Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
jeff-vogel.blogspot.com
jeff-vogel.blogspot.com
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.
While the style may not be modern, the gameplay and stories tend to be quite good. I would also argue that a game that looks great doesn't necessarily imply that the game is any good. Battlefront 2 is a great looking game that is ultimately a soulless, lootbox filled shitshow with painfully bland gameplay.
Anyone saying that he needs to hire an art director have completely missed the point of his article: his business can only support his family. He has also been able to maintain this business for 20 years, which is a lot more than can be said about any other indies.
Ultimately, this is a style that Jeff likes, and it makes him money. If people don't like it, then they can go play something else. He still has his fan base that keeps him afloat.
EDIT: grammar
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 why they don't make a "better" looking game is that they don't care. Or, maybe, it's a taste issue. Flailing your hands about how people totally did not appreciate you going through the trouble of making the graphics isometric or hiring underpaid artists is not the way to go. It's maybe "honest" but it's IMO at best a misunderstanding of and at worst a severe lack of respect for art direction and visual design.
No, he plainly states it is a cost issue. He can't afford to hire the people who could create truly "good" art for his games.
Sounds like "people who care" are people that have spent a lot of money on art and need to respond to this post to justify it. Or are artists themselves and need to prove their worth.
Money talks.
- (Screenshot of Ultima V) - "This is what looks normal to me"
- "Queen's Wish has a very retro square-tile top-down view, reminiscent of old Ultima games, old Pokemon games..."
- (Screenshot of Baba is You) - "If a game that looks like this can be a hit, maybe there can be room for me?"
- (Screenshot of Atari Adventure) - "If you don't like it, maybe the problem is you."
Apart from maybe(!) Atari Adventure, all of those games look far better than Queen's Wish. Even Ultima V shades one side of its walls, something none of his games have accomplished based on these screenshots.
It's an insulting strawman to say that the people criticizing his art would also reject these other games with simple art. It's also insulting to the artists who worked on those games, producing better results in a similar budget. Maybe the insult is unintentional, because he genuinely can't tell the difference himself. But if that's the case, he should just admit that, rather than hiding behind his choice to use a top-down perspective.
It's the hundreds of tiny details like this, that make for great design and good art, regardless of how retro the medium is. That's what this guy seems to be utterly blind to, and it really rubs against people who DO like to spend the effort and time on such tiny details to get the design just right ... only for this guy to call it "looks good enough for me" and then imitate it badly.
Just stick to the business explanation, because there's nothing wrong with running a business on shitty art.
1) If you look at Avernum 3 and Queen's Wish, the characters you are supposed to control don't "stick out" visually. I must have looked at the Avernum picture half a dozen times and actually missed the 3 other characters in the picture other than the cloak and the dragon. That's a huge mistake in visual design--and that is the fault of the designer not the artist. QW has similar issues in that the character design isn't very distinctive: without those horrible colored circles you can't tell friend from foe. And the visual design of the characters makes distinguishing classes difficult. Again, that's designer failure--not art failure.
2) If you look at QW, there are 4 different levels of art. The bottom icons are gorgeous and would fit in a AAA game. The portraits look like potato cam from 1999. The characters look like bad pseudo 2.5D from 1993. And the background sprites look like they are from "My First RPG Maker". You can choose any of those, be consistent, and people won't feel too bad. Look at Exile and Avernum--they have a consistent art level across everything and don't strike me as ugly. What you cannot do is mix and match the levels--that's very jarring and people will complain.
I feel like "exactly as good as they need to be" would actually be quite a bit simpler and, through lack of clutter, easier to use. See, for example, the Caves of Qud art style - https://i.imgur.com/Tul3mn3.png - which is substantially less visually complex than any of the Spiderweb Software games but, IMO, much easier to interpret.
"Exactly as good as they need to be" means "graphics and interface are of a sufficient quality to not significantly hamper interaction with the game, but just barely."
For example, a chess board drawn freestyle in crayon with a bunch of black and white poker chips that have "pawn", "knight", etc written on them in sharpie is "exactly as good as it needs to be," but it sure as heck isn't the same thing as an elegantly minimalist chess board.
I've actually been tempted to buy Avadon the black fortress a few times. It keeps showing up on steam(after reading this I had to double check, for some reason I had a feeling it was one of his games), again i find the graphics to be appealing. I'm just not sure if i want to invest the time into an RPG right now.
It seems like an easy solution would be to allow the tiles in the game to be editable and let people make new ones if they're unhappy with the ones that ship with the game.
The problem I have with it is that it all looks really generic -- like default "RPG Maker" tiles or stock art. The old-school Exile art was simple, but it was unique and had its own distinctive style.
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.
The guy's been getting criticisms for 25 years. I think he's justified in writing a single blog post in defense of his art style. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.
Uh, no, he freely concedes his games are ugly. The title of the article is "Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap".
And the graphism are good enough imo.
Other games look beautiful, yes, but they also somehow always end up getting kind of boring several hours in.
You're making the mistake of thinking that a game that looks good must use more resources. That doesn't make sense.
If one took the exact same resources and gave them a more consistent art style, keeping the same file sizes or even lowering them, the games could look just fine and yet still fine on a low-end machine.
Better looking graphics or art != larger file sizes.
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.
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 went for this kind of pixely tiles, and to be honest, I don't like it (edit: I just checked again, and the art looks far better than I remember. I still prefer the ascii version, though). If you go for bad art, just go all the way, and make it look consistent.
By the way, Baba is You, referenced at the end, is an absolutely brilliant game, and while the art looks cheap like a toddler drew it, it's all animated; they have three versions of every sprite and keep rotating them. That crappy animation arguably makes it look even cheaper, but it also brings the game more alive, and it's certainly more expensive. Most importantly, though: it's a striking and consistent look.
In the end, though: Jeff had been successfully making games he loves for 25 years. Whatever he's doing is clearly working.
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.
Ever since punk, and possibly longer, recorded music has a growing number of niches where lack of polish is a feature, not a bug. Liking stuff that others find unlikable makes the consumer feel special. All kinds of guitar noise, the absolute undanceability of IDM, cheesy pop music from an country far away. They all have their qualities, but if you infer from some people enthusiastically defying the superficial shortcomings of those styles that their redeeming qualities must be exceptionally high, you are missing the entire niche identity appeal mechanism: they are liked, in a large part, for being disliked by most others, nothing more. Try to move closer to mainstream (here: add better graphics) and you might alienate your acquired taste connoisseurs long before you start appealing to others.
