Photorealism in games- a moral dilemma?

[Deleted]

So people within the gaming industry predict we will achieve games indistinguishable from reality within 10 years time.
That's all great and everything and I am really looking forward to that day, but..will our governments allow it to get that far?

At the moment it's fairly easy to separate game from reality and what violent actions we do in a game doesn't reflect the type of person we are in real life. But could we be affected by those very same actions when visual immersion is absolute? Will our unconscious brain "understand" that it's all just fiction, especially when dealing with violent and lethal scenarios that we face in almost every game? And most importantly; Can and should we be trusted that we can "handle" it both consciously and subconsciously once games reach that level of graphical fidelity?

If not, where should we draw the line at how immersive a game should be allowed to get?

[s_bushido]

We watch violent live-action movies all the time...and have done so for decades.

[steale]

Do you feel an uncontrollable urge to blow shit up after watching Die Hard? No? Then it'll be fine.

[Rucati]

Even though I don't see too much of a point for it, since games are already look really good, I don't see this being a big deal.

People that play games and then go commit murders are completely insane, video games don't impact that. Making games more realistic or less realistic won't change that. If you can't distinguish between real life and a video game you need help, no matter how realistic it looks.

At that point it basically just becomes a movie, and people can distinguish those from real life with no problem.

[Adam Jensen]

I think it'll be fine. Even if graphics are super realistic, we'll still know, on a subconscious level, that everything that is happening is fake, and thus there'll be no real harm to it.

One major thing to realize is we won't be in a holodeck, we'll still be looking at a screen and so we'll have the edges of those screens in our peripheral, which we might not notice while playing, but should still key the subconscious to realize this is not real. And even if it was a holodeck, we'd still know it was fake.

Anyone who can't tell the difference probably has a sick mind.

[Deleted]

Do you feel an uncontrollable urge to blow shit up after watching Die Hard? No? Then it'll be fine.

No, but it's no the same thing. I don't have control over who Bruce Willis will kill when watching Die hard. In a game you have control and get to choose which person dies or not. You press a button and someone dies. You action caused a negative effect on someone that your brain can't distinguish from reality.

I mean I get rather squeamish when looking at such movies as Saw and the human centipede, that's not reality and I know that. Imagine you have to do that by yourself to someone. You press the controller and you cut someones guts out and it looks absolutely realistic, just like in the movie, difference is that you made that happen to "someone" in the game.

[Boon]

I'm in the game industry, and people have been 'predicting' this for a long time.

Firstly, the scenario is not a trivial concern. Photorealistic cars is something entirely different from photorealistic people stabbing each other in their photorealistic clothing with their photorealistic facial expressions responding to the photorealistic musculature driving them as they photorealistically grapple in a photorealistic environment for survival.

Secondly, consider that Rhythm & Hues received huge critical acclaim for their work in Life of Pi because they managed to totally sell a CGI tiger. This again, is not trivial: This is hundreds of people working thousands of man-hours using millions of CPU-hours of grunt to produce.

Games industry folk like to use photorealism to loosely define "better than what we currently have", but actual photorealism to the point of fooling an audience entirely is monumentally complex. So much so that world-class VFX artists are only just handling it with a creature. Given our eye for the uncanny valley in humans, I think actual photorealism in games to a degree that raises the question of morality is a long way off. Decades. Probably longer.

Even if our GPUs in 20 years are successfully pushing ten thousand hours of current-tech rendering out at 60 frames per second, the human workforce necessary to produce the work is not trivial.

Actual photorealism is still a pipe dream.

[Adam Jensen]

No, but it's no the same thing. I don't have control over who Bruce Willis will kill when watching Die hard. In a game you have control and get to choose which person dies or not. You press a button and someone dies. You action caused a negative effect on someone that your brain can't distinguish from reality.

I mean I get rather squeamish when looking at such movies as Saw and the human centipede, that's not reality and I know that. Imagine you have to do that by yourself to someone. You press the controller and you cut someones guts out and it looks absolutely realistic, just like in the movie, difference is that you made that happen to "someone" in the game.

I still think that my mind would know that everything I do is fake though, that everyone I "kill" is nothing more than a mindless mook. A well crafted mindless mook, but a mook that spawned for the soul purpose to be killed by the player. So I still don't think there'll be a psychological or ethical dilemma for mentally healthy people.

[Boon]

Maybe if people can digitally satisfy their sociopathic 'urges', they won't feel the need to rape and murder actual people? ~shrug~

[Deleted]

I still think that my mind would know that everything I do is fake though, that everyone I "kill" is nothing more than a mindless mook. A well crafted mindless mook, but a mook that spawned for the soul purpose to be killed by the player. So I still don't think there'll be a psychological or ethical dilemma for mentally healthy people.

