I take it you're pretty much all artists involved with game creation. I also take it that many of you are involved with level design. How often do you add areas just because they look good, with no real utility or purpose? Would you include a high tower with an ocean view at sunset just because you can? What sort of reaction did your best showpiece get?--blase attitudes, confusion, appreciation? Or is a first person shooter just the wrong venue for good art?

Don't think of it as adding areas with no utility, that is a false dichotomy; think of it as taking a useful area and doing it in a beautiful way. You can make a beautiful version of any game area if youput creativity and work into it.

I'd say that art has a utility all of its own.

And I enjoy playing Americas Army and watching the sunset flares highlight another special forces soldier (right before I get shot for not paying attention).

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Original post by sunandshadow Don't think of it as adding areas with no utility, that is a false dichotomy; think of it as taking a useful area and doing it in a beautiful way. You can make a beautiful version of any game area if youput creativity and work into it.

Exactly. You usually just start out with a bunch of boxes/rectangles/octagon shaped rooms leading into eachother. You design the gameplay around those shapes, and then once that's done, you make them look pretty. That way it's fun, and it looks good too.

Though in some instances you could put like a crack in a wall or window or something with a cool looking area on the other side that you can't get to...but I don't like doing that becacuse it is very in-efficient.

Then there are always the design contests that focus mainly on visuals..in that case you would want to make a whole bunch of areas with no use that look pretty :D

Edit: First person shooters the wrong venue for good art??? Are you kidding me? I've seen some of the most beautiful levels ever made by amateur quake3 mappers. Look at some of these screens from a previous quake3 level design contest:

http://members.rogers.com/derbyshire5/Shot0136.jpg
http://www.levelsource.com/images/c05/c05_dragee.jpg
http://www.levelsource.com/images/c05/c05_lilkilla.jpg
http://www.levelsource.com/images/c05/c05_fjogg.jpg

If that's not art, then I don't know what is.

A big part of the attraction of games comes from being beautiful. Usually it´s more about making the game-relevant stuff look good, but there´s nothing wrong with adding decoration.
Personally I´m having a bit of a hard time distinguishing between "add-ons for visual effects" and "game relevant"... eventually I think it pretty much boils down to the same thing. A shooter would be boring with only grey walls, just as most strategy games need some sort of visual representation for what´s going on on the battlefield.

Besides, visuals is the first thing you notice about a game - this is even more true as you slide along the demographic from game developers to gamers to non-gamers.
First reaction you can get from a non-gamer is usually "ooh this looks nice".