Actually it looks like an artist carefully imitating a child like style instead of saying "good enough". It's fine, good even. It looks simple, but it clearly actually is everything it needs to be.
The Ultima V and Baba is You examples are excellent counter-points because they show how great games with simple styles can look.
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.
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 effort into it, or gave up too early because he's protected his choices with rationalizations.
I played the demo of one of his games on a bondi blue iMac back in the early 2000's. The graphics then looked ok. But it's 2019 and new titles don't look better.
I've wondered before who the userbase is for these; is it just fans from back in the day when game development was a smaller thing and the competition didn't have great artists either? Because I can't see getting into them as a new player.
Being able to sell 2x by having a more consistent and up to date art style honestly sounds low to me. Even as someone who's played my share of RPGs, had a Mac back in the day, and know that Spiderweb Software exists, that's the main thing holding me back from checking it out seriously.
But if he's getting by with what he's doing and spending more to try and reach a broader market is a risk he doesn't want to take, that's his call.
Being that they don't have budget for a new position, they just have to train someone to get better at art directing.
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.
People are very visual and your game can be amazing in terms of story or programming, but you also need to sell them visually. That doesn't mean every game has to go for amazing graphics, but it must make sense and look interesting. E.g. nethack looks more interesting without generic sprite package, till somebody developes one with a consistent style.
It takes years to get good at this, unless you did it since you were born. You pay good artists exactly for these years.
Or you try and hop on the unicorn train and start looking for external funding - which will invariably start trying to run your business for you, in ways which you may not want.
The big money is in the latter, but not everyone wants to deal with the proto-corporate bullshit that goes with it.
Occasionally you can find niches - usually B2B, because high-worth bootstrap B2C is very hard - which bring in enough to allow solid growth without huge upfront spending on people and offices.
But they're very rare. And apart from the odd flash-in-the-pan one offs, small games are not usually one of those niches.
And at least choose a decent font (looking at the first screenshot on the blog post)
He does address this in the article: Hiring more people means he directly needs to make more sales, which (I also know from experience) is very difficult to do. Hiring dead weight like an "art director" probably means hiring even more people to carry out the directions of the art director, since they're unlikely to be a can-do person themselves.
The article can be summed into two points:
1) I'm not a good art director 2) Having better art is on my "won't do" list
Nah. I mean, I want Jeff to have a good art director because I find the visuals distracting and a bit unpleasant part of games I otherwise might enjoy, but it's pretty clear he doesn't need one.
I have an indie game myself (Skyturns on G Play) and if you are not an artist, making good art is simply really hard. Someone says ”this menu is ugly”, and the cognitive load of making it meet their expectations is massive.
I even have graphically skilled people critiquing my game, paying them, but then coming back with more ugly menus. A real skilled professional art director is hard to find, recruit and motivate.
On a small scale its a ton of freedom to just let your game be somewhat ugly and just focus on what you yourself is great at.
For all the 1000 opinions I’ve heard about my games menus, not one of these people have produced something better. That 1001st person who actually knows drawing, colors and UX is the professional art director, which is possible to find, but the energy required to find him/her and pay is also something that can go somewhere else!
And if you are not a programmer, making a good game is really hard. But you can learn. If you are willing to put in the effort to develop your own sense of the aesthetic, even a small amount of time can result in huge improvements.
You don't need an "art director" and neither does this guy.
If you think your menus are ugly, find some menus that you don't think are ugly and ask yourself what it is about them that makes them not ugly. When you can answer that question with certainty and apply the answer to your own menus, that's a first step towards improvement.
PS: I spent 10 minutes on your game. It's fun.
Happy to hear you tried and liked the game! Lots of things in the pipeline
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 because he just can't find good developers willing to work for cheap for long enough to complete a project.
The line that stood out me in this context:
I can't stress this enough: Finding talented, reliable, reasonably priced freelancers is HARD. Cherish them when you find them.
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?
Also, as an aside:
The key problem here is that, when most people say, "Your art looks bad," what they mean is, "I want art that is good." They mean, "I want AAA-quality art." And I can't make that. Not even close.
That seems like a pretty big strawman to me. There is a large grey area between "crap" and "AAA-quality".
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 "we want top-quality work but we're not willing to pay for it."
Voegl's expectations here are honest -- refreshingly so. He's openly paying for artists, but he's paying for art to a budget rather than budgeting to art.
> There is a large grey area between "crap" and "AAA-quality".
I think Voegl addresses that in the middle of the "1." section -- he has had games with "improved" art, but the improved art did not increase sales enough to justify the expense. If an epsilon improvement in art did not improve profits, then it suggests he's near a local optimum.
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".
He wants the talent, but he finds talented artists to demand an unreasonable amount of money. To me it's him that comes off as unreasonable.
I think it would be one thing for the author to dig in his heels and make janky looking games because he truly likes them that way, but it sounds from his tone that he'd rather blame external factors for what on some level he knows is his own mediocrity.
Every game you listed, every one, has spends at least one FTE or FTE equivalent, either in sweat equity or in cold hard cash, on their art. (And at least in the case of Steamworld, more than one!) JV's games literally don't make enough money to pay that person. What the heck do you expect him to do?
You're only mentioning the successes, what about all the Steam failures? Your post ignores that, unlike most of those relatively-very-expensive indie games that come out, go "plunk", and their developers go back to a real job, JV has successfully kept doing this for twenty-five years. He's had stinkers and still survived. The machine keeps cranking because of a relentless focus on cost control and making the game that somebody like me wants, even if it means that somebody like you adjusts your pince-nez and waxes on about his "mediocrity".
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 managing to pump out profitable games for 25 years - very, very few people manage to do that successfully. His games may well be mediocre, or at least look mediocre, but in terms of success he's doing far better than most just by still being there.
Then he talked about great stories.
Definitely not mediocre.
So, the take away is story can sell to fans of story and game play.
That is not wrong. It has, does, and I suspect, will continue to.
