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General discussion (archive)Being indie an excuse for crappy graphics?(167 posts)(167 posts)
(167 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 27, 2012
Speaking of shitty GFX, anyone noticed how most adventure games have awful graphics? I wan to try playing some of them, especially Wadjet Eye ones, but aesthetics are so goddamn awful. I'd be fine with that if it was as old as BASS, but for game released in 2012? Seriously?
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Aaron86: Are you really proposing a "your game must use this much video RAM" restriction on PC releases?
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gameon: I'm just saying that for instance, a game made for a handheld system is specifically designed for it. While a 100 hour plus rpg is designed for being at home.

If i was a dev, i'd put my game on a platform suited to it.
I like playing FF IV on my phone. I especially liked it while I was 16 hours in the bus on while I was traveling to Italy last month.
Post edited October 27, 2012 by IronStar
Posted October 27, 2012
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IronStar: Speaking of shitty GFX, anyone noticed how most adventure games have awful graphics? I wan to try playing some of them, especially Wadjet Eye ones, but aesthetics is so goddamn awful. I'd be fine with that if it was as old as BASS, but for game released in 2012? Seriously?
Presentation plays a big part, perhaps even more than the graphics themselves. A game from the 80's can look better than a throwback game from having decent presentation.
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IronStar: Speaking of shitty GFX, anyone noticed how most adventure games have awful graphics? I wan to try playing some of them, especially Wadjet Eye ones, but aesthetics is so goddamn awful. I'd be fine with that if it was as old as BASS, but for game released in 2012? Seriously?
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gameon: I'm just saying that for instance, a game made for a handheld system is specifically designed for it. While a 100 hour plus rpg is designed for being at home.

If i was a dev, i'd put my game on a platform suited to it.
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IronStar: I like playing FF IV on my phone. I especially liked it while I was 16 hours in the bus on while I was traveling to Italy last month.
With all due respect, FF4 isn't 100 hours plus. I was thinking of things like Morrowind and those types of games for my home pc game suggestion.
Post edited October 27, 2012 by gameon
Posted October 27, 2012
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azah_lemur: I remember the case of Another World, made "by a single man" and yet it was beautiful.
IIRC Chachi did the game design, coding and the vector based graphics but the stuff that really made the game beautiful - the backgrounds - were done by an actual artist who only provided those for the game which kinda proves the impact of having a real artist in your team.
Post edited October 27, 2012 by F4LL0UT
Posted October 27, 2012
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IronStar: Speaking of shitty GFX, anyone noticed how most adventure games have awful graphics? I wan to try playing some of them, especially Wadjet Eye ones, but aesthetics is so goddamn awful. I'd be fine with that if it was as old as BASS, but for game released in 2012? Seriously?
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gameon: Presentation plays a big part, perhaps even more than the graphics themselves. A game from the 80's can look better than a throwback game from having decent presentation.
Wadjet Eye gfx feels like I'm poking my eye with something sharp tbh...
Posted October 27, 2012
I personally love the "retro" 2D, DOS/8/16-bit aesthetic. But yeah, certainly some indie games do not utilize it well.

But that's also true for modern 3D games. Morrowind, for example, is one of the ugliest games I have ever played.

Making a visually appealing game is not about choosing the right technology, it's about how you use it. Same with any medium of art.
Posted October 27, 2012
I kind of understand why the indie games look that way, so I hope for a great story and a great gameplay instead, but now... the "retro" style if over-used in a lot of games lately, some of them do it right, with the exact feel and joy, but also a lot of them are doing it wrong. More like Atari 8-bit style... I remember the NES having better graphics, the best one I remember was the game "Batman: Return Of The Joker", it was almost like a 16-bit game... and actually, it was better than the 16-bit versions of that game :P

Now, back on topic, I agree with being indie is an excuse for "not so good AAA graphics style", but also, not an excuse for remaking the same games over and over (like the over-populated puzzle games, or arcade shooters). I expect originality, a good story and a fun gameplay. If it has good graphics and sound, that's a plus for me, so I would chose that game instead of others, and if it has gamepad (Xbox 360 gamepad) support, that's better.

Good graphics doesn't make a good game. The gameplay is more important.

By the way, I do enjoy pixelated 16-bit graphics style with modern effects and filters, in adventure games, classic RPGs, and others, but not too much the 8-bit graphics style... 16 colors is not enough for me... :P

If there are some Indie Devs here, take what I said as a positive criticism, or as a little advice... ;)
Post edited October 27, 2012 by Azrael360
Posted October 27, 2012
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IronStar: Speaking of shitty GFX, anyone noticed how most adventure games have awful graphics? I wan to try playing some of them, especially Wadjet Eye ones, but aesthetics is so goddamn awful. I'd be fine with that if it was as old as BASS, but for game released in 2012? Seriously?


