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Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

• Causality1 7y ago
  >made by a team of freelancers, to our specifications 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.
  • gtirloni 7y ago
    He doesn't have a cadre of artists. They might not be working concurrently in the same game. He specifically says multiple times that they come and go, life happens. 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?
    • gmueckl 7y ago
      You can absolutely write specifications for art. And I would consider a pretty technical checklist for quality control that is agreed on in advance (lighting from predetermined direction, adjerence to color palette for corresponding scenery, shadows consistent, required silhouettes recognizable etc.). I remember an old style guide written by MS for Windows XP that outlined in great detail how icons in the default theme style meed achieve their look. It gave technical details like the exact location of the vanishing point for perspectively drawn icons. So coming up with an art style specification should be doable once the style has been developed.
  • masklinn 7y ago
    Nethergate looks absolutely awful, and I'm not fond of Avernum's art either. 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.
  • egypturnash 7y ago
    Honestly the rest of what he says about hiring artists makes me suspect he doesn’t so much have a team of artists as he has a series of artists, with no communication between them. 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.
• 0xfaded 7y ago
  The graphics immediately reminded me of Tibia (https://www.tibia.com/news https://www.tibia.com/news), the MMO running since 1997. My friends were into it at one point, and I cut my programming teeth writing bots for the game (sorry CIPsoft). Kind of sad to see the playership has been in decline for the last 10 years though :(.
  • jcelerier 7y ago
    > https://www.tibia.com/news https://www.tibia.com/news I miss websites which look like this
  • dkersten 7y ago
    The art in that game looks consistent, lighting looks decent and the colours work well together. Sadly all of these properties lack from the OPs screenshots.
  • kalleboo 7y ago
    Seeing the graphics I was reminded of Realmz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realmz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realmz), which was a game I absolutely loved as a kid. So to me the games hit a nostalgia spot. 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.
• TheCapeGreek 7y ago
  There's a difference between a conscious choice to maintain a certain style or level of detail, and a lack of willingness to improve said style. The whole article reads to me less like "I don't want to upgrade to 3D or higher detail" and more like "I'm too comfortable to want to improve the current art by putting in 10% more detail". 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.
  • jplayer01 7y ago
    > There's a difference between a conscious choice to maintain a certain style or level of detail, and a lack of willingness to improve said style. The whole article reads to me less like "I don't want to upgrade to 3D or higher detail" and more like "I'm too comfortable to want to improve the current art by putting in 10% more detail". 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.
• wodenokoto 7y ago
  Is the first screenshot Queens wish that he is talking about?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• meheleventyone 7y ago
  Arrrgh, there are a lot of interesting and good points in the article but for the most part they miss the wood for the trees. The actual answer is that care isn't being taken to develop a style that looks good and meets his constraints. Jeff needs a good art director. The Ultima V and Baba is You examples are excellent counter-points because they show how great games with simple styles can look.
  • Beltiras 7y ago
    He actually addresses why he won't solve any of the "problems" with more manpower. He's found local maxima and is willing to stay there because there are risks associated with moving.
    • meheleventyone 7y ago
      But it's not a question of adding more manpower. When I say Jeff needs an art director I mean that Jeff needs to care about art direction and that making a good looking game with his existing constraints is perfectly feasible.
      • jplayer01 7y ago
        > When I say Jeff needs an art director I mean that Jeff needs to care about art direction and that making a good looking game with his existing constraints is perfectly feasible. Then say that instead of "Jeff needs an art director", which literally means that Jeff needs an art director. Which means another employee. It doesn't mean "Jeff needs to be an art director". Which he is, but results in the current situation where his games have the art they have, people complain, he writes an article explaining, and people like you criticize him for reasonable justification for why things are the way things are.
        • meheleventyone 7y ago
          Jeff needs an art director doesn't imply anything more than that. It could be him, it could be another full time employee or it could be something he has a freelancer develop at the start of the project.
• m0nty 7y ago
  ITT: lots of people missing the point that he doesn't actually believe his games look like crap, he's just made a conscious (and profitable) decision to go retro. He likes his games' visual style and values the freelancers who produce the art. I didn't think this is a difficult point but apparently it is.
  • LoSboccacc 7y ago
    I don't dislike retro games, actually love the art style of Streets of Rogue and KeeperRL, for example, and I agree it's a great way for indies to get budget under control - it's easy to be tempted to just get better art, but then animation, collisions, interactions etc still need to be coded and contribute significantly to development time. 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.
    • masklinn 7y ago
      > 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) They look way higher res than BG to me, more early or pseudo-3D sprites, they're reminiscent of Van Buren's sprites.
