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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

#271

Post by eropple »

atoav wrote: post #120
mcphage wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> decide this is as good as it gets. He just wrote a very long article explaining just that.

And it reads like and excuse to himself, which is probably the reason for the reaction on HN. A bit like a film maker who says: "If only I had the budget, Hollywood has, I could totally do better films than them". Don't get me wrong, good art doesn't necessarily need a lot of money or resources. It needs the right eyes that know when it works and when it doesn't. He seems to aknowledge he doesn't have them and explai…

> good art doesn't necessarily need a lot of money or resources

Having spent at least as much money, out of pocket, on a game that never shipped as JV spends to ship something consistent that feeds his family, I can assure you that this is not the case. Art is far-and-away the most expensive part of any game that wants mass market appeal. It just is. It doesn't matter if you're using a bunch of freelancers from countries that lost all their vowels along the way, it's still expensive.

The solution, then, is to build a long-tail audience that'll buy your stuff because it scratches that itch, even if it doesn't to people who are just window shopping. You know--what JV has done.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#272

Post by kcbanner »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #262
eropple wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

Working with purchased assets is not so simple; there is no consistent art direction when you buy things from different sources. This usually requires an artists to do a pass and make all these disparate assets work together.

Simply saying "just buy cheap assets" completely misses the point here.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#273

Post by eropple »

baud147258 wrote: post #260
eropple wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JV spends astonishingly little on art because his games don't make very much . His audience is small (I am part of it) and his audience values that particular kind of game way more than it does art-- and the marginal return from making it look a little better to appeal to a little wider of a crowd is historically negative. He cited as much, and he's talked about his numbers in concrete terms before. Every game you li…

I think the issue is that this particular game look worse than his previous games (of course here YMMV), which were done with lower budgets (not Kickstartered).

I do agree that Queen's Wish looks worse, FWIW. (I think the perspective is maybe not great.) But I don't know if this is actually a significantly higher budget game, though, rather than just one where he has the capital up front. Kickstarter-as-preorder is kinda what it's turned into for games. As such, I totally get the intense focus on not eating the seed corn.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#274

Post by nullc »

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.

> and then a pile of comments that ask those exact same questions.

It would be nicer if the remarks in this thread were presented as questions, rather than absolute convictions...

I'm impressed that out of everyone who read the article none have lost their nerve and started responding to every zomg-bad-art-hire-an-art-director poster asking which indy game company they've been profitably running for the past twenty years. Or maybe it's only me feeling that compulsion... :)

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#275

Post by HelloNurse »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #36
Beltiras wrote: post #21

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.

You don't need increased manpower to over time develop a better sense for how well your game's screens are composed and if things fit together or not. This is a skill you can improve yourself by mostly paying attention. This kind of blindness to your own game's visual quality is a common problem that everyone making a game experiences and people generally work around it by relying on feedback from other developers or…

A small example of taste problems: in the top screenshot, everything is unnaturally square. It is completely unnecessary: the tiles have different edge types for transitions (e.g. "vertical edge with dark dirt in the low and middle portion and light dirt in the top portion"), there is (presumably) a tileset with all supported edge type combinations and it wouldn't cost more to use nicer shapes. This art has simply been approved as-is, without technical or budget constraints apart from bothering to try more variations.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#276

Post by eropple »

cosarara wrote: post #263
eropple wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I don't know JV's numbers, but I know mine and a high-quality visual artist who speaks fluent/first-language English and has the sort of willingness to play nice with others' art can be $50/hour. And for a game like these, you're talking quite a few hours, you know?

You can go offshore for cheaper, but then you introduce risk, and if nothing else, JV's model is to minimize risk as much as is possible.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#277

Post by jofer »

mumblemumble wrote: post #149
w0utert wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suppose, but all of that takes time, and he is only one person, and he only has so much time. If he directs some of it toward all the things you're suggesting, he'll necessarily be directing it away from the things that make a Spiderweb game a Spiderweb game. I don't think he ever came out and said this directly, but he dances around it throughout the article: As a very small indie developer, that's a huge risk to…

That's a really good point that I think a lot of folks are overlooking. Spiderweb games has been around for a long time and has a dedicated following. I actually felt pretty alienated when things like Geneforge came out -- It seemed like a huge step away from the simple sprite-based graphics I loved in his earlier games. (Not that Geneforge was bad, mind you! Just a big change.) Spiderweb has always had a very distinct brand of artwork. Call it crappy if you want, but I've always quite liked it.

Don't underestimate the risk of changing your style, particularly when it's a defining part of the experience. You will lose at least some customers. It may be worth it, but it's a significant risk.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#278

Post by vorpalhex »

For the genre, I find the art style to generally be fitting. It's not a distraction.

I do wonder if a more stylized approach would help sooth some of the complaints. The author obviously talks about why that doesn't work when you're using freelancers, but I wonder if the style could happen not in the art directly, but in a shader or similar. This would also help the art feel more consistent.

I do wonder if the author could retain freelancers better, whether that's by a contract that gives them a minimum promised hours or a better rate, etc.

I definitely think that the insults the author has endured are inappropriate, most certainly the threats are. We as gamers benefit from Indies, and we need to treat them well even if sometimes we don't care for their games. There are plenty of indie games that aren't my preference, but I'm glad to have them in the community and want to support them as artists and developers.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#279

Post by eropple »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #262
eropple wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

Dude...have you ever tried to use OpenGameArt or asset packs in anger? The quality is at best "uneven", you'll still have the exact same "but they're inconsistent" complaints, and then on top of that you get people whining that you used off-the-shelf art. (Rather like "oh it's an RPG Maker" game, which is something that Zeboyd Games, another low-budget indie developer, gets all the time; they don't use RPG Maker, but that's another story).

You can't make everybody happy. JV is going to more reliably make money by making his audience, like me, happy. Why should he change it?

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#280

Post by jayd16 »

tempsolution wrote: post #220

There is a big gap between "crap" and AAA for sure. But think about this (in today's time): * Half Life 2 looks like crap * Fallout 3 looks like crap * Actually any game from more than a few years back, looks like crap But any of those are hopelessly out of reach for any Indie developer even with today's tools. There is real AAA from earlier days, that still looks good these days, like: * Battlefield 3 * Crysis 2 * C…

>But any of those are hopelessly out of reach for any Indie developer even with today's tools.

This just isn't true. It only a question of money and/or time.

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