That's an interesting way to look at this article. It seems that many solo entrepreneurs have a hard time evaluating the skills of those outside their own domain.
It feels arrogant to criticize someone profitably running their own company for 25 years, but I wonder if he would be better served by hiring a design/UX firm for a day or two to get some guidance on achieving a consistent look while still spending less money.
There are plenty of entrepreneurs here that hire all kinds of people, and always try to find good bang for the buck. Isn't that normal? I personally have hired artists, developers, marketers, lawyers, managers, you name it... I don't see why I would deal with any profession any different.
> That seems like a pretty big strawman to me. There is a large grey area between "crap" and "AAA-quality".
And even then, you can have low-budget (like what Vogel is doing) with good-looking art, as in good art direction, which he has already done.
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.
I guess it's the same case here. The art isn't as if the entire art pipeline was MS Paint so most people who don't mind graphics may at worst just put up with it for the gameplay they expect from Vogels games.
The question he seems to be answering is “why don’t you try and grow your company”, with his answer being “because I’m happy with the way it is”.
Let me add that, in my opinion, there are more chances of a successful game if you're a competent artist with poor coding skills than the opposite. In fact, lots of solo projects succeed because the author is an artist that happens to be a half decent programmer.
I expect they're also less busy, and more stylised.
Looking at the Queen’s Wish's screenshot, it doesn't look lower resolution than Dungeons of Dredmor, just worse, the backgrounds are way too busy, the colors are inconsistent, too subdued so their kind-of meld into one another making things less legible, the lighting is odd, the level of details seems to vary from one sprite to another,…
Compare
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tV0QOWTjVOM/XV23pI64tQI/AAAAAAAAB...
to
Instead of learning enough about game art over 25 years to direct some consistency across artists for his games, he rationalizes it as an explicit business choice.
I think he's missing an opportunity to learn more about art himself. After making so many games for so long you think there would be some learning/mastery of low-res art. Seems like Jeff is taking the easier route of "that's my style."
No where in the article does Jeff talk about any effort he's put in to learn about palettes, lighting, or generic styles that can be emulated. He only talks about swapping out artists.
The 90s game style saw more powerful chips and higher color depths as a chance to do realistic art and skeuomorphic interfaces.[1] I'm sure they looked good to people then, but the reason they look so dated now is that realism as a design goal is better accomplished with modern graphics technologies than anything they had available then. Anything that still looks "good" does so because it was able to carve out a stylistic niche that didn't depend on having a more realistic interface as the end goal.
Pixel art games look timeless (to me) precisely because their limitations meant that designers had to find a style that worked for the particular game. To be sure, there are 80s games with bad art, but I think on the whole the older art was better (and is now more iconic) because the limitations pushed creativity.
I still love to play low-res games (including new ones like VVVVVV[2]), but most of them are in an older art style than John's games, which (if I'm being honest) look (visually) kind of crappy to me.
[1] The poor font rendering in most 90s games doesn't help matters either.
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/VVVVVV_-...
On the contrary: It will take all your life :)
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.
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 way softer look than todays pixel art does.
To me, the whole pixel art craze looks like false nostalgia. People longing back to something that never existed that way.
this image demonstrates it nicely: http://i.imgur.com/lQFPG14.png
I have several CRTs and pixel art looks pretty much the same in them as it does in modern flat panel displays (blurry pixels is the result of hardware issues and badly configured focus which in many cases it can be fixed). The biggest difference is scaling of low resolution video modes though the integer scaling that is being introduced recently in new drivers should address that (at least as best as possible on a fixed resolution display).
https://www.resetera.com/threads/animation-excellence-a-eulo...
I'd say today's pixel art generally doesn't hit the heights that it did in SF3 or some of the mid KoF games
> >Current technology isn't even close to being enough to replicate this with real-time physics.
The claim on that page, that those detailed cloth animations were superior and somehow lost in the transition to 3D games, is bunk though. Modern games are very detailed, e.g. https://youtu.be/ot_sYoqe_2w?t=2355
I highly recommend Brogue or Cogmind for people that want an example of a beautiful looking contemporary game made with ASCII/ANSI. The developer of Cogmind open-sourced his ASCII-art making tool![0]
It can be easier to set up a photorealistic level using PBR materials in Unreal now than to design a readable level from the ground up. I suspect more developers are going to use photo realism to mask larger problems in their games, and to some extent they already have.
Super Mario Bros (NES): https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LgO7CNdQx0A/maxresdefault.jpg
A Link to the Past (SNES): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0qPvqpVIAAoEz4.jpg
Both of the above look far more like the picture on the left than the right. I actually don't even know what your "blurry" picture is supposed to be a picture of, I don't see the scanlines I'd expect on a CRT.
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 people who just draw on a small canvas and call it pixel art. They lack the fine details.
Not everything has to be intricately hand drawn to look good, and even elicit nostalgia.
For a counter voice, as one of those people, I adore pixel art. I also hate how everything has to be 3D.
Maybe it's not nostalgia, but actually just looks very nice.
Am able to take most vintage sets, align and calibrate them to perform much better than that image. In some cases, modifying the set does even more.
I love pixel art. Back then, I definitely saw the pixels.
Some of my sets were comparable in performance to what people seek for retro today, the PVR.
And I have a PVR, because they are cheap right now. Actually. I have two, but one will need service before I use it. Can still definitely see the pixels.
I love pixel art! So much creativity squeezed out of such limited hardware.
I don't like pixel art either. I assume it is easier to make pixel art than good looking sprites. I think the article touches on this.
but on on the barely 14" CRT in my bedroom. We didn't have huge pixely sprites, they were small and blurry.
This is true for consoles, but not really for arcade games of the era, which have very crisp, very pixelated graphics, like the Link on the left.
Sure, but the author specifically mentions "People who grew up with Nintendo and Sega"
Pixel art is just a style like any other. I like it for the same reason people like pointillism or [insert art style here]. A lot of interesting art, music, and creativity in general stems from self-imposed arbitrary constraints. It's super lazy thinking to blanket disregard an entire sub-genre as people who are either confused about what it "should" look like given some viewing conditions, or simply blinded by nostalgia.
My GB/GBC/GBA games were very rarely played on a 14" CRT.
