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

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#501

Post by strken » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 11:41 PM UTC

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…

That seems like a pretty big strawman to me. There is a large grey area between "crap" and "AAA-quality".

I'm one of the players that's on the margin between his graphically "good" games, e.g. the Avernum remakes, which use a vaguely consistent colour palette and are comfortable to play, and his graphically awful games, e.g. the first Geneforge, which has an eye-stabbingly bright green border around the game area that's brighter and higher contrast than the actual content, making playing the game fatiguing and uncomfortable.

Jeff's games don't need 3D art or a big budget or even a totally consistent style, they just need a tiny amount of good UX taste and a few hours of photoshop to mess with HSV. Thankfully, the more recent titles do have better UX.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#502

Post by adrusi » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

I don't know the business considerations for this little niche Jeff has carved out for himself, so I'll just trust that he knows what he's talking about.

The art really does look bad though. I wonder if what he needs is actually worse art. I'm sure there are corners he could cut, like instead of having a full set of sprites for each race×class combo (I don't know anything about his games, I'm just assuming), each facing four different directions, he could have just one sprite per race with a symbol in the corner indicating its class and an arrow pointing which way it's facing. I'm not sure that the downgrade would result in turning off too many players, I think nearly all the players that care about art style are already turned off from his games. Maybe that would leave more room in the budget for the aspects where his games really shine (which I assume they do, given that he can make a living off of them despite how bad of a visual first impression they leave).

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#503

Post by oiasdjfoiasd » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 12:34 AM 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…

I disagree. If anything it's a testament that for his product, art doesn't matter all that much.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#504

Post by johnnyanmac » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 12:36 AM UTC

nothis wrote: post #370

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'm with you on the games being excellent examples of a super niche style done well but he's basically writing an article attacking the very concept of art direction as a waste of resources. That comes off a little disrespectful towards people who care. I think there's no point in making their games looking any different than they do (because it's part of their brand, now) but the correct response to a question of wh…

I think I interpreted the article differently from you. I saw this as a cold hard look at what works and the dangers of changing your brand (or rather, the fact that "better X" doesn't always mean more success when you're Forte is Y), not some general argument against the idea of artistic integrity. Doing what Vogel can now do after 20 years and an established audience would lead to ruin for 99.9% of devs today aiming for financial success because the market is very different. And I'm sure he knows that.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#505

Post by sha666sum » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #464

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.

Looking at the screenshots in the article, I actually liked the graphics in Avernum 3 and even Escape from the Pit, they seemed consistent and actually pretty well done if a bit simple. I understand the complaints about Queen's Wish. They're not necessarily bad, I don't mind a lot of the tiles, but something does seem off with it. That being said, I've seen far worse and if the gameplay's good then it doesn't seem li…

I never managed to play any games in the Avadon series, because they don't have as good keyboard shortcuts as the Avernum series. One of the Avadon games even has a Linux port, which wasn't done by Jeff himself

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#506

Post by peterashford » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

This is really common with indie devs. Rimworld is another example. Gets heaps of complaints about the art style - surely it should be easy to improve the art? Yes - but at considerable cost in money and time and also to the ability to mod the game, which was also one of its core strengths. To come here and see more of the entitled gamer viewpoint - your business reality doesn't matter, do XYZ anyway! - is disappointing. Making games is hard, making a living from games as a self-run studio is uber-hard. Dude deserves kudos, not criticism. Don't like the art: don't play the games - no-one's forcing you. But this is his life, this is how he pays his bills - his business reality trumps your 'gee wouldn't it be nicer in puce'

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#507

Post by sha666sum » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 1:56 AM 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…

> You would think after 25 years of making games he'd have enough sense to direct art himself in some way.

It might simply be that he isn't particularly interested in learning it. If he isn't motivated by being an art director, then it would very likely lead to burnout.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#508

Post by perl4ever » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #212

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 haven't played these games, but I've put hundreds of hours into NetHack with pure ASCII graphics, so I totally get it. I briefly tried using some of the graphical versions but didn't end up liking them so much, so back to the ASCII it was.

My first exposure to roguelikes was an Amiga graphical version of Hack in the 80s, so I always felt like they were "supposed to" have something more than ascii. But when I tried Diablo, I was really disappointed. It's not that the polished graphics detracted from anything, but that the depth of interaction was lacking.

I remember seeing a first person shooter after years of ignoring games, and being really impressed by the advances in graphics, but in seconds, I could see it was still a world made of indestructible cardboard, which was very disappointing. I suppose things have improved somewhat, depending on genre, but anyway, the issue is that people are easily distracted by graphics, not that they detract from anything per se.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#509

Post by perl4ever » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #472

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 still occasionally play Nethack. In a terminal. I've seen graphical frontends for the game but IMO that stuff just gets in the way .

The first version of Nethack I played had graphics for the walls and empty space only.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#510

Post by awillen » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

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.

On the plus side, this is the top comment, so the silent majority seems to agree with you.

Art just isn't critical to making amazing games... some old BBS games like Tradewars 2002 will always be among my favorites, and their ASCII images barely qualified as art.