Comment by codesushi42
6 years ago
Here is what the critics don't get.
You are game devs. You are Jeff's peers. You are not representative of his customer base.
Did it ever occur to the critics that Jeff's customers may not actually value the quality of artwork in his games all that much? At least not as much as the storytelling.
Even more importantly is staying consistent with what fans expect. It is called "branding", geniuses. If Jeff all of a sudden released a game with an artsy fartsy style, he'd be gambling his future. He might end up alienating his existing customer base by not giving them what they've come to expect, and his experiment may not work for acquiring new customers.
I am sick of armchair critics. Jeff has been doing this for a long time, and longer than all of these know-it-alls. Your opinions mean nothing. His repeated success does.
I don’t know. My guess is that the average gamer is less willing to forgive crappy art than the average game dev, because game devs have more experience dealing with works-in-progress that have unpolished graphics, and “seeing through” the graphics to the underlying merits. I could be wrong, though.
Certainly Jeff’s customers don’t value art too highly – or else they wouldn’t be Jeff’s customers! It’s a self-selected group. The real question is how many potential customers pass over his games because of the graphics.
Yes, the only way to answer that question would be for Jeff to make a big gamble. It makes perfect sense for him to not want to take such a risk. That doesn’t mean we can’t speculate about whether he would win that gamble if he made it. :)
>My guess is that the average gamer is less willing to forgive crappy art than the average game dev, because game devs have more experience dealing with works-in-progress that have unpolished graphics, and “seeing through” the graphics to the underlying merits. I could be wrong, though.
Thing is, the target market for his games is not "the average gamer".
This. This is niche-within-niche-within-niche level stuff. Gaming nowadays is insanely big market and there are endless weird niches for all kind of tastes. Businessmen like Jeff discover some specific niche and make living out of it.
I'm not sure. Look at the Hyperdimension Neptunia games, for example. Reuses a lot of assets, not really known for any graphical prowess, pretty much functional at best graphics. They sell a ton of them. Same with the Atelier games, they are pretty much decent PS3-level graphics but nothing fancy.
Or the Earth Defense Force games. I think once you get loyalty to a series, if anything change is a net negative. There's a lot more to go wrong than go right. Gamers are conservative by nature; if it works, keep playing it
Neptunia, Atelier, and EDF all have much better graphics than Jeff's games. The first 2 have a lot of well-drawn scantily clad girls, and all the graphics are nice. They're old-school, but very well done.
Jeff's games do not have that same air of quality. It's not just about techniques or style, it's about artistry.
Personally, that's fine. I value a game much, much more for its gameplay than its graphics. But that is certainly not true for the market at large.
And even for myself, if a game doesn't put in the effort to have good art, I assume they didn't put in the effort for the gameplay easier, as its a lot easier to buy good art than good gameplay design.
People do judge books by their covers, and Jeff isn't acknowledging that.
Having said all that, if I ever played any of his games, it was forever ago. I've looked at them and haven't seen or read anything that makes them stand out. People sometimes say they're great, but they never say anything that makes them sound special.
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Your comparisons are actually proving the opposite of your point. There's no way you can even approach the graphical fidelity in Hyperdimension Neptunia on Jeff's budget.
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My guess is that Jeff's customers are not average gamers. In all likelihood, they're people like me who have been playing his games for decades.
I'm on the same page, Jeff can ship whatever passes for playable art, I'm in it for his stories and interesting gameplay. I still remember opening that giant list of spells in Exile 3 for the first time, filling a good chunk of my 640x480 screen... nothing quite like it.
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> You are not representative of his customer base.
Sure I am. I buy and play a lot of indie games. My steam and PS4 libraries have hundreds of Indie games in them. The vast majority are pixel art or other low budget graphics. I commented in the previous thread saying that I don’t require fancy or expensive art. Hell, I’m perfectly cool with programmer art, but it needs consistency in style, colour and lighting. His art isn’t terrible, but its also not great and I actually did pass over some of his games in the past because the look just felt a little off.
So you’re almost his customer base?
The ones who buy these games are the people not turned off by the “style, color and lighting” deficiencies.
I looked at his games for the first time after the earlier post and am also not representative of his customer base.
I am also almost his customer base, along a different axis. I have very fond memories of Exile, and every time I am reminded I go to buy something new and remember that none of it is for Linux, and don't quite manage to check whether it works fine on wine.
This isn't a complaint, really - I have plenty to fill my time - just surfacing my experience. The art has never been an issue.
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Almost your customer base is where you look to expand sales.
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> but it needs consistency in style, colour and lighting. His art isn’t terrible, but its also not great and I actually did pass over some of his games in the past because the look just felt a little off.
I am not surprised and there are certainly more people like you. The issue is that, as he says:
> I am still super-bad at art. Always have been.
He knows his writing and game design can sell games. It is totally reasonable for him to stick to his strengths.
It would be nice to see better support for custom tilesets / assets built into his games, but that also takes time / money.
