Comment by Lazare
6 years ago
Meh.
The most cogent criticism of the original post, I think, was that he was conflating cheap art with bad art. You can (and some indies do) have very cheap lo-fi art that still looks good in context. He does not, which is fine, because it is hard.
His response to the critics was basically to double down on conflating cheap and bad. Which is a bit odd! How many times can you include a screenshot of a game with cheap, minimal (or even zero!) art that people still think looks good, and complain that people like how those games but not yours, and not realise that maybe there's something that sets them apart?
Again, it's not the quality of the art, it's the overall aesthetic, and that does not require buying more art, buying better art, or learning to do better art personally. Angband and ADOM are lovely games that do not have a pixel of art (or didn't originally, at any rate; I guess there's tilesets now or something?), and I'd a dozen times rather stare at ADOM than at one of Vogel's games.
That being said, he's still ultimately right. He is a one man shop, he has an established fan base, he's turning a profit, he's doing fine. He's quite right that hiring an artist (or maybe more relevantly, an art director) to try and fix the art problem is an unreasonable gamble. So...just stand up and own it. They're ugly games, the end. He's been very successful; he doesn't need to defend himself.
Some devs make very pretty games with terrible story and gameplay, and that's fine. They don't need to post rambling defences about how their game is really just like Dwarf Fortress if you just squint hard enough. Not every game has to be good at everything!
> he most cogent criticism of the original post, I think, was that he was conflating cheap art with bad art. You can (and some indies do) have very cheap lo-fi art that still looks good in context. He does not, which is fine, because it is hard.
You are conflating lo-fi art with cheap and/or bad lo-fi art. "Cheap lo-fi art that looks good" is not a thing, because the talent that can make something lo-fi also look good and, more importantly, provide good art direction for an extensive project is not cheap.
We are not talking a screen full of pixels or two. These games would require thousands upon thousands of art tiles, that all aim for a distinguishable, consistent and unique in overall style.
As you said, it's hard. That makes it expensive, in either time or money, or both.
> "Cheap lo-fi art that looks good" is not a thing
Dwarf Fortress was literally an exhibit in MOMA; it can look downright beautiful, despite being nothing but ASCII letters in different shades of colors:
https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjI1NTc0MSJdLFsicCIsImNvb...
> You are conflating lo-fi art with cheap and/or bad lo-fi art. "Cheap lo-fi art that looks good" is not a thing, because the talent that can make something lo-fi also look good and, more importantly, provide good art direction for an extensive project is not cheap.
And I would say you are conflating art with design/art direction. :)
> We are not talking a screen full of pixels or two. These games would require thousands upon thousands of art tiles, that all aim for a distinguishable, consistent and unique in overall style.
I mean, one of the examples given was ADOM: https://i.imgur.com/d0RpSnY.png
There's a lot of ways of solving this particular problem.
> that people still think looks good
I saw some people suggesting this last time, but I actually found the games referenced looked worse than his games.
I mean, you tell me...
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/691830/ss_d499ccc...
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O4qcf4H_x1k/XWRVHrVMvII/AAAAAAAAB...
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IBv08R44oKE/XWRSJefoKxI/AAAAAAAAB...
Stuff like this is pure opinion.
Especially if you compare to say, his latest Avernum series, I find this is the case. Personally, I'm kind of sick of pixel art and I find his style generally pretty good, if occasionally a little inconsistent, it doesn't distract from gameplay. Many of the referenced screenshots are against this upcoming title which has gone to a different style, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Although both Undertale and Celeste look bad IMO, they both use pixel art and it's not fair to compare pixel art after resizing it and destroying the pixel-level detail.
Maybe in screenshots they look bad, but Celeste looks great it motion. Lots of good lighting effects, motion effects, and other things that make it look modern.
Undertale has really basic art in certain sections (like in the provided screenshot), but it really ups the detail in a lot of areas (especially certain boss fights) that again, make it look modern and better then the authors games.
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A good example of low-fi "cheap" art fitting well in the overall aesthetic would be Papers Please (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papers,_Please)
That was also a one man production with outsourced art.
What would be examples of indie games that are "pretty" but have terrible gameplay?
Given the choice I'd opt for Jeff's games over something pretty and unplayable.
IMO Papers Please falls in that category. It has pretty graphics but almost no gameplay. Definitely nothing close to Jeff's games. It's a hit because it captivates you with art and dystopia, but in my book, definitely has no real gameplay that I can bare for more than 10 minutes.
He probably agrees with you, however he doesn't have the necessary eye for art to have cheap good looking art. _For him_, improving his art means he has to hire someone to do it, and that's more expensive than what he's doing now.
And what he's doing now works, so he keeps doing it.
Personally I see people post screenshots on here and I just can't tell what their point is or why it would matter, I also completely lack an eye for art.
What guarantees that lo-fi art is cheap to make though? It can easily take more time to generate good, minimalist art in 2d than modeling something in Blender.