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> A proper art team is expensive, and he doesn't want to pay for it. Can't. The word you're looking for here is can't. The unit economics of making the sorts o

> A proper art team is expensive, and he doesn't want to pay for it. Can't. The word you're looking for here is can't. The unit economics of making the sorts of games that JV makes completely preclude it. It would be way easier to spend the money he doesn't make to get better art talent. This is true. It is also not very meaningful. And it's not that there is minimal sense of direction just for funsies--it's that you don't have that luxury when we're talking about the rates he's working at. I spent a decent amount of money, in the ballpark of what JV probably spends on third-party work for a game, trying to get freelancers--reasonably priced or, in reality, not so--to work towards a cohesive art style. That I did not ship that game (which is still in a 75%-ish complete state in my graveyard, it's my fuck-you-money project) is largely due to the difficulty of getting art to a standard I felt comfortable with. JV ships because that standard is lower than I was able to stomach. His games also happen to be really good, too.

nimblegorilla 7y ago
> Can't. The word you're looking for here is can't. I think the real term is "Not Invented Here Syndrome". This site has thousands of open sourced game assets: https://opengameart.org https://opengameart.org Here is an asset pack of 65 fantasy icons for $5: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/fantasy-rpg-icon-set-42707 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/fantasy-r... I suspect someone spending $200 and a day of searching could probably find most of the art needed for Queen's Wish. There's really no need for him to be hiring freelancers in the first place.
- kcbanner 7y ago
  Working with purchased assets is not so simple; there is no consistent art direction when you buy things from different sources. This usually requires an artists to do a pass and make all these disparate assets work together. Simply saying "just buy cheap assets" completely misses the point here.
  - nimblegorilla 7y ago
    Everyone already acknowledges the current art has no consistent direction. It makes no sense to pay extra money for bespoke artwork that looks worse than what you can get by just going to what's already available.
- eropple 7y ago
  Dude...have you ever tried to use OpenGameArt or asset packs in anger? The quality is at best "uneven", you'll still have the exact same "but they're inconsistent" complaints, and then on top of that you get people whining that you used off-the-shelf art. (Rather like "oh it's an RPG Maker" game, which is something that Zeboyd Games, another low-budget indie developer, gets all the time; they don't use RPG Maker, but that's another story). You can't make everybody happy. JV is going to more reliably make money by making his audience, like me, happy. Why should he change it?
  - nimblegorilla 7y ago
    Dude... I have and am using asset packs. If your design schtick is looking as cheap as possible then it's not very hard to get what you need.
- MammalWithLegs 7y ago
  Indie dev here who was been working solo on games for the last 3 years (nights and weekends) using the resources you're describing. You can get a lot of mileage out of those assets for not much money, but it takes a huge amount of time and skill to turn them into something consistent and usable. You can usually find art similar to what you want, but almost never: - in the correct aesthetic - the right size - with the proper animations It's a full-time job to find this art in the first place, to resize, to animate, to recolor, and apply effects to the art to help it match your desired aesthetic. And then it still is never good enough. There's a lot to be said for having someone produce art to your requests in a consistent style, even if the quality of the art is not extremely high.
- cestith 7y ago
  I think the key words here are "New Coke". When you change your focus from a loyal customer base and change key aspects of your product they prefer in order to chase a competitor's customers you risk losing your own base and still not picking up a substantial portion of the rest of the market.
cosarara 7y ago
Ok, can't. This doesn't change the rest of what I said, though: Have the freelance artist spend some time fixing up the tileset as a whole!
- eropple 7y ago
  I think you may not be grasping how tiny the margins here are. Where's the money come from to do it?
  - cosarara 7y ago
    We don't have numbers on the table, so we can't really talk about money. I am presenting what I think would be an efficient use of the money. Not paying a full time artist, not hiring an art director, just having someone with some sense of art fix up the whole asset directory a bit instead of simply asking people to do things generic like he says he does in the article. How much time will depend on the budget. This is just my idea, of course. Maybe he already tried it a bit and it doesn't give as much of a result as I think.
    - eropple 7y ago
      I don't know JV's numbers, but I know mine and a high-quality visual artist who speaks fluent/first-language English and has the sort of willingness to play nice with others' art can be $50/hour. And for a game like these, you're talking quite a few hours, you know? You can go offshore for cheaper, but then you introduce risk, and if nothing else, JV's model is to minimize risk as much as is possible.
      - zimpenfish 7y ago
        > I don't know JV's numbers http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-gam... covers "Geneforge 4: Rebellion" (tl;dr: average performer, $120k budget, almost in the black after 3 years.)

