Comment by deogeo
6 years ago
Reposting my comment from the duplicate thread at https://i.imgur.com/oPH7paD.jpg
![https://i.imgur.com/oPH7paD.jpg](/item/20804401</a>:<p>In the previous thread, someone made a good point - his newer games, with more resources spent on them, look worse than the old ones. Someone else applied pixelization/palletization to the screenshot of his new game, and the degraded quality made it look better: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/oPH7paD.jpg" rel="nofollow){kind=link}
Of course neither point is addressed, and he keeps pretending that the only way to improve is to expend more resources.
As also pointed out in the previous discussion, that's because he simply doesn't have an eye for art. He compares his game to the consistent-and-pleasant-to-look-at Baba Is You, because he can't see the difference, and so he doesn't even see there's a problem to be solved. We might as well try to explain the difference between blue and red to a blind person. That's why he can show a picture of dwarf fortress without realizing it looks better than his game. Going for a Caves of Qud look would also probably save him money - but he simply can't see that it looks better.
Actually I think he engages with your point pretty well. You say:
>he simply doesn't have an eye for art
and
>he keeps pretending that the only way to improve is to expend more resources.
But he says:
>By the way, for people who asked me why I don't just learn to do better art myself, this is why. To learn to do better art, I'd need to spend at least 6-12 months. (To think it takes less is insulting to artists.) I just don't have the time to not be writing games.
It seems correct that for him to develop an eye for art, would require him to expend resources.
How is he supposed to develop an eye for art? Listen to all the comments on his posts? I don't think so, random internet comments are rarely a good source of advice. Developing a taste for art that will actually improve his games will take time and study and possibly even trial and error. And applying that taste once it's developed will take even more time. And it seems totally plausible to me that he can't afford to spend those resources.
His argument is very specific to his own situation. But it seems likely to be correct about his own situation.
I still think he should just allow custom assets to be used. He has a dedicated fanbase. Dedicated fanbases will go out of their way to create and improve content if given the chance. Just look at games like dwarf fortress and minecraft. I don't know much about his games, but it seems like, especially with a kickstarter backed project, allowing custom assets would be the best of both worlds. He could release his game with its 'cheap bastard art' and fans would step in to make their own art. Which might help actually get him some new fans without any extra cost. Some people just like to customize things because they can.
I like that idea. But of course developing and marketing that capability would take time, and so would be another kind of risk (albeit one that could pay dividends for all future games).
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I am too, a programmer with a very bad eye for art. I still think there are several things that look like crap in his screenshots that are not art related, that are programming related, that he could solve without any artist help:
- The width of his grids are inconsistent. It looks like crap because he somtimes uses a gradient only on one side. Either make your lines single-pixeled or force gradients on both sides of a line.
- Talking about gradients, his fog of war could use some, that's where you want it, not on the abstract lines.
- The labels "Blessing" "Haste" overlap and create an ugly black line when they do.
- Actually having two labels of characters next to each other overlapping is bad design, not art related. A bit of thinking could probably solve it (replace it with small icons? Change the font for something smaller, typically a non-serif font? use a color code + mouse-over instead?)
But I have been there, thinking I was hopelessly art-blind and unable to improve the quality of my graphics. I just want to address one of the fallacies I used to fall for:
> To learn to do better art, I'd need to spend at least 6-12 months. (To think it takes less is insulting to artists.) I just don't have the time to not be writing games.
He does not need to do better art to make his games look better. He needs to spend a few days doing GFX improvement. The first time I indulged in not adding features to a 3D project I am doing but at solving the various graphic incoherence I saw (solving that transparency bug, finding a better skybox, tinkering with the lighting) after one day, that looked like a totally different program.
Oh, and another one as well:
"So, if I'm lucky, I get this pillar done for $50. Yay! One terrain type down. 999 more to go. But for Queen's Wish, I want 4 different pillars, to give distinct looks to four different cultures."
That's not being the "Cheapest Bastard In Indie Games". The trick in indie game is to reuse and remix as much as possible. Adding a sprite, changing the palette or the lighting, can easily give different styles to the same sprite. These are tricks that were used widely through all history of video games. Making 250 tiles and multiplying it by the number of cultures you have seems like a waste, especially when you admit that your game looks like crap. How adding more variety of crap will make it less crappier? Focus on other things!
In a way, he is right, yes - he would need to spend more resources. Probably on hiring someone with an eye for art. But how could he tell if that someone actually has an eye for art, if he doesn't have one himself...