> To me, the whole pixel art craze looks like false nostalgia. People longing back to something that never existed that way.
Its certainly could be helped by nostalgia, but that pixel art never existed because you only saw it on a blurry CRT? Yeah keep burying your head into the ground like only your taste existed.
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...
If Muslim artists weren't restricted from painting people and animals they wouldn't create the decorative motives they created. If early sound chips in personal computers weren't restricted chiptune genre wouldn't be created. And you can certainly make art using restrictions that aren't enforced on you - restrictions often inspire people and make it easier to create.
That being said while I love chip tunes and I like some old games made with pixel art I don't particulary like it in the new games, but that's just my opinion, lots of people have different preferences.
Also from gamedev POV pixel art allowed many modern indie games to be created which wouldn't be created otherwise. That's a plus in my book.
> Low quality collision objects?
Funny that you mentioned this - some collision detection bugs in starcraft 2 were introduced on purpose to mimic bugs in starcraft 1 because these bugs increased the skill cap (people learnt to abuse them to get ahead of their opponents and community liked that because it was another thing you had to learn to master the game). See "mineral walk" :)
It's trying to achieve a certain level of detail/realism, but it's falling short of expectations.
This might be completely intentional, to evoke a feel for games from an era that did the same thing, but comparing to Baba is You highlights the developer doesn't understand that.
Baba is You has gone completely in the opposite direction in terms of graphical detail, come out of the Uncanny Valley, and is now sitting atop Cuteness Peak.
The dev needs to decide where he wants the game to sit and why.
The point is know your constraints!!! Be willing to say NO to some things! Anything you say YES to has a cost!
If you can do the above, you can find success in most things.
If you apply the author's idea, it would be the same as. Why he has decided to own a small business and not a startup or a big enterprise. "Why my revenue looks like crap, and our growth is not a hockey stick" Most of us on here would be better off making $500k a year working for ourselves than chasing $1 billion valuation. Nothing wrong with that. He has a family to feed. He prefers having a small pie that's a sure thing than trying to go for a large pie that he might not be able to get.
In fact, as soon someone feels the need to defend aesthetics in the first place, I'm starting to feel twitchy - for the same reason you don't want to discuss the quality of light with a blind person (not that I deny any blind person the right to know how I experience it).
I think a lot of commenters are right on point, when they argue that none of "retro", low budget, or indie imply shabby graphics. Just as many commenters completely miss the point about "shabby" graphics. Reduced or no graphics at all are not "shabby". Obviously you will have a hard time criticizing the aesthetics of text-based adventures (font-choice, spacing and layout maybe?). Also, just moving from retro to contemporary you won't automatically get "great looks", right? Thus can we finally remove the whole retro aspect from the line of argument?
If you produce art (we do consider game graphics to be some kind of art, right?), and you are criticized for the aesthetics, make of it what you wish. Defending it won't increase your sales. Let the success of the game speak for itself.
And if you cannot understand what people mean when they criticize you, ask them (or others) what could be wrong and how to improve.
I don't even know how I'd even start to interview an artist or art director. You can't ask them to spend 10 minutes developing a 32x32 character on a whiteboard, can you? I doubt they'd do a 2-day HackerRank style take-home test. I guess you have to heavily rely on their portfolio and whether you like the look.
I empathize with the OP and really, seeing as he's made a successful living for 25 years writing games with crappy art, why does anyone think he needs advice from the HN or Reddit brain trust?
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.
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?
I thought this was a great article. Why do the games look "ugly"? Because 1) perfect graphics aren't even the point; and 2) this is a way to build a sustainable business.
Your technical complaints about the art entirely miss the point. And I guarantee that there is not a good supply of talented and reliable freelance artists charging $10/hour out there.
Part of the problem seems to be that his critics range from the unrealistic "Just™ triple your budget and make it look competitive with AA games" to the more practical "why not think about visual design more coherently and address some of the low-hanging fruit to make your games more approachable and broaden your audience?" and he's lumping everything into one big WONTFIX pile.
But at the end of the day, if he's found an audience and can support his family, more power to him.
You put your finger on exactly what felt wrong for me when I read their post.
They are just trying to find reason to justify their art, while they have none and simply don't care.
I'm not saying it's wrong that they don't care, it's alright, but doing this kind of post is disrespectful for people who cares.
> What fascinates me here is that the guy seems to think he is telling me news. Like, I'm smart enough to keep a software company running for 25 years, but I am unable to notice qualities in my games that are instantly obvious to Joe Q. Rando.
Imagine that being said in any other context to realize how uncalled for such an attitude is and how much it undermines any other point the author wants to make.
Microsoft or Apple have indubitably created some of the most successful and valuable businesses that are still at it decades later. Now imagine them giving the response above when faced with criticism. If it would sound awful it's because it is. People who can't take even constructive criticism will have a hard time existing on the internet. And it will show.
Come on guys this is clearly a precisely crafted, controversial traffic increasing blog (ahem advertisement) piece to stir additional attention for his soon to be released latest game. Plus he gets to rant a bit with IMHO reasonable justifications.
As in it has already created salty posts on the front page of hacker news (+ other news outlets). He is turning what is perceived as many as a weakness of his games into another advantage, bloody brilliant and well done sir! =)
I stopped downloading desktop games when they hit 3 gigs.
I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Gamers generally like the style. The Venn diagram of his target audience and people who like retro game visuals is likely near a perfect circle.
What makes the games look unpleasing is the execution. It's just all over the place, to the point where it looks like a mashup of free assets collected from various websites.
People are pointing out that his otherwise amazing games are being held back by their subpar graphics. Unfortunately, instead of taking the criticism fairly, he sets up a strawman to deflect any blame, claiming that anyone who doesn't like the execution just dislikes the style.
There's multiple points in the article where this shows, for example this one:
>The key problem here is that, when most people say, "Your art looks bad," what they mean is, "I want art that is good." They mean, "I want AAA-quality art."
Big jumps there Jeff.
He shows his lack of knowledge about making good art when he says he can't afford the extra man power to solve the issue. No one here would claim that, to fix bad code, you have to hire more programmers. Art works in the same way. The problems are foundational and don't require more employees or more hours to get right - just a better approach.
