Read-a-long with Nintendo Power #253 (April 2010)
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Read-a-long with Nintendo Power #253 (April 2010)
March 21, 2010 – 10:40 am | Comments

This issue has some very good news about two games I’ve been monitoring, plus some bad reviews for two games I was going to get. And a little middle-of-the-road news about WarioWare DIY. Stuff your …

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Home » Aeropaused

The Colour Of Next-Gen Gaming?

Submitted by Nick on October 21, 2006 – 10:42 pmComments

Years ago a game called Quake came out and it was amazing. It pushed your PC to its limits, but it had to make a few concessions to be able to do so. One of them was limiting the number of colours used to 256. It was a grimy industrial game and id Software chose to use a combination of greys and browns for most of the levels.

Fast forward to the next generation. Console developers have 16.7 million colours to choose from! Why are they still using predominantly greys and browns? This colour scheme even seems to have spread outside of first person shooters and into other genres.

Check out this montage of images coming out for next-generation consoles (Xbox360, Playstation 3, Wii). It includes a range of games such as: Saints Row, Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Superman Returns, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Rainbox Six: Vegas.

the_future_is_brown.jpg

Clearly this doesn’t apply to all games, but I’m dissapointed by how many it does apply to. Particularly since high profile titles like Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man seem to be the worst offenders. Then again, maybe it suits their subject matter and environment. Maybe the worse offenders are games that are set in meant to be set in less desolate environments (like… the real world).

My suggestion to game developers: How about using some of that extra graphics power to produce a few more colours? If you’re going for realism… well, step outside and have a look around! It’s not that drab!

Source images (for montage) from Gamespot.

  • Kira_924
    With the new nex-gen counsels coming out espically the PS3 isnt it gonna be promoting violence to kids espically with the development RE5 on its way... no "kiddie" games come out n if they do they just nvr get sold...with half the United States not promoting the ESRB ratings...the realism these counsels are giving gamers are good for entertainment purposes...but dunt u think that theres gunna be a case jus like alwayz about sum kid shooting ppl n blaming it on games?
    Sur next-gen counsels r good but wont there be even more issues about violent games and the details of graphics in the future by the press and congress?....
  • Kira_924
    With the new nex-gen counsels coming out espically the PS3 isnt it gonna be promoting violence to kids espically with the development RE5 on its way... no "kiddie" games come out n if they do they jus suck...with half the United States not promoting the ESRB ratings...the realism these counsels are giving gamers are good for entertainment purposes...but dunt u think that theres gunna be a case jus like alwayz about sum kid shooting ppl n blaming it on games?
    Sur next-gen counsels r good but wont there be even more issues about violent games and the details of graphics in the future by the press and congress?....
  • Me: Let's add "blue sky, white clouds, blue/green water, green grass and trees, high-contrast street signs and advertising, red bricks, and all sort of colours for vehicles" to that list of exceptions.
  • Me
    Step outside some time, the world is dull and drab. With the exception of certain animals, insects and plants, the outside is all gray and brown.
  • Gordon
    Loved Burnout 3's graphics... When Revenge went all "gritty" for whatever reason every game seems to be, I was a little sad.
  • Garoath: There are a lot of screenshots and videos of Gears and Resistance online, and the screenshots above are fairly indicative of everything I've seen. You would think they would try to release images that communicate the look and feel of the game. Since all the media they chose to release looks "desolate", I think it's a pretty safe bet that that's how the game looks throughout (or at least for a significant portion of it).
  • Garoath
    Wow! Where did you get a copy of Gears of War and Resistance? I've only seen the demo level for Gears and haven't seen much of Resistance at all. Are you telling me you've played all the way through Gears and the color palate remains the same throughout, or are you making an assertion on game content you haven't actually witnessed?
  • I started to reply to some of these comments, but my reply was getting rather long. So I wrote a follow-up story (look for it on the main page).
  • The results have zero to do with bias - they're unavoidable. It could be a dozen shots of Kirby's Magical Acid Trip and they'd still be brown squares when reduced to single pixels. I'm not saying that there's a lot of muted colors in video games these days, but the author's assertion that reducing this selection of screenshots to single pixels proves his point is simply wrong and misleading.
  • The selection seems a bit biased to me. Where are the non-muddy Wii titles like Super Mario Galaxy or Wii Sports? Or is "next generation" just another way to say "grim 'n gritty bloodfest"?

