However, I've seen some up-turns lately. The claim that Sims 4 has no specific end in sight. For those of you howling for Sims 5, just how happy will you feel if having paid about 500 bucks for a half-completed game, then being expected to start all over again? Sims 4 has a simple, cartoony style that means it will age well.
Toddlers. Players aren't happy with a half-finished game. And they're less happy when they have to pay to finish it.
Vampires. We have the best vampires ever. True, they came in a single gamepack. But because they came single, unlike Get To Work, full focus went into one lifestate, rather than five in an EP.
Will they continue to improve? Only Cats&Dogs will know for certain.
The game’s ‘completeness’ is rather subjective. Not everything we want will be added into the game. At the rate they release content, and with how small each pack tends to be, I would honestly speculate that a lot of things we want won’t find their way into the game by the time it eventually comes to a conclusion.
The art style is pretty, but don’t expect it to massively change the longevity of the game. The biggest factor that warrants a new game is how the current one performs with all DLC. There is all kinds of internal analysis that determines how much ‘stuff’ they can pile on top without the whole thing collapsing. The whole ‘no end in sight’ doesn’t lend itself to believing we’ll have this game for anymore than 2-3 more years. Did we necessarily see the literal ‘end’ of Sims 3 coming before the announcement of Sims 4? I don’t think so, we knew there would be a follow up similarly to how there’s probably going to be an eventual sequel to Sims 4, but there was no ‘end in sight’ so to speak. I don’t think that would necessarily be any different with this game, where they are even tighter lipped about everything that’s being developed.
The art style being pretty is very subjective as well I can assure you. Besides, I don't quite see why simple and cartoony means it will age well.
I can see in one glance what decade those cartoons belong to.
You are very right that the art styles ‘prettyness’ is subjective as well. I don’t necessarily have any issues with it, but I also don’t particularly think that it’s going to make the game last any longer than a less stylized art style would. I’m not sure who planted the seed of ‘art style ages well = longer development cycle’ that’s more or less what my post was about. Maxis saying “the art style ages well” (if it was even a Maxis employee who made the claim) really just excludes tons of more important factors that determine how much the game can actually handle and what their funding can accomplish.
However, I've seen some up-turns lately. The claim that Sims 4 has no specific end in sight. For those of you howling for Sims 5, just how happy will you feel if having paid about 500 bucks for a half-completed game, then being expected to start all over again? Sims 4 has a simple, cartoony style that means it will age well.
Toddlers. Players aren't happy with a half-finished game. And they're less happy when they have to pay to finish it.
Vampires. We have the best vampires ever. True, they came in a single gamepack. But because they came single, unlike Get To Work, full focus went into one lifestate, rather than five in an EP.
Will they continue to improve? Only Cats&Dogs will know for certain.
The game’s ‘completeness’ is rather subjective. Not everything we want will be added into the game. At the rate they release content, and with how small each pack tends to be, I would honestly speculate that a lot of things we want won’t find their way into the game by the time it eventually comes to a conclusion.
The art style is pretty, but don’t expect it to massively change the longevity of the game. The biggest factor that warrants a new game is how the current one performs with all DLC. There is all kinds of internal analysis that determines how much ‘stuff’ they can pile on top without the whole thing collapsing. The whole ‘no end in sight’ doesn’t lend itself to believing we’ll have this game for anymore than 2-3 more years. Did we necessarily see the literal ‘end’ of Sims 3 coming before the announcement of Sims 4? I don’t think so, we knew there would be a follow up similarly to how there’s probably going to be an eventual sequel to Sims 4, but there was no ‘end in sight’ so to speak. I don’t think that would necessarily be any different with this game, where they are even tighter lipped about everything that’s being developed.
The art style being pretty is very subjective as well I can assure you. Besides, I don't quite see why simple and cartoony means it will age well.
I can see in one glance what decade those cartoons belong to.
You are very right that the art styles ‘prettyness’ is subjective as well. I don’t necessarily have any issues with it, but I also don’t particularly think that it’s going to make the game last any longer than a less stylized art style would. I’m not sure who planted the seed of ‘art style ages well = longer development cycle’ that’s more or less what my post was about. Maxis saying “the art style ages well” (if it was even a Maxis employee who made the claim) really just excludes tons of more important factors that determine how much the game can actually handle and what their funding can accomplish.
The art style being pretty is very subjective as well I can assure you. Besides, I don't quite see why simple and cartoony means it will age well.
I can see in one glance what decade those cartoons belong to.
I don't think the argument is so much that "cartoon = ages well." It's that there's a particular style of art used in multiple games (this being one) that I believe has been called "stylized realism." It's more or less the Pixar art style. If you put it next to a photo realistic picture, it might look pathetic in terms of seeming real. But that's not how you're going to be viewing it most of the time.
