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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

#341

Post by mcguire »

The link to the Small Business Council at the end: https://sbecouncil.org/about-us/facts-and-data/

"Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the level of entrepreneurship actually has declined in recent years. That is, the number of self-employed in the U.S. has dropped notably. Incorporated self-employed fell from 5.78 million in 2008 to 5.13 million in 2011. It climbed back to 5.64 million in 2016. So, after eight years, the number of incorporated self-employed remains well short of the 2008 level. Unfortunately, the news is even worse when it comes to the larger measure of unincorporated self-employed. The number of unincorporated self-employed declined from 10.59 million in 2006 to 9.36 million in 2014."

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#342

Post by proc0 »

A good artist will make anything look good, pixel art, card games, all the way to photo-real 3d (of course depending on the artist). What happens is that in general the first thing to be cut due to budget is probably the art since without function you have no game. Imho, indie games would do better if they "sliced" their game releases differently, such that art was never takes a back-seat as it is probably tempting to do. Many people think you only need good gameplay but in reality the art, aesthetics, music, etc. of any game is the invisible factor that people are influenced and only notice when it's broken.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#343

Post by ehsankia »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #300
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 you mean you hate BAD pixel art. Thing about the critical modern successes is that they try to recreate that feel for modern hardware. In the process that naturally means they use more resources to pull off the visual look because 1) there's more resolution so more work needed and 2) it's usually being applied to a modern pipeline (computational lighting, for instance. Something NES games lacked)

"Pixel art" nowadays is a very very wide term. There's huge variable and hundreds of different "art styles" within pixel art. There are games with fairly simple graphics like Stardew Valley or Terraria, games with much better art direction like Celeste, and games with "high res" pixel art like Owlboy. Just to say it's "pixel art" doesn't mean much anymore.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#344

Post by NateEag »

jayd16 wrote: post #312
johnnyanmac wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that's exactly what that comment meant. I'm sure a 2 man experienced team consisting of a programer and an artist can recreate the vault intro sequence of F3 in a few months. They wouldn't be able to expand thst into the full 2007 game without years of man-hours. Because F3 itself took thousands of man hours. It'd take a lot less time with modern tools, but not enough to offset the work of hundreds of de…

You're not going to get hundreds of man hours of content for free but setting up Source or Unreal or Unity to get a modern engine with every feature those games had does not take months.

An engine that's roughly equivalent, in absentia the actual games' data, is not remotely equivalent to those games.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#345

Post by _hardwaregeek »

I respect that. Crappiness is an underrated quality. I watched an interview with Barry Jenkins recently where he talked about his first short film. He talked about how the film had bad exposure, scratches on the film, weird color, etc. But at the same time, he still loved it, simply due to its uniqueness and rawness.

There's this assumption that every artist wants to mimic the big budget people. Or not even big budget, just medium budget. That filmmakers want to make movies which are shiny and polished. But a filmmaker who tries to imitate a big budget production with a shoestring budget isn't going to get a polished film at a tenth the budget. They're gonna get a weird uncanny valley, kinda good looking film that isn't quite indie, isn't quite mainstream. And trust me, as a begrudging attendee of many small film festivals, it's not a good look.

Contrast that to say, Stranger Than Paradise, which is remarkably simple and very obviously low budget. It's in black and white. The acting is a little rough around the edges. The sets are extraordinarily simple. The camera doesn't do anything fancy. Yet it works because it takes full advantage of its crappiness. It doesn't half ass quality, it full asses crappiness.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#346

Post by ehsankia »

mark-r wrote: post #192
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 suspect he knew exactly what the reaction would be when he wrote the article.

Yeah, when you write such an abrasive post, literally ending with "haters gonna hate" and basically implying that anyone who doesn't like the art is stupid, I'm not sure what kind of reaction you expect to get.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#347

Post by marktangotango »

mumblemumble wrote: post #215
gbersac wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This, for me, is the thing that really distinguishes Spiderweb's games: it seems that nobody else out there is still making CRPGs that I actually finish. Other games look beautiful, yes, but they also somehow always end up getting kind of boring several hours in.

Same here, very few games hold my attention long enough to finish, and his games do. Jeff's been a very good citizen of the indie game scene for a long time. I have a great deal of admiration for him and what he's accomplished.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#348

Post by Reedx »

mcguire wrote: post #341

The link to the Small Business Council at the end: https://sbecouncil.org/about-us/facts-and-data/ " Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the level of entrepreneurship actually has declined in recent years. That is, the number of self-employed in the U.S. has dropped notably. Incorporated self-employed fell from 5.78 million in 2008 to 5.13 million in 2011. It climbed back to 5.64 million in 2016. So, after…

I wonder how much of that is due to our messed up healthcare system. If we fixed that, I bet we'd see a substantial boost because it's one of the most difficult aspects of starting and running a small business.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#349

Post by cat199 »

enjoying watching people making the same arguments countered in the article without actually adressing the counterpoints -

the square peg of 'maximizing superficial appeal for the most short term popularity irrespective of the personal cost' is so deeply implanted in some people's minds that they literally cannot comprehend doing things in any other 'round hole' sort of way.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#350

Post by softfalcon »

Constraint breeds creativity.

Constraints ensure simplicity where there could have been excess.

If you have less pixels to work with, it helps you edit your design to what is clear and truly necessary. It prevents bad patterns from emerging in the UI and game interactions.

I applaud this developer for sticking to their guns, finding their niche and really making it shine.

There is nothing wrong with building around a practical and dare I say it, nostalgic design aesthetic.

"Make games you would want to play" is one of the mantras I repeat to myself whenever I'm tinkering with a game prototype.

Clearly Jeff understands all of this and follows through with the delivery.

Great article!

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