![]() ![]() On the other hand, hey, the gates are wide open for another game to do it. That’s a lot of people to whom Ark could have seeded a fresh vision of what dinosaurs looked like. I think it could have thought big, because despite being still in Early Access, it’s been played by 1.6 million people. But Jurassic Park knew it could start a revolution because it was a big Hollywood movie, while Ark seems to think it’s ‘just a game’. It had a chance, like Jurassic Park did, to make a new and distinct vision of dinosaurs that might go on to inspire a new generation. In that context, Ark’s a bit of a missed opportunity. The film set expectations for dinosaurs from which science has since moved on, while popular culture has not. “Unfortunately, Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were so memorable that they quickly became inescapable in the popular media,” Vincent laments. Spielberg was a bit too successful, though. “If Jurassic Park had taken the route that so many are taking now, the film would have featured swamp-dwelling, lard arse brontosaurs and tail-dragging, tripodal, Harryhausen-esque tyrannosaurs.” rex in Jurassic Park is an active hunter, able to run with its tail stretched out behind it, acting as a counter-balance. Instead of basing its designs on old dino art, Spielberg’s team consulted scientists and referred to the work of the most well-informed palaeoartists of the 1980s, like Gregory Paul, Mark Hallett and Doug Henderson. “For all their inaccuracies, and for all that the filmmakers made use of artistic license, Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were nevertheless pretty well up-to-date for 1993,” Vincent says. Vincent sees Ark’s dinosaurs as being part of a tradition that started with Jurassic Park, which was a big event for dinosaur representation. You see vast and lumpen old monsters of the 1970s, which was how dinosaurs looked when I first started getting obsessed with them, and then you see how they’ve changed into the lithe and active creatures of today. Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs is brilliant because it shows how there were fashions in the way old faves were represented. But back then, I didn’t realise that the pictures of dinos that I looked at so much weren’t made by palaeontologists but illustrators who were influenced at least as much by other illustrators as science. Anything depicting a dinosaur was incredible. When I was a kid, I probably wouldn’t have minded about all this much. “If you're going to name your creature after a dinosaur – and the majority of the species in this game are placed in existing dinosaur genera – then you should probably be prepared to make it resemble the animal in question.” ![]() “As a dinosaur geek, one can't help but be a little disappointed that the developers have opted to tack dinosaurs' names onto what are, essentially, fantasy creatures,” he told me. Marc Vincent understands that, too, but the way they’re presented in the game frustrates him. ![]() That’s completely understandable in the context of making a fun game, especially one where you can ride your captured dino and put glasses on it. It’s actually kind of stressful because people are really passionate about dinosaurs.” He also said that “it’s really hard to do good feathers in a game.” The big lizard thing is not scientifically accurate any more’. Rapczak later told MCV: “We’ve noticed that a lot of people are quick to point out: ‘Hey, dinosaurs have feathers now. Studio Wildcard explains them with some mysteriously undisclosed “in-world context for why these species may have evolved slightly from their historical counterparts,” but it’s also a bit of a get-out. And maybe sometimes don’t, like Doedicurus, which rolls around Ark like Sonic the Hedgehog. Creative director Jesse Rapczak told Gamasutra that he and his team didn’t go out to attempt accuracy, instead designing creatures that look and behave how players expect. Its island is also home to ape men and giant snakes. It’s important to note that Ark’s dinos aren’t meant to be scientifically correct. Guess what? Ark’s dinosaurs aren’t very dinosaury. So I asked one of its writers, Marc Vincent, about how games and popular culture depict dinosaurs, and to look at a few of Ark’s. I’m interested in all this stuff because for the past few years I’ve been reading a wonderfully When the Internet Was Great-style blog called Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs, which documents representations of dinosaurs, mostly from old picture books, many of which I pored over when I was little, and critiques them according to current scientific thinking. I mean, who wouldn’t? But since the very first video that came out about the game, I’ve wondered how close to modern paleontological thinking they are. I play Ark: Survival Evolved mostly to look at its dinosaurs. ![]()
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