Perhaps not. I don't think I'd turn serial killer from it either but it would definitely limit what type of games I have the stomach to play ^^

[Sunseeker]

The fact that we can, or even will achieve that doesn't mean that every game is going to look perfectly like reality. Not every foe or PC will be a human, not every setting will be a realistic one. Even if a game does those things, stylization will take place wherein the setting, the PCs/NPCs will be done in an artistic manner so that they may not be perfectly inseparable from reality.

[Kraenen]

ive never understood the desire for more realistic graphics in games...dont you want to escape from reality and engage in fantasy...?

[Arayaa]

I agree with Boon, it might be possible, but I'm doubtful we would be seeing it in games for a long time. But there were a few things I wanted to mention:

Games have proven to be much more engaging then movies - watching someone get stabbed in a movie that you have no control over and stabbing someone on your own will are two different things. You don't have the control in movies that you do in games. That said, many studies have been done with violence in games correlating to real-life aggression and they pretty much all come back to the same result, either there is no rise in violence due to games or they in fact lower aggression (due to catharsis and having a way to vent anger etc). I doubt that would change so drastically as graphics become more photo-realistic (or we already would have been this happening already).

On a side note, I don't even think I would want photo-realistic graphics to be a standard for video games. I like that games aren't realistic.

[Caesonia]

meh the people that wont be able to distinguish reality from the game have mental issues to begin with graphics or not, we watch live action movies that are extremelty violent as is so...yea

[Sivick]

we may have the technology, but it'll probably be too costly to make games like that. no return on investment.

[Chiquihuite]

Our brains work based on interpreting patterns anyway. We passed the point where graphics were "close enough" to affect us emotionally at least 20 years ago, and possibly for as long as we've had video games or animation in any form at all.

I think this image does a good job of summarizing my point-



I'm not gonna lie. I straight up cried when this happened. And that was over 15 years ago.

[Boon]

I agree with Boon, it might be possible, but I'm doubtful we would be seeing it in games for a long time. But there were a few things I wanted to mention:

Games have proven to be much more engaging then movies - watching someone get stabbed in a movie that you have no control over and stabbing someone on your own will are two different things. You don't have the control in movies that you do in games. That said, many studies have been done with violence in games correlating to real-life aggression and they pretty much all come back to the same result, either there is no rise in violence due to games or they in fact lower aggression (due to catharsis and having a way to vent anger etc). I doubt that would change so drastically as graphics become more photo-realistic (or we already would have been this happening already).

On a side note, I don't even think I would want photo-realistic graphics to be a standard for video games. I like that games aren't realistic.

I actually recall a fairly comprehensive study that showed a correlation between violent games and aggression - players became more vocally aggressive, more short tempered. But they also became less violent. I'll see if I can dig it up.

I was also told about a study (heresay) where a group of kids played violent video games, and another group did not. In the post-session interview, the interviewer would 'accidently' knock a tin of pens onto the floor, and none of the kids who played the violent games assisted him in picking them up, while most of the kids who played non-violent games did.

Like I said, heresay, I'd need to see that study myself before I quoted it in any debating context.

[Adam Jensen]

Our brains works based on interpreting patterns anyway. We passed the point where graphics were "close enough" to affect us emotionally at least 20 years ago, and possibly for as long as we've had video games or animation in any form at all.

I think this image does a good job of summarizing my point-



I'm not gonna lie. I straight up cried when this happened. And that was over 15 years ago.

Well you can get emotionally invested in a story, that's not good graphics, that's just good storytelling. But that doesn't mean you can't tell the difference between reality and fiction. Just damn good storytelling.

[yurano]

I actually recall a fairly comprehensive study that showed a correlation between violent games and aggression - players became more vocally aggressive, more short tempered. But they also became less violent. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Violent video games: nerd rage goes up, actual violence goes down.

[Chiquihuite]

Well you can get emotionally invested in a story, that's not good graphics, that's just good storytelling. But that doesn't mean you can't tell the difference between reality and fiction. Just damn good storytelling.

It's the same thing, though. We've been able to get characters to a point where you care enough to feel empathy for them for a very long time.

I proceeded to violently murder Sephiroth roughly 20 hours later, and he had plenty of depth and realism poured into him as well.

The only reason "random NPC that you stab" is different is because you don't actually get to know him before you kill him, and that's exactly how we treat people in real life. We scream obscenities at people who cut us off on the road and we're disappointed at how such a stupid person shares the same oxygen with us, but if you actually sat down and talked to that person for a few minutes it's likely that you'd no longer find yourself thinking about them that way.

Whether or not someone or something is disposable in our mind has nothing to do with how realistic they appear to be visually.