The argument that this is not possible with freelancers is silly. He gives the example of a freelancer creating a super niche style that no other artist can replicate. No one is asking him to create award-winning art. People are simply asking for games that are not-ugly. There's plenty of artstyles that fit all his requirements, while still being not-ugly and reproducible by other artists.
I don't doubt that it's hard to find good artists when you never took the time to study what makes good art.
The truth seems to be that after his 25 years of game development Jeff still doesn't know how to make good looking games. He has every right to do as he wants - just as anyone else is free to comment on the look of games. But this article is nothing more than one big list of poor justifications, which is why it's getting a lot of flak.
But more importantly, that's not even all he said. He also defended his decision by pointing to games like Pokémon and Baba Is You, and saying "these games also look ugly, therefore there's nothing wrong with my games looking ugly", which means that _he's_ missing a really important point, which is that those games don't look ugly.
I completely understand if he can't afford to hire anyone with design sense, and that he doesn't want to learn basic design. But a lot of the rest of what he's saying is outright wrong, and belies a complete misunderstanding of what people mean when they say his games are ugly.
Probably the best counterexample is Kingdom of Loathing:
https://www.kingdomofloathing.com/
Kingdom of Loathing isn't ugly. It's possible to draw very low-effort art without a game looking ugly. It's much more understanding basic principles like consistency and clarity, than effort or budget.
And in turn I think you're missing the point somewhat - people's point is that retro doesn't have to mean inconsistent art style and bad colours. There are lots of examples of beautiful retro games.
The most confusing part of the whole story is that his latest game looks noticeably worse than his two previous games. So there seems to be something more going on beyond that he just wants to go low budget and retro. The problem doesn't seem to primarily be the budget or the quality of the art per se, but a lack of care when it comes to art direction.
that said, what makes these game look at least weird is the combination of very retro tiles (say, 1994is, master of magic level) with late retro higher def sprites (say, 1998ish?, baldur's gate level)
while going retro style is not a bad decision for indies, the graphic and ux suffer from being mixed styles, and that's imho a valid criticism.
Windows 3.11 16 color default palette retro
>and profitable
so profitable he cant even hire someone with basic art sense
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Braid-art-1.j...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Braid-art-2.j...
Yes, it is an expense and so it's also a risk, but not taking any risks means never trying to get out of your comfort zone.
One of my favorite games of all time was Legends of Kesmai[1] - a graphical multi-user dungeon that even for its time in the dial-up AOL days had horribly outdated and simplistic graphics. Something about those basic graphics just got my imagination going in a way that no other game has, and I found myself completely immersed exploring that world.
So for me there is a lot of appeal in the Spiderweb graphical style.
[1]https://s.blogcdn.com/massively.joystiq.com/media/2012/03/ke...
Besides, ask Jon how much he spent on assets for it. It is clear that Jeff is uninterested in spending a ton of money on a portion of the final product that he doesn't really think is that important.
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.
This also holds more true to the generation being targeted. People that grew up on XBox/PlayStation will have a hard time with lesser graphics. People that grew up with Atari will be more open to lesser graphics.
We should all be so lucky.
People may not like his graphics and that’s totally understandable. But hopefully everyone can at least respect his accomplishments.
The choices are his, but people can still have opinions and voice them.
e.g. Jeff believes marginal revenue increases would not be enough to offset marginal expenses. Others have different opinions, and voice them as a response to a public blogpost. I see nothing wrong with that.
I do wonder if a more stylized approach would help sooth some of the complaints. The author obviously talks about why that doesn't work when you're using freelancers, but I wonder if the style could happen not in the art directly, but in a shader or similar. This would also help the art feel more consistent.
I do wonder if the author could retain freelancers better, whether that's by a contract that gives them a minimum promised hours or a better rate, etc.
I definitely think that the insults the author has endured are inappropriate, most certainly the threats are. We as gamers benefit from Indies, and we need to treat them well even if sometimes we don't care for their games. There are plenty of indie games that aren't my preference, but I'm glad to have them in the community and want to support them as artists and developers.
Kind of sad to see the playership has been in decline for the last 10 years though :(.
I miss websites which look like this
It seems like Fantasoft published the first Spiderweb game (and looking at screenshots there are definitely some shared assets) so there is actually a connection there.
[0] http://randsinrepose.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mtrek.pn... [1] http://bt-thud.sourceforge.net/thud/big/bigpicture.jpg
From a commercial point of view the aesthetics are used by consumers as (perhaps unfairly) a judge of quality.
Having played through the Avernum trilogy last year, I don't think the art style is inconsistent at all, especially considering how old some of the assets are. Please have a closer look at some actual screenshots from a recent Avernum game[1] before providing your invaluable input on how he should manage his game art.
Maybe I'm biased having played the original Avernum games when I was a kid though.
For example lighting and shadows can be generated dynamically (currently they're baked into the assets, meaning they are inconsistent or completely missing). Or generate edges between ground textures procedurally so things don't look so blocky. Add a particle system for weather and atmospheric effects.
If he did that then he'd be able to carry that work forward into future games, and achieve a consistency of look and feel that extends beyond what he can get by trying to match artwork.
As an ex - videogame developer I've shipped several titles from simple 'kids' games to AAA titles. Here's my take:
You CAN make good looking games on an indie budget. Plenty of indie developers do it. However this requires an Artistic Director which oversees the visual style and coherence for the game.
Some programmers (very few I know) have both technical talent and have a very good 'eye' artistically. They are able to make games and make them look good. It's once again still about style and visual coherence.
Obviously the writer of the post is not an artist so he might not necessarily have the time or inclination to dwell on such visual coherence and direction. That's fine, he accepts that.
But I can't agree with the fact that being and indie makes it harder to have a pleasing visual aesthetic. That is simply a question of choice, which you can rationalize with any type of arguments.
That being said I'm really impressed with their success and hope them all the best for the next 25 years!
The rest of the blog post is one of those soliloquies more to reassure yourself than anything, I'd say.
> Please don't take this the wrong way, I know it has been a contention for years, and you are probably very aware of it. I just think you could be reaching a lot more new fans and I feel sad about the lost opportunity.
which was (IMO unfairly) omitted from the original post. Totally goes against the authors suggestion that "What fascinates me here is that the guy seems to think he is telling me news".
