It’s interesting to contrast this attitude with Simogo, who seem moderately successful by really prioritizing visual conception.
I wonder if there are non obvious economic factors that make it possible for them.
Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
371–380 of 552 posts
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#372A 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 t…
> 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).
That's so true. It made me also realize something else, that a good artist can also works with monetary constraint.
He bought graphics, like a product. The thing is, he isn't an artist. It's the artist that should have the liberty to decide whether details is worth it or not.
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
He includes a picture of Ultima V for DOS, which looks better than his current games. Hell, he includes a picture of the original art for Exile, which IMO looked better than the later Exile III tileset (which was ported back to releases of Exile I). The problem with the aesthetics of his latest game is not resolution and it isn't that it's in a classic 2D tile-based style. That said, I see where he's coming from. The…
Swapping out a tile set would have been pretty trivial on the old SW games on Windows (on Mac you had to meet with the Resource Fork). It was all just images in folders.
I used to go and snag cool-looking NPC/monster graphics from the monster spritesheet and Blades of Exile scenarios and paste them into the PC spritesheet so I could use those graphics for my party members. I always really wanted BoE to support Vahnatai party members.
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#374I'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 n…
I won't download a mobile game with too much art. Wastes spaces and usually causes the app to run slowly. I stopped downloading desktop games when they hit 3 gigs. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Okay, but art direction has nothing to do with the size of the game? I basically just argued that their games look worse since going HD.
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#375I'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 n…
I did not read that as defending his art style, I saw it as getting at something deeper. His argument is not really about defending the quality of graphics in his games, they are much more about showing the calculus and weighing of his choices.
The first and key point is that there are people (such as myself) who actually like his graphic style and who, above all, prioritize the excellent story telling in his games. These are the people who sustain his business.
The second point is one of niche indie versus AAA or even popular indie. It's a similar sort of argument as between "life-style" businesses versus VC backed businesses. Specifically, in the game industry, the effort into graphics and assets versus reward from customers gained is not a linear function of effort, where small increases result in small gains. It is not even a smooth function where there are small in-between things you can do that will have an impact.
Now, in hackernews style, you believe that there is a simple solution but remember, the issue is not of graphics but getting to a sustainable business. This is someone who has survived making games for 25 years where so many better more consistent looking games have flopped or their parent companies folded. Besides, from my short time working on games, it seems to me you are both overestimating and underestimating the gains from such touchups. The people who care about such things are very exacting and the people who don't care are very forgiving. The upshot is, either the touchups you list will not matter or they will never be enough. Which leads to a key point.
There is a large step function covering not just graphics but also animation and sound quality to where the majority would consider acceptable. He is not complaining that good artists are too expensive, he is stating that the incurred risk required to afford majority acceptable game assets is not worth it, compared to what he is comfortable with and how he wishes to live his life.
He is happy with his current niche and those of us who feel nothing for the latest shiny 3D raytraced games are grateful that developers like him exist.
Those of you who seek to create businesses should consider knowing yourself and what will truly make you happy. Do you want great wealth and acclaim or the freedom to live your life mostly as you please, content without any great material or status need?
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#376> 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 had a maladjusted TV or something. On a good TV or composite monitor, pixel art should have fairly sharp edges. Most televisions had adjustment controls for various thing (sharpness, contrast, tint, color, etc); so many people didn't know how to properly adjust them, though.
My first video game system was a cheapo b/w pong clone knockoff thing from radio shack. My second was an Atari 2600. Later my parents bought me a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with 16K (which eventually got upgraded to 32, then 64K), and then still later a Color Computer 3. An NES was in there somewhere, and I played on friend's Sega Genesis systems and C=64 computers (plus Apple IIe, PCjr, and others).
Pixel art (back then, they were just "sprites" or "tiles" to us - I'm not sure if the term "pixel art" was a thing then - I never heard it, but it doesn't mean it wasn't) wasn't fuzzy or soft, unless things weren't adjusted right.
The only other time it might be a little funky was if the machine in question was trying to use artifacting in some manner:
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-overlooked-a...