I'm not sure he can develop an eye for art, however. He writes "To learn to do better art" - but it's not the doing that's the problem, but the seeing. How do you teach a sense of aesthetics? It seems to me more a matter of taste - you find a picture pleasing, or not. You may be able to learn why you find it pleasing, but the subjective experience itself is not a product of any kind of knowledge.
A proper musical education is pretty effective in teaching a sense of (musical) aesthetics.
You need to start from first principles, though. In music this is done eg by learning to logically develop independent harmonically coherent voices (rather than thinking in “chords”).
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> To learn to do better art, I'd need to spend at least 6-12 months. (To think it takes less is insulting to artists.) I just don't have the time to not be writing games.
That's such a strawman. He doesn't need to be a top-tier artist. He just needs to know enough to not suck at art. Diminishing returns means that he could spend much less time than that.
> > To learn to do better art, I'd need to spend at least 6-12 months. (To think it takes less is insulting to artists.) I just don't have the time to not be writing games.
> That's such a strawman. He doesn't need to be a top-tier artist. He just needs to know enough to not suck at art. Diminishing returns means that he could spend much less time than that.
Becoming a top-tier artist takes much longer even when the talent is there (intuitively, I would say a decade). The 6-12 months of intensive learning that Jeff Vogel claims seems to me a good estimate for the time that is required not to suck at art.
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I called bullshit on this too, a college course (50-100hrs~) teaches enough to identify and fix the more egregious mistakes his art makes.
> How is he supposed to develop an eye for art?
Which is exactly why the CEO of Ubisoft has quite an eye for art (he actually may have an eye for art, but my point is he don't have to...).
You can hire someone to do this, even part time, you can find someone to collaborate with that can do it too.
His arguments aren't correct argument. His actual argument is that he don't care and don't want to have better art. That's all.
It's nearly impossible to improve on something if you're convinced that there's no room for improvement and that anyone who offers constructive criticism is a hater. If you know you have a blind spot for something, getting constructive feedback from others would be useful. But there seems to be a strong amount of resentment from Vogel and a certain subsection of his fanbase whenever it's suggested that he might be able to do better. Such an attitude isn't conducive to improvement.
> Of course neither point is addressed, and he keeps pretending that the only way to improve is to expend more resources.
He didn’t write this blog post to address any of the criticisms; this guy comes across as a “my way or the highway” kind of guy (and hey, if he’s successful in business, good for him).
But he found a topic that makes people want to comment and upvote a lot, giving him tons of exposure, so he would be silly to not keep milking that as much as he can.
He might be sacrificing some reputation for the short term thrill of controversy.
That’s something we all should be wary of.
You do realise this is Jeff “Scorched Earth Party” Vogel?
http://www.ironycentral.com/scorchedearth.html
Keep on truckin’, Jeff.
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> Someone else applied pixelization/palletization to the screenshot of his new game, and the degraded quality made it look better: https://i.imgur.com/oPH7paD.jpg
I think that's pretty illustrative of Jeff's point actually. I, for one, can barely see any difference at all between these images and none of them look particularly "better" to me than the others.
I think the difference is day and night.
The lower resolution one looks worse, because when I see low-resolution art like that I expect to see pixel art, but it's just resampled high-resolution art. It doesn't exploit the non-point-sample reality of pixels to create the illusion of higher resolution like pixel art does.
The middle one changes the meaning of the green liquid next to the building. The original uses a bright saturated green, which is the standard visual code for "harmful to touch" (e.g. acid or radioactive waste). The modified version merely looks like dirty water. I haven't played the game so I don't know which is correct.
> Someone else applied pixelization/palletization to the screenshot of his new game, and the degraded quality made it look better
I can only speak for myself, but assuming the bottom SS is the real one, it looks the best to me.
My main problem with his games is that the interface feels clunky.
> Someone else applied pixelization/palletization to the screenshot of his new game, and the degraded quality made it look better: https://i.imgur.com/oPH7paD.jpg
I can’t tell which of those is supposed to be the “better” and which is the “worse.”
Which I suppose goes to show that this isn’t an issue for everyone
From the description of the filters applied, it feels like the bottom is the original as the palettization unifies the colour and the top is definitely more pixelated. But to me I like the colours of the bottom more and you can see some places (like the tent in the top right) where there's significant detail loss in the top one, which is also why I think it's not the original.
That said, there are some things that are improved. The inconsistent shadows and harsh differences in level of detail are very clear in the bottom one and not so much in the top one.
So I'm with you, I can guess which one is the original, but I couldn't pick a "better" one.
Those other versions don't look better, though.
Hopefully, your perspective dissuades others from alchemizing the author's rationalization.