happened to "mature" art direction?

Everything is so Gerhard Richter now.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Agreed! I've been meaning to bitch about this. All the damn edge is sterilized out of media. Just compare shit like old God of War and the games from the 2000s to games coming out now.
Even a supposedly dark game like Elden Ring is fucking sterilized, no grit. Where's my fucking grit! Everything is fucking pablum crap, Pathfinder is a decent game but that fucking artstyle.. same with the supposedly gritty Rogue Trader, too cartoony. Even fricking Doom looked like a cartoon in Eternal. All the anime look like low quality hentai now. Everything's fucking dogshit!!

 

[Gargaune]

What happened?

No idea, but it applies to overall art direction, from visual to audio and writing, and it's not restricted to videogames. Contemporary aesthetics have overindulged in the trivial and often demonstrate active contempt for grit and gravitas. It's like authors are afraid that if they put any serious thought into their "silly" SciFi or fantasy projects, their friends are all gonna laugh and call 'em nerds at their next dinner party.

It's a persistent bugbear of mine, I've got less and less interest in modern entertainment and it sure as hell ain't a case of me "growing out of it", the media landscape's changed massively. If neither the authors nor the characters can take the subject matter seriously, how can the consumer? Fuck's sake, even gunmetal grey and bald space marines are starting to feel nostalgic.

 

[Damned Registrations]

My guess would be it's backlash from the sea of brown 3rd person shooters. There was a good decade or so where every game looked like that instead, complete with the same face on every character. That plus a mllion artists that grew up playing crap early 3D stuff like WoW and FF7.

Overwatch is a bad example to use; it's a multiplayer focused game, heavy emphasis was put on giving different characters distinct sillouhettes so they could be identified at a glance during gameplay. The point in general applies though; the characters in the Civ franchise look retarded now, for example.

 

[Hag]

World of Warcraft happened.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

They turned making video games into a diploma mill and this is the style of art they teach in them. It's universal and easy to take impressive particle effect filled promo shots of so it's used as the generic graphics style.

There is also the problem of Tumblr and now twitter being the hub most artists interact on. It's much easier to get noticed for a bright cheerful art style by someone infinitely scrolling than it is a brown and grey one. That means it's easier for a cheerful artist to network than a grim one in the current year.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Everything? I think not!

 

[Konjad]

Fully agreed, here are some more examples of good old mature art direction:

and shitty new ones:

 

[Axie]

Culture en général is going from bittersweet decadence to total decline.

 

[Semiurge]

What happened to "mature" art direction?

Those religious paintings are the past's version of design-by-committee commissioned works. They're aesthetically pleasing, but the artist had little room for creativity. They make use of expensive substances usually reserved just for works of this kind, such as lapis lazuli and gold ground up and mixed with oils and paints. In a way they're like corporate art.

 

[TheSecondRanger]

Mobile game tier graphics need less talent.

 

[Trithne]

The "games when we were kids" are roughly between '96 and 2001, a period where graphics tech was still rapidly evolving and developers were interested in pushing the envelope towards realism that up until that point we had not been able to have. This applies in both 3d and 2d - 3d graphics riding the wave of new video cards every half a year to do more, and 2d graphics taking advantage of higher screen resolutions to draw more detailed sprites and portraits.

Now, graphics have mostly plateaued in the march towards realism a while ago, and the game designers of today want to stand out by coming up with "innovative" or "interesting" or even just "retro" graphical styles instead of realism, which is boring and passé now. The shitpost about changes in art is the same thing - Once realism was attained and commonplace, artists didn't want to be realistic, they wanted to flex their creativity.

 

[NecroLord]

Infantilization of culture.
And sterilization of every free and independent thought away from the norm.

 

[agris]

Everything? I think not!

What game is this?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It's the same thing that happened to western cartoons/comics, no? They call it "calarts" or sth.

A lot of asian infantile influence as well for sure. So many of you guize are dweebs, so should know.

 

[caffeine]

The cartoony aesthetic looks "good" (between quotes, from the normalfag's point of view) on mobile therefore all companies aim for that look. It's also easier to make, less detail = less work. And last but not least important, women.

 

[Maxie]

Just play better games

 

[Darth Roxor]

Everything? I think not!

What game is this?

King Arthur: Knight's Tale. Highly recommended, I may or may not revio it when I'm finished.

 

[Lord_Potato]

What happened?

Nothing, we're good. Play better/prettier games

 

[Serus]

What happened to "mature" art direction?

Those religious paintings are the past's version of design-by-committee commissioned works. They're aesthetically pleasing, but the artist had little room for creativity. They make use of expensive substances usually reserved just for works of this kind, such as lapis lazuli and gold ground up and mixed with oils and paints. In a way they're like corporate art.

Most art - not only paintings - in the past was commissioned, certainly in Middle Ages but later as well, up to 19th century. Before renaissance a painter was mostly an artisan, not very different from other artisans. He made what people wanted to buy from him. Even Mona Lisa was commissioned (although it didn't end in commissioner hands but that's another story).

The above ones - still better than Picasso. (joke for the inner circle)

 

[Lord_Potato]

Other examples of current day art direction:

Yup, definately we're good.

 

[Bester]

Other examples of current day art direction:

Yup, definately we're good.

Boring.

 

[EldarEldrad]

It is just a part of modern mainstream culture standardization and unification (which some illiterate peasants call diversity presentation) - just look at endless corp shit like Corporate Memphis. Infantilization and removing all borders along with good taste is real cancer.

Fortunately, there are people, who have good art style sense and are capable of doing decent things, so sometimes we see good media and good games in particular.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

King Arthur: Knight's Tale.

I tried this and found it overly simplistic and easy with small party size and lacking customization.

I'm also not a fan of the grimdark style. Everyone says knights and chivalry are cliché but I can't think of a single property since Excalibur that actually plays it straight. Everything is a subvsersion, everything is an 'alternate take.' No one really wants to do medieval romance like 'The Song of Roland', even 500 years ago Cervantes thought knights were a joke.

I want an unstoppable hero killing 1000 Saracens before falling on his sword. I want Orlando going insane and Astolfo flying a hippogriff to recover his wits from the moon. Basically I want something like The Last Samurai for the west, that romanticizes the shit out of knights and chivalry. But no one even tries because they think it would be hokey and dumb. Maybe it's all Monty Python's fault, and this is an over correction.