3 years ago, I would have said no. Actually, I would have said most animations hurt a game. But... Ive seen better animations which have improved games since then. I still see the same 2 shitty frames repeated over and over in some games. Also, I started playing some rpgm/wolfrpg games, which is where I first saw the live2d cubism animations. If the animations are done well (or at least not badly), I feel they do add to the game. But if they are done badly, they detract from it. But very few devs are able to animate very well. And lately, lots are jumping into AI to do it for them, which sometimes yields good results, but not always. The biggest problem is that the devs just accept the shit it spits out even if it is trash. I saw one in a game where the girl turned and the face changed so much from the different angle she looked like some sort of demon monster for about 1.5s before it found a better angle and fixed her face. But the dev left that shit in.
So I guess TLDR: if dev is not stupid enough to insert shitty animations, then yes.
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I think animation improves the experience. Whether is DAZ or hand-drawn or whatever, it always looks nice to see a bit of movement. I think that AI can help create them, but I agree it is noticeable when it's done poorly. That and looping the animation. Do a short looping .gif or .webp animation and there you go. I've seen too many animations that look passable, but then jump back to the start.
This mindset actually pisses me off when it comes to games. "a bit of movement" has made me uninstall games. Devs who feel that just slightly panning around each image as if you were looking thorugh a camera that someone was holding, or slight up and down movement of the image just to have movement. That feels like a lazy as fuck attempt to make up for boring renders and lack of animation ability. Its like some of those japanese H games where they have 5 images for the whole game and just change the face or fluid overlay to make it seem new. And girl getting fucked = image jerking from side to side. "YAY!! WE ANIMATED IT!!" - No. you fucking shook a picture.
Also, ive seen devs who use some sort of image stretching/bending to try to make it look animated. One dev made all standing sprits (is this the right word?) do this so it almost looked like they were breathing. Almost. Not quite. It looked like they were made out of a flat piece of plastic that was flapping and stretching in the wind. Then using that to fake-animate a sex scene? Fucking horrendous. Uninstalled that shit. If you cant do anything except "a bit of movement", then either practice, or skip it. Dont put trash movement in your game and call it animation.