      • LoSboccacc 7y ago
        here's a side by side: https://i.imgur.com/OLfbGEY.png https://i.imgur.com/OLfbGEY.png maybe I'm remembering the enhanced edition but yeah you get the point: they have that "3d model to sprites" style while the background looks like straight pixel art
  • dagw 7y ago
    There are better and worse ways to make retro looking games, and there are ways to care about the look of your game without having it noticeably effect your budget. 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.
• glenvdb 7y ago
  I think the problem is that the game is in Uncanny Valley. 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.
  • gtirloni 7y ago
    The article explains in detail where he wants the game to sit and why. Sorry, I don't follow.
    • glenvdb 7y ago
      If the dev truly understood where he wants the game to sit and why he wouldn't have compared it to Baba is You.
    • barryhoodlum 7y ago
      But his games don't sit where he thinks they sit. It's baffling as there's a huge market for "retro" looking indie games, and has been for a decade or so. Plenty of successful and influential indie games made by a small team (or even a solo developer) in the past decade have been really successful despite looking like they could run on an NES or a Commodore 64, with limited palettes and chunky graphics. But there's a difference between that and what appears to be placeholder programmer art.
      • sgift 7y ago
        > in the past decade have been really successful He makes indie games for 25 years. They feed him and his family. That sounds very successful to me.
        • barryhoodlum 7y ago
• juskrey 7y ago
  People are much better imagining "other 90%" of the game realistically on their own
• hartror 7y ago
  Jeff is an enjoyable speaker, his latest GDC talk is fantastic (and a better version of this blog post). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• acd 7y ago
  Simple graphics open up for imagination as juskrey post here said. That couple with a great story can be good enough. A good book does not need to contain picture we imagine the content, a RPG can be the same. That said better looking graphics could be sourced from Chinese graphic artist, there is an industry which makes better game graphics quite cheaply. For example https://retrostylegames.com/about-game-art/ https://retrostylegames.com/about-game-art/
• ehnto 7y ago
  I have been really enjoying the way games are being stylized nowadays. We reached a level of fidelity that is really expensive to maintain I think, and so game studios are leaning in on really solid art direction instead. It makes for much more interesting worlds and longer lasting art. 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.
  • Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
    Did that facial capture technology end up anywhere? I still remember how amazing the facial animations looked in that game and can't think of any other game since where it's been that noticeable. Although maybe that was just because of how much better they were than anything else out there at the time?
  • Crinus 7y ago
    IMO even games that go for realistic graphics end up stylized, mainly because the technical limitations do force those styles (e.g. many PS2 games tried to be realistic but the lack of pixel shaders means they had to paint the lighting on the textures and the low resolution meant that they had to exaggerate some thinner shapes and both of those nowadays give a more cartoony look). The closer to "today" you go, the harder is to see this, but it becomes apparent when you see games from the 80s, 90s and (to a lesser extent, since they are more recent) 2000s. If you can say that a game looks like a $X game (e.g. a NES game or ZX Spectrum game or SNES game or PS1 game, or N64 game or PS2 game or PS3 game) that is because its appearance has aspects that are common with other games on $X - which is exactly what make that a style. 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).
• DecoPerson 7y ago
  In the AAA game industry a Look Dev Artist would help here. Focusing on the in-universe elements of the game (as opposed to the UI), they set goals and restrictions that lead to consistent, appealing, and cheap-to-produce art styles. 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?"
• d--b 7y ago
  Dwarf Fortress, MineCraft, A Dark Room, etc. You don't need great graphics to make games that people really enjoy.
  • rasz 7y ago
    Rimworld also shows you dont need $$ and manpower to make great looking games. Its all about Style, not quality of actual assets. https://imgur.com/a/wS3Pt https://imgur.com/a/wS3Pt https://imgur.com/a/xdDzg https://imgur.com/a/xdDzg
    • dkersten 7y ago
      Those links are awesome l, thanks for posting! As far as games with simple but nice art go, there’s also prison architect, stardew valley, Celeste, risk or rain, terraria, sword and sworcery, factorio... and many many more. It doesn’t need to be high res or super fancy, just consistent with a a nice colour palette.
  • ttsda 7y ago
    I think it's unfair to compare Minecraft with the screenshots shown in this article, as it'd always had a pretty consistent art style. That old neon-green grass was pretty weird though.
• cousin_it 7y ago
  Jeff, the art problems of your games have nothing to do with low-res. Baba is You (or Downwell) are just as low-res, but manage to look good because they use fewer colors and choose them well. I recommend learning that skill, it will make your games look way better and it honestly doesn't take that much time.
