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Reading. Another common (and incredibly useful) recommendation to replace video games with. Even though I'm a writer and a major component of everyone reading books, I'll admit... reading (by itself) will not replace playing video games. Not that just one hobby should be able to replace video games completely.
- "In-Game" vs. "In-Engine" vs. CGI Trailers
- Why "In-Game" Doesn't Always Mean What It Should
- The Best Tech Newsletter Around
In 2005, the Killzone 2 trailer debuted at E3, featuring graphics unlike anything anyone had ever seen before (console or otherwise). The animations and character models were so fluid they looked like they were ripped straight from a computer-generated movie. Used as advertising fodder to show off the increased graphical capabilities of the PS3, the trailer was posted and reposted by every gaming news outlet in the country, and heralded as the launching point for "gaming's second renaissance".
Of course, it didn't take long for the press to dissect the trailer bit by bit. As more actual in-game screenshots leaked out over the next few months, journalists and gamers alike started to wonder if the trailer they were shown at E3 was really telling the whole story. Turns out Guerilla (the developers of Killzone) had used a technique known as "in-engine rendering", which allowed the developers to add in extra lighting elements, new animations, or other alterations to clean up the final product.
There are a few different ways game developers can create a trailer. Full CGI trailers, like the Overwatch trailer above, are made completely separate from the game engine. These usually include Pixar-esque cinematics that involve characters in the story fighting some kind of battle or having a lot of dialogue. Even though CGI trailers are a divisive promotional tool in the gaming community, they're also commonly accepted as part of the advertising blitz necessary to get a game to sell by the time it's on shelves.
"In-engine" trailers, like that Killzone trailer in 2005 (or the Total War: Warhammer trailer above), are a bit different. When you make an in-engine trailer, it works similarly to the pre-rendered CGI model, except that the 3D artists are animating characters using only the game's engine to create a static cutscene. You may also see these referred to as "pre-rendered" trailers.
Related: How to Tweak Your Video Game Options for Better Graphics and Performance
It's easy to make in-engine shots look good because you can fine tune exactly how many resources the engine is using for any given element. An artist can push more graphical fidelity to a character's face while blurring the background, or add more processing power to animations instead of loading the character's artificial intelligence. They can also add custom animations or other cinematic effects that you wouldn't see in-game, even if they require more processing power than a normal gaming PC would be able to handle. That's why everything looks so flawless.
That's not the whole story, though. In-game footage can still be altered. By carefully changing settings like how a particular shot is exposed, developers can be sure that their "in-game" footage looks its absolute best by the time the trailer is released, even if it uses features not available to normal gamers, or requires processing power no gaming PC would be capable of.
Sometimes, the case could be made that what we see in these trailers are what the company wanted the final game to look like, as a vision of what it could have been with endless resources and time at their disposal. In the case of The Division back in 2013, Ubisoft showed off a graphically rich, dense game filled with gorgeous textures that lined a living, breathing world. Now that the beta is out in 2016, three years later, testers everywhere are reporting how little the game they're playing resembles the experience from the first trailer.
Related: PS4 vs Xbox One vs Wii U: Which One is Right For You?
Many jump to the conclusion that the developer is misleading them. But it could also be a sign of developers with big ideas who are forced to accept the reality of working on limited hardware with finite budgets, and have to downgrade graphics or gameplay elements in order for the game to run without crashing every few seconds.
For now, there are only vague laws that are able to prevent companies from using the "in-game footage" tag on any recordings of gameplay that have gone through editing since it was originally recorded. After all, even pre-rendered cutscenes are technically "in the game", so they get to be referred to as "gameplay". The issue is that developers will often spend months laboring over how to make just one section of their game look as good as it can for the trailer, while ignoring the fact that those same resources probably could have been better spent improving the performance of the title as a whole.
There's no established international body that can dictate how game companies promote their products, so until more concrete false advertising limitations are placed on developers for what they can refer to as "in-game" compared to "in-engine", the problem will only continue to get worse from here.
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21 hours ago · During co-use, you can scaffold by explaining difficult words, relating on-screen content to real-life experiences, or helping your child apply what they’ve learned from the media to other day ...
Maybe many modern games do not need a walkthrough as much, many games are so much "on rails" that you can hardly go in the wrong direction, but even so I don't mind reading walkthroughs or look at Youtube playthrough videos to get past a difficult section, so I can continue the game and experience as much as possible of the game that the developers have created.
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Jun 14, 2023 · Video Ads. Game Trailer Principles. #1: Stick to Your Audience. #2: Watch a Lot of Trailers. #3: Determine the Trailer’s Purpose. #4: Focus on Your Selling Point. #5: Match the Game. #6: Be Concise & Engaging. Making a Game Trailer: Narrative Design.
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But why is that? First, let’s look at the three kinds of trailers. “Full CGI” trailers don’t make use of the game’s graphic engine at all. They’re simply rendered on a computer’s graphic design software. The trailer’s director can put anything they want in it. “In-engine” or “pre-rendered” trailers use the game’s ...
