Why art history matters when designing a game world

What the talk is about

Iryna Shedko explains why art and cultural history matter when building a game world, and outlines four approaches. The visual-stylistic one is the most primitive: developers use bare visual associations or lift details of real objects without cultural context, as in a tomb location in Tomb Raider. The stereotype-based approach relies on general ideas of an era and allows stylization, but free stylization that breaks the construction of a building or costume gives a false image. The historical-stylistic approach follows the canons of the period so an object could really have existed. Artistic reconstruction recreates cities directly, as in Assassin's Creed; model-style reconstruction shows only general building looks, as in strategies and city builders. Useful for designers and artists working with historical or mythological settings.