“Bad graphics,” “poor art direction,” “why the terrible art style?” These types of reviews plague games with pixel art graphics. The reason why many of these games have these graphics is because they are often made by a small dev team or even a single person. Often it is not worth it to make “good” graphics because of the decreasing benefits of investing time into graphics. This situation remains true for Dreamfeel, the developers behind Curtain, as they are a small team of nine people.
Although pixel graphics can be chosen due to staff limitations, it is also an artistic choice. We often forget that they are also an art form because of how many of us have grown up with games as a form of entertainment. Art is subjective but also contains meaning. If you look at Dreamfeel’s newest game, If Found…, you can see how charming and “good” its art style is. If Found… is still being made by a small team of developers even though it has been eight years since the release of Curtain. The art style of Curtain is a conscious choice made by Dreamfeel which is reflected in the game itself.
In discussion on Tuesday, we briefly mentioned that the graphics setting was defaulted to “Overwhelming” and, more importantly, it could not be changed. I don’t want to dwell too much on the meaning behind this as not only have we touched on it in class but other classmates are making posts going into more depth as I am writing this. Instead, I want to discuss is the absence of choice in the matter.
Games have a lot of choices within them. That is often the draw of games- being able to do something impossible in real life or being able to simulate choices you could make. You become much more aware of these choices when making a game itself. The most obvious example of choice are in text responses. How do your responses as a player affect the outcome of the story? Do they matter like in a dating sim wherein you make one wrong comment and it’s back to square one? Or is it like Mass Effect’s conversation tones where they provide a semblance of choice?
These choices are often tied to the character the player is playing as. It makes sense to not give the player too many choices as to not break character. Or you can then instead give choices anyway and see if the player willingly conforms to the narrative.
Curtain decides to not give the player an option for graphics to fully immerse the player into the world of the game. Unpacking also takes away choice to some extent as items often have “correct” places to be -all of which shed light on the character we play as.
Another interesting choice I have run into is the ability to jump. Including this ability opens so many possibilities in traversing the world of the game. Excluding it also provides opportunities to find creative ways to explore the environment such as stacking objects or finding a glitch in the physics to give ourselves height. Excluding it also gives the possibilities of giving puzzles that are no longer trivialized by a simple press of the space bar.
We have grown up in an age where we have been spoiled through the amount of choices we can make. We often forget how the absence of choice can enrich the experience of a game just as much as the presence of choice.
PS: If Found… is currently on sale for $6.49 on switch and looks p dope
Your discussion about developer intentions and graphics options reminds me of several interesting examples where players choose options that run counter to the developer’s original intentions.
One example would be players turning down motion blur because it causes motion sickness or because it ruins the dense details of the art style. I think this occurs in games like Uncharted 4, where many players are attracted to its “photorealistic” art style which is accomplished through high-poly count models and accurate physics-simulated water. While developers might believe that motion blur contributes to “photorealism”, many players choose to disable or turn down this option because they think it pulls them out of the immersion.
A second example would be competitive FPS games where players choose to turn down graphics to their lowest settings to boost frame-rate performance. While the developers might intend for a certain look for the game, usually indicated by a “standard” or “regular” label in the graphics settings, players sometimes prioritize different aspects of the game.
I definitely agree with your analysis that absence of choice can be a powerful aspect of a game. I also personally enjoy games with non-normative or difficult mechanics because they can convey persuasive messages, for instance about identity – although they might not be games that I would find myself playing over and over or for extended lengths of time. However, I think one thing that has to be discussed with absence of choice is accessibility. Thanks to technological capabilities, more and more modern games include many gameplay choices to make games playable and enjoyable to more audiences. Performance settings like low-graphics modes allow players to experience games that in their default modes might be too strenuous for their hardware, photosensitive modes allow players to play visually difficult games, and general difficulty settings allow players to customize their experience based on their skill and familiarity with the mechanics. Taking away these choices can give developers the control to create strong experiences, but they can also make the game unplayable or difficult to players. However, the customized experience of the player can be very different from the intended experience of the developer. This could be viewed as a collaboration between player and developer to create a unique experience or a distortion of the game that detracts from the experience – would Curtain be as interesting if it had crisp, digestible graphics? Of course, this is one of the central aspects of game design – deciding what choices the player will have and what restrictions the game applies. However, now more than ever there is a wealth of choice that the developer can give to the player to customize their experience, and developers have to figure out how to use them to enrich their games but not lose control of the designed experience.
Really interesting point about a developer’s intention to maintain the experience with their game. I have always wondered how people draw the line between “it was intended for x impact” and “this is my excuse for having something function poorly”, since these days, many interpretations of a game’s meaning and play style is often completely different from what the creator actually intended.