  • mysterydip 7y ago
    There are pixel artists that create and share restrictive palettes, which I think could help. For example: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16247 http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16247
    • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Totally aside the cross-dither chart gives a great animated effect on my monitor!
  • JelteF 7y ago
    Completely agree that it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they are low res. However, it's not just the colors. For me it's mostly that the lighting across artwork is very inconsistent. The artwork separately is quite good, but because some stuff is much lighter than the rest it feels like it's gathered from multiple separate games and put together in one.
    • alttab 7y ago
      The article explains why this is so. Arguably with some art direction from Jeff himself he can make art that is more easily replicable, but the reasoning seems to be that "I have to be able to swap artists out." 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.
• fouc 7y ago
  Honestly I think it's a shame when people are so picky about graphics. Some of the best games I've ever played were purely ASCII-based. I'm talking about various BBS games, or MUD-based games. There were also some really novel interfaces like like mTrek [0], and BattleTech 3030 MUX [1]. So much fun to play. [0] http://randsinrepose.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mtrek.png http://randsinrepose.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mtrek.pn... [1] http://bt-thud.sourceforge.net/thud/big/bigpicture.jpg http://bt-thud.sourceforge.net/thud/big/bigpicture.jpg
  • meheleventyone 7y ago
    It's not so much being picky but that from a design perspective aesthetics should add to rather than detract from the experience. For a modern ASCII example take a look at Cogmind: https://i.imgur.com/lUpcTmF.gif https://i.imgur.com/lUpcTmF.gif From a commercial point of view the aesthetics are used by consumers as (perhaps unfairly) a judge of quality.
    • anchpop 7y ago
      The aesthetics of that game make me want to go buy it right away just from that gif you linked, it just looks so interesting and unique! And I don't think it's unfair to use aesthetics as a judge of quality. First of all, as you mentioned, nice aesthetics do enhance the experience. And second of all, it's a way to signal strength - a team not capable of making a good game will often not be capable of making it look interesting either, especially for indie games. And it doesn't have to be that expensive either. There's a game I'm slightly affiliated with (but not in any monetary way) that has been made with a budget of $0 by volunteers (mostly highschoolers) and I think it looks good just because of the insane attention-to-detail and meticulousness of everyone involved. Here's [0] what it looks like for reference. [0]: https://youtu.be/Uryrdj-DUcA?t=4 https://youtu.be/Uryrdj-DUcA?t=4
      • meheleventyone 7y ago
        Yup, that looks lovely.
• dmitriid 7y ago
  You should also see his GDC talk, “Failing to Fail”. Jeff Vogel is amazing: https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs
• tempguy9999 7y ago
  What is looking good? To me it's that the hues and colours don't hide relevant features of the game, or hurt my eyes. 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)
• starsinspace 7y ago
  Oh wow, I remember playing Exile back then! Found it on some shareware CD-ROM in the 90s. Was a nice game... I should check out their newer games!
  • sha666sum 7y ago
    The Avernum trilogy, starting with Escape from the Pit[1] is a remake of the original Exile-trilogy. I highly recommend especially the first game in the trilogy. [1] https://www.gog.com/game/avernum_escape_from_the_pit https://www.gog.com/game/avernum_escape_from_the_pit
• huhtenberg 7y ago
  To each his own, of course, but a great art can really elevate game to a completely new level - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Braid-art-1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Braid-art-1.j... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Braid-art-2.jpg 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.
  • freetime2 7y ago
    I think there’s also something to be said for simple art that forces you to use your imagination. Especially in the role playing genre. 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/kesmai.jpg https://s.blogcdn.com/massively.joystiq.com/media/2012/03/ke...
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Eh, i don't really think the art is what made Braid interesting, or even contributed to that. Honestly, I think in my case it may have even detracted from my enjoyment of it a little because it felt so out of place with the gameplay in some subconscious way I'm unable to adequately describe. 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.
• progx 7y ago
  Look at the app-stores, you need great teaser-graphics for the first view of users. So you get attention.
• bipson 7y ago
  Aesthetics are such a poor/difficult topic to discuss, unless you want to go the academic/philosophical route. 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.
  • ryandrake 7y ago
    Art is one of the [many] reasons I could never be an indie game developer--I preferred to stick to apps and use the OS's native toolkits. You can't just write more tests to help ensure good art like you can for software. There's no compiler warnings to tell you it's not going to look good. There's no API spec to consult when you don't know if your character should have bigger or smaller eyes. 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?
• ChrisRR 7y ago
  Unfortunately I think the graphics look like that typical windows 95 style game, where the lighting is inconsistent, the style is inconsistent, the colour choices are drab and the fonts are just the first default picks from MS word. 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.
