Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap • Hacker News Board

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#151

Post by LugosFergus » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #141

Oh man. This thread is really something else. Like...for miles in every direction, all I can see are pitchforks, and here I am standing alone on a small hill thinking to myself "Holy shit. That's the Spiderweb software guy. I've played every single one of his games, EVERY SINGLE ONE, and loved all of them." The graphics in the games are exactly as good as they need to be to make wonderful story-driven RPGs.

You and me both! I thought this thread would have a bit more praise for Jeff's work after all of these years, but it's just a bunch of Debbie Downers taking a collective dump on it just because they don't like the look.

While the style may not be modern, the gameplay and stories tend to be quite good. I would also argue that a game that looks great doesn't necessarily imply that the game is any good. Battlefront 2 is a great looking game that is ultimately a soulless, lootbox filled shitshow with painfully bland gameplay.

Anyone saying that he needs to hire an art director have completely missed the point of his article: his business can only support his family. He has also been able to maintain this business for 20 years, which is a lot more than can be said about any other indies.

Ultimately, this is a style that Jeff likes, and it makes him money. If people don't like it, then they can go play something else. He still has his fan base that keeps him afloat.

EDIT: grammar

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#152

Post by barryhoodlum » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

sgift wrote: post #129

barryhoodlum wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But his games don't sit where he thinks they sit. It's baffling as there's a huge market for "retro" looking indie games, and has been for a decade or so. Plenty of successful and influential indie games made by a small team (or even a solo developer) in the past decade have been really successful despite looking like they could run on an NES or a Commodore 64, with limited palettes and chunky graphics. But there's a…

> in the past decade have been really successful He makes indie games for 25 years. They feed him and his family. That sounds very successful to me.

I'm not saying he's not successful. He's implying you either have shoddy graphics, or spend big money on AAA graphics. But they're not the only two choices, and that's proven - there are successful games without AAA graphics that also don't look bad. If he's feeding his family on his games, changing his attitude to their appearance could expand his audience significantly for relatively minor effort.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#153

Post by wincy » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:23 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #147

Sometimes 'better-but-not-good-enough' is a trap. That's basically what Jeff Vogel is saying about moving up from his poor inconsistent art to slightly better art, but it's also how I feel about moving up from ascii characters to his style of "crappy" art. AdoM is a fantastic roguelike created by Thomas Biskup, which originally had you as an '@' battling other ascii characters. Later he wanted a nicer interface and w…

Dwarf Fortress having mod packs is a pretty good idea. It has the text interface by default then people can make their own sprites. Then again most places don’t have the sort of community support Dwarf Fortress has.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#154

Post by lazyjones » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

magashna wrote: post #150

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #84

> People who grew up with Nintendo and Sega really like pixel art. As one of those people, I really don't like pixel art at all. Today's pixel art looks nothing like games did back in the day. The simple reason is that those Nintendo and Sega games weren't played on 27" 4k LCD monitors or 65" OLED TV's but on on the barely 14" CRT in my bedroom. We didn't have huge pixely sprites, they were small and blurry. It had a…

That era also had fantastic art in arcade games, so don't deny that things like Kim Kaphwan's pants exist https://www.resetera.com/threads/animation-excellence-a-eulo... I'd say today's pixel art generally doesn't hit the heights that it did in SF3 or some of the mid KoF games

> https://www.resetera.com/threads/animation-excellence-a-eulo...

> >Current technology isn't even close to being enough to replicate this with real-time physics.

The claim on that page, that those detailed cloth animations were superior and somehow lost in the transition to 3D games, is bunk though. Modern games are very detailed, e.g. https://youtu.be/ot_sYoqe_2w?t=2355

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#155

Post by kkarakk » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

w0utert wrote: post #87

alttab wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes I agree. I almost feel bad for disagreeing with someone who obviously put so much love in his games and rightfully stands behind them, but I cannot shake off the feeling that there is a huge potential for improvement there that does not involve hiring additional people, more expensive artists, etc. Just investing some of his own time reading up on the fundamentals of art, visual language, perception, color theory…

>I try to build games for fun and learning

so basically you aren't selling your games? Are you even posting them on itch.io? Your constraint set is WILDLY different

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#156

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #17

TeMPOraL wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he doesn't understand why people say the games look bad (and people may have trouble articulating the real reasons too); I believe 'meheleventyone captured the root issue elsewhere[0] - the game he presented has inconsistent, crappy style. Which can be contrasted to other simple games he uses as a justification - these games look well because they have a particular style. The solution isn't to go 3D, or add m…

He explains why he doesn't want to get a single permanent artist in the article. A few times.

I know. But that doesn't change the fact that a single art director would most likely fix the "look like crap" problem.

The article reads to me like, "would-be customers complain about X, I gather that A, B, C are the causes of X, but I won't address them; moreover, I won't address the issues Y and Z (which happen to be the true causes of X) either; so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

What was the point of that article again?

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#157

Post by kkarakk » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #143

jplayer01 wrote: post #45

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.

For what it's worth, I clicked the comment thread here before looking at the article. And without recognizing the author's name, my first thought from what people were saying about it was "It sounds like we're talking about Avernum." I played the demo of one of his games on a bondi blue iMac back in the early 2000's. The graphics then looked ok. But it's 2019 and new titles don't look better. I've wondered before who…

Except his competition isn't other indie developers,it's fully staffed studios in india/china/europe that earn the same amount of money with 3 or 4 times the developers. He has to be the best in a certain metric(he seems to have chosen story for this according to the limited time i've played his latest game) and he certainly is head and shoulders above his competition there.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#158

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #57

jplayer01 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... it's like nobody's reading the article. And it's a good article.

It's an interesting pattern to notice; well written articles that pre-emptively address common questions, and then a pile of comments that ask those exact same questions.

Some articles (like this) don't address common questions, they brush them aside, possibly not realizing that actually addressing them would remove the point behind the article.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#159

Post by gbersac » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #141

Oh man. This thread is really something else. Like...for miles in every direction, all I can see are pitchforks, and here I am standing alone on a small hill thinking to myself "Holy shit. That's the Spiderweb software guy. I've played every single one of his games, EVERY SINGLE ONE, and loved all of them." The graphics in the games are exactly as good as they need to be to make wonderful story-driven RPGs.

I only played one of his game (avalon), but I finished it. As a casual / very hard to please player, finishing a game is a rare event. Congrats to him.

And the graphism are good enough imo.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#160

Post by kkarakk » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #83

alttab wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That would be my guess too. Another guess would be that for him visuals have simply never been a thing that was all that important – otherwise he would have tried to learn a thing or two about this important part of games on his journey. The thing people need to realize is that in compound arts like games, films, theatre every part is important. You can do a film with poor lighting if every other aspect is great and…

Limited visuals just enhance your judgement of everything else in the game - as long as you're willing to move beyond the limited visuals. Some people are, despite the tone of the haters.