Technological advances are slowly but surely making it possible for game developers to get closer and closer to graphics which are indistinguishable from the real world — just look at the recent Unreal Engine 4 or Agni’s Philosophy demos to see where we’re headed. Setting aside the issue of rising development costs, providing developers with the hardware to handle the games they want to make is undoubtedly a good thing, knowing that even with something like Crysis 3 in the works, we can still have games that look like Dyad or Penny Arcade Episode 3.
But are these strides in visual quality a step that is needed to open up new genres and allow certain emotions to be evoked? That’s the position taken by 2K Games President Christoph Hartmann who, when asked about veteran game designer Warren Spector’s position on games being too centered around violence, told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes the interactivity in games makes it difficult to evoke the same emotions that movies do.