  • udp 7y ago
    The fact that you identify "that typical windows 95 style game" as being a thing implies that it is a style, whether or not you like the style. Building games that look like that today is just a specific kind of retro. 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!
  • samlevine 7y ago
    That's my childhood you're making fun of! ;) 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.
• mruts 7y ago
  If one doesn't care about art, why not just use ascii art? I quite like the style of Nethack or Cogmind. If he cares about art (which he claims to), why not just make it look good and consistent? No one is expecting AAA type art and there are tons of indie developers who make beautiful games with beautiful art and it wasn't that expensive. I've never played any of his games but looking at the screenshots, they put me off. They look like all the art was found online on free asset stores. It all looks inconsistent and uses too many colors and tries to be too realistic. It looks gross I would have hard time playing the games. It seems like all his games could be using ascii art instead, and honestly, they probably would look a lot better.
• Aaargh20318 7y ago
  > 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 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 http://i.imgur.com/lQFPG14.png
  • thaumasiotes 7y ago
    I played LOOM on a smallish 640x480 CRT from the 80s. The pixels are clearly visible. In particular, since the color palette is so restricted, a lot of large surfaces are dithered -- and you can easily see the grid of little alternating squares.
  • Crinus 7y ago
    Eh, i played NES games on my grandparents' ~24" TV, those pixels were clearly visible (though not so visible on my own monochrome TV). Also while "pixel art" is often associated with NES/SEGA by the people who grew up with those systems, it is was also very common in home computers where image clarity was much better than on TV - especially with most games being 320x200 that appeared double scanned on pretty much every EGA and VGA monitor. Even the shitty monochrome 14" VGA monitor that my 386 had had enough clarity to distinguish individual pixels at 640x480 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).
    • svrtknst 7y ago
      I played Pokemon on the GBA, lots of sharp pixels all around
• justanegg 7y ago
  he could triple his esthetic by switching to a 3d engine and low poly models. maybe toon shaded.
• YesThatTom2 7y ago
  Hiring s full time employee would more than double his budget. Since his company is a husband-wife team they share expenses and probably live off the equivalent of 1.5 salaries (or maybe 1.0?)
• freetime2 7y ago
  Jeff Vogel has run a successful business for 25 years - making the games he wants to make, living the life he wants to live, and making a lot of people happy in the process. 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.
  • PeterStuer 7y ago
    So we can't have opinions on public statements of people if they are 'successful'? 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.
    • freetime2 7y ago
      I updated my comment above to remove the negative reaction to the general HN sentiment. Of course anyone is free (and encouraged) to voice their opinions.
      • PeterStuer 7y ago
        My comment above now no longer makes sense in he context of your edits, but I can't change it anymore.
• jdance 7y ago
  Haha I love how 90% of the comments are from just exactly the same people who he wrote this blog post for, and they still make the same points again :D 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!
  • aardshark 7y ago
    > if you are not an artist, making good art is simply really hard 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.
    • jdance 7y ago
      Hey, believe me I'm working on it, those menus I have are like 10 iterations in! And I'm looking for art help too. Just saying its a cognitive load, both the learning, iteration, , finding people and paying them. I could instead say "fcuk it" and focus ONLY on the things I'm good at, it's an option that I can understand. Happy to hear you tried and liked the game! Lots of things in the pipeline
• cosarara 7y ago
  I wonder how easy it would for modders to replace the art in those games, just like how people made texture packs for minecraft and tilesets for dwarf fortress. Sometimes a fan with free time is all it takes.
• underwater 7y ago
  It seems like there is so much he could do that doesn't require paying for new assets or more expensive artists. 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.
  • lesbaker 7y ago
    This is along the lines of what I wanted to say. Going from the main screenshot, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit (in addition to what you said) that could be done programmatically like making the ground tiles look non-uniform or adding some "noise" to the land/water boundaries. Even some decals such as rocks or flowers on the ground would do wonders. The point is that there is big-bang-for-the-buck things that game developers can do with existing assets and I feel this may have been missed in the discussion.
• sha666sum 7y ago
  As expected, a lot of people in this thread are giving "valuable" advice about his art style. Jeff's self-ironic way of saying the game looks like crap and calling his art style inconsistent seems to have set the tone of the conversation. 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. [1] https://www.gog.com/game/avernum_escape_from_the_pit https://www.gog.com/game/avernum_escape_from_the_pit
  • alexgmcm 7y ago
    Yeah - I don't think the games even look that bad given it's isometric etc. Maybe I'm biased having played the original Avernum games when I was a kid though.
  • djur 7y ago
    The Avernum remakes look fine. That isn't what the article is talking about, though. It's his new game, which looks substantially worse and consists mostly of new art. He even includes an image of Avernum 3 with this caption: "Our previous game, Avernum 3: Ruined World. Why didn't I just write another game that looks like this? Because I didn't want to. Nyeah!"