Not everybody likes it, but for those who do, it seems passably real to the brain and after a while, you kind of forget that it's supposed to matter. It ages well because it's probably about as close as a cartoon-ish style can get to photo-realism without actually being photo-realistic graphics.
I think it is the play ability of a game that makes it age well. I can play FF7 to this day, and enjoy it just as much as I can play Witcher 3 which I enjoyed tremendously. They are completely different styles, but they are playable. I don't mind the older graphics of FF7 because it is playable. I do mind the art style of Sims4. It is not to my taste and I tried the game and did not like the play of the game. It is also not to my taste. I won't buy it. If the play had been better and more to my taste I could probably, maybe, sort of, overlook the art style. I think the dev's have learned that a lot of simmers will not put up with shoddy workmanship anymore (ball pit in particular). They are fixing what they can in regards to glitches and bugs, but, just like Sims3, it just depends on how bad the bug or issue is as to whether they will bother with it. I cannot support that kind of attitude any longer in a company.
I think that the devs just are doing what EA has told them to do (via the executive producer who's job it is to make sure that EA's instructions are followed and within the budgets for each SP, GP and EP.). It is surely also EA who decides the types of expansions (SP, GP or EP) and how many of each type that the devs have to make. I am quite sure that the devs have much less freedom than most people here imagine.
Making games is big business and not just something that the devs do to have a little fun.
The art style being pretty is very subjective as well I can assure you. Besides, I don't quite see why simple and cartoony means it will age well.
I can see in one glance what decade those cartoons belong to.
I don't think the argument is so much that "cartoon = ages well." It's that there's a particular style of art used in multiple games (this being one) that I believe has been called "stylized realism." It's more or less the Pixar art style. If you put it next to a photo realistic picture, it might look pathetic in terms of seeming real. But that's not how you're going to be viewing it most of the time.
Not everybody likes it, but for those who do, it seems passably real to the brain and after a while, you kind of forget that it's supposed to matter. It ages well because it's probably about as close as a cartoon-ish style can get to photo-realism without actually being photo-realistic graphics.
I wasn't so much referring to the cartoony aspect here, but rather to the stylized aspect. To use less cartoony though stylized examples:
Those art styles in fact look very dated, very much belonging to a certain era. Because of the way they are stylized. Stylized means 'to design in or cause to conform to a particular style, as of representation or treatment in art; conventionalize'. That subjects much more to a certain fashion than realism. And if there's one thing bound to be outdated at one point, it's fashion To compare, some sixties realism.
If you wouldn't know him, you'd immediately accept him as an actor playing in a recently released movie
@JoAnne65
I think TS4 will last longer, but probably not 60-years longer.
I think it's not so much that cartoony/stylized don't age, it's that as soon as you go the photorealistic route, you have to be cutting edge, or it shows, because humans are trained daily to recognize realism, but not that much into distinguishing and identifying the timeline of different stylized fashions. Especially when talking about a period of several years. Technology is changing quicker than fashion I think.
I mean, think it that way : if people say TS4 looks like Pixar, do you think they make the distinction between Inside Out-Pixar and Up-Pixar ? I doubt it.
I wasn't so much referring to the cartoony aspect here, but rather to the stylized aspect. To use less cartoony though stylized examples:
Those art styles in fact look very dated, very much belonging to a certain era. Because of the way they are stylized. Stylized means 'to design in or cause to conform to a particular style, as of representation or treatment in art; conventionalize'. That subjects much more to a certain fashion than realism. And if there's one thing bound to be outdated at one point, it's fashion To compare, some sixties realism.
If you wouldn't know him, you'd immediately accept him as an actor playing in a recently released movie
I wouldn't even call those cartoon tbh, so I'm not sure what you mean. They look like attempts at realism to me, just without going into full detail.
@JoAnne65
I think TS4 will last longer, but probably not 60-years longer.
I think it's not so much that cartoony/stylized don't age, it's that as soon as you go the photorealistic route, you have to be cutting edge, or it shows, because humans are trained daily to recognize realism, but not that much into distinguishing and identifying the timeline of different stylized fashions. Especially when talking about a period of several years. Technology is changing quicker than fashion I think.
I mean, think it that way : if people say TS4 looks like Pixar, do you think they make the distinction between Inside Out-Pixar and Up-Pixar ? I doubt it.
There is a huge difference between 60’s and 70’s art style as you can see, I wasn’t comparing 60’s to now
1968:
Same magazine in 1972:
I’m not a fan of photorealism in the game by the way, I don’t need creepy. It’s just that this argument simply doesn’t make any sense. It’s very debatable what changes faster, fashion or technology. Fashion lasts about a season And besides, they can use advancing technology during the existence of a game. The looks of both Sims 3 and Sims 4 over the years prove that.