Anyway, to make this useful here are some moderately or lesser known low-fi (ish) games that are basically responsible for me not having a PhD in something:
-Rimworld
-Starsector
-Neo Scavanger
-Gary Grigsby's War in the East/West
-DCS Barbarossa
-KSP (Kerbal)
-Factorio
-Xenonauts
-Rimworld again, but this time with excessive modding :)
-Everything Ssethtzeentach has reviewed
Funny enough I never played any of Vogel’s games past Blades of Exile, and honestly, it’s because I think they look bad, aesthetically. I never felt this way about Exile, or even old Ultima games. The problem here isn’t “these games don’t have good graphics” but rather “these games don’t have good art direction/style/aesthetic”. Vogel says in the post he has used multiple artists with conflicting art styles, and it shows. As the games got higher resolution the problems just got more apparent.
So...did these freelancers not communicate with each other at all? When I saw the first screenshot on the page, of the newest game, I thought it was composed entirely of assets purchased from an asset store and built in RPG Maker and I expected the body of the article to be centered on why it's ok to buy assets when what you're focusing on is gameplay. I feel like this dev is really being taken advantage of by his cadre of artists because the other games on the page don't actually look bad. Maybe a hair generic, but not bad. The newest one, though, damn. That looks like someone's homework.
I guess there's an argument to be made that he could focus on better and better specifications for those artists so, over time, the style stays consistent. But I dont know anything about that. Seems doable?
Exile: Escape From the Pit looks OK, it uses bold colors and a pretty consistent palette, it could be improved (the texturing attempts on the wooden elements) is bleh and the perspective is a bit odd) but the world area at least is fine.
Reading between the lines I think he is also not paying his artists very much, and not offering them any other perks that would make them want to come back for another fun Spiderweb gig on the side.
Queen's Wish looks ugly in a quaint way. I might buy it for that reason, as it makes me think: "Indie creators usually feel there's something about their game that'll make it sell -- it's clearly not the art style or the music in this case, so it must be the gameplay and/or the story, right?"
For example, LA Noire looks dated (though still excellent in many ways), while Borderlands looks as good as when it was released.
LA Noire while it feels a bit dated, the characters don't really hit uncanny valley thanks to the facial motion capture technology. I am still aware they are a video game character, just a very emotive one.
It makes me think there is a peak realism we should chase, after which improved graphics wouldn't really add much. I wonder if maybe we aren't already there.
Many games suffer from high detail but lack of clarity. We are still working with a 2D screen with limited dynamic range after all. So that means when there is higher detail it can get overly busy. Lacking contrast, making it hard to decipher what you are looking at quickly, especially if it is moving. Stylized games can add visual contrast in their lighting and art, improving clarity overall. Having said that, I think games could leanr some tricks from cinema in this regard. Just capturing what is real doesn't make good cinema, you have to engineer the scene and the shot.
So with that in mind, "dated" is simply a realistic style that isn't old enough to have become distinct from the current peak.
Also FWIW "stylistic" doesn't necessarily imply cartoony or exaggerated, this is just a kind of style you can have but certainly not the only one. And of course the "styles" i mentioned above are treated as just guidelines, many NES-styled or ZX Spectrum-styled or PS1-styled games wont work on real NES/ZX Spectrum/PS1 (or even even strictly follow the visual limitations - e.g. many ZX Spectrum-styled games use single colored chunky sprites with bold outlines but they do not do attribute clash and similarly many NES-styled games use the resolution and palette of NES but ignore sprite or VRAM limitations). After all it is giving the impression that matters, not adhering to strict hardware limitations (though for some that may also be part of the appeal).
There's a lot of work that needs to be done to pick a consistent style, because at the moment it's a mixture of everything and it all clashes.
The screenshots of John's games make me feel nostalgic in the same way that I'm sure NES and Arcade style games make 80s kids feel nostalgic. The Windows 95 style is retro now, even if it still feels current to us!
I wish more games look terrible in a 1995 kind of a way. Mostly for the sake of nostalgia, I loved playing crappy shareware games and terrible demos from floppy/CD magazines when I was a kid.
I've played on-line games that have camera shake when you make a hit, bits spray everywhere, shadows cast where they conceal relevant stuff, none of this helps me enjoy it, it just gets in the way of what I need to see. It gets turned off ASAP.
In other cases I'd rather have the characters not act like dicks (stand around when there's a fight starting, get attacked by monsters and not defend themselves). The gameplay is so frustrating sometimes. (edit: point is graphics are low on my list of bothersome)
Art is going mad, like the floppy hair that nvidia GPUs are boasting about - who cares, really?
(Did play a demo of Vogel's game and liked it, the only problem being that I didn't pick up any threatening atmosphere in areas where there should have been. Still, recommended and good fun)
"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."
In this comment thread: "Fuck your choice. It'd be nebulously better if you made a different choice."
You don't need great graphics to make games that people really enjoy.
The way I knew I absolutely had to go to bed was when I lost over an hour's worth of progress due to forgetting to save.
I remember reading The Story of the Baby on IronyCentral back in 2002. [0] The Baby is now almost an adult.
The Spiderweb Software forums were my first major forum presence.
I love Jeff Vogel's crappy looking games.
I remember the brief but super fun Blades of Exile scenario community back then, there were some really fun inventive things people did with a pretty barebones engine.
I think at one point someone made a fanservice scenario with a lot of people from the forums and I got a cameo. Good childhood memories.
A better quality visual experience could be delivered at near zero additional cost / complexity with basic technical hacks - eg faux shading / lighting - see the before / after below:
https://twitter.com/RavenmoreArt/status/1164447066300588033
Feels like Jeff would benefit from a consultation with a technical art director or similar.
Every point he makes about economy, style, preference would still stand but could also address a considerable amount of the visual criticism (and hence, lost sales opportunities)
And historically, the genre has responded to this by sacrificing some aspect of polish - typically animation, but also often by just telling you about a thing with text.
What Jeff has done by stocking up and reusing generic assets is essentially a way of reducing that load so that the game actually gets produced on his microbudget targets. And what's really lost in that is any sort of "wow" moment where a distinctive scene, magic item or character design can make an impression visually.