    • sha666sum 7y ago
      The article is about more than just his new game. All the criticism that he addresses is about his previous games, and even the title of the article is "Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap". I'm quite certain that the comment in the Avernum 3 caption was about changing the perspective from isometric.
• ebg13 7y ago
  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.
  • xtracto 7y ago
    I havent played any of his games but now would love to do it. I like dwarf fortress and generally am bummed with the gameplay in current games.
    • IggleSniggle 7y ago
      Try Cogmind.
      • eropple 7y ago
        Cogmind is really cool and really pushes (to a screaming breaking point) what you can do with "ASCII art". It also helps that the developer is a very chill person, for sure. But to the GP, you should go play his games! Try "Avernum: Escape from the Pit", his remake of his remake of his original game (he's got a system down pat). It's the best game he's made, IMO, and the iPad version is really good if you've got one lying around. PC/Mac version is good too, of course, but I found the touch interface really nice and a refreshing way to play a game I'd already exhaustively completed twice, so I'd hope it'd meet more modern sensibilities pretty well.
      • steeleduncan 7y ago
        Also in that vein, Caves of Qud is worth a try.
    • aoeusnth1 7y ago
      Ever tried Factorio?
  • 7y ago
• mcv 7y ago
  Sometimes 'better-but-not-good-enough' is a trap. That's basically what Jeff Vogel is saying about moving up from his poor inconsistent art to slightly better art, but it's also how I feel about moving up from ascii characters to his style of "crappy" art. AdoM is a fantastic roguelike created by Thomas Biskup, which originally had you as an '@' battling other ascii characters. Later he wanted a nicer interface and 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.
  • wincy 7y ago
    Dwarf Fortress having mod packs is a pretty good idea. It has the text interface by default then people can make their own sprites. Then again most places don’t have the sort of community support Dwarf Fortress has.
    • cpeterso 7y ago
      Jeff could make his games moddable and then incorporate the most popular mods into the future versions of his games. Free work from fans who understand that they could get credit in the game but not necessarily paid. Or Jeff could just hire them after having already seen their work in his games.
      • duskwuff 7y ago
        Jeff tried "moddable" twice, with Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum. He's said that sales of both games were terrible.
  • 7y ago
• mar77i 7y ago
  > It achieved financial success (among the blind, apparently) 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.
  • gbersac 7y ago
    It's clearly a joke.
• qazpot 7y ago
  This article is a masterpiece of click bait titles.
• ctack 7y ago
  And now I want to read his book - “The Poo Bomb: True Tales of Parental Terror”
• cushychicken 7y ago
  In this post: "I made a conscious choice of what to build." In this comment thread: "Fuck your choice. It'd be nebulously better if you made a different choice."
• ravenstine 7y ago
  Maybe I'm just an old man at this point, but I find "imperfection" rather charming. Realism can be cool, but games and cartoons that are "crappy" have character and allow me to use my imagination to believe in different worlds. One of the reasons that I still love Nintendo 64 games is that they look clunky compared to today's games, and they look that way because the artists had to work within the constraints of the hardware and come up with game assets that look close enough but don't destroy the FPS. If a game looks consistently crappy, I can buy into its universe with my imagination. 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.
• draw_down 7y ago
  I’ve been playing GTA 5 recently. It looks great because they painstakingly built an incredible, immersive world. Sorry but it’s pretty important to me how a game looks, I wouldn’t play something like this.
• cannonedhamster 7y ago
  I grew up playing the Exile series on shareware, then I migrated to Avernum. I have yet to find any series of games that I can get more value out of. The sheer depth in the games Spiderweb software puts out is why I'll buy pretty much everything they make. If I had to pick a gaming hill to die on this developer would be it. The graphics do their job. Could they be flashier? Sure, whatever. Aside from the Elder Scrolls series I can't think of a game that even comes close in time to finish and the sheer amount of replayability. Nothing in the game is a grind. There's always something do do while you're collecting gear, etc.
  • Narishma 7y ago
    The issue is not that the graphics aren't flashy, whatever that means, it's that they are inconsistent.
• laegooose 7y ago
  Can anyone recommend books/blogs/courses about how to make game (or any complicated piece of software actually) look good? 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.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  This article was very good for me. It made me fully understand why I never liked Minecraft and why I will never like it. I would rather replay Gothic series for 11th time then start playing Minecraft. My kids play Minecraft on daily basis, when free time is allowed of course, the only game I never played with them.
• kelvin0 7y ago
  I think it's great that they are able to be profitable in a great niche (25 years!). 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!