(I don’t agree Sims 4 looks like Pixar by the way)
I wasn't so much referring to the cartoony aspect here, but rather to the stylized aspect. To use less cartoony though stylized examples:
Those art styles in fact look very dated, very much belonging to a certain era. Because of the way they are stylized. Stylized means 'to design in or cause to conform to a particular style, as of representation or treatment in art; conventionalize'. That subjects much more to a certain fashion than realism. And if there's one thing bound to be outdated at one point, it's fashion To compare, some sixties realism.
If you wouldn't know him, you'd immediately accept him as an actor playing in a recently released movie
I wouldn't even call those cartoon tbh, so I'm not sure what you mean. They look like attempts at realism to me, just without going into full detail.
Yes, after you said: I don't think the argument is so much that "cartoon = ages well." It's that there's a particular style of art used in multiple games (this being one) that I believe has been called "stylized realism." I used none cartoony stylized examples the second time - and I said I did so I don’t understand your remark? - to show that stylized realism ages as well. This opposed to the assumption “Sims 4 has a simple, cartoony style that means it will age well”. Cartoon and simple style don’t age well at all. They become old fashioned pretty fast.
Yes, after you said: I don't think the argument is so much that "cartoon = ages well." It's that there's a particular style of art used in multiple games (this being one) that I believe has been called "stylized realism." I used none cartoony stylized examples the second time - and I said I did so I don’t understand your remark? - to show that stylized realism ages as well. This opposed to the assumption “Sims 4 has a simple, cartoony style that means it will age well”. Cartoon and simple style don’t age well at all. They become old fashioned pretty fast.
I guess I misread. I'm very confused as to what the argument is at this point. Stylized realism is a term I remember for a game that uses a similar style to TS4. If it's just some all-encompassing term for a super broad style, then I guess I'm using terminology wrong.
I don't see how the style we're talking about (a style like TS4's style, which I believe is similar, if not the same, to the Pixar style and to the style of games like SWTOR) is aging fast. A Bug's Life (a Pixar movie) came out in 1998. Finding Dory (one of the most recent Pixar movies) came out in 2016. That's almost two decades. If you google pictures of the movies, the style looks about the same. And it's showing no sign that I've seen of being considered dated or out of fashion. Even if you were to disagree that this game's style is the same as Pixar, the evidence of Pixar's success is still an indication that their particularly cartoon style is aging just fine. So a blanket argument that "cartoon and simple style don’t age well at all", I just don't see it.
It's difficult to say how a game ages. You have to remember what you thought when you first saw its graphics and then compare it to what's available today. When Sims 2 was released, its graphics were considered great. Certainly a huge jump forward from Sims 1. Compared to Sims 3 and 4 though, it looks really weak. The eyes are always the first thing to go.
Compare Team Fortress 2 to today's graphics, and TF2 has held up rather well. Sure, nobody says it's photorealistic. And it's not perfect. But you don't feel so torn because the 'then' and the 'now'. And that's what Sims 4 seems to have gone for. Rather than approaching the Uncanny Valley head on, the graphics have taken a step sideways, rather than forward, and with the power of the strongest CAS yet in the palm of our sliders, there really is more potential.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
A lot of Disney films created in the 1940's are still watched today. As a child I never wanted to watch old films with actors in as they seemed so old fashioned but I would happily watch Disney films without being aware of how old they were. Generally cartoons will last longer before they seem out of date although that doesn't mean they wont ever be out dated.
The unrestrained praise of the separate release of Vampires has hopefully shown EA that no matter how much we know this is one way to turn one EP into 5 GPs, we'll still pay for it if the quality is high. It's one of the most highly recommended packs, as long as you like Vampires. Can't see the point of a 'turn vampires off' option myself, since if you do that you're paying £20 for a glorified Stuff Pack.
I think people will be seriously disappointed if the other supernatruals aren't as polished as Vampires was, and it would be a big step backwards.
And I'm more than happy to say goodbye to the Microtransactions of Sims 3, although it makes me raise an eyebrow to see the prices as extortionate as ever even 3 years later.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
A lot of Disney films created in the 1940's are still watched today. As a child I never wanted to watch old films with actors in as they seemed so old fashioned but I would happily watch Disney films without being aware of how old they were. Generally cartoons will last longer before they seem out of date although that doesn't mean they wont ever be out dated.
This isn't just about cartoons because I happily watch very old films without colors too. A movie isn't mainly about colors and there are old movies from the 1930s and 1940s which I still never have seen and they are often very good. So it is a pity that so many now just refuse to see those fantastic movies just because they aren't color movies. The missing colors are something you usually only care about in the first few minutes of the movie until you realize how good the movie is and why so many people saw it all those years ago. A good movie in black and white still beats a bad movie in colors any time
A lot of Disney films created in the 1940's are still watched today. As a child I never wanted to watch old films with actors in as they seemed so old fashioned but I would happily watch Disney films without being aware of how old they were. Generally cartoons will last longer before they seem out of date although that doesn't mean they wont ever be out dated.
