A New Look
May 1st, 2008 trobert9
Discussion in class recently turned to the “uncanny valley” of how eerie modern computer graphics can be when trying to model real people. After playing many games based off of movies, it usually isn’t too bad, maybe because movie characters are larger-than-life figures, and a little distortion is okay. However, I recently tried out two games based off of television series and the story is quite different. Both popular shows CSI and Lost have released games, CSI: Hard Evidence and Lost: Via Domus respectively. In these games, the character models are very, for lack of a better term, creepy. They do resemble the characters viewers have come to know and love, but are oddly lifeless and glossy. It’s like watching clay-mation.
The real thing that bugs me though, is why is it creepier when playing a TV based game than playing a movie based game? I think it is because while movie characters are larger-than-life, TV characters capitalize on how real they are. People are more likely to identify with a character in a TV show about average people than an over-the-top movie about big time heroes. So when these average people look slightly off, it bothers us more than the movie character that was different from us anyway. Also, movies in general can take place in wild and impossible situations, while these two TV shows are grounded in the real world, so seeing a fake version of it is unsettling to us. I guess in a TV show-game it seems more like an eerie representation of the person, which is weird, while in a movie-game it is a representation of the character, which is acceptable.
Of course, the reason could be different, maybe it’s just the artists of those games, or the fact that the other characters in both those games address the player directly, while movie-games usually happen from an omnipotent point of view. However, I personally find it much more unsettling to watch either of these games than any other game I own, movie-based or not, and I think it has something to do with the TV show origins.
I guess I don’t have a definite answer to my question of why its creepier, I just wanted to bring up these two fitting examples of what we talked about in class.
Entry Filed under: Game Log
