Players Don't Want Realistic Games, Epic Games Says

Epic Games, the studio behind the massively popular Unreal Engine technology that's used to power many games in recent years, has talked about the possibility of attaining photo-realistic graphics and confessed that gamers might not be so thrilled with lifelike visuals in their experiences.

Epic Games, through its Unreal Engine, has shaped the graphics of many games we know today, so the studio knows quite a lot of things about visuals and how they'll evolve in the next few years, especially since a next generation of consoles is expected.

Besides the new devices, many gamers expect to finally see photo-realistic graphics in a title, taking the already visuals seen in games like Heavy Rain or L.A. Noire one step further.

Epic's senior technical artist and level designer Alan Willard, via CVG, said that there are bigger issues to tackle than realistic graphics, as many players might not even enjoy such an experience.

"It's too problematic to make something that's...well, nobody wants to go home, sit down and play their own life, I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people assume. You want it to look good, you don't want it to look real. Yes we want to make characters look really good but if you look at BioShock Infinite those characters look fantastic - Gears of War's characters look great. They're not photo-realistic, they're not meant to be. They're meant to be interesting, fun and great game content."

Electronic Arts also talked about the issue of lifelike graphics with its FIFA series, emphasizing that developers should worry about gameplay mechanics and then polish graphics to their best.

In terms of the next generation of devices, Epic Games wants one major improvement in the upcoming PlayStation 4 or Xbox 720, in the form of more memory.

"I think our biggest request from any new console will always be more memory - more than anything else. That's something we lobbied for with the Xbox 360 and PS3. We talked to them and went: 'Hey, here's what we can do with this and here's what we can do with that. Give us more memory and we can do better.' That was a win for us and that is something that will always give us a bigger platform to work on."

As of yet, besides rumors and reports, new consoles aren't even mentioned by large hardware manufacturers like Sony or Microsoft.