Future Games, Future Animation

Games and animation have come a long way since they first appeared. But, what lies in store for them in the future?
Consoles, computers and screens are getting bigger and better each day, so, games and animations are going to evolve along side them, but, what form will they take?

Visuals will of course be enhanced with the possible crossing of the uncanny valley. So one of the possible enhancement will probably be the achievement in photorealism in animations and in games. Photorealism in animation may not serve any other purpose than technical achievement (since we can use camera to film live action footage instead of spending time animating and composing sequences), with maybe the added bonus that one day photorealistic animation might be cheaper than live action. Games on the other hand would greatly benefit from photorealism, bringing the player closer to total submergence.

New technology such as motion controllers, cameras with motion tracking systems and 3D screens are already widely used. In time I believe they will be perfected so that they become the "norm". Taking them a step further, we might see 3D headgear or 3D glasses that allow people to feel like they are walking through the gaming environment. Prototypes already exist but the finished product is a long way away.

Gloves fitted with motion capture systems as well as special controls to immerse the player fully might make him or her feel like they are actually wielding the sword/dealing blows/ casting spells or interacting with characters or objects from the game (for example: thermal controls that make the gloves cold could make the wearer feel like they are trapped in a blizzard; vibrations or small electric shocks will make them feel like they are touching things, casting magic, hitting things, etc). The gloves, combined with a 3D visor would help the gamer feel submerged.The technology for these things already exist, so it's just a matter of time. But, what about sound? Smell? Taste?

Taking things a step further I can imagine a cylindrical room/chamber, small enough to fit in any room of your house/apartment, but big enough for one or two fully grown adults to fit in with enough oom for movement. The walls would act as a screen displaying a 360 degree 3D view of the gaming environment. Scents could then be used inside the chamber (pine, flower and grass for woods for example). A surround-sound system would solve the noise problem, with the room canceling out all external sounds. Taste would be difficult to replicate, but, since most games do not require you to taste things in-game, this wouldn't be a problem. But if need be, one could use sprays with different tastes:

The gamer would theoretically be able to interact with the game as if he is in the real world. Of course, the room would have to be ventilated so that you won't die from lack of oxygen or from pungent odours (from the scents mixing). Then there's also the fact that the gamer would have to remain standing for long periods of time thus he'd become fatigued. Though that would force the gamer to exercise (on of the downsides of gaming most parents seem to point out). But then, we'd eliminate the need to go outside and exercise. In a Second Life scenario people could end up living as their game counterparts, interacting in an ideal world, but that again could go both ways. As a means of entertainment it's ok but some people will fo over board and will refuse to go outside and interact with the real world ( some people do that now with our "limited" technology).

As far as animation goes, an open ended or interactive narrative might be the future. Using the same "game room"/ "screen room" we can imerge ourselves and interact with the animation. 

Perhaps different screens that can be bended into different shapes/changed and that reaction to our motions might exist. It the screen would be made from a pliable and mouldable material we could stretch it out, turn in into a ball, rip pieces of it. If we have an animation of a fish bowl, we can flatten in (the water pours out) we can make it a ball (we make it back into a bowl), we rip pieces apart (separating the fishes). 

So, in 5 years I think we'll have even better motion capture technology (maybe gloves so that it will feel less clunky than a controller), or better motion capturing cameras (a step forward from the Kinect).

In 20 years we'll probably have photorealism and perhaps good 3D head gear or a 360 degree room. Motion capture cameras could be used for the "game room" but we'd still need the gloves to be able to replicate the sense of touch.

Games and animation will probably go in a very different direction from what we have at the moment, as people want to experiment newer things so much so that the new experience would be more important than the actual finished product, so we'll just have to wait and find out where human resourcefulness and imagination will lead us.

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey, or the monomyth refers to a basic pattern that is supposedly found in narratives from all over the world. Thus, one should be able, without fail, to create a compelling story using this structure. But, is this the case?

