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Why is it that games used to be colorful and now they're all gun metal grey and dog turd brown?
Not including indie games of course because those always have good color.

This is sure to be a fruitful discussion.

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It is because of the War.

Rationing is every citizen's duty.

Haven't you heard?  REAL IS BROWN.

(also the bird is the word) :noir:

I've heard this referred to as the "next gen" look several times. Bleach out the colors and make them shiny greyish or orange/brown with lots of bloom. I think the problem is that colorful games tend to make people think of kids games.

because it's realistic, don't you know? life looks like shit. look around. if it's too colorful you must be high or gay or wearing tinted shades like a cool ass on a hot day.





That is what I would say but I like cavalcade's answer more



in serious, I think it's just a fad

Because commercial games literally have no soul anymore. Art is a reflection of life. Look around you; the world is dying. The universe is collapsing in on itself. Everything will return to one once more. And once that gets boring, we'll blow ourself up into the illusion of separation once again. What else is there to do with infinity?  :shrug2:

several reasons. Basically the shit brown is how the world really is. Photographs and old videogames tend to not display shit-brown effect (and indie games but that's because all they have are a couple huge pixels and a gimmick).
Photos and TVs don't demonstrate this effect most of the time because of colour distortion and bad cameras and the fact that cameras are actually tweaked to look good. Old games don't either because they don't have realistic lighting (or lighting at all).
If we were living with a blue sun , we would end up with shit-blue on all next gen games.

<insert obligatory nietzsche quote here>

I miss color, though  :'(

More seriously, this (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PhilippeRinguetteAngrignon/20090606/1708/Why_quotNextGen_Gamesquot_Went_Gray_Brown_And_Grey.php) is the actual reason.

Technical constraints, not marketing ones.

now you know

I assumed it was this (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222).

they just happen to take place in worlds where they are trying to create that feeling of isolation for them post apocalypse, its also an earthy color and lot of gams take place on earth... its also a very neutral color. n it also looks kool and cinematic

or it could be that the military based war gams happens to hav dirt, you kno.. with war happenin on dirt sometimes

anyway i dont see a problem with it. if brown is a problem then id have to complain about games being too colorful for no reason

--
also i doubt it has to do with photo realism

LOL.

Once I graduate I WILL MAKE THE MOST COLORFUL GAMES YOU WILL EVER SEE!!!! YOUR EYES WILL ORGASM FROM ALL THE COLOR!!!!

More colourful than Spheres Of Chaos? Impossible.

Jesus tap dancing christ, not that... chaotically tie dye color crazy...

So they can all look identical?
...at least that's the effect it has on me.  :droop:

Games are grey and brown so that colour blind gamers won't feel left out. That or kids are too stupid and fat to count more than two colours.

"All" games are gray and brown because you're playing the wrong fucking games.

It's those new fangled 3D games. Before they used to ruse red/blue separation, now they use brown/brown.

Bah, you beat me to it :P

What are you doing playing dependent games?  KICK HIM OUT.

Snap, son :tiger:

Also, TF2 ain't all brown and gray.
Though it is a bit watercolour-toned, but there's a good reason for that.

Because games are about technique right now, so the goal is to deliver realism, and also the ones who make games think that people love dark stuff, so they make everything dark. It sucks.

Yes. I mean, sure it's probably true for FPS's (with some notable exceptions like TF2), but Darksiders, Assassin's Creed 2, Castlevania LOS, Final Fantasy XIII, Metroid Other M, Dead Rising 2, Bayonetta and Vanquish are just a few examples of non-brown big budget AAA games in recent memory.

I'd like to point out that it isn't exactly a new thing either. Have you ever played any Id games? Aren't they mostly grey and brown?

This is true, but the only game close to an id game that I'm playing is "Beyond Castle Wolfenstein" which wasn't id at all.


See, I have the unfortunate...ness of having a mac because ironically it's required for my major which is game design...
So, the only indie games that I really have are Star Guard and Cave Story.

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But I like colourless things :<

Hahahah, what?

Yeah. What the fuck? Nothing against macs, but basically 99% of everything is developed on pcs.

Macs arn't for games! They're for...GarageBand or something...and OS'es named after great cats.

Maybe Microsoft should start naming windows versions off of birds, it's windows: hummingbird edition! Hey, yeah, I'm a genius.

I have a Mac and there are more than enough games for it, especially indie.

For the rest, I use Bootcamp.

I always wondered if it's because the actual wars being fought these days are in brown sandy parts of the world, so seeing a brown wartorn area in a game makes sense to us. Whereas back in the days of earlier games the most recent big war was vietnam, so it was all bright green jungles. I mean, the dull brown problem is only really seen in fpses, so it kinda makes sense.

That may be complete poppycock though.

edit: in other words, we need to find the most colourful country and declare war pronto for the good of gaming!