    --R.J.
  • BBXboy
    Um, this is an absolutely ridiculous assertion... by averaging all of the pixels, of course you're going to get something neutral/brown. Try mixing up a bunch of primary colored paints and see what you get: yep, brown. In order to arrive at a down-sampled primary or bright color, the screenshot in question would require an overwhelming percentage of a given primary/bright color and would therefor lack anything akin to realism.

    Looks like somebody needs to educate himself with regards to both color and resampling - in fact, I challenge anyone to come up with a single example of a down-sampled screenshot of any game that doesn't end up something like these when reduced to a single pixel. If it comes out bright and happy I guarantee the source if super-saturated and lacks much depth or contrast.
  • Great point to this article!
    I hope people make a bigger deal of this.

    It's pathetic how both movies and video games "inspire" each other to such low-levels.
    Video games want that "cinematic" feel, and dumb down their palettes to create "mood" and "atmosphere". You can do a lot of that in your lighting alone, and still have good color theory. Yet I think it's a lack of artistic direction, and/or knowledge of color theory that hold most games back.

    And movies, with its impossibly unrealistic action and ridiculous concept design for the sake of "cool poses" and "dumb functionality" dies at the box office often because nobody puts time into the story and dialogue.

    Creative incestuousness is the real culprit.
    As long as video games and movies keep feeding off each other being "color blind" is just one more nail in the coffin!

    =s=
  • MaXThReAT
    Games will never meet reality in the same way the movies will never reach reality. I think of games and movies in the same way. As said before the colors are picked by the dev's or producers and directors to give it the cinematic look and feel and to convey a mood or feeling about what your looking at. I think these visual forms of entertainment will not change anytime soon. If a movie was made simply by filming the actors in a real world untouched setting it looks like a cheap film festival movie. Games really are not moving in the direction of mimicking real life they are more moving to mimic blockbuster films. Until we have a camera that digitizes the real world into polygons, colors and textures I don't think it ever will look like real life.
  • Gui
    This is by far the most ridiculous lines Ive read in a videogame media.

    Theres plenty of reasons why games looks greyish... especially realistic titles... no need to explain more. but may I point out that if you look closer with your eyes youll see plenty of colours in games... shades that tend to be greyish though but still...

    also that the use of grey ease the gameplay n the colours highlight are part of game design.

    Final word is that Mario games uses plenty of colors n dont ever looks real cause its all in the style.

    This article should be deleted, at least thats my point of view... still it is making us think a bit more about it... mmm
  • reelX
    FarCry is green. STEAL!
  • jibbler
    put some red clothes on snake and sam fisher. that should help their work
  • Enter
    It's the Matrix's fault. They started it with tinting everything green, now next-gen video games like Assasins Creed are tinting everything to make it look "cooler" and more "cinematic".
  • blindelf
    This is the 'Saving Private Ryan' syndrome...the restricted palette does a good job of creating an oppressive, surreal mood which when coupled with
    realistic visuals produces a sort of too-real/welcome-to-Hell vibe...

    Its the 'in' look now...its hardcore, right?

    Halo is more colorful. It'll be interesting to see if Halo 3 sticks with the brighter, less depressing look or succumbs somewhat to this affliction in hopes of staying gritty.

    Look at the Far Cry series...lots of bright
    sunlight and color there, and the games are
    still pretty engaging, right?
  • This trend also has something to do with our perception of visual information. We have many more rods in our retinas than we have cones. rods pick up greyscale, the majority of our motion detection, and details within our peripheral vision. Cones are concentrated within our focal point of vision, and they pick up color. Therefore less saturated hues exercise our rods to get the needed information across, and there is a broader, higher resolution array of rods to take advantage of the big high resolution screens that we view in HD gaming. I imagine too much satuaration throughout the entire screen would more easily confuse our brains and tire out our eyes.
  • James
    Actually, the real world is just neutral colors just like the games.


    Mario is colorful but totally unrealistic. If the industry makes more cartoon games, then you'll see more color. Rarely do I play Chromehounds and say, "I wish this had pretty colors." It's a mech war game, shouldn't have flashy colors.
  • Washed out colour is used in both film and video games to inspire a sense of hopelessness and realism (two things that are often used interchangeably). There's a particular new war film that is certainly guilty of using a dark hue to present mood in this way.

    I think you're right, this is incredibly overused and doesn't do justice to the real nature of war and conflict. Many battles have been fought on otherwise beautiful days, in fact it's the mixture of a peaceful day and ultra-violent conflict that truly represent war.
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