Pixar: Games should stop trying to be realistic
Lewis Denby June 23, 2011 - 11:01 amPixar boss John Lasseter thinks complexity, not realism, is the way forward for videogames.
Cars 2: The Video Game launches alongside its animated movie counterpart this week, prompting Pixar CCO John Lasseter to think about the future of gaming.
It’s all about more complex worlds and storytelling, he thinks – but one thing it’s definitely not going to be about is photorealism.
“I don’t think videogame makers should keep trying to do realism,” he said, citing the ‘uncanny valley’ as a potential problem.
The idea of the uncanny valley is that the closer animation gets to perfect realism, the less appealing it is to the audience. Somehow, it seems something that’s almost realistic is less convincing than something which doesn’t even try to be.
“If you take a step back from that and do a slight caricaturisation – caricaturise it slightly, or stylise it, in a way – and then you have all that complexity, it is so believable to the audience,” he said, in an interview with GamerLive.TV.
“It’s fantastic,” he added, noting that this is exactly the way Pixar approaches its films.
