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Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

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Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#61

Post by bipson »

Aesthetics are such a poor/difficult topic to discuss, unless you want to go the academic/philosophical route.

In fact, as soon someone feels the need to defend aesthetics in the first place, I'm starting to feel twitchy - for the same reason you don't want to discuss the quality of light with a blind person (not that I deny any blind person the right to know how I experience it).

I think a lot of commenters are right on point, when they argue that none of "retro", low budget, or indie imply shabby graphics. Just as many commenters completely miss the point about "shabby" graphics. Reduced or no graphics at all are not "shabby". Obviously you will have a hard time criticizing the aesthetics of text-based adventures (font-choice, spacing and layout maybe?). Also, just moving from retro to contemporary you won't automatically get "great looks", right? Thus can we finally remove the whole retro aspect from the line of argument?

If you produce art (we do consider game graphics to be some kind of art, right?), and you are criticized for the aesthetics, make of it what you wish. Defending it won't increase your sales. Let the success of the game speak for itself.

And if you cannot understand what people mean when they criticize you, ask them (or others) what could be wrong and how to improve.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#62

Post by meheleventyone »

rwmj wrote: post #46
meheleventyone wrote: post #9

Arrrgh, there are a lot of interesting and good points in the article but for the most part they miss the wood for the trees. The actual answer is that care isn't being taken to develop a style that looks good and meets his constraints. Jeff needs a good art director. The Ultima V and Baba is You examples are excellent counter-points because they show how great games with simple styles can look.

> Jeff needs a good art director. He does address this in the article: Hiring more people means he directly needs to make more sales, which (I also know from experience) is very difficult to do. Hiring dead weight like an "art director" probably means hiring even more people to carry out the directions of the art director, since they're unlikely to be a can-do person themselves.

I think you have some odd preconceptions about what an art director role on a small indie team would be like. For the kind of thing Jeff is talking about I'd not even suggest it be an in-house role and would definitely expect them to be producing art.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#63

Post by alttab »

jplayer01 wrote: post #45
meheleventyone wrote: post #9

Arrrgh, there are a lot of interesting and good points in the article but for the most part they miss the wood for the trees. The actual answer is that care isn't being taken to develop a style that looks good and meets his constraints. Jeff needs a good art director. The Ultima V and Baba is You examples are excellent counter-points because they show how great games with simple styles can look.

> Jeff needs a good art director. Did you miss the part where adding an employee would double his required budget for the game? Which means he needs at least double the sales? Which means more risk? And there's no guarantee he'll hit that even if the graphics look better? He spells out that he's working with freelancers, who often flake out for (understandable) various reasons.

You would think after 25 years of making games he'd have enough sense to direct art himself in some way. Seems like he's rationalizing his choices instead of taking it upon himself to learn from his customer's criticisms and his own experience.

If I had made that many games over 3 decades I would have at least learned how to talk to freelance artists in a way that would get better over time. It seems Jeff has put no effort into it, or gave up too early because he's protected his choices with rationalizations.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#64

Post by alttab »

atoav wrote: post #50
meheleventyone wrote: post #9

Arrrgh, there are a lot of interesting and good points in the article but for the most part they miss the wood for the trees. The actual answer is that care isn't being taken to develop a style that looks good and meets his constraints. Jeff needs a good art director. The Ultima V and Baba is You examples are excellent counter-points because they show how great games with simple styles can look.

Additionally it helps to have a unique, well thought out and recognizable style in a game when you want to convince your audience that you are making good games and you are not some guy who tried out a game editor for the first thime with that generic texture pack he found on the internet. People are very visual and your game can be amazing in terms of story or programming, but you also need to sell them visually. Th…

Jeff has had 25 years to get good at it. Based on the reasoning in his article, it seems like he didn't try.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#65

Post by alttab »

meheleventyone wrote: post #56
jplayer01 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I say Jeff needs an art director I mean that Jeff needs to care about art direction and that making a good looking game with his existing constraints is perfectly feasible. Then say that instead of "Jeff needs an art director", which literally means that Jeff needs an art director. Which means another employee. It doesn't mean "Jeff needs to be an art director". Which he is, but results in the current situatio…

Jeff needs an art director doesn't imply anything more than that. It could be him, it could be another full time employee or it could be something he has a freelancer develop at the start of the project.