However, I do think he could stand to leverage technology better. 3D might not be nostalgic, but it is the overwhelming preference of devs trying to use generic assets, since it gives you so much more utility(take the sword model and reskin it - new sword! same building with different decor - new scene!) and even puts some stock animation within reach, when relying on Mixamo or similar.
Jeff is already using these kinds of stock assets in the new game, it's just that faithfully implementing them into an old-style 2D tile renderer system makes them look worse than they actually are, since it guarantees that they look inconsistent in scale, perspective, lighting etc.
One productive way to respond to his challenge would be to give him an A/B: license his existing work to a small self-funded team, have them remake it aesthetically without changing how it plays. Have it launch on consoles and mobile. Then we'd really know if the assertions match the reality.
For example https://retrostylegames.com/about-game-art/
On the other hand, he should have led with that, and probably also kept it to that. Because defending this style as if it's somehow a valid choice design-wise ... yeah no. It's pretty obvious that the guy has no sense about design, colour use, or the aesthetic aspects that make retro look "cool", how they differ from the aesthetic aspects in old games with good art versus those with bad art, and how to make choices and combine that knowledge to actually celebrate the look of retro art that he loves so much.
Saying it looks like this because he likes the look of retro art, is kind of dismissive of .. well basically studying graphics design in general. Because he somehow equates not spending the effort on making it look good, to the aesthetic of these old games. But a lot of effort was spent to make them look good within the limitations of those machines/displays.
Just applying those limitations isn't going to get you the quality. It's just like those furniture stores that sell vintage-looking stuff, that is actually just things made badly (crooked) with artificially aged wood, pretending to be a porch on a beach house, I dunno. It wants to be vintage cool, but it turns out to be vintage crap.
But I get it for the business reasons. I just hate it when people come up with the excuse of "actually I think it's prettier this way" ...
I don't agree. You need enough money to pay an artist, but you don't need to give the artist a 50% cut of your studio!
Full Disclosure: I personally think the art is bad, but I see the retro appeal. The mismatching styles and low quality definitely is reminiscent of old D&D manuals which had monsters drawn by Gary Gygax himself... and which looked really bad too.
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).
That's what I was thinking. One of the things about games from back in the old days (I'm thinking 1980s) is that they had to be fun to play, because they didn't offer much else. Today there is an emphasis on looking good, but the game itself usually isn't great.
My hypothesis is that selling good-looking games that suck is more profitable. The graphics sell the game. Then the kids get tired of it and buy a new one. If the game is good, they'll just keep playing it and not open their wallet.
I like games like NetHack and Baldur's Gate. I was quite disappointed when I bought Pillars of Eternity and its dull story couldn't keep me interested at all.
I would choose a nice story over nice graphics anytime.
I don't particularly like the art that his games use (and I also grew up on Ultima) but I'm 100% behind the idea that if "trying for better art" (and note that "better" in no way guarantees "something people will call good") means putting the entire business at risk, only someone with no sense of responsibility and no understanding of the value of a dollar would take that risk. Not in year one, and still not in year 25.
Now compare something ultra-realistic like FFXV. Undoubtedly cool. Took them 10 years though, and even then they almost released it too soon. Gamers still blew through all available content in no time. Except now, the developers can’t just add a bunch of new stuff in no time: every change has an absurdly-high quality bar to meet. That means extremely high cost, and probably more time spent than they’d like.
I think the real question is:
If he made the games look better would he sell enough more to justify the cost? He feels strongly not. But one has to wonder, how many people look at say pass, without even trying. Or go the other way an just do a "Dwarf Fortress" and go straight to ascii.
I guess the economics work for him, as is.
People are fickle, and do infact judge books by their covers to some extent and in a crowded market. If you went to but something from a website that had a late 90s web ascetic, you might choose to go to one that looks a little more modern.
It also seems the games aren’t easily modded (at least, the blog post nor this HN discussion mention it).
I’m sure it won’t be enough for all or even most critics, but that, to me, seems a missed opportunity. Looking at the games, the look of the tiles won’t affect gameplay (as I tight if, for example, the programs do a flood-fill of the map at some time) so it shouldn’t be hard to, at startup, check for the presence of a ‘tiles.png’ or ‘tiles.bmp’ file, and read tiles from it, if present.
Gosh the images and text on this page is so small. I know I can make it bigger in my browser, but consider bringing the font size (and image size) up a bit on the page too.
As a software developer and entrepreneur, I understand concept of ergonomics very well - things should be easy to read, hard to misinterpret, responsive, familiar, easy to click. But I struggle with aesthetics all the time - something feels off, but I can't pinpoint why and how to fix it.
In case you didn't read the end note: "I am writing these blog posts to get attention to our newest game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror." I'd say he succeeded pretty well in that aim!
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.
As he says repeatedly in his posts if you don't like his art style or games you're free to find other games.
He's been supporting himself successfully this way for over 25 years despite the criticism. Clearly there is a community of people who favor his style of games depsite "the old school art style"
Growing up Spiderweb games were some of my all time favorites and I'd love one on the go.
Seriously, it’s possible to make low-budget art that looks good. This isn’t it.
I forget who said it, but I think there's a saying that great art is borne through limitation. When an a good artist only has a limited set of tools, or maybe not even the best ones, it brings out the best in their abilities.
I wonder if there are non obvious economic factors that make it possible for them.
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!
Developer: nuh-uh, it's you who's wrong! hAtErS gOnNa HaTe!
And then return to hack hack slash shoot.
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.
Here's a screen recording of a demo I made in a VM, which walks through the scenarios, objects, and tools, and also shows some of the "SimAntics" behavior tree code behind the different levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY
It's got a "sketchy" user interface, a dot above the selected character's head instead of the iconic spinning plumb-bob, a horrifically crude and ugly object placement tool with yellow squares and big red X's when you can't place an object (but that gladly lets you place bathtubs on hills), and a bare minimal number of crappy objects, some of which have astoundingly terrible graphics and prototypically implemented behaviors.
