Video Game Color Palattes

There seems to be a lot of talk these days about how most video games only rely on a few different colors, namely brown and grey, making them look like a bowl full of porridge and dirt.

Well one intrepid fan decided to go through and pull out the color set from a variety of games, and though the brown/grey thing is true for most shooters, there are definitely a lot of other titles that expand their horizons. Mainly we have Nintendo to thank for that, as most of their games resemble unicorns puking rainbows in terms of color scheme.

Where’s Deus Ex? That would just be two bars, yellow and black.

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9 Comments

  1. Gears 3 is actually quite vibrant, unlike 1 and 2. There are lots of reds, blues, oranges, and a uprising amount of light greens and yellows, especially in the last level, which is very bright and pretty, as opposed to the muck color of the last two games combined.

  2. Actually I like games being washed out.

    If you look around real life like in a city etc it’s just shades of grey.

    When a game makes all the colours washed out it makes it look really realistic and cool.

    When you start to get TOO colourful it starts to make it look like a nintendo game.

    When I game in serious games I try to turn the colour down to make it look more realistic 🙂

    But yeah unless you’re in a really pretty location or garden, real life isn’t very colourful at all.

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  4. “If you look around real life like in a city etc it’s just shades of grey.””

    where do you live that doesnt have a sky,clouds,sunset/sunrise or any follage?

    No brick(ie red) buildings I can understand if your in a city, but even most citys have plenty of colour. Lots have blue tinted windows on skyscrappers to start with.

    Then theres, like cars that come in just about every color….

  5. Incidently, I’m pretty sure the real reason is not that less saturation is “more realistic” its because its easier to make things look real when you use less colour.
    That is, theres less to get wrong.
    By giving the eye less information your making it easier for everything you do to look acceptable.

    A bit like how if someone is making a “alien abduction” video or some other crappy fake it will be black and white, full of noise and with a wobbleing camera. All cheap tricks to make things seem like they could be real.

  6. @Thomas Wrobel (second comment)
    Yeah, that’s completely true.
    I’ve noticed that too.

    Even if they wanted to make the graphics more real looking without using the effect, they couldn’t.
    The consoles aren’t powerful enough.
    I bet next gen will see a different standard of graphical style due to technical improvements in the hardware.

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