Joseph Campbell (the man who coined the term) argues that due to a psychological undercurrent specific to all humans, we are "hot-wired" to structure storied using the following 17 stages:

•  Departure
  • The Call to Adventure
  • Refusal of the Call
  • Supernatural Aid
  • The Crossing of the First Threshold
  • Belly of The Whale
• Initiation
  • The Road of Trials
  • The Meeting With the Goddess
  • Woman as Temptress
  • Atonement with the Father
  • Apotheosis
  • The Ultimate Boon
• Return
  • Refusal of the Return
  • The Magic Flight
  • Rescue from Without
  • The Crossing of the Return Threshold
  • Master of Two Worlds
  • Freedom to Live

This structure has since been reformulated several times by several different people. Nowadays it's used as a structure in Hollywood movies (scripts that don't have this structure -Syd Field's Paradigm-are rejected).
One of the most well know and successful examples of using this structure to write an award winning movies is George Lucas' "Star Wars". Lucas has admitted using this structure in the book "Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind" (Larsen and Larsen, 2002, pages 541-543).
This structure can also be applied to a variety of movies: "Godfather" , "The King's Speech", all of the "Harry Potter" movies, "Marly and Me", "Casablanca".
I believe that, because of the vagueness of the stages almost any movie (if not all of them) can be forced into this mould. This has given rise to criticism from various people stating that, by using the monomyth one loses all originality. Cliches thus become widely used and individuality is lost. Others, such as David Brin, claim that the monomyth was born out of cross-cultural similarities between cultures and was mostly enforced by kings and priest to justify tyranny. He points to science fiction as an antithesis to Campbell's monomyth (how valid this claim is is a point of discussion).


The monomyth works mainly because we as a species have defined what a story is (Aristotle is one of the first to try to give a structure for stories). Whether this is because of some deep rooted psychological reason or because of a natural and logical development of the story structure. There will always be people who claim to have a different set of rules and this is how it should be. Storytelling (like all art forms) is an every growing, ever changing process that will undoubtedly take on a myriad of different forms for as long as humans shall exist, neither being better or worse than the other, just different.

Storytelling

Storytelling - the conveying of events thorough sounds, images and words ofter using embellishment or improvisation. Stories have been used in every culture as a means to insill moral values, as entertainment, for educational purposes and to preserve cultural heritage.
Some of the crucial elements of storytelling are: characters, plot and narrative point of view.

People have used a variety of medium and ways of storytelling throughout history, everything from rock art (pictures drawn or carved on/in rock), sand, leaves and tree branches, tattooing (showing the story of the tribe, or the clan- used even nowadays by Yakuza members), singing, oral narrative, dance, then gradually transitioned to written language (when the first alphabets were invented), first on rocks and leaves then on paper. Nowadays people make use of video cameras, computers, recorders, video games, animation, film making, and anything in-between to tell a story. We even have a wider view on what constitutes a story. Apart from the traditional forms like legends, fables, fairytales, mythology, plays etc. we also have political commentaries, personal narratives ( diaries, blogs), etc.
One of the first attempts at examining the structure of various narratives was made by Aristotle in his work "Poetics". Through it he attempts to define structures for certain types on narratives (poetry, tragedy and comedy). He also set the basis for a story- what is should consist of: Beginning, Middle and End.

One of the major differences between traditional storytelling and modern storytelling is interactivity. The ability to change the story according to the reader/ viewers whims has taked storytelling to a different level. Games allow us to interact with the story and leave our imprint on it, even though the basic story and premise remain unchanged. And certain games such as Second Life give you the opportunity to create your own story and interact with other people (and their stories) thus giving birth to yet another new type of storytelling, where two stories merge to create a third, new one, where they can be seen as different stories or one story with two staring points. Yet, no matter what hybrids may arrise the main building blocks of story telling must still remain. Given to much freedom and ambiguity creates either a bad story(with no structure) or a bland story ( so structures and concise that it leaves nothing to the imagination - narratology is, after all, an art form).

Games seem to be the best bet for original storytelling. The interactivity mixed with traditional storytelling (oral and visual) make games the most versatile and most groundbreaking way of storytelling, and only time will tell where it will lead us.

Player Types

Based on a paper by Richard Bartle, the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology is a series of questions designed to categorise players into certain groups: Achievers, Explorers, Socialisers and Killers. It has become so well known that video games designers have used it to determine what type of games they should make based on a particular target audience.

