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

[Humanophage]

I agree with the response that it's the fault of WoW and also Warcraft 3 as well as the MOBAs it spawned. Competitive MOBAs also gave it a flair of legitimacy for the more serious games as this style is less dependent on specs and perhaps clearer, and most games are 3D so it really is important. I would add that it's more of their fault than the fault of Facebook and mobile games, which emerged fairly late. There is also the noxious idea that these cartoonish graphics are proof of more deliberate design and stylisation. You can see it even on the Codex.

That said, it's not that overwhelming and it is somewhat waning. Many of the biggest most popamole games like Call of Duty, Escape from Tarkov, even PUBG had a neutral art direction. The big novel influence on graphics seems to be Dark Souls, which is making games a bit more grimdark (Hunt comes to mind). Come to think of it, I don't believe many RPGs nowadays have this style. The ones where it is present, usually have it due to cartoonish source material like Pathfinder or Naheulbeuk.

 

[luj1]

You cherry picked

Yeah, it's all in our heads

 

[luj1]

There is the noxious idea that these cartoonish graphics are proof of more deliberate design and stylisation.

They are proof of lack of talent.

And institutions such as CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) created to accomodate this lack of talent.

 

[cvv]

Infantilization of the society is the umbrella answer.

You guise seem to forget/not realise how many retards are out there. How many people love this style. And vice versa, how many people moan about "drab" and "boring", whenever something ISN'T anime or cartoon or some ultra-stylized Gen-Z garbage.

Decline, degeneracy, Age of Kali. The end days.

I think Idiocracy and Wall-E predicted the future of humanity correctly.

 

[luj1]

Infantilization of society is the umbrella answer.

Absolutely. You mean *the* answer.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I remember Blizzard pushing to keep a familiar art style for their games which would date back to the cartoon look of Warcraft 3 and later WoW. It even infested Diablo 3 a bit but was rejected by many. The success though of Overwatch pushed this style to the forefront. The unreal (pun inteded) success of Fornite sent this art style over the edge. Everyone wants a piece of that pie.

Also, I believe a good deal of these lunatic berkeley artists, who never had bigger problems than what disney or pixar movie to watch next, clung to marketing and gaming as a career. These people are all stuck in a perpetual state of infantilism. They create art like this for most websites and I believe it all to be interrelated to keep people from feeling human.

 

[luj1]

I wish Frazetta was alive, he would kill them on sight with bare hands.

 

[luj1]

While there is observable decline, what you did by comparing Arcanum to Overwatch is like comparing Arma to Super Mario.

Then compare Arcanum to Sovereign Syndicate for example.

Mature and gritty world compared to London with fags and furries.

Or compare Morrowind with Outer Worlds or whatever. It's undeniable.

 

[Machocruz]

Everyone wants to be a, poor man's, Genndy Tartakovsky. Characters in 95% of animation for the past 15 years look like mutants. I'm all for cartoon art, but the present day shit ain't Tex Avery or Fleischer. Notice how angular and pointy a lot of stuff is now. Straight lines and corners are easier to draw and animate than organic shapes and roundness.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

OP's comparasion is flawed
The first group was targeted at a specific audience of nerds and wasn't intended for children
The last one is meant to attract the largest audience possible and any age group

Finally op the answer to your question is anime

Anyway shouldn't this thread be in the "General Gaming" forum?

even 500 years ago Cervantes thought knights were a joke.

No he didn't
He loved tales of chivalry
Dom Quixote is a parody, not a satire

Everyone says knights and chivalry are cliché but I can't think of a single property since Excalibur that actually plays it straight.

 

[cvv]

Infantilization of society is the umbrella answer.

Absolutely. You mean *the* answer.

THE answer would be deeper - where is this infantilization trend coming from? It's not new, mind you, Warcraft 3 happened 20 years ago and it was a galactic success back then. The trend was already in full swing.

That answer is probably related to the "Hard times create strong men..." piece of wisdom, specifically to the "good times create weak men" part.

It's the era of comfort, of the absence of any real struggle that strips men of testosterone and turns them into Nintendo soybeans.

 

[smaug]

I think it's a shitty choice between Grimdark, anime, and WoW. No room for a good middle ground anymore.

He loved tales of chivalry
Dom Quixote is a parody, not a satire

thank you for dispelling that stupid myth

 

[Lord_Potato]

You cherry picked

Yeah, it's all in our heads

In your head, to be specific

 

[luj1]

In your head, specificly

Go back to getting buttfucked by furries, specifically.

 

[Lord_Potato]

In your head, specificly

Go back to getting buttfucked by furries, specifically.

