[theandrewbailey]

> We're in a period where the graphical canvas is getting larger every year, and the temptation is to fill it with as much color and pop as possible.

It's been a while, but last I looked, it seemed that the temptation was to use ever muddier and desaturated visuals, with as much glare and shiny surfaces as possible.

[subwayclub]

It comes and goes in phases according to the available technology. The first Quake was all muddy brown and gray. Quake 2 and Unreal both introduced color lighting and looked like a disco on Saturday night. Mid-2000s games added a lot of new lighting and post-processing effects but they had limitations causing harsh shadows and highlights, hence another round of gray/brown photorealism came through.

But in this decade things are finally feeling more evened out. Lighting models are sophisticated enough to allow for designs similar to a film set or photo shoot, and post-processing is getting past basic glows and filters and into a spectrum of quality/performance tradeoffs.

Of course, the games that don't aim for photorealism always age better. That's been the case since people started digitizing photographs for games.