Do Games Need To Be Photorealistic To Evolve Emotionally?

2K Games boss Christoph Hartmann has said that games achieving real-life graphics is needed for the medium to expand into more genres.

Speaking to GamesIndustry International, the company's global president claimed that photorealistic graphics must be pursued if games are to compete with movies.

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Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.

"Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country... it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies," he said.

"Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.

"To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console."

Predictably, his comments have provoked heated reactions from several well known industry figures, including Peter Molyneux, David Cage and BioWare bosses. But some of the most vehement disagreement came from Markus "Notch" Persson; the man behind Minecraft took to his Twitter to share his objections.

He wrote, "No, Christoph, you LIMIT the number of new genres if you focus on photorealism."

"I had way more emotions playing Proteus than I ever did playing any 2K game."

"Also, Futurama has made me feel sad more than most sad movies can. The Sting, Jurrasic Bark, Luck of the Fryish. Photorealistic? No."

So it seems for now that even though the biggest publishers may be pushing graphical boundaries come the next generation, there are more than enough smaller developers ready to rally round and focus on putting gameplay ahead of presentation.

Will better graphics will give the medium greater emotional clout or not? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

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