5 ms·

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 d

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.
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  Undertale had really amateur art but it was cohesive and looked like someone actually cared about it, versus a bunch of parts-bin stock graphics some guy bought on discount. I don't doubt the guy is successful, but he doesn't really bring up a convincing argument for his position. He could be potentially be MORE successful if he invested a little more in visual aspects of his games. Reading an article about why it isn't a priority for him isn't that interesting to me.
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > He could be potentially be MORE successful if he invested a little more in visual aspects of his games. Covered in the article (and previous blog posts, I think): 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."
    - tripzilch 7y ago
      They really did look better, it's just that the vast majority of people didn't think so. Sounds like someone who worked at all the wrong things to "improve" because they don't listen to feedback.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > Undertale had really amateur art Not sure I can agree with that. Undertale had lo-fi art, but there was a lot of care put into it.
- user5994461 7y ago
  The video game market is very different today than it was a decade ago, or two decades ago. I wouldn't compare making and selling a simple game on CD 20 years ago vs today. Among other things, there are much higher expectations on graphics and it's a lot harder to make 3D world and assets than it was to make 2D sprites. Cheap games are also facing a fierce competition from a truckload of other cheap games and previous AAA titles. There are more games than people can play and why buy Game 2019 when Game 2015 is just as good and 75% off.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    And yet he's still profitable. That he's remained profitable through all those kind of changes suggests to me he knows his market very well.
eropple 7y ago
JV spends astonishingly little on art because his games don't make very much. His audience is small (I am part of it) and his audience values that particular kind of game way more than it does art--and the marginal return from making it look a little better to appeal to a little wider of a crowd is historically negative. He cited as much, and he's talked about his numbers in concrete terms before. 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".
- baud147258 7y ago
  I think the issue is that this particular game look worse than his previous games (of course here YMMV), which were done with lower budgets (not Kickstartered).
  - eropple 7y ago
    I do agree that Queen's Wish looks worse, FWIW. (I think the perspective is maybe not great.) But I don't know if this is actually a significantly higher budget game, though, rather than just one where he has the capital up front. Kickstarter-as-preorder is kinda what it's turned into for games. As such, I totally get the intense focus on not eating the seed corn.
    - djur 7y ago
      Semi-jokingly: he should just dig up the Exile I tileset he included a screenshot of in the article and go to town. IMO that's the best his games have ever looked, aside from maybe Nethergate (and some of the more artfully done Blades of Exile scenarios, of course, but that wasn't him). Vogel should peek over the fence at the adjacent roguelike community and do what they've done: custom tileset support. He's clearly not that invested in his games as aesthetic experiences, and that's his prerogative, but in the year 2019 it's actually not that uncommon for game communities to scratch their own itch in that regard when allowed.
ddingus 7y ago
Actually, he completely owned his mediocrity, and he cited cost and risk, as well as his own comfort with said mediocrity as reasons for continuing with it. 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.

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.

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
Undertale had really amateur art but it was cohesive and looked like someone actually cared about it, versus a bunch of parts-bin stock graphics some guy bought on discount. I don't doubt the guy is successful, but he doesn't really bring up a convincing argument for his position. He could be potentially be MORE successful if he invested a little more in visual aspects of his games. Reading an article about why it isn't a priority for him isn't that interesting to me.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > He could be potentially be MORE successful if he invested a little more in visual aspects of his games. Covered in the article (and previous blog posts, I think): 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."
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    They really did look better, it's just that the vast majority of people didn't think so. Sounds like someone who worked at all the wrong things to "improve" because they don't listen to feedback.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > Undertale had really amateur art Not sure I can agree with that. Undertale had lo-fi art, but there was a lot of care put into it.
user5994461 7y ago
The video game market is very different today than it was a decade ago, or two decades ago. I wouldn't compare making and selling a simple game on CD 20 years ago vs today. Among other things, there are much higher expectations on graphics and it's a lot harder to make 3D world and assets than it was to make 2D sprites. Cheap games are also facing a fierce competition from a truckload of other cheap games and previous AAA titles. There are more games than people can play and why buy Game 2019 when Game 2015 is just as good and 75% off.
- vidarh 7y ago
  And yet he's still profitable. That he's remained profitable through all those kind of changes suggests to me he knows his market very well.

eropple 7y ago

JV spends astonishingly little on art because his games don't make very much. His audience is small (I am part of it) and his audience values that particular kind of game way more than it does art--and the marginal return from making it look a little better to appeal to a little wider of a crowd is historically negative. He cited as much, and he's talked about his numbers in concrete terms before. 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".

baud147258 7y ago
I think the issue is that this particular game look worse than his previous games (of course here YMMV), which were done with lower budgets (not Kickstartered).
- eropple 7y ago
  I do agree that Queen's Wish looks worse, FWIW. (I think the perspective is maybe not great.) But I don't know if this is actually a significantly higher budget game, though, rather than just one where he has the capital up front. Kickstarter-as-preorder is kinda what it's turned into for games. As such, I totally get the intense focus on not eating the seed corn.
  - djur 7y ago
    Semi-jokingly: he should just dig up the Exile I tileset he included a screenshot of in the article and go to town. IMO that's the best his games have ever looked, aside from maybe Nethergate (and some of the more artfully done Blades of Exile scenarios, of course, but that wasn't him). Vogel should peek over the fence at the adjacent roguelike community and do what they've done: custom tileset support. He's clearly not that invested in his games as aesthetic experiences, and that's his prerogative, but in the year 2019 it's actually not that uncommon for game communities to scratch their own itch in that regard when allowed.

ddingus 7y ago

Actually, he completely owned his mediocrity, and he cited cost and risk, as well as his own comfort with said mediocrity as reasons for continuing with it. 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.