This isn't just about cartoons because I happily watch very old films without colors too. A movie isn't mainly about colors and there are old movies from the 1930s and 1940s which I still never have seen and they are often very good. So it is a pity that so many now just refuse to see those fantastic movies just because they aren't color movies. The missing colors are something you usually only care about in the first few minutes of the movie until you realize how good the movie is and why so many people saw it all those years ago. A good movie in black and white still beats a bad movie in colors any time
Gee, that doesn't sound biased at all /s.
Who cares if people enjoy color over black and white? Movies are a VISUAL medium, so its perfectly acceptable for someone to not be interested in films that are in black and white.
A lot of Disney films created in the 1940's are still watched today. As a child I never wanted to watch old films with actors in as they seemed so old fashioned but I would happily watch Disney films without being aware of how old they were. Generally cartoons will last longer before they seem out of date although that doesn't mean they wont ever be out dated.
This isn't just about cartoons because I happily watch very old films without colors too. A movie isn't mainly about colors and there are old movies from the 1930s and 1940s which I still never have seen and they are often very good. So it is a pity that so many now just refuse to see those fantastic movies just because they aren't color movies. The missing colors are something you usually only care about in the first few minutes of the movie until you realize how good the movie is and why so many people saw it all those years ago. A good movie in black and white still beats a bad movie in colors any time
Gee, that doesn't sound biased at all /s.
Who cares if people enjoy color over black and white? Movies are a VISUAL medium, so its perfectly acceptable for someone to not be interested in films that are in black and white.
Did I say anything else?
Of course it is very acceptable if people are more interested in colors than in a good movie or whatever. But I just don't care so much about the colors myself that I prefer to just look at colors instead of enjoying a good story.
In the same way it is of course also completely acceptable if you won't care to read a book unless it has nice and colorful pictures on all its pages too.
If we return to the subject then it would likewise be very acceptable if some people won't play Sims games because the Sims don't look like the people we meet in our real lives. Sometimes in the future they may also look like real people and I actually think that EA could make them such already now. I just don't think that this really would improve the Sims games much either.
TS1 was a good game in spite of its ugly graphics and people are actually still playing it
Yes, after you said: I don't think the argument is so much that "cartoon = ages well." It's that there's a particular style of art used in multiple games (this being one) that I believe has been called "stylized realism." I used none cartoony stylized examples the second time - and I said I did so I don’t understand your remark? - to show that stylized realism ages as well. This opposed to the assumption “Sims 4 has a simple, cartoony style that means it will age well”. Cartoon and simple style don’t age well at all. They become old fashioned pretty fast.
I guess I misread. I'm very confused as to what the argument is at this point. Stylized realism is a term I remember for a game that uses a similar style to TS4. If it's just some all-encompassing term for a super broad style, then I guess I'm using terminology wrong.
I don't see how the style we're talking about (a style like TS4's style, which I believe is similar, if not the same, to the Pixar style and to the style of games like SWTOR) is aging fast. A Bug's Life (a Pixar movie) came out in 1998. Finding Dory (one of the most recent Pixar movies) came out in 2016. That's almost two decades. If you google pictures of the movies, the style looks about the same. And it's showing no sign that I've seen of being considered dated or out of fashion. Even if you were to disagree that this game's style is the same as Pixar, the evidence of Pixar's success is still an indication that their particularly cartoon style is aging just fine. So a blanket argument that "cartoon and simple style don’t age well at all", I just don't see it.
The 'trigger' of the argument was the OP's observation “Sims 4 has a simple, cartoony style that means it will age well”. I have read that before but I don't understand what it means. To me it sounds like a catchy oneliner that's used as a truism, but is it (true I mean). And in fact the confusion here is one of the reasons I'm wondering if this is in any way true. Because indeed, what are people referring to when they claim this? The cartoony art style, or the stylized style? There is a difference. This is definitely cartoony, but the texture is realistic:
This is not cartoony, the approach is realistic, but it is stylized:
Both cartoony and stylized are very sensitive to becoming dated, because they represent a certain approach, it's hardly ever timeless. You can often tell when it was created. Which as such isn't a bad thing by the way, I like both cartoony and stylized, though not in my Sims game. But I simply don't understand the oneliner, because I find it's quite the opposite. Realism is much more timeless than cartoon because as Paul Newman shows (or a realistic drawing of Paul Newman), people basically looked exactly the same back in the sixties as they do now, hairstyle and clothing aside.
Pixar indeed has the same approach as they did 20 years ago, which means an art style with great detail and awesome textures. Presenting cartoon as if it's real. In no way do I see that back in Sims 4. If I may compare the 2009 game to the 2014 game here:
Please explain to me how the legs on the left look dated because they look like real legs and the legs on the right do not because they look like asparagus?
It's difficult to say how a game ages. You have to remember what you thought when you first saw its graphics and then compare it to what's available today. When Sims 2 was released, its graphics were considered great. Certainly a huge jump forward from Sims 1. Compared to Sims 3 and 4 though, it looks really weak. The eyes are always the first thing to go.