As you can see - artifacting could introduce a certain level of "fuzziness" to graphics; but scroll to the bottom of that page, to see what the CoCo 2 could do in the hands of someone competent with the effect.
The CoCo 2 got 4 colors on an effectively black/white screen mode by interleaving black and white values - spaced close together on the screen, the NTSC system would render alternate colors - red/blue instead, depending on certain other factors - there was an alternate color mode (green/black) that got you purple and grey or something like that as well - this kind of thing didn't work with PAL CoCo systems (or Dragon 32 - also PAL).
The CoCo 3 could simulate certain "extra colors" on a TV or composite monitor if you dropped into the 640x200 screen (4 colors) and played with pixel patterns. What wasn't widely known then (one guy figured it out - but published his results in Hot CoCo magazine, which wasn't as widely read as The Rainbow magazine was - and so his efforts went mostly unnoticed!) was that with the right pixel patterns over 4 pixels (thus reducing the actual resolution to 160x200 - an almost square "screen"), and using the 4 grayscales available on the CoCo 3 (black, white, and a dark gray and light gray) - you could generate (again, using NTSC artifacting) hundreds of colors!
http://www.coco3.com/community/2009/12/composite-artifacting...
http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-little-known-color-c...
This was rediscovered long after the CoCo 3 was out to pasture so to speak - in the 2000s; it's kinda sad, as it is almost the rumored (likely false) "256-color" mode in practice, and might have done wonders for games back in the day had it been fully utilized, vs the 320x200 16 color mode that was available (there was also a 160x200 16 color mode); these modes were out of a total of 64 colors (which could also be displayed simultaneously if the processor was doing nothing else, by swapping the palette on the horizontal retrace at the right moments - but it wasn't used for more than still images at best; some image displayers for digitizers also used it to swap r/g/b patches of palette on the vertical retrace to get a very flickery form of high-color for special digitized pictures - also, there was a similar way of doing things on the CoCo 2 to get all 8 of it's colors onscreen at once in one of the "mid-res" modes - it was used for a game called "DragonFire":
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/dragonfire.html
Lately, people have used these tricks and such to do some weird stuff with the CoCo:
https://hackaday.com/2011/04/21/tandy-color-computer-coco3-c...
Then of course, you also have the possibilities offered by CGA on a composite monitor:
https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
Which is also a good primer on artifacting itself. And of course:
https://int10h.org/blog/2015/08/8088-mph-final-old-vs-new-cg...
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65371
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y
Ok - enough of that - downvote this nostalgia trip - I'm sorry...
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your aside comment. That quote in the original article really jumped out to me. There are a ton of great indie games that have solid cohesive art direction but wouldn't be considered even close to AAA quality in terms of production effort. Some beloved heavy hitters would include the Steamworld series, Celeste, Undertale, Super Meat Boy. These are games made on a shoestring development team that don't lo…
For each Undertale, how many games do you think there are out there that look good that will never break even? There are two sides to this: Can you make better games for cheap? Sure you can, many people have. But the second question is: How large a proportion of those who try that would be able to keep churning out profitable games for 25 years? Or even produce a single profitable game? There's nothing mediocre about…
Undertale had really amateur art but it was cohesive and looked like someone actually cared about it, versus a bunch of parts-bin stock graphics some guy bought on discount.
I don't doubt the guy is successful, but he doesn't really bring up a convincing argument for his position. He could be potentially be MORE successful if he invested a little more in visual aspects of his games. Reading an article about why it isn't a priority for him isn't that interesting to me.
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#378I 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…
Sounds like you missed the point of the article.
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#379There 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…
There's quite a fine line between "crap" and AAA actually, as evidenced by "any game from more than a few years back, looks like crap". And if you extend that line out to infinity, good art is on the crap side of it.
AAA |
------+--------------------------------------+------
crap | | good
Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
#380Earlier 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.
>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 d…
According to one old article[0], Geneforge 4 was $3,000 in the hole three years after launch. The current article sounds like he's supporting his family, but not by any great margin. Certainly not by enough of a margin to pay for a second salary out of profit.
[0] http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-gam...