While several people have questioned the validity of this test (the idea that people can be grouped into only 4 disting groups is a bit of a stretch), the main idea of the test ( organising player types and preferences) is valid. While various sub-types may appear (mixes between types -which leads me to believe that there are more than the 4 main types and that the mixes should become types as well), the test is a good framework to start from.

After taking the Bartle Test I found out that I am an Explorer/ Achiever. So, judging from the graph bellow, I'm interested with interacting with the environment as well as acting on it and changing it to my needs and desires.

I had a vague notion that I might end up in these categories. I tend to like exploring the games (getting into the story, getting to know the characters, learning about how to best use the various pieces of the games, whether those are moves, various weapons or artifacts, or maybe just cheats that will ultimately enable me to better enjoy the game- although cheating as a way of increasing the gaming pleasure is a different topic altogether), so I am a typical Explorer. On the other hand I do get a sense os satisfaction from high scores and winning, so again, I have typical Achiever traits. But given the right incentive, I could easily fall into the other two categories: Socialiser or Killer, depending on my mood or my objective.

I believe that most people tend to go through all of the types at various points either in the game or maybe even in their lives. How much your real persona influences the game persona is a contention point. Although I'm sure that our personality plays a part in how we play games, the reason we play games is to experience a different reality, and that usually includes a different persona. You play a game because you get a sense of freedom you wouldn't experience in real life (you wouldn't shoot someone in the head like you so freely and happily do in games such as Call of Duty, or steal a car like in Grand Theft Auto, you certainly  wouldn't try to use spells or weapons to defeat wolfs or bear in real life as you do in Skyrim). Some people create entirely different personas and life in a sort of wish fulfillment through games such as Second Life or World of Warcraft.
You could say that people who choose to create a different game persona are still creating it based on a player type (the character they create may be a sorcerer who spends time learning spells, thus he or she can be termed an Explorer, or maybe the character is a worrier only interested in killing and maiming opponents , thus being a Killer), but everyone needs different things at different times and to try to force a person into a mould based on a single game type (MMORPG), or a certain time frame, I think, is a mistake. Again, the premise is good, but the detailes need to be sorted out to avoid muddling.

In the end, I think a successul game should have something to offer each player type, because in concentrating on just one you eliminate a huge market of potential players, as well as leading to a dwindling of all the other players (Mr. Bartle shows in his thesis how all player types are interconnected, each one "feeding" on the other, so a balance is always needed)

Animation and Computer Games

They're both part of digital media, there have been a number of transitions between them ( computer games based on tv shows, movies based of games, etc). Computer games use animation for cut scenes. So they are in some cases linked, but, what are the differences between them?

Computer games and animation are both immersive, but, in different ways. When you play a game you are usually given a wide range of options to choose from that directly effect either the game play or in some cases the game. With animation, on the other hand, one doesn't have the option of changing any part of it, yet this doesn't take away from the enjoyment (as long as we're referring to the viewer - or player in case of a game - and not the creator who experiences both immersion at certain parts of the creative process as well as full control of the mediums). Therefore, both allow the viewer to interact and become part of the world the game or animation are potrating, but in various degrees or ways. Games tend to have a more physical approach to immersion, whereas animation tends to be geared towards the imagination and inner world of the viewer (that is not to say that video games don't use the same psychological immersion techniques).

Another point to consider is the quality of the animation for each of them. Animation for a feature film or a series is usually high quality, animators having the enough time to focus on it and few software limitations to worry about. With video games, on the other hand, although animation is usually one of the focal points of the game, many other things have to be done in parallel. Game mechanics, level designs, programming,environment interactivity time constraints all contribute to the animation quality. But, most importantly, software limitation is the one that brings down the animation in games. Based on the console the games is geared at, the memory one has is limited. The modelling has to be simple (with simple rigs), which usually leads to clunky animations. The quality of the characters (facial animation, clothes, hair) is usually subpar when compared to an animated movie because of the same reason. The more complex the characters and backgrounds, the greater te lag in render playback. Yet, consoles are even evolving and with their evolution comes more memory and more space within which animators can create better and better animations.