Compare Team Fortress 2 to today's graphics, and TF2 has held up rather well. Sure, nobody says it's photorealistic. And it's not perfect. But you don't feel so torn because the 'then' and the 'now'. And that's what Sims 4 seems to have gone for. Rather than approaching the Uncanny Valley head on, the graphics have taken a step sideways, rather than forward, and with the power of the strongest CAS yet in the palm of our sliders, there really is more potential.
There is a huge spectrum between a step back (not sideways, also in comparison to Sims 2) and uncanny valley. I find it rather odd that delivering a poor job is sold as a good thing because you won't notice in the end it was a poor job. First, it doesn't work because people do see it.
And second: give me awesome now, by the time it starts looking outdated I'll settle for new awesomeness. "Let's aim really low, in order to not fall so deep in the end."
@JoAnne65
As soon as you go away from a realistic style (whether cartoony or stylized), I think it's far less obvious for people to guess the time period because they typically aren't expert in art styles accross the age. Or to go back to your example, in 5 years, the real legs won't look as real as the "real legs of 2023 computers", and not as real as the real legs irl, and it will be more obvious because everybody knows how real legs are supposed to look like, but the asparagus will still look like asparagus, and unless you're into the art/media field, it's fairly unlikely that you'll be able to date the various art styles (especially when some lasts longer than a typical TS iteration, some make a come back, etc).
Basically, it goes like this :
- Realistic style : less real -> real -> more and more real ---> toward the reality we all watch daily
- Cartoony style : several art styles -> some other art styles -> yet other styles -> a remake of some styles -> etc
And it's just far easier to gauge how realistic something is (we see reality all the time, so we can all see how close it is to reality, and since it's going toward more realistic, we can more easily guess how old it is, based on how far from reality it still is), than gauge the exact era of this or that art style.
@Neia The error in this line of thought, is that realistic doesn't necessarily mean "what we all watch daily". Apparently people are confusing realism and photorealism, Sims has never been about photorealism (I don't need those legs to be any more realistic than that). I think I'm starting to understand what people mean now though. The thought here is that graphics matter more with a realistic approach. Truth is, Sims 4 is not going to get away with that. People have been complaining about squirrels and clouds and grass and rocks like chewed gum from the get go. Even when a game isn't (photo)realistic, people apparently have some standards Sims 4 doesn't meet. "But it's meant to be realistic stylized" really is no excuse for poor quality (which this whole 'it will age well' is beginning to sound like for me).
I think what I'm getting out of this is some people just have vastly different standards for what quality graphics are, possibly due to differences on a basic eyesight or memory level. I mean, I actually prefer graphics that are as realistic as possible and I can be pretty high-standards about certain graphical annoyances, like combining colors the wrong way. I just don't expect highest levels of realism possible to happen for this series due to the performance requirements it would lay on. But I've also played games like this long enough that my brain somehow knows to switch certain filters on/off and it doesn't take long for me to play before I see it as perfectly normal and barely notice the difference. Maybe it's a memory thing, somewhat. When I'm playing this game, I'm not sitting there thinking about how dumb it would look next to a game like The Witcher 3. Other versions of graphics aren't in my head at all.
There's usually a brief period of adjustment where I notice if I've been playing a game with starkly different graphics a lot. But then I adjust and stop noticing.
I definitely have limits though. If I went to a game that is old enough, with dated enough graphics, I'd probably have a hard time stopping noticing.
With this game, maybe it's just a thing particular to some brains and that's why this whole line of discussion is confusing to me. Cause with TS4, it seems that for whatever reason, despite not being high realism, the style is done in such a way that I largely forget that it matters to me at all. I don't know that that would work if I went back and tried 2 or 3, having never played them before.
@Neia The error in this line of thought, is that realistic doesn't necessarily mean "what we all watch daily". Apparently people are confusing realism and photorealism, Sims has never been about photorealism (I don't need those legs to be any more realistic than that). I think I'm starting to understand what people mean now though. The thought here is that graphics matter more with a realistic approach. Truth is, Sims 4 is not going to get away with that. People have been complaining about squirrels and clouds and grass and rocks like chewed gum from the get go. Even when a game isn't (photo)realistic, people apparently have some standards Sims 4 doesn't meet. "But it's meant to be realistic stylized" really is no excuse for poor quality (which this whole 'it will age well' is beginning to sound like for me).
And yet in this type of game more realism does kind of mean more photorealistic no? I personally agree that TS4 is definitely not on the level of Pixar, but it clearly aims for a similar art style which, yes, is a bit more timeless than realistic (or photorealistic) styles. Not necessarily because the graphics in cartoony styles don't matter, but because our ability to create more and more realistic looking games is just constantly evolving in only one pre-defined direction, and as we get closer to it, most games that try to resemble reality the closest actually age the worst.
