ROCKETON is a 2D virtual world that can layered onto any website. One may be tempted to question, then, how it intends to compete with the various 3D virtual worlds out there, such as IMVU or Google’s recently announced Lively. I’ll address this in two parts – first, dealing with the assumption that 3D graphics are better than 2D graphics by their nature, and second by talking about how a 2D format is specifically advantageous for what ROCKETON is trying to accomplish.
The advent of 3D game technology has opened up new possibilities for games. It has allowed for an unprecedented amount of graphical detail, allowed for shifts in perspective, and perhaps more importantly added a dimension in which objects can move in virtual space. There are, however, downsides to 3D graphics, including the problem hinted at in the post just below this one: the problem of the uncanny valley.
More generally, though, a key problem for 3D games is the inherent decrease in visual abstraction, which results in 3D graphics aging very quickly.
For example, Final Fantas
y VII was lauded for it’s state-of-the-art graphics in 1997, as shown in the picture to the left. This was seen as a prime example of the amazing possibilities of 3D graphics when it was first released, but just a couple of years later looked dated.
This isn’t the fault of the artists working on the game, but is a natural consequence of the switch to polygon-based graphics. There is an added level of visual abstraction in the use of a 2D image to represent a 3D space, and it is a level of abstraction we’re very familiar and comfortable with – we make the same allowances whenever we draw pictures representing 3D objects in the world.
A 2D game also presents privileged perspectives of the objects in the world, which can make it easier to have a consistently appealing aesthetic presentation. A month after Final Fantasy VII was released, Konami released Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a throwback to 2D sidescrolling that was able to build upon existing methods of making convincing 2D art and use layered backgrounds to create a game that is an aesthetic achievement even by today’s standards.
This isn’t to suggest that 2D games are inherently superior to 3D games – I’d be very sad not have played many of my favorite 3D games from the last 10 years – but that 2D and 3D games have comparative advantages, and in some cases 2D graphics will serve the vision of a project better than 3D graphics can.
ROCKETON is such a project that can make better use of 2D graphics than it could 3D graphics. The vision for the application is to allow users to bring their avatars to any site. Google’s Lively advertises that it can be put on any site – but what that means is that a point of access to the virtual world can be embedded on any site. There is no relationship between the virtual space and the site it is on. There is a French virtual environment called “Yoowalk” which tries to use websites as the backdrop for a 3D space, but the result strikes me as extremely awkward. The reason is pretty straightforward: websites are only 2-dimensional in nature. Most websites consist of text and pictures, both of which exist in two dimensions. In order to create a relationship between a virtual space and a website, the space has to accommodate the form of the website. What’s more, 3D environments take up more resources and take longer to load than a 2D environment does, which slows down the browsing experience and makes the environment less accessible. Finally, navigation in a 2D environment is more intuitive than it is in a 3D environment. A mouse only moves in two dimensions, and so can perfectly represent a range of possibilities in 2D but not in 3D space. 3D environment have shifting perspective, and objects in front of objects are common, which can make it hard to select the object you intended. A 2D environment offers a more fluid experience, in which a user can pick up and go where they want immediately, without having to wait for a long load time or figure out how to navigate a 3D space. Combine this with the fact that users know that they’re in-game property won’t be visually obsolete in two years time and you have all the components needed for a successful virtual world.
-Ellipsis