I feel that, although they are two different digital medias, and though they will always retain separate undiluted forms, they will at some point in the future mix together to form a completely new digital media. Whether it will be an animation that will allow you to hand pick certain actions the characters take so as to lead them towards different endings, or a game where the animation will reach the same quality as in features films, maybe even one that allows you to "direct" you own animation/game by giving you options for camera positioning, character and selection, ability to alter elements in the game (whether they are character or background objects or even settings), while still retaining the "feel" or basic story of the game. Only time will tell where this two medias will head and how they will merge.

The Uncanny Valley

The Uncanny Valley: has it been crossed yet?

What is the uncanny Valley? Wikipedia says it is: "(...) a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's human likeness."


First coined by professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, mankind has since tried to create robots and 3d characters that cross this so-called valley. These attempts have been more or less successful, as we shall see. Yet, can the Valley be crossed? Although all people have a basic psychological archetypical structure, one has to take into consideration the subjective nature of people. People perceives things in a purely subjective and original way, entirely different from one another, and these perceptions can shape the way one perceives the Uncanny Valley. So, what one perceives as disturbing, another might perceive as funny, endearing or interesting, without feeling the least bit of repulsion. 

As we can see from the above graph, the more human like something is the more repulsed we feel by it,that is, until it crosses over to a real human, at which point we become comfortable again. As we can see, people seem to be irked by the lack of life in the puppets/zombies/3d characters etc. So it's not only a problem of hoe life like something looks but also how life like something comes across/ feels to us. Again, this feeling will be different on a case by case basis. Human perception is formed through experience, so, when something doesn't match our day to day experience (i.e. a 3d character doesn't move in the same way we know humans are supposed to move), the uncanny valley appears. 


A few theories on why the valley exists have been proposed:
a. Mate selection: wherein we are biologically designed to reject potential mates that we deem subpar (i.e. infertile) - we are attuned to notice imperfections
b. Mortality salience: the way the "uncanny" robot moves reminds us of our own mortality, of our own transient life .It plays on our fear of death, our fear of not being unique and being easy to replace and in some situations of losing control of our body (jerky movements, weird facial expressions reminiscent of facial nerve paralysis)
c.Pathogen avoidance: The visual anomalies and defects signal to us that the human like creature might carry a desease, thus we feel aversion as a means of signalling that we should avoid it.
d. Sorites paradoxes: We find it difficult to discern when the robot stop becoming a robot (non human) and bomes human.
e. Violation of human norms: a robot which has enough non-human characteristics will be judged as a robot, but, a robot with enough human-lika characteristics to do a passable job as a human shall be judged as a human ( therefore the defects are highly magnified)
f. Religious constructions of human identity: by acknowledging a human like robot we acknowledge that there is no such thing as human uniqueness. This causes existential anxiety, wherein we are reminded of our mortality and our ageing (things which humans then to attributet to others except oneself)


Here are a few examples of the Uncanny Valley in action: 
















In the end the uncanny valley hasn't been crossed yet but we are on the right track, and, at the rate at which electronics are progressing it is really just a matter of time until someone manages to cross it.

Experimental Animation

During the Avant- Garde and Abstract Art era of film making a new type of animation, paralleling these movements, emerged. Standing as a contrast to "commercial" animation, this type of animation sought to explore new techniques , use animation as a means of artistic self expresion, and create new ways of animating.
Experimental animation is usually done by an individual as opposed to a studio, and is usually produced with much smaller budgets than other animations. However, this is not an impediment  but, on the contrary, it seems to help with the experimental nature of this art form by forcing the creator to think outside of the box. Although not usually not commercially successful, experimental animations have nonetheless left an imprint on mainstream animation, influencing such works as Disney's "Fantasia".



Hans Richter's "Rhythm. 23" from 1923:







Andrzej Pawlowski's "Here and There" (1957)





Len Lye's "Free Radicals" (1958):






Oskar Fischinger's "Danse Macabre":







Normal McLaren's "Dots" (1940):




Mary Ellen Bute's "Synchromy No. 4":





Walter Ruttman's "Opus I" :






As we can see, experimental animators play with form, colors, textures, rhythm, combine mediums, use controversial images and rarely use storytelling, all in an attempt to illicit emotion from the viewer.
While not a fan of experimental or abstract animation, I find some of them quite interesting and inspirational. The raw emotions and images one derives form viewing such animations are a great way of  getting inspiration for any art form.