Because if you look at them with today's capabilities in mind, they really don't look all that good - visually at least (fortunately for old movies, however, CGI sometimes creates such low attention to detail and overall care that some old movies' attempt at realistically representing the real, extraordinary or impossible is actually far more timeless and sometimes more realistic - think Stanley Kubrick or even the old Star Wars movies ... but that aside ).
So if the sims 3 is viewed as part of an evolution starting from TS1, you do get the impression that they've aimed at making the sims and their environments increasingly more (photo-)realistic. And with the old games in mind, TS3 does look very realistic. But compared to today's standards, it's already starting to look a bit dated, even if it still looks great. 10 years from now, it will be even worse. TS4 won't be exposed to that comparison quite as much, simply because it breaks with that sims tradition and goes for a style that is purposefully cartoony and unrealistic. Surely cartoony styles evolve too, just like our ability to create ever more highly stylized cartoony games in general.
But: there are still a lot of games coming out with a pixelated art style for example. You'd consider that unnecessary and dated too, because we can make much better looking games now. But we don't: in this unrealistic realm, styles get repurposed over and over again. You don't see that happening much with styles that really really aim for more real world-like realism (especially computer generated realism). Graphics themselves still matter just as much for both, like increasing our technical ability continues to make these styles evolve and improve over time, but not at the same rate and not with the same standards in mind.
That aside I agree with you that using cartoony styles shouldn't be an excuse for delivering lazy or shoddy work and I'm glad they decided to, for instance, give us the lighting update, the improved ball pit and soon, finally a color wheel in CAP. I think this kind of stuff (and a free world, toddlers, supernaturals, pets, family play) is also what the OP meant with the devs ARE listening (just to get back on topic for a second ). In the end, this discussion keeps rearing its head because most people that hate the graphics don't really like TS4 in general. And they're inclined to overlook such patches and content altogether because of what they personally consider to be the end of the series.
I just don't think in some cases it's really the art style that bothers people, but the whole game. And the lack of realism, then, is just the icing on an already poisoned cake (not necessarily talking about you here, just drifting off lol). I also don't mean to say they overlook them on purpose because they hate the game and want it to be bad now. Seriously, everyone will never like this game (just like many people hated 3). And in the end, that's alright. Still doesn't mean that devs aren't listening to anyone at all of course (no, you didn't say that I know, just a general statement).
I actually like the graphics in TS4. I think it's quite cute and very pretty. The problem is that it doesn't lend well to grunge, but it's not so much the art style that is the culprit for that. It's the hard-locked surrounding world, which is a different topic.
As for aging well: I feel the graphics have nothing to do with it at all. As long as content is continuously added the game will become more bloated. Keeping it light may extend its longevity a bit. But in the end, there will either be another sims game, or simply an end to how much S4 can actually handle
Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
I actually like the graphics in TS4. I think it's quite cute and very pretty. The problem is that it doesn't lend well to grunge, but it's not so much the art style that is the culprit for that. It's the hard-locked surrounding world, which is a different topic.
As for aging well: I feel the graphics have nothing to do with it at all. As long as content is continuously added the game will become more bloated. Keeping it light may extend its longevity a bit. But in the end, there will either be another sims game, or simply an end to how much S4 can actually handle
The aging well thing is purely about the looks of the game and how these looks will hold up years from now, not really about how long people will be playing it though
I actually like the graphics in TS4. I think it's quite cute and very pretty. The problem is that it doesn't lend well to grunge, but it's not so much the art style that is the culprit for that. It's the hard-locked surrounding world, which is a different topic.
As for aging well: I feel the graphics have nothing to do with it at all. As long as content is continuously added the game will become more bloated. Keeping it light may extend its longevity a bit. But in the end, there will either be another sims game, or simply an end to how much S4 can actually handle
The aging well thing is purely about the looks of the game and how these looks will hold up years from now, not really about how long people will be playing it though
I don't know. Styles come and go, and then come back, and go, and so on.
Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
Comments
You are very right that the art styles ‘prettyness’ is subjective as well. I don’t necessarily have any issues with it, but I also don’t particularly think that it’s going to make the game last any longer than a less stylized art style would. I’m not sure who planted the seed of ‘art style ages well = longer development cycle’ that’s more or less what my post was about. Maxis saying “the art style ages well” (if it was even a Maxis employee who made the claim) really just excludes tons of more important factors that determine how much the game can actually handle and what their funding can accomplish.
Not everybody likes it, but for those who do, it seems passably real to the brain and after a while, you kind of forget that it's supposed to matter. It ages well because it's probably about as close as a cartoon-ish style can get to photo-realism without actually being photo-realistic graphics.
The Cowboy and the Mermaid
Making games is big business and not just something that the devs do to have a little fun.
