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

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#301

Post by atoav » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #251

atoav wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I said in a different comment: there are people like that in film too – they make films their whole life, found a certain level that they feel comfortable with and settle there. That is a perfectly fine choice and in no way should anybody talk bad about it. The only thing that bugs me however is when they try to come up with excuses why their works don't live up to the standard of other artists judge the…

Why should he expend effort getting better at something he doesn't really care that much about when he can spend his time getting better at things he does? People like you always seem to miss the thing about time being a scarce resource.

"People like me" are uttering these things, because "people like me" are facing the same or similar questions themselves. You are right about time being a scarce resource. This is precisely the reason why one shouldn't skimp on $IMPORTANT_THING: because it can greatly reduce the value of all the time put into the thing already.

So you got me 180° wrong – if his motives were purely economical, I'd completely understand his arguments. But because it is not purely economical I see this as a vague sign that he might not value the time he put into it himself enough, which is never a good thing in the long term.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#302

Post by MammalWithLegs » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

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'…

Indie dev here who was been working solo on games for the last 3 years (nights and weekends) using the resources you're describing. You can get a lot of mileage out of those assets for not much money, but it takes a huge amount of time and skill to turn them into something consistent and usable. You can usually find art similar to what you want, but almost never: - in the correct aesthetic - the right size - with the proper animations

It's a full-time job to find this art in the first place, to resize, to animate, to recolor, and apply effects to the art to help it match your desired aesthetic. And then it still is never good enough.

There's a lot to be said for having someone produce art to your requests in a consistent style, even if the quality of the art is not extremely high.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#303

Post by Cookingboy » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

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.

>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?

How does that mean he needs to double the sale? That's not how any of this works unless he wasn't making a profit before.

Assuming his budget was $50k, and he made $250k in sales. Now if he increases budget to $100k, he sure as hell doesn't need $500k in sales to justify the decision, in fact as long as his sale goes beyond $300k, or a 20% increase, then it pays for the increased budget.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#304

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

alttab wrote: post #63

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.

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…

Maybe, maybe not. You'd think after spending over 12 years or so trying to read through untranslated Japanese games that I'd get some sense of reading the language. I can't point out some kanji and even read some common sentences by myself but the fact of the matter is I'm not gonna be native anytime soon without focused study.

I imagine it's the same case here. There may be some passive knowledge gained over the years but not enough to be a competent art director compared to if he even spent 6 months dedicating himself to learning.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#305

Post by Cookingboy » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #199

barryhoodlum wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> He's implying you either have shoddy graphics, or spend big money on AAA graphics. He really is not. The article goes into the details of the nuance of where his games are graphically. Not to mention he specifically addresses what you're talking about. The next step up in art quality is to add one person to his permanent team, which roughly doubles each game's budget and roughly doubles the sales needed to support…

>The next step up in art quality is to add one person to his permanent team, which roughly doubles each game's budget and roughly doubles the sales needed to support that budget.

That's just simply not true. He just needs to increase revenue by the additional budget to support the budget. So unless he was only break even before with revenue == budget, he doesn't need to double the revenue.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#306

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #243

vidarh wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it more as an explanation of why it the suggestions does not work for him. Sure, it's fair to disagree, but it's also very easy to disagree when giving the suggestions does not put at risk a business that has sustained his family for a quarter century in a business where very few even large game studios have survived that long.

Well of course but that doesn't make the critique wrong to make nor dismiss it as irrelevant. Different perspectives are worthwhile to voice.

Likewise I think you both make good pints and both perspectives are valid. Idk what the argument is about.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#307

Post by atoav » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #271

atoav wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coun…

I think you overread the "necessarily" part of my quote. Good art can cost a ton and it does so for a reason. I (among other things) worked as a freelance designer, so I know.

What I meant however is that depending on the genre you might find solutions that you can do yourself far easier with equally good (or better) results. You could work with one-color abstract shapes and give them a good feel by using the right deformation and stick some eyes on them. Minimal styles can work in your favour at times etc. Filmmakers also use similar ideas – can't afford to show thing A? Let the protagonist tell us about it in a internal monologue and use it to your advantage. That kind of stuff.

This approach obviously won't work for every game or genre, depending on the scope, but I didn't say it would.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#308

Post by nimblegorilla » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

kcbanner wrote: post #272

nimblegorilla wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Everyone already acknowledges the current art has no consistent direction. It makes no sense to pay extra money for bespoke artwork that looks worse than what you can get by just going to what's already available.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#309

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

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…

I played LOOM on a smallish 640x480 CRT from the 80s. The pixels are clearly visible. In particular, since the color palette is so restricted, a lot of large surfaces are dithered -- and you can easily see the grid of little alternating squares.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#310

Post by munificent » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #197

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…

Good pixel artists aim for the peaks of mid-90s arcade, the Saturn, PS1, and GBA. With a proper monitor/TV and cables (or just the GBA), you were looking at sharp pixels and vivid colors. Most (not all) people going for NES-inspired graphics are just amateur artists who try passing off their lack of skill for “retro style”. And frankly, it can work. Amateur artists can make good low res art. The real problem is peopl…

What a weird, sweeping, broad brush claim. There are pixel artists of all levels of skill making pixel art inspired by all eras of technology, often a mixture of them, and sometimes not related to any historical limitation at all.