• ozzmotik 7y ago
  it's nice to see something like this. im personally of the mind that graphics really don't matter in video games; they are certainly nice, but you don't need state of the art, AAA high def rendering to make a video game compelling. i think ultimately the hallmark of an enjoyable game is how engaging and immersive it is, and how fluidly it exposes its mechanics to you and allows you a playground to exploit those mechanics.
• jlturner 7y ago
  My brother and I have been working our way through the Exile series, and while they’re old and rough, the game content is really good. They make you feel like smart figuring out some tough optional puzzle, and there is a great sense of exploration and internal mapping. 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.
• Goronmon 7y ago
  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 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".
  • rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    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 look like garbage. 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.
    • vidarh 7y ago
      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 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.
• tempsolution 7y ago
  There 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 * 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.
  • cosarara 7y ago
    Half Life doesn't look like crap. It looks dated. There is a huge gap between the way the OP's games look and how half life looks, because even though the 3D tech was worse and the textures lower res in half life, it had a proper art team behind it. A proper art team is expensive, and he doesn't want to pay for it. Fair enough. But just getting someone to look over the art all together and making it a bit more cohesive would be a huge improvement. The thing is, it seems he's paying different people to do different pieces and just putting it all together without any sense of direction. I think it's alright if you want to pay A to draw this and that, and then when A leaves pay B to draw this and that, but you should have B take a look at the tileset as a whole and ask him to make the pieces look alright together. Because right now it's a huge mess.
• segmondy 7y ago
  I think most people in this thread are missing the point. 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.
• JosephRedfern 7y ago
  Perhaps irrelevant, but I found the original message posted to reddit, and it ended with: > 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".
• vorpalhex 7y ago
  For the genre, I find the art style to generally be fitting. It's not a distraction. 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.
• soup10 7y ago
  Good art is expensive and he makes niche games. My gut feeling is that if he just improved the art without making sure the games appealed to a wider audience it would fail financially.
• jayd16 7y ago
  I think the main take away is Jeff is just not passionate about art and so it gets cut. Even when talking about art he seems to mostly be talking about technically advanced graphics and still not the art you can achieve with those graphics. This is fine. Play to your strength. The rest of the blog post is one of those soliloquies more to reassure yourself than anything, I'd say.
• gwbas1c 7y ago
  (nit) 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.
• kd3 7y ago
  Not sure if Vogel realizes this, but his games look like crap. Someone should tell him.
• crimsonalucard 7y ago
  There's a secret to art this person hasn't realized. Art doesn't have to be detailed to look good. Minimalism proves this. Those Geneforge games have just enough detail to look like shit. It's possible to scale back and keep the art good with less effort but better design sense. Take the game: Thomas was alone. The guy probably didn't hire a single artist yet that game looks way better than any gene-forge game. It's all in the style. The author of this article really just doesn't have a sense of style.
• nothis 7y ago
  I'm super happy that games that look and feel like those from Spiderweb Software exist. I think it's charming. But the fact that he feels compelled to write an article in defense of the art style is telling to me. I think it's not unreasonable to answer the headline question with "because they're stubborn". Their games look crap, not because of a lack of resources but because of a disrespect for visual design (it's not even "art", they could make a better looking game with colored squares). There's probably many, many ways to improve the look that have nothing to do with "AAA art". He fails to see how Baba Is You is a better looking game than any of theirs, simply because it's focused and has a good use of color and contrast. Any $10/hour freelance game artist can tell him that the problem with the games is a mismatch in detail, between background and characters, between resolution and texture detail. This makes tiles look either blurry or covered in white noise and together with a sever lack of contrast, makes the game look flat and unlit. Solving that doesn't require hiring expensive artists, it first involves acknowledging there's an issue at the core that can't be solved by sticking stuff on top of it. I see zero patience or passion for that and that's why their games look the same as 25 years ago (and I could argue, worse, since higher resolution doesn't do them any favors). Again, I have no problem with their games and them looking like they do but going into defense here is a battle they can't win. Their best move is to acknowledge that they don't care and do so with pride. Everything else just feels at best insecure and at worst somewhat disrespectful towards devs who care.
  • dwild 7y ago
    > 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. 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.
  • close04 7y ago
    The problem isn't going into defense, it's having an acidic attitude towards it: > 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.
• AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  And graphics disappear from your enjoyment of a game after about an hour typically, aside from those fleeting moments in "world" games where you get stunning vistas... And then return to hack hack slash shoot.