Those art styles in fact look very dated, very much belonging to a certain era. Because of the way they are stylized. Stylized means 'to design in or cause to conform to a particular style, as of representation or treatment in art; conventionalize'. That subjects much more to a certain fashion than realism. And if there's one thing bound to be outdated at one point, it's fashion
If you wouldn't know him, you'd immediately accept him as an actor playing in a recently released movie
I think TS4 will last longer, but probably not 60-years longer.
I think it's not so much that cartoony/stylized don't age, it's that as soon as you go the photorealistic route, you have to be cutting edge, or it shows, because humans are trained daily to recognize realism, but not that much into distinguishing and identifying the timeline of different stylized fashions. Especially when talking about a period of several years. Technology is changing quicker than fashion I think.
I mean, think it that way : if people say TS4 looks like Pixar, do you think they make the distinction between Inside Out-Pixar and Up-Pixar ? I doubt it.
1968:
Same magazine in 1972:
I’m not a fan of photorealism in the game by the way, I don’t need creepy. It’s just that this argument simply doesn’t make any sense. It’s very debatable what changes faster, fashion or technology. Fashion lasts about a season
(I don’t agree Sims 4 looks like Pixar by the way)
I don't see how the style we're talking about (a style like TS4's style, which I believe is similar, if not the same, to the Pixar style and to the style of games like SWTOR) is aging fast. A Bug's Life (a Pixar movie) came out in 1998. Finding Dory (one of the most recent Pixar movies) came out in 2016. That's almost two decades. If you google pictures of the movies, the style looks about the same. And it's showing no sign that I've seen of being considered dated or out of fashion. Even if you were to disagree that this game's style is the same as Pixar, the evidence of Pixar's success is still an indication that their particularly cartoon style is aging just fine. So a blanket argument that "cartoon and simple style don’t age well at all", I just don't see it.
Compare Team Fortress 2 to today's graphics, and TF2 has held up rather well. Sure, nobody says it's photorealistic. And it's not perfect. But you don't feel so torn because the 'then' and the 'now'. And that's what Sims 4 seems to have gone for. Rather than approaching the Uncanny Valley head on, the graphics have taken a step sideways, rather than forward, and with the power of the strongest CAS yet in the palm of our sliders, there really is more potential.
I think people will be seriously disappointed if the other supernatruals aren't as polished as Vampires was, and it would be a big step backwards.
And I'm more than happy to say goodbye to the Microtransactions of Sims 3, although it makes me raise an eyebrow to see the prices as extortionate as ever even 3 years later.
Gee, that doesn't sound biased at all /s.
Who cares if people enjoy color over black and white? Movies are a VISUAL medium, so its perfectly acceptable for someone to not be interested in films that are in black and white.
OUTER SENSHI PRIDE
Of course it is very acceptable if people are more interested in colors than in a good movie or whatever. But I just don't care so much about the colors myself that I prefer to just look at colors instead of enjoying a good story.
In the same way it is of course also completely acceptable if you won't care to read a book unless it has nice and colorful pictures on all its pages too.
If we return to the subject then it would likewise be very acceptable if some people won't play Sims games because the Sims don't look like the people we meet in our real lives. Sometimes in the future they may also look like real people and I actually think that EA could make them such already now. I just don't think that this really would improve the Sims games much either.
TS1 was a good game in spite of its ugly graphics and people are actually still playing it
This is not cartoony, the approach is realistic, but it is stylized:
Both cartoony and stylized are very sensitive to becoming dated, because they represent a certain approach, it's hardly ever timeless. You can often tell when it was created. Which as such isn't a bad thing by the way, I like both cartoony and stylized, though not in my Sims game. But I simply don't understand the oneliner, because I find it's quite the opposite. Realism is much more timeless than cartoon because as Paul Newman shows (or a realistic drawing of Paul Newman), people basically looked exactly the same back in the sixties as they do now, hairstyle and clothing aside.
Pixar indeed has the same approach as they did 20 years ago, which means an art style with great detail and awesome textures. Presenting cartoon as if it's real. In no way do I see that back in Sims 4. If I may compare the 2009 game to the 2014 game here:
Please explain to me how the legs on the left look dated because they look like real legs and the legs on the right do not because they look like asparagus?
There is a huge spectrum between a step back (not sideways, also in comparison to Sims 2) and uncanny valley. I find it rather odd that delivering a poor job is sold as a good thing because you won't notice in the end it was a poor job. First, it doesn't work because people do see it.
And second: give me awesome now, by the time it starts looking outdated I'll settle for new awesomeness. "Let's aim really low, in order to not fall so deep in the end."
As soon as you go away from a realistic style (whether cartoony or stylized), I think it's far less obvious for people to guess the time period because they typically aren't expert in art styles accross the age. Or to go back to your example, in 5 years, the real legs won't look as real as the "real legs of 2023 computers", and not as real as the real legs irl, and it will be more obvious because everybody knows how real legs are supposed to look like, but the asparagus will still look like asparagus, and unless you're into the art/media field, it's fairly unlikely that you'll be able to date the various art styles (especially when some lasts longer than a typical TS iteration, some make a come back, etc).
