NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
This article is a few years old, but it's still relevant and I can't help but agree with all of its points.
The graphical effects listed in the article are:
Motion blur, Eyeball grime, Chromatic aberration, Film grain, Depth of field and Lens flare
Check out the link for details, since the absurd 10,000 character limit prevents me from quoting the article properly.
Two other effects which the linked article doesn't mention, but which I also hate with a burning passion and will switch off in the settings whenever I can, are:
Capping games at 30 FPS. So you've decided to spend a big chunk of change on a powerful multi-core processor and turbo-charged graphics card? Well fuck you, because the developers in their infinite wisdom have decided that lowly peons such as yourself should experience their masterpiece through eyes of a shitty last-gen television camera. After all, playing video games is exactly like watching television, right? Thanks for making my eyes hurt, you arseholes.
Vignettes. Oh God, vignettes. For those who don't know, vignetting is when the edges and corners of an image are ever-so-slightly obscured, faded or decontrasted, with a "hot spot" of clarity in the centre. It used to be an artefact of shitty camera technology, but for some unfathomable reason video game developers have been enthusiastically introducing this hideous effect on purpose, making you feel like your peripheral vision is being slowly destroyed. What kind of fucking genius thought this was a good idea in a medium in which keeping an eye out is often paramount to progressing and succeeding?
The common thread which I've noticed to all of these terrible, horrible, no good, very bad visual effects is the desperate keenness with which they attempt to incorporate the cinematic or televisual eye into what should be a revolutionary new medium. Now make no mistake, it can look good while you're passively sitting there and drinking in a game trailer on YouTube, or viewing an in-game visual cinematic in which you're not directly controlling your character.
But when you're actually in control and trying to navigate the game world while avoiding hazards, these effects look like utter dogshit. Especially since developers have a distressing tendency to really crank up the dial with such effects. It seems like too many video developers have ended up in the wrong line of work after failing to become the cinematographers they truly wanted to be.
The graphical effects listed in the article are:
Motion blur, Eyeball grime, Chromatic aberration, Film grain, Depth of field and Lens flare
Check out the link for details, since the absurd 10,000 character limit prevents me from quoting the article properly.
Two other effects which the linked article doesn't mention, but which I also hate with a burning passion and will switch off in the settings whenever I can, are:
Capping games at 30 FPS. So you've decided to spend a big chunk of change on a powerful multi-core processor and turbo-charged graphics card? Well fuck you, because the developers in their infinite wisdom have decided that lowly peons such as yourself should experience their masterpiece through eyes of a shitty last-gen television camera. After all, playing video games is exactly like watching television, right? Thanks for making my eyes hurt, you arseholes.
Vignettes. Oh God, vignettes. For those who don't know, vignetting is when the edges and corners of an image are ever-so-slightly obscured, faded or decontrasted, with a "hot spot" of clarity in the centre. It used to be an artefact of shitty camera technology, but for some unfathomable reason video game developers have been enthusiastically introducing this hideous effect on purpose, making you feel like your peripheral vision is being slowly destroyed. What kind of fucking genius thought this was a good idea in a medium in which keeping an eye out is often paramount to progressing and succeeding?
The common thread which I've noticed to all of these terrible, horrible, no good, very bad visual effects is the desperate keenness with which they attempt to incorporate the cinematic or televisual eye into what should be a revolutionary new medium. Now make no mistake, it can look good while you're passively sitting there and drinking in a game trailer on YouTube, or viewing an in-game visual cinematic in which you're not directly controlling your character.
But when you're actually in control and trying to navigate the game world while avoiding hazards, these effects look like utter dogshit. Especially since developers have a distressing tendency to really crank up the dial with such effects. It seems like too many video developers have ended up in the wrong line of work after failing to become the cinematographers they truly wanted to be.
