The color of next-gen gaming is brown

by Blake Snow on Oct 23rd 2006 1:55PM

Aeropause compiled a montage of next-generation screenshots and found the overall color tones to be dull; mostly browns and greys. From the article: "Console developers have 16.7 million colors to choose from! Why are they still using predominantly greys and browns? This color scheme even seems to have spread outside of first person shooters and into other genres."

Author Nick encourages game developers striving for realism to "step outside and have a look around" because life's "not that drab." Well if Flickr's favorite color is a bluish grey, maybe it is, Nick. Maybe it is. Though we're with you on using more colors in games to escape this cold, hard world of ours.

[Image: Original montage as compared to our pixelated version]

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Reader Comments (62)

Frankly, we should be talking about median colour and colour ratio, instead of averages, because AVERAGES ARE MEANT TO BE AVERAGE, NOT EXCEPTIONAL. Duh.

This is idiotic most games revolved around horrible things happening, the colors set the tone.

Wii loves RGB!

I've been complaining about this for a while, too. Everyone else has already made the points I have, so I'll just add in that it pisses me off immensely that the last year (or more) of EGM has had a three-color scheme: Red, Black, White. Older EGM's had a wonderful palette. It's so freaking Hot Topic that I could just kill myself.

Why must you idiots who vote with your wallet dull my universe?

I do like brown (at times) better than the post-Metal Gear/Matrix games that were very, very green, but it's still boring.

While hardware may be becoming white and sleek like the iPod, graphics are definately becoming more grey, black, and brown, like Resident Evil 4. Not to say that that game started it all (Lord of the Rings, etc.) but that is one good example. Expect to see many more of these stylish shades in the next five years.

Point is, most games still look "dull" when SQUEEZED to a flat color.
Shadows, people, SHADOWS!

If anyone needs to see great color usage, get Tron 2.0. It's still beautiful, thrilling, fun and the visual styles never get old.

Thank goodness someone is bringing up this issue.

Yes, gritty FPS games aren't going to be pink, but even games like Ridge "Stop Saying it Wrong, Lamers" Racer are pretty monochromatic.

Geometry Wars, FTW.

@21 benjaman

LOL you remind me of my dubs on youtube where I say that all the time XD

coincidence?

It's so funny that this article came up now, as I was just looking at the Gears of War screens in the latest EGM and was thinking it looks black and white!

Why are so many damned games drab and dark, I hate that. I have an HDTV projection setup so that most of the screen in my games is black, c'mon!