How much does the cover or poster image of a game impact your interest in it?

Clearly it is a promotional thing, that at times can go wrong I guess ... it can certainly happen that way for me.

Take the main poster image for Rimworld. The guy in between the two girls looks corny as and a jerk, and it puts me right off the game. So much so, that I haven't even bothered to investigate it. No way I am gonna put up with having to see that dude all the time. It's bad enough that I see that image at GOG as much as I do, when I browse the main page.

I wonder how much a publisher thinks about images that can put people off. Surely it makes sense to play it safe.

My apologies to anyone who looks like that dude in real life. ha ha ha

if something catches my eye i'll look at it.
so it definitely has an impact. i'm sure there are good games i've not looked at simply because they never stood out and i just skimmed straight past them.
ofc if i open the page and it looks disasterous there then i simply close the page.

I bought Fallout based on the box (without even opening it and seeing the game description) and the byline. At the time, postapocalyptic science fiction was my favorite. Before it became Zombies and religious propaganda. I was not disappointed. On the other hand, Wasteland's box art and vibe were the same, and I don't like Wasteland 1 much at all.

I've also bought many other games based on pretty cover art, mostly crap games that I later regretted. I've even bought games knowing that I would hate it based on the genre/game description.

So yeah, cover art (or, in the case of gog, promotional art on the release page) has way too much influence on me. I'm an idiot.

Theres a whole lot to be said on this topic, but I'll simply start with one thing: the art or marketing department of any reasonable sized publisher and up would likely think of angles like that (and of course the artist should), but its often not in the brief before the work even begins.

Indies / self published are less likely to consider this unless they have a background thats touched upon it before (like having spent years in the industry). Add to that lower budgets and the bottom dollar being the budget for art (or even "exposure") and sometimes you get something that doesn't even reflect the game at all.

Theres plenty of info (and some studies) out there on this kind of thing available regarding album and DVD covers, movie posters etc if you want to dig further..

Edit: I should add, I think the worst offenders in this area are people self publishing on Amazon Kindle, and book publishers whose covers are a range of dodgy stock images and tired fonts.

Actually you will when setting up a new game - but only then.

Well, I guess, that shouldn't happen all too often.

certainly not once you've gotten used to the game, though restarting isnt uncommon at first

Of course it has an impact, though I think it's lessened in this age of digital purchasing. In the old retail shelf big box era, the product had to try to stand out on limited shelf space. Now they use banners/posters on digital stores sure, but the user then has easy and quick access to screen shots, gameplay videos and reviews- so the benefits of an attractive poster wear off quicker. Whilst in the old days the artwork on the box was all the user often had to go by.

This reminds me of that old game "Barbarian" from the late 80's I think it was. They used a popular page 3 girl in bikini on the cover, but had no money at all left for marketing. So the marketing guy himself made "official" complaints to every conservative newspaper in the country, describing this video game with naked flesh on the cover, corrupting all the countries youth. The newspaper ran with it and gave free advertising, then everyone had to have the game after that. There's a moral in there somewhere.

Yep, seen plenty of that crap.
Always makes me think - What were they thinking? Do they really want you to buy? How much effort did they put in, after all that writing effort? ... and perhaps the most important element. But that then begs the questions - Why so prominent? And why take a risk with a non essential?

Well, for me it wasn't just the front cover artwork, it was graphics or screenshots on the back of the box as well, that played an important part in my purchasing. So I'm not sure things have changed all that much. Sure you can get greater promotional material now, but often they screw it up, by just showing pointless propaganda videos and even screenshots.

The cover image and or title still determine for me whether I look any further. Especially as we now have products overload ... just so much to wade through now. Perhaps that is more evident at Steam than here, where we have substantially less games available and being promoted at any one time.

Anything that helps divide the overwhelming amount of games into check and don't check piles is still helpful, and first port of call is the cover or poster image and the title.

So if it looks crap and sounds crap, then unless you have another factor involved to override that, guess what pile it goes into? That factor can be a whole bunch of possibilities of course.

I do think covers do have an impact.

Back in the day, it was impossible to not notice covers like Unreal, Quake, Diablo II, Doom II, System Shock....

Nowadays, with a lot of generic art style floating around, anything with a nice art quality stands out.

No Man's Sky art style is beautiful, the Wonder Boy Dragon's Trap remake also has a great style.

When I was really young the box art for this game made me buy it:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/577549-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-manhattan-missions/images/116752


The game wasn't great, but I still have that box.

When I was young, you better didn't fall for the box art. ;)

To be honest I never really thought about it much.
But to me it works more on a subconsious level, if a lot of work went into creating the cover/packaging it's generally a reflection for the rest of the product.
The same goes if it looks generic or boring.