If you go up to a bunch of people doing a craft and you show yourself displaying extremely poor technique and care for the craft itself, those craftsmen will disrespect you, and they will be right. As an indie developer it's kind of tiring to hear all these developers constantly praising mediocrity and showing no will to improve their craftsmanship as long as they're able to make a living. You can also make a living and be extremely skilled and care about constantly improving, it's not an either/or situation.
That is just your opinion. But does it matter?
It is rare for any indie developer to be making any kind of "a living" from making games. The fact that Jeff does already makes him exceptional.
As a gamer, I could care less about whatever rubbish being claimed about his "technique" and "craftsmanship". His games are entertaining, unique, and better than most indies in my eyes.
>It is rare for any indie developer to be making any kind of "a living" from making games. The fact that Jeff does already makes him exceptional.
It's not that rare. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025672/2014-vs-2018-The-Shape This talk goes over how many games are doing extremely well at any point in time on Steam alone and it's actually hundreds of games. It's mostly a function of time and persistence for any individual developer and given that Steam has only been around for indies in a big way for about 8 years we'll start seeing more and more indie devs making a living over time.
>As a gamer, I could care less about whatever rubbish being claimed about his "technique" and "craftsmanship"
That's great, but your post complained about the actions of other developers towards him. I explained, from the perspective of a developer, why I received his message negatively. It's a message of mediocrity in an important aspect of the craft and it shows his lack of care for it. I couldn't care less about what gamers think, gamers aren't around me when I'm spending 10 hours a day every day in front of the computer coding. To make games you have to love the craft, and I won't think highly of peers who show no interest in the craft itself.
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I think Jeff is pretty invested in his craft in general, but it’s just that he focuses on making an ideal product with the resources and abilities he has available to him.
> displaying extremely poor technique and care for the craft itself
That is a pretty presumptuous thing to say about someone who has made a life making games which are loved by his fans. What's the skin off your back that this guy has different priorities for what he likes in games than you do? Why is it ok for games to lack a good story but not ok for them to lack good art?
> Why is it ok for games to lack a good story but not ok for them to lack good art?
Personally I think that both are okay. Even more so when someone seems to be doing such a good job on one of the aspect.
What's not okay is going around and arguing that you just can't do better than that. He could do better, he just don't care and I repeat, it's alright to not care.
His older post was disrespectful to all people that do take pride in what they do and want to improve it.
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Anyone with any aesthetic sense can point out how his games are lacking visually, so it's not that presumptuous at all. The effects of his game's poor art on his ability to run a business are another matter altogether that I personally don't care about.
As for priorities, people can have different priorities, but there are a few basics that in my opinion anyone can improve at with minimal effort as long as they try. Developing an aesthetic sense for what works together on a screen and what doesn't is one of those things. It's clear this guy hasn't bothered with this and in my view that makes him a mediocre game developer, which is a kind of developer that I will not look up to if I want to improve.
>Why is it ok for games to lack a good story but not ok for them to lack good art?
This can be a very long discussion but art is the one thing that is immediately visible to anyone. In some ways it's the most important aspect of a game. I don't have the same views on code that I have on art, for instance. With code you can get away with very poor practices and you can be very pragmatic about it because bad code is not nearly as visible as bad art.
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>As an indie developer it's kind of tiring to hear all these developers constantly praising mediocrity and showing no will to improve their craftsmanship as long as they're able to make a living.
Well, someone who made this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/760330/BYTEPATH/?curator_...
Shouldn't speak so derisively of Jeff's graphics.
This looks like a mediocre attempt of poor craftmanship and amateur graphics. It looks like a paint-over over something like Thrust with crude basic artwork...
See how it cuts both ways?
What's worse, unlike Jeff's games, where the gameplay and story are the important parts, this even has tired old mechanics and a trite shooter gameplay.
I've written about this game and the process of making it here https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/35 and here https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/31 if you're curious.
>See how it cuts both ways?
Not really. I haven't been in the industry for 25 years and I haven't written articles excusing my game's poor visual quality. I'm aware of my abilities and I'm constantly working on improving them. For instance, you can see the current game I'm working on here https://twitter.com/adnzzzzZ and generally people are responding better to its visuals than they did for my previous game.
If you find me 20 years from now making the same types of games and writing articles about how my games look bad and how it's actually all intentional then maybe you'll have an argument.
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I think that looks great, it is VERY stylized but it is consistent and definitely had a goal which is more than likely hit.
> You are game devs. You are Jeff's peers.
I am pretty sure the critics are not so much other game developers. It's armchair developers and people who don't actually sell games for a living.
Indie game developers that make a living from their games have a huge tendency to give other developers the benefit of the doubt.
> Here is what the critics don't get.
> You are game devs. You are Jeff's peers. You are not representative of his customer base.
You don't really think any of the people criticizing him online are game devs with a track record as long as his, do you? People falling into that very, very small category know exactly why he operates as he does, the niche his games fill, the financial tradeoffs involved, and so on.