• mcguire 7y ago
  The link to the Small Business Council at the end: https://sbecouncil.org/about-us/facts-and-data/ https://sbecouncil.org/about-us/facts-and-data/ "Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the level of entrepreneurship actually has declined in recent years. That is, the number of self-employed in the U.S. has dropped notably. Incorporated self-employed fell from 5.78 million in 2008 to 5.13 million in 2011. It climbed back to 5.64 million in 2016. So, after eight years, the number of incorporated self-employed remains well short of the 2008 level. Unfortunately, the news is even worse when it comes to the larger measure of unincorporated self-employed. The number of unincorporated self-employed declined from 10.59 million in 2006 to 9.36 million in 2014."
  • Reedx 7y ago
    I wonder how much of that is due to our messed up healthcare system. If we fixed that, I bet we'd see a substantial boost because it's one of the most difficult aspects of starting and running a small business.
• proc0 7y ago
  A good artist will make anything look good, pixel art, card games, all the way to photo-real 3d (of course depending on the artist). What happens is that in general the first thing to be cut due to budget is probably the art since without function you have no game. Imho, indie games would do better if they "sliced" their game releases differently, such that art was never takes a back-seat as it is probably tempting to do. Many people think you only need good gameplay but in reality the art, aesthetics, music, etc. of any game is the invisible factor that people are influenced and only notice when it's broken.
  • brixon 7y ago
    I think this hold more true to the types of games I play, but a little less so to the types of games this developer makes. It sounds like he is targeting the D&D and retro gaming crowd. 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.
  • dwild 7y ago
    > 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.
• _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  I respect that. Crappiness is an underrated quality. I watched an interview with Barry Jenkins recently where he talked about his first short film. He talked about how the film had bad exposure, scratches on the film, weird color, etc. But at the same time, he still loved it, simply due to its uniqueness and rawness. There's this assumption that every artist wants to mimic the big budget people. Or not even big budget, just medium budget. That filmmakers want to make movies which are shiny and polished. But a filmmaker who tries to imitate a big budget production with a shoestring budget isn't going to get a polished film at a tenth the budget. They're gonna get a weird uncanny valley, kinda good looking film that isn't quite indie, isn't quite mainstream. And trust me, as a begrudging attendee of many small film festivals, it's not a good look. Contrast that to say, Stranger Than Paradise, which is remarkably simple and very obviously low budget. It's in black and white. The acting is a little rough around the edges. The sets are extraordinarily simple. The camera doesn't do anything fancy. Yet it works because it takes full advantage of its crappiness. It doesn't half ass quality, it full asses crappiness.
• cat199 7y ago
  enjoying watching people making the same arguments countered in the article without actually adressing the counterpoints - the square peg of 'maximizing superficial appeal for the most short term popularity irrespective of the personal cost' is so deeply implanted in some people's minds that they literally cannot comprehend doing things in any other 'round hole' sort of way.
• softfalcon 7y ago
  Constraint breeds creativity. Constraints ensure simplicity where there could have been excess. If you have less pixels to work with, it helps you edit your design to what is clear and truly necessary. It prevents bad patterns from emerging in the UI and game interactions. I applaud this developer for sticking to their guns, finding their niche and really making it shine. There is nothing wrong with building around a practical and dare I say it, nostalgic design aesthetic. "Make games you would want to play" is one of the mantras I repeat to myself whenever I'm tinkering with a game prototype. Clearly Jeff understands all of this and follows through with the delivery. Great article!
• ixtli 7y ago
  I would rather modern games look a bit more "like crap" and have even a 10th of the gameplay depth and quality of Spiderweb games than his games getting any better. I guess I'm also one of those people who grew up on the SNES and on Avernum and etc., but i know many younger people who feel the same as i do!
  • bachmeier 7y ago
    > I would rather modern games look a bit more "like crap" and have even a 10th of the gameplay depth and quality of Spiderweb games than his games getting any better. 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.
• tinus_hn 7y ago
  I don’t know his games but perhaps he could make it easy for his fans to develop alternative tile sets.
• acomjean 7y ago
  Honestly this rubbed me the wrong way. Almost like its a point of pride that his art is bad. 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.
• whiddershins 7y ago
  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.
• ErikAugust 7y ago
  Our game "looks like crap too": https://megacity.gg https://megacity.gg. It's supposed to be retro.
• AcerbicZero 7y ago
  The vast majority of games which I have sunk serious amounts of play time into often look mediocre, or worse. Its not that I don't enjoy high fidelity graphics, its just that those GFX's often come at the cost of mechanics, or replay ability. Not a fair trade in my mind. 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
• ahh 7y ago
  Somewhat off topic, but what's the closest thing to Avernum - a big, sprawly, kitchen sink RPG with a ton of backstory and fiddly combat - that I can play on my phone? (Not a tablet.) Growing up Spiderweb games were some of my all time favorites and I'd love one on the go.
