From the 'Uncanny Valley' to the Mountain of Manifest

In my term paper I discussed digitial visual effects in film compared with video games, giving an overview of the history of CGI. Furthermore because CGI is so prevalent in video games I looked at gameplay vs. narration and gave an overview of the trend and the difficulties in creating photorealism in video games. The problem with photorealism is what I'd like to discuss here. On October 13, 2009 an article was published by Science Daily, showing that not only do humans react to the Uncanny Valley effect, but so do monkeys. Okay, now I'm sure some of you will know what the 'uncanny valley' is, but I had no idea until I began this paper. The 'uncanny valley' effect was theorized by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. The 'valley' refers to a dip in a graph that charts a human's positive reaction in response to an image on one axis and a robot's human-likeness on the other. Based on scientific findings by Princeton University’s assistant psychology professor Asif Ghazanfar and research specialist Shawn Steckenfinger, the ability to distinguish nuances in facial expressions as theorized in the uncanny valley effect are evolutionary adaptations. The research showed that macaque monkeys, when shown an image of a CGI monkey instead of a video of a real monkey, quickly averted their glances and were frightened. So, people and even monkeys, can tell the difference between CGI and real. What does this exactly mean for video games? Well, we're going to continue pursuing photorealism until we achieve realism beyond the point where we can distinguish the two or we can rely on non-photorealistic techniques and develop a more stylized approach to CGI characters. Because, interestingly enough people react more positively to non-photorealistic characters such as the disproportionate ones in "The Incredibles" than they do to more photorealistic ones like those in "Polar Express." Either way we will continue down this track until we reach the point where a new technology is needed to express ourselves and when we get there and have crossed the 'valley,' we will begin a new adventure, climbing the mountain of manifest.