a good game from user game that makes me
forget that I'm playing a game it's when
you completely lose yourself in it
you're not aware of what's going on
around you
it's modern magic you trick people into
believing a certain scenario is taking
place and you do it so convincingly that
they immediately connect to it which I
guess is escapism which is essentially
what reading watching movies or playing
games is about right you pretend you're
somewhere else someone else doing
something you're not doing
more and more the lines between video
games and cinema are becoming blurred
here in Frankfurt video game development
studio Crytek is at the edge of where
those two mediums meet found in more
than 10 years ago by three brothers of
Turkish descent the video game studio
has developed a reputation for
incredibly realistic highly polished
games such as their marquee franchise
Crysis 3 we spoke to members of the game
development team about hot rodding for
the Xbox the future of games and what
it's like to be building the new cinema
this is Rasmus as director of creative
development at Crytek he oversees
franchises like the crisis game series
it's important it will always be
important for critics to create really
high-quality visuals that doesn't
necessarily mean the technical quality
of the visuals maybe the AH quality of
the visuals but it needs to be done well
in order to immerse players the Crysis
series is a near-future military shooter
that takes a hyper realistic approach to
game plan cry things known for creating
these very lush tropical environments
really well which was what dominated
Crysis one and then Crysis 2 has this
urban setting that then gets completely
infested with alien technology and
matter and then in a way those things
are combined in Crysis 3 where New York
has become this completely overgrown
rainforest because this rainforest is
artificially grown we can take it to
some extremes which gives us some
creative liberties in terms of level
design and visuals and moods once you're
able to do realistic rendering that's
almost like being able to play off of a
page you know you can read the notes and
you can play what is there but it's not
necessarily that interesting it's a
little dull it's only when you apply
your own art form and personality on top
of it that it actually becomes party
one of the things that we spend a lot of
effort on in general I really wanted to
push is just making sure that you have
that high frame rate so that people can
actually play the game and can actually
aim and all this but at the same time
cram and all these things that makes it
look like it's filmed because people are
used to seeing things filmed right you
never see a lens flare you'll only see
that through a lens so you essentially
add all the should we say crap that you
have to except when you have our camera
artificially into the virtual world that
just makes them feel nice at home and
like yep this is like a movie I'm
playing creating a game with movie
techniques requires a powerful software
set known as a game engine Crytek's
CryEngine is one of the most popular and
is known for its ability to render
detailed environments in real time the
major components of a game engine are
the AI lighting in physics shaders
rendering and finally the tools that the
developer uses to put it all together
really taking all the technical stuff
away so that the creative people can
just do their work on a game the biggest
thing that I'm always worried about is
performance we can you know have
hundreds and thousands of particle
effects going off all the time you've
got to manage performance throughout the
entire game the current generation
consoles so xbox and ps3 they really
don't have a lot of memory you know this
is actually using two and a half gigs of
video memory right now and I mean the
Xbox is only got 512 imagine having to
cut three-quarters of what you're seeing
but you know you can't make it look like
you've cut three quarters so you know my
whole job is trying to get the visuals
that you want with really high
performance in terms of art when you
have really really strong limitations it
really sets apart the very good artists
we're pushing against those limitations
all the time and no matter how fast
Hardware is it always feels like there
is just as much limitation as there has
always been it just becomes smaller and
smaller details that you start focusing
on right it's so many little
no the way that light breaks in the
visor and you get all these strange
flares and the visor for me is
incredibly immersive because it makes me
feel a lot more like that guy wearing a
helmet another thing that's important is
that the whole thing needs to feel very
alive you can't have the world with dead
and Static you know it needs to be
motion in the vegetation and consist
stuff like grass is something we put a
lot of effort into I can't think of any
other game that has this level of detail
and pink in grass normally you have one
big plane with a lot of grass painted on
but we have nearly every every grass
instance as a separate object this is
the instance counter this is all single
objects I had photo references and I
split it up into single pieces and we
arranged it in high poly so I have a
brush with a radius and there I can say
I paint this stuff and they will
randomly paid random scales so they
don't grow all the same but then I still
have to go and say ok here is a line of
high grass and next to it then comes a
line of low grass we have wind spawning
in the levels and that makes the grass
go in different directions so they react
to the wind it's normally the Polish
work that over time that you stay late
and just put some good music on each
blade of grass moves games like Crysis
closer to the experiences of film this
begs the question who games overtake
cinema as the most dominant art form of
the 21st century cinema will be inspired
by games games will be inspired by
cinema it might change what cinema is
hopefully in the way that it's always
good when a certain art form gets
affected by something else
as long as everybody feel all the time
that they have something to learn from
that other industry I think that's gonna
help push the quality a lot I guess it's
a little bit like you sometimes want
that magic you filled with Christmas
when you were a kid you want that to
come back but just never does it's very
very rare to get that to today but then
when you get it it's just so awesome
that's when you know that someone has
done subjects will be something that is
really really good
you