The argument of are games art seems to be never-ending, there is no argument on how far video game graphics have come. Video game graphics started off very simplistic. The colour palette was extremely basic and for an 8-bit game, only 256 colours were available for game producers to use. The colour palette eventually expanded to 16-bit games in 1987 where 65,536 colour combinations were available. Refer to Fig 7. This was a huge step, and sprites showed a lot more detail than they previously did. Sprites are a bitmap graphic that is designed to be part of a bigger scene. It can either be animated graphic or even a static image. (Tech Terms, 2012)
Fig1 . Mario 8-bit and 16-bit. (Hawken, 2018)
Video games are now more commonly up to 32-bit and 64-bit. A 32-bit game has a total of 16,777,215 which can have a total of 4,294,967,296 colour combinations, which is significantly bigger than a 16-bit game. (Computer Hope, 18) The graphics have become so photo-realistic, it can be hard to tell the difference between an in-game photograph, and a photograph of the real location. For example, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a game released in October 2019, sets one of the scenes in Piccadilly Circus, London. This particular Call of Duty game is a 64-bit game, meaning the graphics are incredibly realistic, and almost look like a photograph (Fig 8). The second mission, Piccadilly Circus, is remarkably similar to the real location, from the larger details, to the tiny details you may not notice at first
Fig 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare ‘Piccadilly Circus’ (Castle, 19)
Figure 2 is an in-game photograph of the Piccadilly Circus mission. As it can be seen, the detail is astonishingly accurate to the real location, from the subway station, to the police officers’ uniform. If the image wasn’t in the first-person shooter mode, it could be easily mistaken as a clip from a film, or just a photograph. Video games are very similar to film, one element they both share is the use of on-screen and off-screen space in the creation of a diegetic world. (Wolf, 2005) A diegetic world is a sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film or game, this could be either; the voice of characters; sounds that could be made by objects within the story; or, sounds or music. These can be both on-screen and off-screen sounds, depending on the source. (filmsound.org, n.d.)
Fig 3. ‘Piccadilly Circus in the evening’ 2015-2017, by Reid Bramblett. (Bramblett, 2017)
Figure 3 is an actual photograph of Piccadilly Circus, compared to the in-game screenshot, Figure 2, there aren’t many differences between them. The game developers at Activision were able to recreate an already existing space and make it highly accurate, as well as the graphics being photo realistic, they were able to make the player feel like they are in London. One of the reasons they were able to make the game and graphics highly realistic, is because they now have the technology, they can use more colours and colour combinations when creating the games to make them photo realistic.