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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

#331

Post by Goronmon »

Majromax wrote: post #254
Goronmon wrote: post #214

I wonder what the sentiment would be if the situation was reversed. Here we have a developer effectively looking to pay below market rates for artists, and then unsurprisingly not finding many good artists willing to do that long term. Not a judgment on my part, just saying that he's looking to keep the art budget to an absolute minimum. Instead if it was an artist defending his choice to make relatively simple games…

> If the context of the discussion was about developers instead of artists, how would HackerNews feel about someone lamenting the fact that they can't get any "affordable" developers to work on their projects? I'm not sure the reaction would be all that negative, to be honest. The problem to me isn't when someone says "we want cheap work and we understand it will not be particularly high-quality," but when they say "…

The problem to me isn't when someone says "we want cheap work and we understand it will not be particularly high-quality," but when they say "we want top-quality work but we're not willing to pay for it."

And to me, I read it as he expects more towards the latter than the former. "Talented, reliable" implies an expectation of a specific level of quality beyond "cheap work, not particularly high-quality".

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#332

Post by Richard_East »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #319
jayd16 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His problem, and you can see from his wording, is that he thinks about "graphics" not "art." Sure he made a 3d game. So what. He doesn't seem to have the same passion for art direction as he does for game design so its not surprising at all that you can throw money at the wrong problem and not get much out.

it's more of a taste problem than a budget problem, plenty games go low fi and are amusing both to play and look at, i.e. Celeste

Specifically its more of an art direction problem.

If you have an artist with decent technical skills, enough time, and an excellent art director, you can still achieve great results. Eventually that Artist will learn and become better in what they independently produce.

Plus, the art is visible through a camera, and with post-processing and FX - which are easily controlled or influenced by that same art director. Just tweaking colour, camera angle, and FOV can produce incredibly unique results.

I had a very small budget, and no team, and was able to produce something regarded as reasonably good-looking in 3D for Frontline Zed:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/915490/Frontline_Zed/

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#333

Post by djur »

anaphor wrote: post #320
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 think the pixel art in Thimbleweed Park looks fantastic https://thimbleweedpark.com/

And the games it's evoking would have been mostly experienced with crisp pixels, since they were late enough in the home computer era that people had dedicated monitors rather than TVs.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#334

Post by crimsonalucard »

There's a secret to art this person hasn't realized.

Art doesn't have to be detailed to look good. Minimalism proves this. Those Geneforge games have just enough detail to look like shit. It's possible to scale back and keep the art good with less effort but better design sense.

Take the game: Thomas was alone. The guy probably didn't hire a single artist yet that game looks way better than any gene-forge game. It's all in the style. The author of this article really just doesn't have a sense of style.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#335

Post by oneepic »

cousin_it wrote: post #35

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.

This is missing the point entirely. The point is much closer to: don't worry about art and focus on making the game.

People will always get upset about graphics, and will always have their own "suggestions" on how to make your art not terrible. If you listen to one person, you might just alienate every other player that doesn't like that person's style.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#336

Post by nothis »

I'm super happy that games that look and feel like those from Spiderweb Software exist. I think it's charming. But the fact that he feels compelled to write an article in defense of the art style is telling to me. I think it's not unreasonable to answer the headline question with "because they're stubborn".

Their games look crap, not because of a lack of resources but because of a disrespect for visual design (it's not even "art", they could make a better looking game with colored squares). There's probably many, many ways to improve the look that have nothing to do with "AAA art". He fails to see how Baba Is You is a better looking game than any of theirs, simply because it's focused and has a good use of color and contrast. Any $10/hour freelance game artist can tell him that the problem with the games is a mismatch in detail, between background and characters, between resolution and texture detail. This makes tiles look either blurry or covered in white noise and together with a sever lack of contrast, makes the game look flat and unlit.

Solving that doesn't require hiring expensive artists, it first involves acknowledging there's an issue at the core that can't be solved by sticking stuff on top of it. I see zero patience or passion for that and that's why their games look the same as 25 years ago (and I could argue, worse, since higher resolution doesn't do them any favors).

Again, I have no problem with their games and them looking like they do but going into defense here is a battle they can't win. Their best move is to acknowledge that they don't care and do so with pride. Everything else just feels at best insecure and at worst somewhat disrespectful towards devs who care.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#338

Post by Rebelgecko »

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).

For reference, the Queen's Wish kickstarter raised less than $100,000.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#339

Post by djur »

dagw wrote: post #190
falcolas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 25 years of making games, he is directing the art. The art style hasn’t changed - that doesn’t happen over a span of decades without direction. His art direction just doesn’t match the tastes of a large number of folks. Neither did H.R. Geiger’s. Nothing wrong with that.

The art style hasn’t changed But it has, that's what many people are commenting on. His last two games looked much better than his current game. It could just be the luck of the draw with regards to which artists showed up rather than a conscious choice, but his new game clearly has a different look than his previous game.

Yes, I hadn't seen any pictures of his new game, so I thought he was talking about Avadon, the Avernum re-remakes, and so on, all of which look fine despite having a decent amount of re-used art and being iso 2D. The screenshots for the new game look worse than any game he's previously released.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#340

Post by Cpoll »

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…

Baba is You came to mind for me as well, as a game with incredibly simple graphics that still looks _really_ good. I think a big part of that is the consistency of the design.

The high-contrast simple design also facilitates the gameplay. There's no visual noise, so it's very easy to 'read' the levels and focus on the solutions.

With that said, I think the art is also deceptively good. I don't think I could replicate it quite as well (from memory) even having played the game a fair bit, and I certainly don't think a toddler (or lesser hyperbole) could capture the charm of some of the sprites.

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