I was playing Morrowind earlier, finding some dead guy's skull for an orc in one of those sandstone Velothi tombs they have.

The place was very dark, to the point that my eyes were hurting, and I had no torches or lamps, so I decided to raise the brightness settings, which made everything in the game a lot brighter, surprisingly.


And it ocurred to me, I'd been playing the game at that brightness for three years, but how do I know if that was how the devs intended it to be seen? I could have been playing all my games much darker than everyone else, who all have cheery bright gameworlds in comparison.

So I thought to ask, those of you who change the brightness settings on your monitors and TVs, how bright do you like to game?

Fairly bright, so I can see things that might be missed otherwise.

Depends on the game.

I liked deus ex human revoloution, but some times it was to dark, other times it was fine and I didnt want to ruin it by changing brightness. I hated that. Should have had some night vision aug or somthing.

That's a good question... I like it where I can totally see in most cases, but I do like it when there are points that I have to use a torch or turn on a flashlight to see. if it is always dark though then I won't enjoy the game. So I guess if I had to choose, I mainly like brighter lighting then darker.

I try not to adjust the brightness on my actual TV unless absolutely necessary (otherwise I find myself fiddling with TV settings every time I change games/film). Most games I play these days have in-game options and little guides to help set the brightness, but I always set mine a bit darker. Not to the point where I can no longer see things dark areas, but a notch or two below. I just like how it makes shadows/colors look.

Me too, problem is it ruins my eyes.

Oblivion was too bright. I had to install a mod that makes the dungeons darker.

Agreed. Just a little bit darker makes the game look a bit better to me.

It depends on the style of game. If it's a darker, grittier game such as Condemned than it warrants the darker look, if it's a game like Infamous 2 I turn it up a bit higher for the full effect of those beautiful lights.

One nice feature I run across sometimes in games is a "test" screen for Brightness/Contrast. It usually shows up as a picture, and words saying "adjust your brightness/contrast/gamma/whatever until the image is barely visible against the black background". It's nice because it allows you to set things to how the devs actually intended it to be.

(of course, that may end up being too dark or bright, but at least you have a defined baseline to work from.)

Most recently, I saw something like this in the PS3 demo of Dungeon Siege 3.
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Personally, I'm not a fan of really dark. Don't want to turn stuff up too far, because it screws up the colors, but I do tend to push the brightness up a notch or two in games where the darkness isn't a specific feature (like suspense games.... the dark is there for a reason. :tongue:)

What I especially don't like is games where there's rapid shifts of contrast between very dark and light areas. It may be more "realistic", but it's hard on the eyes. Nier did this a bit, with the dynamic lighting (when you were in shadow it darkened the whole view, when you stepped into sunlight you got hit by glare until your "eyes" adjusted.) Also saw this in some youtube videos of one of the current modern warfare style games - super dark shadows with super bright sunlight whenever you stepped in front of a window or out of an alley.