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Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

261–270 of 552 posts

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#261
post #87
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 you're a dilettante? That's fine. So am I. But I don't wonder about my future if my game doesn't sell (or doesn't even ship). He does.

Perhaps you should consider being a little more generous in your thinking.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half Life doesn't look like crap. It looks dated. There is a huge gap between the way the OP's games look and how half life looks, because even though the 3D tech was worse and the textures lower res in half life, it had a proper art team behind it. A proper art team is expensive, and he doesn't want to pay for it. Fair enough. But just getting someone to look over the art all together and making it a bit more cohesi…

> A proper art team is expensive, and he doesn't want to pay for it. Can't . The word you're looking for here is can't . The unit economics of making the sorts of games that JV makes completely preclude it. It would be way easier to spend the money he doesn't make to get better art talent. This is true. It is also not very meaningful. And it's not that there is minimal sense of direction just for funsies--it's that y…

> Can't. The word you're looking for here is can't.

I think the real term is "Not Invented Here Syndrome".

This site has thousands of open sourced game assets: https://opengameart.org

Here is an asset pack of 65 fantasy icons for $5: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/fantasy-r...

I suspect someone spending $200 and a day of searching could probably find most of the art needed for Queen's Wish. There's really no need for him to be hiring freelancers in the first place.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, can't. This doesn't change the rest of what I said, though: Have the freelance artist spend some time fixing up the tileset as a whole!

I think you may not be grasping how tiny the margins here are. Where's the money come from to do it?

We don't have numbers on the table, so we can't really talk about money. I am presenting what I think would be an efficient use of the money. Not paying a full time artist, not hiring an art director, just having someone with some sense of art fix up the whole asset directory a bit instead of simply asking people to do things generic like he says he does in the article. How much time will depend on the budget. This is just my idea, of course. Maybe he already tried it a bit and it doesn't give as much of a result as I think.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#264

As expected, a lot of people in this thread are giving "valuable" advice about his art style. Jeff's self-ironic way of saying the game looks like crap and calling his art style inconsistent seems to have set the tone of the conversation. Having played through the Avernum trilogy last year, I don't think the art style is inconsistent at all, especially considering how old some of the assets are. Please have a closer…

Yeah - I don't think the games even look that bad given it's isometric etc.

Maybe I'm biased having played the original Avernum games when I was a kid though.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#265

To each his own, of course, but a great art can really elevate game to a completely new level - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Braid-art-1.j... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Braid-art-2.j... Yes, it is an expense and so it's also a risk, but not taking any risks means never trying to get out of your comfort zone.

Eh, i don't really think the art is what made Braid interesting, or even contributed to that. Honestly, I think in my case it may have even detracted from my enjoyment of it a little because it felt so out of place with the gameplay in some subconscious way I'm unable to adequately describe.

Besides, ask Jon how much he spent on assets for it. It is clear that Jeff is uninterested in spending a ton of money on a portion of the final product that he doesn't really think is that important.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#266
Perhaps irrelevant, but I found the original message posted to reddit, and it ended with:

> Please don't take this the wrong way, I know it has been a contention for years, and you are probably very aware of it. I just think you could be reaching a lot more new fans and I feel sad about the lost opportunity.

which was (IMO unfairly) omitted from the original post. Totally goes against the authors suggestion that "What fascinates me here is that the guy seems to think he is telling me news".

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the actual message is that he doesn't have money to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, and he's not going to risk going into debt.

Yet some small developers have managed to build visually stunning games, like Brigadier. Enter The Gungeon, Stardew Valley, Dungeons Of The Endless, were all developed by very small teams.

> Yet some small developers have managed to build visually stunning games,

That's Voegl's point 3. There, he admits he probably could develop a more impressive-looking single game, but doing so would make him dependent on the freelancer responsible for the art style (risky) or on paying much more for other art to match the style (expensive).

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the actual message is that he doesn't have money to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, and he's not going to risk going into debt.

Yet some small developers have managed to build visually stunning games, like Brigadier. Enter The Gungeon, Stardew Valley, Dungeons Of The Endless, were all developed by very small teams.

At least one of those games--Brigadier--failed so hard that the team fell apart. The others don't take into account that for every one of those successes there are ten or twenty failures.

JV isn't trying to be a runaway success, he's trying to not be a failure. I don't quite get why that's so hard for folks here to parse.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actually addresses why he won't solve any of the "problems" with more manpower. He's found local maxima and is willing to stay there because there are risks associated with moving.

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.

Well, he cares a lot about story. It takes time to care.

If he also cares about art more, then the other thing he cares about, namely; his one family, are denied that time.

Everything costs something.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#270
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.

Vogel's using the level of graphic quality that work for him, but that doesn't excuse the inconsistent art direction and mixed art styles.
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