Photo Modes In Video Gaming

In late 2013, Sony released their controller for the Playstation 4, the Dualshock 4. It featured a dedicated “share” button, which, I personally never used. Apparently some people used it, because the next generations’ controller had the same button. Except it was called “create” “to emphasize creating content to share”.

Video gaming inherently has social aspects built into it. Even before video games, games in general were essentially all social or “multiplayer” in nature. Except solitaire.

Video games have seen an evolution of social features over time, like the focus on single player gaming with home consoles, local and network connections for LAN PC gaming, early internet and attempts at netcode, or cables and adhoc connections with handheld devices.

However, the rise in popularity of social media especially changed gaming. There were always internet forums to talk about games on, but core social media platforms introduced more people to online gaming discussion.

The presentation of games started to be obsessed over, with discussion of graphics becoming the focal point of online game discussion. Clips being shared sometimes defined the popularity of the game and thus changed how developers made design choices.

An immediate example of this is that Path of Exile developers removed the lower quality settings from their game, because many players were using them while streaming to get the highest performance, and it made their game look bad (lower quality, means lowering the graphics or polygons of assets, meaning the game looks “worse”, but gives better performance).

One might argue social media is a big reason as to why the current trend of Western game development focuses on movie-like cinematic games. After all, live streaming and Youtube became a vital part of gaming marketing and the industry in general.

There is a lot more to be said regarding this intersection of ideas, but this is enough context regarding the era of sharing video game content online.

Photo Modes in Videogaming

All the way back in 2004, photo mode made its first appearance in Gran Turismo 4. Thats most of what I’m going to say about the history of photo mode, as I don’t think you want to hear a timeline featuring innovations like adding filters to photo mode or allowing a character to pose for photos.

We’ve always had external methods to record our games, capture cards and taking video or pictures of the screen. And we’ve had older and newer system methods of recording and taking photos, like the print screen and the share button.

But photo modes show effort from developers in trying to help players photograph their game. Many games’ photo modes feature a free camera and pause that allows you to capture the game from various angles otherwise unavailable to the player.

A great mechanic, since gamers have been trying to “break out” of the perspective they’ve been forced into since the beginning of gaming. Methods and efforts to do this include things like noclip, which allows your character to move through walls and barriers(no collision). Breaking boundaries and understanding what is in the video game or how it works has always been fun for a curious player. After all, your download of the game contains all of the game, not just the parts that should be visible to you, the player.

Yet, it’s clear that the increased perspective and camera movement are not the features developers were primarily interested in giving players. Photo modes are primarily to enable, help, and maybe even remind players to take photos. And if this is the primary reason, it may, unfortunately, be better for developers to limit the range of the camera or use other tricks to prevent players from taking unflattering photos of the game, as good photos can be used by the developers for free marketing through players sharing them. Though if the benefit of photo mode is primarily for the developer, what are players’ to gain from photo mode?

The Player’s Reason for Taking Photos

If you haven’t ever felt much of a reason to take photos in your games, it may also be worth looking at why people take photos in the real world, in the first place. And if you can’t think of reasons for that off the top of your head, some googling will provide insight.

However, for many gamers, the taking of photos in games come naturally, or at least, the urge to photograph arises when we realize we are seeing something we want to share or remember. Many times we take a photo as a way to share with others what we were experiencing or what we were feeling when the photo happened.

In this section, I am refering the explicit use of photos by players as an end product, discluding things like photos or video content taken for content creation and furthering one’s own brand, channel, etc.

Now, here are some specific reasons for why we may take photos in games. Think of times you may have taken photos for these reasons, both in game and in real life.

Aesthetics and Beauty: Sometimes, life astounds us, and creates moments of beauty by pure chance. Like by miraculously creating developers who create graphical engines that allow us to view their manually placed landscapes or content. There are many games that one can stop to take a photo of towering mountains, chaotic battles, creative or clever architecture, masterfully sculpted 3d models, and much more.

Player Customization: With so many games allowing great customization of character appearance, it can be nice to see other’s fashion sense and choices. For example, racing games with customization have players sculpting masterpieces on the sides of cars. General action games have people rating each other’s character creations and outfits, with many mods created to increase variety and breadth in appearance.

Funny Moments and Glitches: Lots of photos are taken to share for general amusement. Either out of what was intended and happened in the game, like funny dialog, or what was unintended, like characters stuck in a T-Pose animation. Also used to help document the glitches for later fixing.

Personal Memories: Perhaps this doesn’t happen too often, or you may find it embarrassing to even want to catalog your interaction with a video game, but taking photos of major or cool moments for looking back on later can be nice. Especially when it reveals a moment caused by personal choice or player agency, as opposed to a moment everyone has. Though every category mentioned may fit into this category, I would consider this type of photo more personal in nature. Thus, when both a stranger and a friend share a moment to say “Wow! This part of the game was crazy!”, it’s generally more enjoyable to see how a friend felt about the moment.

Strategy and Puzzles: Sometimes considered a defining trait of older games, you used to need to record information to be used later. Maybe the code to a door, or cooler, in game signs or sigils that are part of a puzzle. Lastly…

Achievements: Pretty simple, and is more for visual proof or to cap off an announcement. Sometimes cool photos can come out of this, and this can range from a half naked character over a bosses corpse to give evidence that someone beat the boss without armor on, to a screenshot of your rank in a multiplayer game.

The Social Aspect of Art & Conclusion

Social media has affected art in peculiar ways. However, much of art is designed with an audience in mind, or the intention to share in the first place. Arguably, art is social in nature, though, obviously, an artist looks to be proud and content with their own creations— it’s hard to share or sell a creation that you do not like or are not proud of.

But social media has pushed artists to create art with a greater concern for audience or appeal. To sum it up, I believe the real worry of creating art with other people in mind comes from the concern of material gain, social benefits, and online algorithms interfering with the creation of good art. Did we even take photos “for ourselves”, before it got to the point of multiple 20 second videos of a concert you attended being posted on social media to farm clout?

Regarding photo mode, I believe the most likely conclusion is that photo mode was designed to be another tool with the intention of helping the marketing and image of the game. Taking great photos in a game and sharing them does help the game’s image and marketing, but its fun regardless of the reason it was made. Perhaps one day, in-game photos will be considered art, or at least artistic. You need the skill, perspective and sense to take good photos, after all.

However, the issue is, real photography always captures a subject and creates immediate meaning in its ability to present real life and reflect the photographer. There are perhaps a few examples of photos from videogames that capture the meaning and significance that the real world has, but it is certainly not the majority. The counter argument for this is that the content of the video game and the person taking the photo are the meaning and significance. True, but we already have a preconception of videogames regarding its credibility or legitimacy alongside already established art forms and media. This tends to conflict with looking at video game photos with a sense of appreciation in both the significance and craftsmanship.

I went into making this text with little idea about the subject, wondering what I could say, and even why I was making this. But in writing and researching, I feel I’ve gained a little more perspective and some motivation to take photos in games. And I hope you have too. So go and take advantage of all games have to offer, and take some pictures of these artistic works that developers and artists spend years working on.

(Note: This is a text adapted from a script I wrote to go along with video footage—formatting, sentence structure, etc. are not “optimized” for reading—though I made a few edits regarding specific language or phrases.)