Thread by @BryanRenno

I've been all over how inspiring theme park design (especially Disney) is to environment game artists for awhile but I dont think I've laid the case out for why. I want to try doing some tonight.

Let's explore why environments are so important to both games and parks: Context

In both instances, context for what you're doing (what activity you're participating in) is a huge part of getting audiences to buy into the experience. It's more than just a game where your using a turned based combat system. It's more than just a roller coaster. There's story.

To get your audience enthusiastic about the experience, you have to immerse them in the world. Make them live in it, moment to moment, and get them excited to be there. The setting, the environment, is the key to this. Its first and foremost about providing a lived experience

At the same time, you're also trying to focus that experience towards specific activities. You're going to end up funneling them towards things and walling them off from others. Theres an intended experience to have. The environment has to help drive this as well.

You've probably heard a lot of this before but it is really remarkable how much themed entertainment and video games share in common.

So now let's talk about the part that Disney really hits with this that I find the most inspiring: The craftsmanship

In games we tend to see a lot of focus on fantasies with a high level of craft. Whatever the genre is, theres always an 'idealized' version. Disney embodies this idea. Even in areas that are more grounded in real reference, like this Harambe section of Animal Kingdom

Theres a bit more color. It's a bit less noisy and dirty in all the right spots. The culture around a lot of the art of games are trained in the same ways Disney has approached set dressing and decorating their parks since the original back in 1955. There is a shared common eye.

Heres the thing, game environment art is still so young! We've only recently been seeing what artists can do when geometry, materials and lighting arent as limited as they've been for most of 3d game history. That's less than 10-12 years.

Disney has a 50 year start.

(Doesnt hurt that they hire some of the best, most seasoned artists of each generation, a shit ton of money and land to pull all this off too.)

Theres a ton of knowledge to mine from Disney Imagineers who have worked 30-40+ years doing what some env artists have done for half that (and most even far less than that) that have shared techniques on craftsmanship, showmanship and storytelling. To me, they set the bar.

They are the absolute best at what they do and with so many shared problems and solutions, there are some small lines of communication opening up now that artists in games should take advantage of (see a lot of what Star Wars Land is cooking up).

Sometimes it feels like the environment set community can be an echo chamber, focused so much on what other games are doing. But I dont think it's too hard of a stretch to also take a look at the work that Disney and more recently Universal projects have been cooking up.

Not only that but look past the final work in the park and look at what inspired the creation of it. @Joe_Rohde is constantly showcasing the real places, people and ideas from around the world that inspired Epcot and Animal Kingdom. Diving into that is it's own reward.

Theres nothing quite like these in the real world that blends an experiential space with the presentation qualities of craftsmen at the top of their game. If they can pull these off in the real world, its inspiring to think what we can do without as many physical limitations