Especially @ 24:25: the vintage Stereo with colorful musical notes dancing above it, the stinky Fish Tank (permanently attached to its own table), the unbelievably nasty Pink Flamingo, the goofy looking Flower (also growing out of a pot on its own table), and the blue bakelite Telephone (glued to its own table as well) which looks like it has Halloween Candy Corn springing out when it rings @ 12:45, then the caller asks you if you'd like your fingers chewed off by rabid ferrets for $42. It has pixelated censoring @ 13:31, which attempts to disguise the embarrassing fact that they shit and shower with their pants on. Also @ 2:00 it has weird pie menus with placeholder programmer art, and the original characters, including Archie Bunker permanently holding a burning cigar in his hand! Also there's some unfortunately worded dialog text that probably wouldn't have made it past the ESRB @ 40:50.
As ugly as it was, it was just playable enough to convince The Sims Steering Committee at EA not to cancel our project, and to give us another year and a half to complete it.
Here's an interview with Chris Trottier, one of the designers of The Sims, in which she describes "Tuned Emergence and Design by Accretion".
Sims Designer Chris Trottier on Tuned Emergence and Design by Accretion
https://web.archive.org/web/20110408034710/https://www.donho...
>The Armchair Empire interviewed Chris Trottier, one of the designers of The Sims and The Sims Online. She touches on some important ideas, including "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion".
>Chris' honest analysis of how and why "the gameplay didn't come together until the months before the ship" is right on the mark, and that's the secret to the success of games like The Sims and SimCity.
>The essential element that was missing until the last minute was tuning: The approach to game design that Maxis brought to the table is called "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion". Before it was tuned, The Sims wasn't missing any structure or content, but it just wasn't balanced yet. But it's OK, because that's how it's supposed to work!
>In justifying their approach to The Sims, Maxis had to explain to EA that SimCity 2000 was not fun until 6 weeks before it shipped. But EA was not comfortable with that approach, which went against every rule in their play book. It required Will Wright's tremendous stamina to convince EA not to cancel The Sims, because according to EA's formula, it would never work.
>If a game isn't tuned, it's a drag, and you can't stand to play it for an hour. The Sims and SimCity were "designed by accretion": incrementally assembled together out of "a mass of separate components", like a planet forming out of a cloud of dust orbiting around star. They had to reach critical mass first, before they could even start down the road towards "Tuned Emergence", like life finally taking hold on the planet surface. Even then, they weren't fun until they were carefully tuned just before they shipped, like the renaissance of civilization suddenly developing science and technology. Before it was properly tuned, The Sims was called "the toilet game", for the obvious reason that there wasn't much else to do!
Chris Trottier (Sims Online) Q&A
https://web.archive.org/web/20111211182436/http://www.armcha...
>Q: On paper, a game where you simulate daily life doesn't sound that interesting. Yet The Sims is really fun to play, so much so that it is now the biggest-selling PC game ever. Although any development team working with Will Wright has to feel confident in the product they are creating, has the unbelievable popularity of the franchise shocked even the development team?
>A: Absolutely. When I was first assigned to The Sims, it was not-very-affectionately-known within the company as "the toilet game." Will Wright had tremendous stamina for the risk involved with trying something very new, but there were certainly a lot of head-scratchers both on the team and outside of it. In all honesty, the gameplay didn't start to really come together until a couple of months before ship. Being involved in that tuning process, and seeing the game take shape from what had previously been a mass of separate components, was one of the most powerful experiences of my career.
* 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
* Call Of Duty Modern Warfare
* etc.
But these games have among the highest budget in history of game development and a respectable revenue stream...
What the author is trying to say is that most people think most games looks like crap (I think so too). There is no point in making AA games (let's assume he didn't mean actual AAA games) as an Indie developer, because people will still think your game looks like crap. And those people who don't (I for instance really like SNES games still), will also be satisfied with the art he can create.
Let's look at Anno 1602 vs. Anno 1800. This is more in the domain of the author. I really like both games and I have to say, Anno 1800 has AMAZING graphics. But the game gets boring after playing it one time to the Investor level... Anno 1602 has graphics that you can probably manage as an Indie developer these days (since you don't need to optimize it at all and have much better tooling). This game never gets old ;). I have more fun playing that one than Anno 1800. Which is another reason why AAA graphics is unneeded. You need shiny graphics if your game sucks. And creating games that suck is what todays AAA industry is all about.
I like Spiderweb games, but most SNES games looked better than this. Some NES games looked better than this. You can have cheap, low-res art that is coherent and pleasing to the eye, but this isn't it.
AAA |
------+--------------------------------------+------
crap | | good
This just isn't true. It only a question of money and/or time.
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.
It seems like all his games could be using ascii art instead, and honestly, they probably would look a lot better.
That reminds me: I guess not even a game like NetHack can be realistically played by a blind person, so I wonder if this was some failed kind of joke or if the author actually considers that audience.
Disclaimer: I'm not a business owner and don't work in the games industry. My opinions are that of a layman from the (sometimes similar) maze of the development agency sector.
Lesson 1 is correct. Perfectionism will always be there.
Lesson 2 has a false premise that the amount of effort and cost to increase art quality is more than the value gained in sales and profit. It's not wrong that hiring more people will be a bit of a gamble, but also putting more time in it to iron out kinks is an alternative step. If you're a business owner then long hours are the norm, no?
Lesson 3 is just putting the blame on the freelancers. Yes it's hard to find talent and yes it's hard to afford it, but that shouldn't be an excuse to just give up on trying to strive for better.
Lesson 4 I agree with. One should follow their strengths. However that doesn't mean stagnating at one level.
He has an entire section dedicated to this issue though. Which boils down to the fact that improving the graphics sufficiently for enough people to not say "this looks like crap" far outstrips the budget and team he has available. His take:
> I have had games where I worked very hard to improve the graphics, spending a lot of time and money, and they really did look better! But when I released those games, the vast majority of people who had said, "Your games look bad." STILL said, "Your games look bad."
I get his position and I don't see a problem here. Gamers are incredibly fickle and I wouldn't want to be subject to the whims of the gaming community's opinions on graphics. Of course, he's choosing to limit his audience to an extent but ... that's fine. He wants to focus on everything else that can make a game good and valuable and it seems that's something that his business has continued to survive on.
As a business owner, you have to do some kind of de-risking to your production process. If that includes not relying on freelancers so you can hit deadlines, that's fine. It's a completely valid excuse.