The document discusses four artistic styles used in video games: photorealism, cel shading, abstraction, and exaggeration. Photorealism aims to make graphics look like real-life photos, cel shading makes textures look hand drawn like comics, abstraction uses simple geometric shapes and lines, and exaggeration amplifies features like in anime. Examples are given for each style.

1. Artistic Styles in Video Games
Sam Gregory-Haigh

2. Photorealism
• Photorealism in games is just what the name suggests. Developers try to create
graphics that look so life-like that it looks like a photo. This has become a more recent
trend with games as graphical capabilities have improved so much in recent years.
Some good examples of games that try to replicate photorealistic graphics are:
– Far Cry2
– La Noire
– Crysis
Photorealistic graphics have become a must
have for some companies in recent years
and some believe that this will be the death of
story and substance in future games.

3. Cel Shading
• Cel Shading is when the texture of an object is made to look like a comic book or
hand drawn image using flat colours to give the impression that it is all hand
drawn. It has been made more popular in video games recently after the release of
Borderland in 2009. Some examples of cel shaded games include:
– Borderlands/Borderlands 2
– Dragonball Budokai 2 onwards
– The Walking Dead Game

4. Abstraction
• Abstract art style often employs a lot of lines and geometric shapes that don't
resemble any real-life objects. For example, Geometry Wars, a game which uses
nothing but lines and geometric shapes. Some other examples of games that use
an abstract art style are:
– Geometry Wars
– Tetris
– Beautiful Katamari
This art style is mainly used for
more arcadey titles, but it is still
used a lot in games today.

5. Exaggeration
• Exaggeration in games is like the style of anime and manga, they exaggerate
features of humans or environments. These games have become more common
after the success of series’ such as Final Fantasy and lots of anime tv series’ getting
their own video game adaptations, such as Naruto and Dragonball. Some examples
include:
– Final Fantasy X
– Naruto Ninja Storm Generations