This just in, the U.S declares war on CandyLand

Well palette limits are a thing of the past, so developers don't have to work with starkly contrasting colors.  And of course the "brown" games spoken of are made to visualy reflect the subject matter.  Lastly, while there's plenty of war games that perpetuate the brownish realistic style; it's completely fallacious to say that all modern games are like that.  There's plenty of recently released mainstream games that are very colorful and sold well.  It's like complaining that all painters aren't impressionists or that all ice cream isn't strawberry flavored.

i read online that the reason is because in reality, light reflects off of objects and light the surroudning things, and also exhibit somethin called "AMBIENT OCCLUSION" but for years this was too cpu-intensive to do, so the game industry developed the only color-scheme that looked good in a realistic setting; grey and brown.

I read the title to this thread as "Color's Game," like it was the title to some interesting new game, and was sorely disappointed to see I was mistaken.

Lack of luminosity is a lame reason, IMHO. :shrug2: In certain circumstances it can be faked, surely? (Mostly, if your environment is very static, texture your stuff more neutrally and use vertex colour to add tints.) Ambient occlusion was previously all faked, so...

I think the problem is more putting technical achievements before artistical ones. Brown FPS developers don't care if the game looks nice or like baby poo, they just want all the shiny gizmos working there.

You see more color creeping into games lately. Just go through IGN's previews page and you can find some pretty colorful stuff: new Bioshock (http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/142/14258637/imgs_1.html), Brink (http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/143/14349125/imgs_1.html) and probably lots more. They still look like shit to me, even with the added color. It just means that they're trying to ape the Hollywood obsession with orange/teal instead of the typical brown/gray game look.

When I was a teenager I spent hours every day working on 3D models and animation and texturing and all that good shit. I so badly wanted to get a job making stuff for games. Today, tho, most game studios are just obsessed with this realism crap. Even a lot of the smaller teams are doing this. I tried working on some next-gen assets and characters a while back and it's the most soulless, energy-draining bullshit I've ever forced myself to work on. I dunno how so many people can sit around all day making that shit 'cause I wanted to eat a shotgun the whole time. I'm working on another portfolio approach right now, because I'm never going to do another gun-toting normal-mapped high-poly sci-fi post-apocalyptic grizzled warrior dude ever again. I don't care if you can make good money doing it.

We finally have a couple of systems that will allow developers to do whatever the hell they want artistically. On the older systems they had to stylize shit to make it work with few polygons and small textures. You could look at a screenshot and tell what game or series it was. Now they don't really have any limitations. Ultimate freedom to do whatever they want, and they all just do the exact same thing. Pretty ironic, really.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe that limitations and freedom do the opposite of what people's first instinct is. People believe that in a limited environment creativity can't flourish, and in a free environment the mind can cook up infinitely creative concepts.

Instead what happens is that limitations force artists to think outside the box. They have to stylize, to really make their few resources count. It pushes the brain artistically and gives it a workout.

With freedom, you get the opposite. People's brains seem to clam up, unable to deal with all those possibilities. They aren't as able to focus their creative juices. They feel they have to live up to sky-high graphical standards in terms of using the technology. So they take the easy route and use all that graphical power to try and mimic boring reality, and somehow make it look even more boring.

At least that's my theory.

most of the "stylish" things look the same to me
no substance at all

Stylish is a very broad word. You need to be a bit more specific.

And if what you saw had no substance, then the style sucked. :P

by stylish i mean the word that many of you happen to use to refer to whatever "non-brown" games (and no i dont like using it this way but whatever)

by substance i mean quality, the little things that matter, the actual content, architecture, props, textures, -- not random scattered tiles supposedly representing a boring forest or a town with some pretty color scheme as an excuse

Yeah, but I don't think graphics have to be abstract or highly stylized to look good. And as someone else already said, relying mostly on shades of grey and brown isn't a requirement for "realism".

Just look at Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for instance. That's a game with great-looking non-abstract graphics and lots of "substance" that still manages to be colorful. Like, it has lush green forests, snowy mountains, decrepit medieval villages, menacing gothic castles etc. and not the same ugly, murky wasteland for 80% of its levels.

yes but if the art directors want that kind of gloomy wasteland look, its their artistic decision
and who says they're going for realism all the time?


the only problem i guess its that theres a lot of games with that look, and it could be tiring to see so many BUT there's enough of games with "color" that it isnt really a problem at all for both and between to exist

i can call out all the stage-based platformers that all had the same worlds since super mario bros but theres other platformers too

its good to hav a choice

A lot of the time, they are. "Gritty realism" is a term you see thrown around a lot. I mean, Borderlands is one wasteland game that doesn't try to be realistic, but it uses generic cel shading instead which I guess isn't much better. Darksiders is does it better. And Bioshock if you count that as a "wasteland".

Also, I actually like the wasteland look, it's just that:
It's the same with generic platformers for me, BTW. Don't go assuming that just cuz I'm on TIGS I put platformers on some kinda pedestal.   ;)

Yeah, I agree. I even made a post a page or so back where I said pretty much exactly that.

Mac actually has great audio programs and movie editing programs, but of course most of those are compatible with both OS's. And I have no idea why the department at my college has Macs as a requirement, but I saw games ACTUALLY being made and played on them last year when I came for a visit so.... we'll see. But again my games will eye rape you will all the glorious colors.