The hidden world of gaming: an exploration of pre-production design, hyperrealism, and its function in establishing conceptual and aesthetic visualisation, characterisation and narrative structure.

Abstract

Pre-production design in the video game industry is an extremely important and fundamental part of the pipeline production as it impacts the production, post-production and distribution phases of game development. It is what sets the foundation for the visual and narrative style of the project and, if done incorrectly, it can have adverse effects on the other phases of production, ultimately wasting time, money and contributing to the failure of a project being executed efficiently. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of pre-production design on the video game industry as a whole and the effects that hyperrealism has had on the industry itself. To fully understand the context and importance of pre-production design, its history and origin will be explored. The two aspects of hyperrealism that I will be referring to and discussing are those of creating a reality that goes beyond true reality, and the integration of the constructed reality into one’s own natural reality. How does a game appear visually hyper-realistic. Where the visuals of the game can picture perfect and in fact sometime better than reality? Secondly, how does a game as a whole evoke the notion of hyperrealism as expressed by theorists like Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard where playing the game becomes a part of one’s life? The notion of leaving the game can be distressing as the player does not want to lose out on this aspect of the hyper-real simulation (or Simulacra) that has become a part of his life. As this study has a practice-based component, a set of character and creature designs will accompany my theoretical work as an exploration of pre-production design within the context of video games. This has been done in order to explore how design ties in with hyperrealism when looking at creature and character design. Gameplay mechanics have also been briefly considered as the character and creature designs will impact what is visually achievable in the game. Through investigation of both theoretical and practical applications, the study will conclude that pre-production design is imperative to the success of the making of a video game.