You've got interesting sexual obsessions, dude.

Still, you know shit about both games and art.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

I agree with the response that it's the fault of WoW and also Warcraft 3 as well as the MOBAs it spawned. Competitive MOBAs also gave it a flair of legitimacy for the more serious games as this style is less dependent on specs and perhaps clearer, and most games are 3D so it really is important. I would add that it's more of their fault than the fault of Facebook and mobile games, which emerged fairly late. There is also the noxious idea that these cartoonish graphics are proof of more deliberate design and stylisation. You can see it even on the Codex.

That said, it's not that overwhelming and it is somewhat waning. Many of the biggest most popamole games like Call of Duty, Escape from Tarkov, even PUBG had a neutral art direction. The big novel influence on graphics seems to be Dark Souls, which is making games a bit more grimdark (Hunt comes to mind). Come to think of it, I don't believe many RPGs nowadays have this style. The ones where it is present, usually have it due to cartoonish source material like Pathfinder or Naheulbeuk.

The threads correct but also remember that games are now made over the internet. It's much easier to have a universal standard style than it is to do unique stuff when you're dealing with pajeets. You don't want your shitty B studios making all your props in the wrong art style and having to redo them in house when you're already going to be discarding up to 90% of the garbage they shovel at you. A universal style makes it so much easier to outsource to 6 toed cousin fuckers modeling your rocks and trees.

 

[Silverfish]

You could partially attribute the change in styles to the fact that, at least for now, there aren't any preconceptions for games to rally against. At one point, devs wanted to disprove the Nintendo-led notion that games were just children's toys. Later, everyone wanted to show Roger Ebert that games could measure up to films in terms of storytelling and presentation (they went about it the wrong way, but that's another discussion). Even the current oversaturation of cartoony, Overwatch-style design was in response to what was largely seen as a drab, ugly era of mainstream games being dominated by brown and gray military shooters. By contrast, not only are games pretty much accepted by the mainstream now, but there's just enough variety that no one thing is totally dominant and needs significant pushback.

 

[catfood]

Bright colorful graphics appeal to the chinese audience who makes up a large part of the mobile market. The mobile market in part dwarfs PC & consoles combined. There's your answer.

 

[Tyranicon]

The answer is simple and has already been touched on by multiple posters: game corps want the broadest audience possible, so they go for the lowest common denominator.

Yeah, old fucks and people with taste won't consume their product, but that's like a tiny percentage of their available audience. They can live without our money.

Corporations suck at everything, but sometimes they get the math right.

 

[LanciaArdita]

The collective unconscious is experiencing a globe-spanning effort of puerilization and infantilization.

Art is ultimately perceived as the fundamental expression of the unconscious mind.

But also bright, vivid, warm and jutting out colours are more adept at grabbing the attention of the rotted, diseased, redditor-type ADHD burger addled and on iPhone reared brain (which is the dominant type in mass/volume fraction).

The best exercise to counter this type of brain damage is to meditate in a dark corner of the room, in front of a small wooden shrine displaying IE concept art. Preferably listening to Gregorian chants with an AI-modulated MCA voice doing the singing.

2x 1/2h daily.

 

[cvv]

Yeah, old fucks and people with taste won't consume their product

Let's be honest, their lowest common denominator covers even many old fucks.

I mean, I played W3 too. Hated the stupid art but played anyways.

Those fucking corpos can see right through us I tell you.

 

[Butter]

I think it's comparable to the decline we witnessed in animation when full computer animation became viable. Computer animation became the standard because it was cheaper, not because it was a better product. But most people aren't discerning and they consoom it anyway. Normies have never had good taste, so nobody gets punished for feeding them soulless garbage.

 

[Iucounu]

Subnautica (great gameplay despite the artstyle):

 

[Machocruz]

Also the eventual fruit of 'art is subjective'. Which is true as far as personal enjoyment, but it's main use is as a weapon against criticism and comparison between the lesser and the greater, for the purposes of culture war and personal ego cope. I've seen people feel confident and justified in saying that Freddy Got Fingered is just as good as Apocalypse Now, because "art is subjective." -an actual conversation, I'm not pulling movie titles out of my ass.

Sorry guys, WoW art is as good as Frazetta. Accept it.

 

[luj1]

The answer is simple and has already been touched on by multiple posters: game corps want the broadest audience possible, so they go for the lowest common denominator.

Yeah, old fucks and people with taste won't consume their product, but that's like a tiny percentage of their available audience. They can live without our money.

Corporations suck at everything, but sometimes they get the math right.

They wouldn't make any less profit with better art/design/writing, that's the tragedy