nimblegorilla 7y ago

> Can't. The word you're looking for here is can't. I think the real term is "Not Invented Here Syndrome". This site has thousands of open sourced game assets: https://opengameart.org https://opengameart.org Here is an asset pack of 65 fantasy icons for $5: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/fantasy-rpg-icon-set-42707 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/fantasy-r... I suspect someone spending $200 and a day of searching could probably find most of the art needed for Queen's Wish. There's really no need for him to be hiring freelancers in the first place.

kcbanner 7y ago
Working with purchased assets is not so simple; there is no consistent art direction when you buy things from different sources. This usually requires an artists to do a pass and make all these disparate assets work together. Simply saying "just buy cheap assets" completely misses the point here.
- nimblegorilla 7y ago
  Everyone already acknowledges the current art has no consistent direction. It makes no sense to pay extra money for bespoke artwork that looks worse than what you can get by just going to what's already available.
eropple 7y ago
Dude...have you ever tried to use OpenGameArt or asset packs in anger? The quality is at best "uneven", you'll still have the exact same "but they're inconsistent" complaints, and then on top of that you get people whining that you used off-the-shelf art. (Rather like "oh it's an RPG Maker" game, which is something that Zeboyd Games, another low-budget indie developer, gets all the time; they don't use RPG Maker, but that's another story). You can't make everybody happy. JV is going to more reliably make money by making his audience, like me, happy. Why should he change it?
- nimblegorilla 7y ago
  Dude... I have and am using asset packs. If your design schtick is looking as cheap as possible then it's not very hard to get what you need.
MammalWithLegs 7y ago
Indie dev here who was been working solo on games for the last 3 years (nights and weekends) using the resources you're describing. You can get a lot of mileage out of those assets for not much money, but it takes a huge amount of time and skill to turn them into something consistent and usable. You can usually find art similar to what you want, but almost never: - in the correct aesthetic - the right size - with the proper animations It's a full-time job to find this art in the first place, to resize, to animate, to recolor, and apply effects to the art to help it match your desired aesthetic. And then it still is never good enough. There's a lot to be said for having someone produce art to your requests in a consistent style, even if the quality of the art is not extremely high.
cestith 7y ago
I think the key words here are "New Coke". When you change your focus from a loyal customer base and change key aspects of your product they prefer in order to chase a competitor's customers you risk losing your own base and still not picking up a substantial portion of the rest of the market.

cosarara 7y ago

Ok, can't. This doesn't change the rest of what I said, though: Have the freelance artist spend some time fixing up the tileset as a whole!

eropple 7y ago
I think you may not be grasping how tiny the margins here are. Where's the money come from to do it?
- cosarara 7y ago
  We don't have numbers on the table, so we can't really talk about money. I am presenting what I think would be an efficient use of the money. Not paying a full time artist, not hiring an art director, just having someone with some sense of art fix up the whole asset directory a bit instead of simply asking people to do things generic like he says he does in the article. How much time will depend on the budget. This is just my idea, of course. Maybe he already tried it a bit and it doesn't give as much of a result as I think.
  - eropple 7y ago
    I don't know JV's numbers, but I know mine and a high-quality visual artist who speaks fluent/first-language English and has the sort of willingness to play nice with others' art can be $50/hour. And for a game like these, you're talking quite a few hours, you know? You can go offshore for cheaper, but then you introduce risk, and if nothing else, JV's model is to minimize risk as much as is possible.
    - zimpenfish 7y ago
      > I don't know JV's numbers http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-gam... covers "Geneforge 4: Rebellion" (tl;dr: average performer, $120k budget, almost in the black after 3 years.)