It can't just be me, right? Someone else has to have noticed how washed out and dull most new games colors have become. I mean look at super mario land, doom, half life, ut 2k4, morrowind, sure some of them may not have had the widest color pallet but they were more vibrant, especially the primary colors. Now so many "new" and "advanced" games have really crappy colors. Look at UT 3, oblivion, skyrim, the new halos. Its like the colors have been sucked out, are duller deader colors just easier for the consoles to render or something, or what? Where did the color go?
the same place good video games went, back before 2005 and a few indie devs lol
Games are going for realism. Look outside. Do you live in a cartoon?
Main stream is all about "OH THE GRAPH-X SO GUUD!" And less about quality gameplay.
I like realism in some games, though. I love great graphics. But I love indie games, too. For the quality of the game.
tl;dr
Real life isn't very colorful.
Seems to be a theme to add more 'drama' and seriousness to a game. It's less of a risk to look like a more popular game and game development generally costs a butt load. I agree though, Bioshock Infinite had beautiful colors.
Play Warframe, it's colorful and rage-inducing.
Edit: I just made it to Earth and Jupiter; the planets feature quite disparate environmental designs with a fair smattering of metal panelling and neon lights. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the worlds look like.
I blame most modern shooters. They introduced the grey/brown colour scheme that is so popular right now. Anyway, there are quite a few titles out there with really great colours. Enslaved: Odyssey to the west, Bioshock infinite, DmC: Devil may cry, Sleeping dogs, Ascendant, etc. Good and colourful games are not "gone", but they have been few and far between in the past few years, yes. Also, things like SweetFX can really change the look of a game and also give you a very different colour palette if you want that. I use it on many games that seem like they have a grey or muddy filter over them all the time and it works really well IMO.
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"Real life isn't very colorful."
Now thats something that just simply is not true. Spend one year in the American mid west, colors out the ass man. My life is full of color.
Theres a difference from regular color, and animated cheerful color.
I agree, and most modern games especially shooters have neither, but instead something that looks like it has a thin layer of mud over it.
I look outside and see red and blue houses, lush green grass, and a bright blue sky. Sounds pretty colorful to me.
they want it to look more cinematic (gritty, etc...)... for some reason video game companies have hollywood envy.
in movies it's been the "fashion" to have a flat desaturated look for nearly two decades, i.e. since the nineties. ever since david fincher's "Seven", or perhaps before then.
it's not just realism. the world is quite colourful. it's summer, go outside. during the day. take off your sunglasses and see.
you live in a different world from me. I see dull green leaves on trees. Patch dull green grass. A bright blue sky, and brown and dull green fields. Also a couple houses that are white and boring, but theres only two I can see from my house.
Honestly I prefer seeing a specific art style in a game rather than realism. As far as colors go, I think it depends on the game, some will not look right with really bright vivid colors. Something like battlefield needs gritty greys and dark colors, but something like Halo would need bright and vivid, but then again Halo is trying to look "real" nowadays instead of a specific art style, which I would personally prefer.
my opinion on the matter is that realism is not equal to great graphics, in some game styles popular right now the colors appear very washed out (most fps and many rpgs im looking at you) however this is not true for every game out there and i think developers use it to portray a moody or dark ambiance to the game world. However in my opinion this has been overused lately to the point where it has become a standard, one that takes away from graphics quality to my perception.
Sadly I'd have to agree that there is a lack of color in games, the only really colorful games that I saw at E3 that did not belong to Nintendo (because Nintendo is made of colors and it is rare to see brown and dull from them) were Dead Island 2, Sunset Overdrive, and Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel. Maybe there will be more coming and I do hope that is the case.