Video Games

DIGITAL ANIMATION

Some important developments in technologies, and the formal capacity they offer for rendering versions of new fictional worlds, are also shared between cinema and games, most obviously in the area of digital animation. The fact that new standards of realism in computer-generated graphics are offered as one selling point of games and animated films creates a point of crossover between the two media. This is especially the case in a film such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), based on the successful Final Fantasy game series. The crossover between more overtly "fantastic" digital special effects in live-action cinema and those used in games, such as the morphing effects in Primal (2003) and American McGee's Alice (2000), is another prominent point of contact. Similar representational capacities are drawn upon by the two media, a fact of significance to the libraries of images, image-textures, and devices available to each. The availability of particular kinds of effects might in some cases encourage particular types of production. Horror and fantasy, for example, lend themselves especially well to the spectacular display of fantastical morphing effects in both films and games.

This is another area in which differences are in play, even when such fundamentally similar building blocks are involved. The level of surface, visual realism attained in the film version of Final Fantasy is higher—more detailed—than that found in the interactive segments of games contemporary with this film, mainly because priorities other than graphical realism have an important call on the hardware resources available during game processing. The same goes for the morphing effects in Primal as compared to their equivalent on film. A similar kind of transformation might be present in some films and games, creating similar potential for the development of narrative or spectacular effects. But the quality of resolution—and, arguably, the importance of this factor among others—remains different. These differences, driven by substantially different priorities and agendas, have various implications for effects produced in the name of both realism and spectacular attraction for its own sake.

Developments in graphics processing are closing the gap, however, a promise that figures largely in advance publicity claims for forthcoming products (software and hardware), as is evident in each new generation of games and games designed to take advantage of the capabilities offered by new processing technologies. The development of new generations of graphics technology contributes to the ability of games and cinema to create increasingly spectacular audio-visual effects (realistic-looking water and fire or dynamic lighting/shadows, for example). And as processing power increases, animated characters in tie-in games become more like the actors who originally played them—in terms of both facial features and movement (as is the case with the player/character in Constantine [2005], composed from motion-captured movement, the recorded voice, and digital-mapped face of the actor Keanu Reeves).

In a multiplayer online context, limitations of telephony still have an impact on levels of graphical realism, more detailed graphics creating a slower rate of exchange between server and PC. Action-adventure-type games and some types of cinema also share an investment in the production of intense sensational experiences that impact forcefully on the player or viewer. Varying combinations of rapid editing and unstable camerawork are used in contemporary Hollywood action cinema to create maximum sensation. Games sometimes mimic devices used in Hollywood—the fireball impact effect, for example—but they also take this a stage further, requiring a frenzied response on the part of the player.