• makecheck 7y ago
  One of the curses of games is that they start to feel “old” quickly; the faster you can develop new content, the better. It is a lot faster to add content with simpler art (and cheaper, with better consistency, etc. as article says). 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.
• nardi 7y ago
  “Because I have bad taste.” Seriously, it’s possible to make low-budget art that looks good. This isn’t it.
• ggggtez 7y ago
  > That means we have to double our sales to make up for it. 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.
• aresant 7y ago
  An incredibly good point is made by a user on Twitter that I hope is taken to heart by Jeff. 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 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)
• TheRealPomax 7y ago
  A nice related video is his GDC 2018 talk "failing to fail", over on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs 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.
• GhostVII 7y ago
  I largely agree with the post, but using "Baba is you" as an example I think actually goes against the authors point. The art in "Baba is you" is very simple, and would likely not take much money to create, yet the game still looks very nice (in my eyes, at least). It uses simple graphics very effectively, while the author seems to use more complex graphics, and as a result the game as a whole actually looks worse and less consistent.
• zapzupnz 7y ago
  Nobody: Developer: nuh-uh, it's you who's wrong! hAtErS gOnNa HaTe!
• haolez 7y ago
  This article worked like advertising to me. I feel enticed to buy his games now :) 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.
• mntmoss 7y ago
  Something that never seems to come up when one of Jeff's art defense posts come up is that an RPG has a considerably higher asset load than most types of games, not just graphically but all around. 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.
  • sprafa 7y ago
    If he was making huge money on these games, why wouldn't he invest I having better artists? Are you saying that the ROI for having better art is so high that he’s in a self perpetuating cycle so to speak? By keeping his games ugly he has no choice but to microbudget and on and on it goes?
• csours 7y ago
  The first games I bought online were Spiderweb games (Exile 2,3). I had to convince my parents to let me use their credit card. I got the code back in email to unlock the game, and I got to play the second half of the game! I remember agonizing over stats of things like the waveblades and halberds. 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. 0. http://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html http://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html
  • gipp 7y ago
    Oh wow, are you me? I also remember being young enough to think I could just find a way around the Shareware Demon (lol) if I tried hard enough. 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.
• ta7fh38f 7y ago
  I'd probably call Spiderweb games one template, with some variations. Not much has advanced in the twenty odd years I've looked at them from time to time. First one was OK, all others I've tried for a few minutes and been pretty underwhelmed with the progress.
• DonHopkins 7y ago
  Speaking of looking like crap, I was recently going through my old backups, and ran across an ancient forgotten installer for "The Sims Steering Committee" dated June 4, 1998, an early pre-release version of The Sims that we distributed internally at EA shortly after they bought Maxis, more than a year and a half before we released The Sims in March 2000. 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 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.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/31 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.armchairempire.com/Interviews/chris-trottier-the-sims.htm 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.
• davidscolgan 7y ago
  This thread reminds me of patio11's thread "What I'd Do If I Ran Tarsnap" where Colin took a strong contrarian stance and everyone raged against it and in the end Colin won from all of the exposure. 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!
• barbs 7y ago
  In this thread: people who aren't the developer's target audience complaining about the graphics in a game they'll never play.
• Someone 7y ago
  So, this firm has customers that want better graphics, but they’re not willing to invest in that. 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.
• DonHopkins 7y ago
  This article fondly reminds me of the Game Helpin' Squad's jawesome review of World Quester 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gy9hJauXns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gy9hJauXns
• adrusi 7y ago
  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).
• peterashford 7y ago
  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'
• sukilot 7y ago
  Nowhere in the article does he entertain the notion of finding an artist willing to join as a partner and go 50-50 (or 80-20) on equity/revshare. He only frets about the cost of hiring employees on wage.
• j0057 7y ago
  Gameplay is way more important than graphics. Source: played a lot of fun but crap-looking games in the 90s on a 320×200 four-shades-of-amber screen. Or what about the 160×144 Gameboy screen that also supported 2-bit color?
  • dagw 7y ago
    How good a game looks is not simply a function of the number of pixels and colors the screen can display. There where great looking games on the Gameboy and there are terrible looking games running at 4K on the latest GPUs.
• tripzilch 7y ago
  On the one hand, I totally get the business explanation he gave in the second half of this post. That's a perfectly fine reason and if this is how he makes his business run for all these years, that is impressive and more power to him. 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" ...
• markus_zhang 7y ago
  Bought all of his games and have to say I respect his decision. In small business you have to find the local maximum and stay there until it's drain dried and change course then.
• 8bitme 7y ago
  Big props to Jeff. 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"