"The Beauty of Game Design" is a personal project of mine. It started with a game called Watch Dogs, which I worked hard to mod in order for it to receive a complete overhaul, along with having a built in photo mode. I would enable developer permissions and tools to allow me to alter things like camera angle, lighting, and weather. This gave me the perfect tool to practice my cinematic ideas. I then found myself capturing what I felt was the "beauty" of the game, treating the environment as if it is a real one, and planning a photo in that way. The mod garnered so much attention, GameRant even wrote an article about it!
I eventually started shifting to other games that already had photography tools built into it, like Ghost of Tsushima and Cyberpunk 2077. I came to the full realization that these are the perfect tool to practice shots you have dreamed of taking without spending the money. You don't have to drop thousands of dollars on lighting and great cameras. In the virtual realm, there are no limits to what shots you can create.
