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There's a lot of work that needs to be done to pick a consistent style, because at the moment it's a mixture of everything and it all clashes.
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> 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.
You're missing the point: the author is happy with the games and the success they've brought to him and his family, and he doesn't "need" random tips from anonymous message-board posters, most of whom have shipped precisely zero games.
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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.
He got good at other things he cared more about it.
Maybe he should hang out on HackerNews more, so he can be an expert on everything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
While I agree with your assessment, his argument from experience seems to be that none of that will affect his sales, so why bother. I'm sure he knows more about that than I do.
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Completely agree that it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they are low res. However, it's not just the colors. For me it's mostly that the lighting across artwork is very inconsistent. The artwork separately is quite good, but because some stuff is much lighter than the rest it feels like it's gathered from multiple separate games and put together in one.
The article explains why this is so. Arguably with some art direction from Jeff himself he can make art that is more easily replicable, but the reasoning seems to be that "I have to be able to swap artists out." Instead of learning enough about game art over 25 years to direct some consistency across artists for his games, he rationalizes it as an explicit business choice. I think he's missing an opportunity to learn…
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.
Gamers generally like the style. The Venn diagram of his target audience and people who like retro game visuals is likely near a perfect circle.
What makes the games look unpleasing is the execution. It's just all over the place, to the point where it looks like a mashup of free assets collected from various websites.
People are pointing out that his otherwise amazing games are being held back by their subpar graphics. Unfortunately, instead of taking the criticism fairly, he sets up a strawman to deflect any blame, claiming that anyone who doesn't like the execution just dislikes the style.
There's multiple points in the article where this shows, for example this one:
>The key problem here is that, when most people say, "Your art looks bad," what they mean is, "I want art that is good." They mean, "I want AAA-quality art."
Big jumps there Jeff.
He shows his lack of knowledge about making good art when he says he can't afford the extra man power to solve the issue. No one here would claim that, to fix bad code, you have to hire more programmers. Art works in the same way. The problems are foundational and don't require more employees or more hours to get right - just a better approach.
The argument that this is not possible with freelancers is silly. He gives the example of a freelancer creating a super niche style that no other artist can replicate. No one is asking him to create award-winning art. People are simply asking for games that are not-ugly. There's plenty of artstyles that fit all his requirements, while still being not-ugly and reproducible by other artists.
I don't doubt that it's hard to find good artists when you never took the time to study what makes good art.
The truth seems to be that after his 25 years of game development Jeff still doesn't know how to make good looking games. He has every right to do as he wants - just as anyone else is free to comment on the look of games. But this article is nothing more than one big list of poor justifications, which is why it's getting a lot of flak.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree that it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they are low res. However, it's not just the colors. For me it's mostly that the lighting across artwork is very inconsistent. The artwork separately is quite good, but because some stuff is much lighter than the rest it feels like it's gathered from multiple separate games and put together in one.
The article explains why this is so. Arguably with some art direction from Jeff himself he can make art that is more easily replicable, but the reasoning seems to be that "I have to be able to swap artists out." Instead of learning enough about game art over 25 years to direct some consistency across artists for his games, he rationalizes it as an explicit business choice. I think he's missing an opportunity to learn…
I play a lot of games with low resolution, cheap or crude graphics and that never bothers me, but I find inconsistent art really difficult to ignore to the point where I probably wouldn’t play this game.
Keeping art generic, boring and inconsistent to swap out artists is akin to using a lowest common denominator language and framework so you can swap out programmers. Maybe it makes business sense, but it leads to uninspired boring results.
I’m sorry at how negative this comment turned out, so if the author reads it I hope he takes it constructively and considers how to improve the consistency of the art.
EDIT: I don't think the art looks terrible, but it could be improved a lot with relatively minor changes (consistent shadows would be a great start).
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> they just have to train someone to get better at art directing. You're missing the point: the author is happy with the games and the success they've brought to him and his family, and he doesn't "need" random tips from anonymous message-board posters, most of whom have shipped precisely zero games.
Jeff, the art problems of your games have nothing to do with low-res. Baba is You (or Downwell) are just as low-res, but manage to look good because they use fewer colors and choose them well. I recommend learning that skill, it will make your games look way better and it honestly doesn't take that much time.
I expect they're also less busy, and more stylised.
Looking at the Queen’s Wish's screenshot, it doesn't look lower resolution than Dungeons of Dredmor, just worse, the backgrounds are way too busy, the colors are inconsistent, too subdued so their kind-of meld into one another making things less legible, the lighting is odd, the level of details seems to vary from one sprite to another,…
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