Basically, it goes like this :
- Realistic style : less real -> real -> more and more real ---> toward the reality we all watch daily
- Cartoony style : several art styles -> some other art styles -> yet other styles -> a remake of some styles -> etc
And it's just far easier to gauge how realistic something is (we see reality all the time, so we can all see how close it is to reality, and since it's going toward more realistic, we can more easily guess how old it is, based on how far from reality it still is), than gauge the exact era of this or that art style.
I think what I'm getting out of this is some people just have vastly different standards for what quality graphics are, possibly due to differences on a basic eyesight or memory level. I mean, I actually prefer graphics that are as realistic as possible and I can be pretty high-standards about certain graphical annoyances, like combining colors the wrong way. I just don't expect highest levels of realism possible to happen for this series due to the performance requirements it would lay on. But I've also played games like this long enough that my brain somehow knows to switch certain filters on/off and it doesn't take long for me to play before I see it as perfectly normal and barely notice the difference. Maybe it's a memory thing, somewhat. When I'm playing this game, I'm not sitting there thinking about how dumb it would look next to a game like The Witcher 3. Other versions of graphics aren't in my head at all.
There's usually a brief period of adjustment where I notice if I've been playing a game with starkly different graphics a lot. But then I adjust and stop noticing.
I definitely have limits though. If I went to a game that is old enough, with dated enough graphics, I'd probably have a hard time stopping noticing.
With this game, maybe it's just a thing particular to some brains and that's why this whole line of discussion is confusing to me. Cause with TS4, it seems that for whatever reason, despite not being high realism, the style is done in such a way that I largely forget that it matters to me at all. I don't know that that would work if I went back and tried 2 or 3, having never played them before.
And yet in this type of game more realism does kind of mean more photorealistic no? I personally agree that TS4 is definitely not on the level of Pixar, but it clearly aims for a similar art style which, yes, is a bit more timeless than realistic (or photorealistic) styles. Not necessarily because the graphics in cartoony styles don't matter, but because our ability to create more and more realistic looking games is just constantly evolving in only one pre-defined direction, and as we get closer to it, most games that try to resemble reality the closest actually age the worst.
Because if you look at them with today's capabilities in mind, they really don't look all that good - visually at least (fortunately for old movies, however, CGI sometimes creates such low attention to detail and overall care that some old movies' attempt at realistically representing the real, extraordinary or impossible is actually far more timeless and sometimes more realistic - think Stanley Kubrick or even the old Star Wars movies ... but that aside
So if the sims 3 is viewed as part of an evolution starting from TS1, you do get the impression that they've aimed at making the sims and their environments increasingly more (photo-)realistic. And with the old games in mind, TS3 does look very realistic. But compared to today's standards, it's already starting to look a bit dated, even if it still looks great. 10 years from now, it will be even worse. TS4 won't be exposed to that comparison quite as much, simply because it breaks with that sims tradition and goes for a style that is purposefully cartoony and unrealistic. Surely cartoony styles evolve too, just like our ability to create ever more highly stylized cartoony games in general.
But: there are still a lot of games coming out with a pixelated art style for example. You'd consider that unnecessary and dated too, because we can make much better looking games now. But we don't: in this unrealistic realm, styles get repurposed over and over again. You don't see that happening much with styles that really really aim for more real world-like realism (especially computer generated realism). Graphics themselves still matter just as much for both, like increasing our technical ability continues to make these styles evolve and improve over time, but not at the same rate and not with the same standards in mind.
That aside I agree with you that using cartoony styles shouldn't be an excuse for delivering lazy or shoddy work and I'm glad they decided to, for instance, give us the lighting update, the improved ball pit and soon, finally a color wheel in CAP. I think this kind of stuff (and a free world, toddlers, supernaturals, pets, family play) is also what the OP meant with the devs ARE listening (just to get back on topic for a second
I just don't think in some cases it's really the art style that bothers people, but the whole game. And the lack of realism, then, is just the icing on an already poisoned cake (not necessarily talking about you here, just drifting off lol). I also don't mean to say they overlook them on purpose because they hate the game and want it to be bad now. Seriously, everyone will never like this game (just like many people hated 3). And in the end, that's alright. Still doesn't mean that devs aren't listening to anyone at all of course (no, you didn't say that I know, just a general statement).
As for aging well: I feel the graphics have nothing to do with it at all. As long as content is continuously added the game will become more bloated. Keeping it light may extend its longevity a bit. But in the end, there will either be another sims game, or simply an end to how much S4 can actually handle
The aging well thing is purely about the looks of the game and how these looks will hold up years from now, not really about how long people will be playing it though
I don't know. Styles come and go, and then come back, and go, and so on.