And it seems like he focused more on making sure that his artists were replaceable, even at the price of a hodge-podge style. The criticism is legitimate - it doesn't seem like Jeff has invested in his own ability to direct art.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#66

Post by SiempreViernes »

jplayer01 wrote: post #45
meheleventyone wrote: post #9

Arrrgh, there are a lot of interesting and good points in the article but for the most part they miss the wood for the trees. The actual answer is that care isn't being taken to develop a style that looks good and meets his constraints. Jeff needs a good art director. The Ultima V and Baba is You examples are excellent counter-points because they show how great games with simple styles can look.

> Jeff needs a good art director. Did you miss the part where adding an employee would double his required budget for the game? Which means he needs at least double the sales? Which means more risk? And there's no guarantee he'll hit that even if the graphics look better? He spells out that he's working with freelancers, who often flake out for (understandable) various reasons.

You miss the point: many games have used lots of freelancers, but come out looking good because the one in charge of placing and paying for art has a good aestetic sense for what will look good together. They have an art director.

Being that they don't have budget for a new position, they just have to train someone to get better at art directing.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#67

Post by rasz »

d--b wrote: post #33

Dwarf Fortress, MineCraft, A Dark Room, etc. You don't need great graphics to make games that people really enjoy.

Rimworld also shows you dont need $$ and manpower to make great looking games. Its all about Style, not quality of actual assets.

https://imgur.com/a/wS3Pt

https://imgur.com/a/xdDzg

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#68

Post by atoav »

jplayer01 wrote: post #48
meheleventyone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not a question of adding more manpower. When I say Jeff needs an art director I mean that Jeff needs to care about art direction and that making a good looking game with his existing constraints is perfectly feasible.

> When I say Jeff needs an art director I mean that Jeff needs to care about art direction and that making a good looking game with his existing constraints is perfectly feasible. Then say that instead of "Jeff needs an art director", which literally means that Jeff needs an art director. Which means another employee. It doesn't mean "Jeff needs to be an art director". Which he is, but results in the current situatio…

It is a circular problem:

When you care about art, you usually got some sense of aesthetics and feel more likely unable to bring yourself to ship anything that looks simply bad to yourself.

When you don't got the eyes to see bad art as what it is, you also won't see it as a problem that really needs fixing so you care less about it than is good for you.

You have to strike a balance there. Games are visual independend of the style. Yes you play them – but before you even decide to pick a game up, you see screenshots, trailers or game-play-videos. If that doesn't look interesting, you can have the most interesing gameplay in the universe and it wouldn't sell.

A bit like in films, where the best script can be destroyed by bad acting or the best acting can be destroyed by bad scripts as a passionate creator you have to realize that this is a serious issue.

Amateur filmmakers might figure out directing techniques to get top notch acting out of people who never stood in front of a camera before or they might search very patiently till somebody crosses their way who is a natural talent.

The thing is to precisely know your limitations and do the best you can do within them, sometimes even by not copying the best, but by finding glorious short cuts that sometimes create whole new genres.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#69

Post by [deleted] »

gtirloni wrote: post #15
glenvdb wrote: post #12

I think the problem is that the game is in Uncanny Valley. It's trying to achieve a certain level of detail/realism, but it's falling short of expectations. This might be completely intentional, to evoke a feel for games from an era that did the same thing, but comparing to Baba is You highlights the developer doesn't understand that. Baba is You has gone completely in the opposite direction in terms of graphical det…

The article explains in detail where he wants the game to sit and why. Sorry, I don't follow.

[deleted]

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#70

Post by rasz »

m0nty wrote: post #10

ITT: lots of people missing the point that he doesn't actually believe his games look like crap, he's just made a conscious (and profitable) decision to go retro. He likes his games' visual style and values the freelancers who produce the art. I didn't think this is a difficult point but apparently it is.

>conscious decision to go retro

Windows 3.11 16 color default palette retro

>and profitable

so profitable he cant even hire someone with basic art sense

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