The realism of video games never ceases to amaze. We talk about it like 10e art. After TV, cinema and others: video games. We also owe the sub-art of virtual photography to video games — let’s call it the 10e art and a half — for which Ubisoft Montreal is currently holding an exhibition based on its Photomode competition.
Photomode, as in “photo mode” (or “photo mode”), a way to navigate the virtual environment of certain so-called “open world” games — by activating screen capture tools inspired by more traditional photography. Because we can do lots of things in these immersive environments, in addition to completing missions and accumulating trophies…
“Taking screenshots is only one facet of what some players experience,” says Amélie Sorel, associate artistic director at Ubisoft Montreal. It is an emerging form of artistic expression, but it is also the result of what some consider to be virtual tourism. “For those with limited travel, virtual worlds are travel experiences. With photo mode, they bring back memories of their escapades. »
We don’t really know how, officially, “photo mode” became an essential element of the video game experience. We have identified an exhibition of avatars in the universe of Second Life from 2006. We remember a photo mode in Metal Gear Solid: Integralpublished in 1999. But it seems to have crystallized in the middle of the last decade, when visual capture tools became widespread in the industry.
Nowadays, almost all gaming environments, Gran Turismo has Spiderman Passing by Zeldahave photomodes.
Ubisoft Photomode 2024
Ubisoft also follows this… fashion. For a second time, the French publisher last February invited video game artists to send it their best visual creations, images sketched in one or another of their favorite games. A jury of four experts screened the submissions and elected twenty winners. The images submitted by these twenty lucky people will be presented to the Montreal public during an open day at the Ubisoft Montreal studio on May 11.
Amélie Sorel was part of the jury, alongside her colleague Shauna Jones, community manager for Ubisoft. Jonas Cuénin, the general director of Bling Magazinean online publication specializing in photographic news, as well as virtual photographer Jack Harrison, known for his photos published under the name Virtual Tourism, completed the quartet.
Their mandate was not so simple. Virtual photography in video games consists, basically, of taking screen captures — in short, of reproducing in a Jpeg image file what we see on the screen at a given moment. The talent of virtual photographers is therefore to find the ideal gaming environment to create an image of high artistic value – taking into account the quality of the light, the decor, the humanity of the characters, the evocative aspect of ‘a landscape, etc.
“There was a bit of everything — photos focused on the game, others more inspired by photography,” says Amélie Sorel. The art of traditional photography applied to video games is quite interesting. The photomodes we have in games are sometimes sophisticated — they imitate the effects you can do with a real camera [profondeur de champ, etc.]. These are quite advanced tools. »
“For us game developers, it’s super motivating. It’s another vision of the product we created. »
The winning photos of the first three prizes of the jury of Photomode embody this definition to perfection: we see plant textures taken from another planet, silhouettes blurred by slightly rough glass and an eagle flying over an unusual tricolor ground.
Postphotography
Exhibiting virtual photos taken from a video game is not a new idea either. The Center Pompidou in Paris organized as early as 2015 an exhibition of works by artists Duncan Harris (aka DeadEndThrills) and Robert Overweg, British and Dutch virtual photographers respectively.
Ubisoft is in the second edition of its Photomode. The previous one was organized in New York, and the exhibition has since been sent on tour, to a dozen studios of the French company located on all continents: in California, India, Germany…
“For me, it’s part of the UGC movement,” says Justin Levy, contest instigator and senior director of branding and content for Ubisoft. In digital marketing, “UGC” is the Holy Grail. It’s the ” user-generated content », content created by users of a site or platform around a brand, a product or something else.
“We see a lot of costume contests [le « cosplay »]. We believed that virtual photography also lent itself well to competitions. » Especially since Ubisoft has created, over the years, more than one virtual environment where it’s nice to wander around to take original photos: Assassin’s Creed, Watchdogs, Avatar…
These days we are talking about a golden age for “postphotography”. To create photographic masterpieces, you can have a film or digital camera, or an iPhone, or even… a video game controller.