Overview

Video games are something I have been interested in for most of my life. This means that I have had the opportunity to grow up with all the changes in this relatively young industry. Compared to any other medium, video games have grown considerably fast. If you compare the birth of the modern video game console, the Nintendo Entertainment System with the current generation of consoles, you can clearly see the many evolutionary steps this industry has taken. From pixels to polygons, from five channels of music to full orchestration and from buttons to actual motion control.

Indie games tend to reject the modern video game trends, such as 100 man teams, photorealistic graphics and all he other unnecessary aspects. With the current generation of consoles, downloadable content has allowed for indie gaming to shine. There is no need for a publisher with indie gaming, therefore giving full artistic creativity to the developer. This means the quality of gaming is more artistic and less about making money.

How this has affected animation is ore interesting. As an indie game is made by a smaller team and involves less money, the animation is more limited. This sounds like a negative point, but in actual fact is a very strong plus. Lots of indie games have returned to the pixel, mainly for nostalgia, but also for a strong statement on how the photorealism that gaming strives for today has lost a lot of charm. Animation in indie games has returned to the basics, the simplicity of animation. Their focus is not on capturing all the realism of how sweat will drop from a characters face, as this is pointless. This doesn't add to the gameplay, and certainly is not needed to create a good piece of entertainment. By reverting back to the simplicity of older games, thinking of how to animate a character becomes more interesting, as they don't need to be made realistic. This may seem weird, but it adds a lot more charm into a character, and relates back to one of the 12 principles of animation, exaggeration. If a photorealistic games character was animated like a disney cartoon, it would be a monstrosity to see, and would not work. By choosing this old primitive form of animation, it allows for more traditional animation techniques and therefore more character.