If you read his previous blogs, particularly the kickstarter one - his fans were asking for a return to a topdown game rather than making it fancier. Looks like they backed that by taking his kickstarter 3x over what he was asking for to get the graphics done.
You can't argue with that!
> Did it ever occur to the critics that Jeff's customers may not actually value the quality of artwork in his games all that much? At least not as much as the storytelling.
> His repeated success does.
Nobody is questioning that at all. What we were questioning was his last post.
He was trying to justify not making better art using wrong reasons. The only reason he actually had was "I don't want to invest time into finding someone good with art and the market I want to target doesn't care for it either", but didn't want to say that.
This new post isn't better, he push even further, pushing with even bolder claims, $150000-180000 for an artist? Sure... At least he confirm how he works and that explains why the art is so bad.
This guy is clearly a genius in game design and development, it's sad that it's spend alone like that micromanaging the art, but at the end of the day, what matters is that he does what he likes and that's fine.
What's not fine is him that art isn't worth it, that it would means everything will go down, etc... while it's just that he don't care about it and neither does his market.
The art style looks fine to me. I don't get the big deal.
They're talking about the people that aren't his customers because they value art.
Selection bias. Jeff's customers are not representative of Jeff's would-be customers, like the ones he casually dismissed in his previous post.
No one is talking about "artsy fartsy", whatever that means (are Jeff's RPG stories "roley poley"?); they are talking about coherent colors and style and uncluttered non-distracting layout. Many/most successful indie games look decent not ugly, and not "artsy fartsy".
In his previous post, Jeff said that better art styles would increase his sales. So he doesn't feel that this would be gambling his future.
But in this new post, he points out that better art styles would likely mean he needs to sell 40k copies (wildly optimistic) instead of 25k (doable over a few years) and likely have to get some kind of up-front loan to pay for the increased costs of that art (he estimates an extra $110k). He suggests that would put the financial future of the (profitable for 25 years doing what he's doing!) company well into "gamble" territory.
Thinking about it like tech debt - there is a middle ground, to gradually improve his "tilekit" over time. He's willing to take the extra 6-8 months (which is roughly a $60-80k cash investment based on his $200k/20 months budget) to rewrite the engine, but not willing to spend one month per game to tidy up some of his worst art offenders.
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That's a question of how much he'll increase his sales, not whether his sales will decrease.
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No, in his previous post he said that better set would likely increase his sales, but not proportional to the increased costs and risks.
Right. That's not compatible with the idea that he's not changing the art style because he's worried it would alienate his existing customer base.
It would increase his sales, but by his estimate it would have to sell almost twice as many copies to break even.
Coherent art would cost him more than 3 times his current art budget.
Yes, my point is that Jeff doesn't think he needs to stick with the current art style in order to keep his existing customers.
> You are not representative of his customers.
I've been buying Spiderweb Software games since the Exile: Escape from the Pit shareware days.
So far, two of you said you were customers. The question would be, "Are you both a critic and representative of most of his buyers?"
For instance, he mentioned their games were popular with folks who were blind or couldn't see well. They'd focus on non-visual aspects more than visual. There's another crowd that likes the visual style of the game. Then, there might be some that don't like it but like it's other aspects. What the spread is on this would have a major impact on whether investing in better graphics would increase sales. They'd lose a bunch of money for nothing if the first, two categories were majority of buyers.
> For instance, he mentioned their games were popular with folks who were blind
That was a joke. (He was implying that his customers must be blind to not realize how ugly the game was.) His games are all turn-based, tile-based RPGs with a heavy emphasis on combat and exploration -- they're completely unplayable without vision.
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>Here is what the critics don't get. You are game devs. You are Jeff's peers. You are not representative of his customer base.
Actually I'd say that not only they're not "representative of his customer base", but they're also not game devs.
Most people complaining are unrelated to the industry (devs, but not game devs, graphic designers, etc), and don't understand the costs and tradeoffs.
I also see a game dev badmouthing Jeff's graphics in the comments here, when theirs are equally if not more crude.
Why do we keep repeating the line that he is "successful" and worth listening to? He has been at this for 25 years and nobody outside HN has ever heard of him. And no, being on the front page of HN does not make you successful.
> Your opinions mean nothing. his success does.
The opinion of the consumer is everything, and... graphics are easily the most important element of a game. This is just obvious common sense, even if game devs don't want to admit it. And posting a screen shot of dwarf fortress doesn't disprove that. If DF had graphics and a normal UI, it would have been a minecraft level success, even with the insane amount of bugs it has.
He supported his family making indie games for 25 years doing it his way, for me that counts as successful. In fact what is success is defined by him, and he considers it a success. Who cares who has heard of him.
Graphics are the most important element of a game for you, perhaps. Nethack's tile sets all make the game worse than its ASCII version.
He did a GDC Post Mortem - I have heard of him outside of HN.