The document discusses different artistic styles that can be used in games, including photorealism, cel shading, abstraction, and exaggeration. Photorealism aims to make games look realistic but may detract from gameplay. Cel shading can give games a unique cartoon-like feel without impacting performance. Abstraction uses unusual, non-realistic designs to make games stand out. Exaggeration is common in RPGs and anime-inspired games, enlarging features like weapons and emotions to engage players. Overall, the document examines tradeoffs of different artistic approaches and how they shape the gameplay experience.

1. Artistic Styles
Photorealism in games give the player a sense of being in the
gaming world, therefore making gameplay feel more realistic
and possibly more interesting to interact with. However,
photorealism in my opinion does not make the overall
gameplay any better; it only makes the graphics better. I
believe that characters, story and controls are more important
to creating an overall good game. It is also important for the
photorealistic looking person/object to act in a realistic way
otherwise they could end up looking unnatural or uncanny but
if the game is going for that kind of atmosphere then it would be a great technique to use.
Photorealism doesn’t need to be used for emotion either; it does create realism but does
not create emotion, if the game has emotion whether it is linear or nonlinear then that
comes majorly from the story, the events happening in cut scenes. On the other hand,
looking at photorealistic eyes during an emotional cut scene can give the character more
emotion but that in itself will not have much effect on the player. Most games using
photorealism become more like interactive films. They may look good, but is the gameplay
good? It seems to me that modern games tend to focus more on the graphics rather than
actual gameplay which means for me older games are much better.
Cel Shading is the "art" of rendering objects to look like
cartoons. This kind of style can give a completely
different atmosphere to a game such as “The Legend of
Zelda: The Wind Waker”. Compared to the other Zelda
games, this game has a different feel to it which a lot of
Zelda fans didn’t like because it’s different. In my
opinion it gave a great, unique feel to the game and did
not affect the standard gameplay of a Zelda game. So,
cel shading in a game can be underrated at times. Cel
shading means better FPS (frames per second) because
the GPU doesn't have to process a lot of high VRAM
Abstraction is an art form that doesn't want
to be realistic, it wants to stand out, be
different. The work produced in abstract may
resemble some things but will have a lot of
differences to it, or a lot of strange things in
the game. An example of this art style in the
new "Botanicula"game, as you can see in the
picture, there are 5 main protagonists
resembling a: leaf, feather, mushroom, poppy

2. seed and a twig, yet the art style of the game is unusual, and the black creature on the right
is unlike anything you've seen. using textures.
Exaggeration is used in games,
mostly in RPGs, this art style is used
for animé and manga typically, this
art style is where the artist
exaggerates many things within the
game, mostly games with a
Japanese influence, for example, in
the game "final fantasy 7" the
character "cloud" has a huge
sword.Exaggeration is also used for
emotions, as the characters have
bigger eyes when sad, and strong characters are muscular etc. A lot of designers exaggerate
things like weapons or vehicles the characters can use to make the player like them more as
they look, feel and shoot better. This gains more interest in their games, as would you
rather drive a ford focus or a mustang with rocket launchers, nitros, machine guns, shields
and hover car capability.