I like playing FF IV on my phone. I especially liked it while I was 16 hours in the bus on while I was traveling to Italy last month.
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gameon: With all due respect, FF4 isn't 100 hours plus. I was thinking of things like Morrowind and those types of games for my home pc game suggestion.
I don't know, lack of in-game map drives me insane :P
On the other hand, I'm not sure how good is PSX emulator for Android is, but if it's good I see myself replaying Chrono Cross not too far from now. And that is quite long game. :)
Posted October 27, 2012
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azah_lemur: Take Braid for example.
Whose commercial version had an artist on board. As in I don't think it was Johnathan Blow who created the artwork that shipped with the game.

Indie devs have been making ugly games for years right back to when it was called shareware. Hell, the entire roguelike scene is centred around ascii graphics, and I've met several roguelike enthusiasts ready to argue why ascii is better than graphics.

Pixel graphics don't need professional artists if they're done right. People doing creative work usually have some kind of aesthetic feel and can do better, I think.
I've tried my hand at pixel art a few times. As a non-artist, believe me that it's harder than it looks. If I needed a creature, my options were either crank out an ugly sprite, spend forever making a decent sprite, or edit existing sprites like with most RPG Maker games. A developer who isn't already good at art would need to pay for good graphics.
Posted October 27, 2012
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doady: But that's also true for modern 3D games. Morrowind, for example, is one of the ugliest games I have ever played.
Are you sure that you would have called it ugly upon its release?
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doady: Making a visually appealing game is not about choosing the right technology, it's about how you use it. Same with any medium of art.
This.
Post edited October 27, 2012 by F4LL0UT
Posted October 27, 2012
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Azrael360: Now, back on topic, I agree with being indie is an excuse for "not so good AAA graphics style", but also, not an excuse for remaking the same games over and over (like the over-populated puzzle games, or arcade shooters). I expect originality, a good story and a fun gameplay. If it has good graphics and sound, that's a plus for me, so I would chose that game instead of others, and if it has gamepad (Xbox 360 gamepad) support, that's better.
I hope you understand that huge amount of AAA budget is used for shiny graphics?
Also indie game =/= originality. 95+% of it is shovelware.
Posted October 27, 2012
I think Hotline Miami does a great job for what it's trying to accomplish, same with games like Retro City Rampage. Don't see the big deal here?
Posted October 27, 2012
Tiny and big team: "We are a team of three programmers, two animators and one comic artist"

http://www.tinyandbig.com/team/

I thought the Tiny and big graphics were fantastic and vibrant. They reminded me of Psychonauts on ps2, and were on that level of graphics. It shows that decent graphics can be made with a small dev team. And a fun/original game too.

And Grimrock had a 4 man dev team, which also looked/played great.
Post edited October 27, 2012 by gameon
Posted October 27, 2012
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doady: I personally love the "retro" 2D, DOS/8/16-bit aesthetic. But yeah, certainly some indie games do not utilize it well.

But that's also true for modern 3D games. Morrowind, for example, is one of the ugliest games I have ever played.

Making a visually appealing game is not about choosing the right technology, it's about how you use it. Same with any medium of art.
Ever played early PSX 3D games? Crash for example? They look like shit NOW, with all those polygons sticking out, but they were pinnacle of technology back than. They just look ugly as we are used to fancy 3D.
Still, I would rather play Crash 2/3 than most of modern platformers, even though it looks like shit.
Posted October 27, 2012
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Aaron86:
Agreed. I also often look at some good sprites and tell myself "I can do that" and it turns out that I can. However, an artist would do it in ten minutes, I need at least five hours. In the context of a whole game it basically means that you NEED an artist because of the time contraints. Also my experience is: an artist always does it better (unless he's really crappy, of course). When I'm really proud of my work I know that a real visual artist would create something much more beautiful in shorter time. Many people don't seem to get that.
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gameon: Tiny and big team: "We are a team of three programmers, two animators and one comic artist"

http://www.tinyandbig.com/team/

I thought the Tiny and big graphics were fantastic and vibrant. They reminded me of Psychonauts on ps2, and were on that level of graphics. It shows that decent graphics can be made with a small dev team. And a fun/original game too.
Tiny and Big looks great because the whole team is smart. It's a perfect example of proper use of technology. They knew their technology and chose the right content which would provide beautiful results with comparably small effort. I'm not a huge fan of Tiny & Big but I have to admit that in this aspect they've really surpassed many experienced professional devs.
Post edited October 27, 2012 by F4LL0UT
Posted October 27, 2012
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azah_lemur: Now...don't get me wrong. I really enjoy the whole "indie" renaissance as I like to call it, as many great games are coming out without the horde of shareholders and committees to satisfy BEFORE the gamers.

First some explanation so that you know where I'm coming from...

I know that the general argument is that the game needs to be playable and fun and only later beautiful. I can't agree wit that. Now, I am totally against the whole tech wars when it comes to graphics. Games don't need photorealism, nor some ubershaders or other post processing. But still they should be aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.

Now, indie games today seem to go through a "retro" phase where they go back to the 8-bit era style. For some it works well, but some seem to make it an excuse for having shitty graphics. And I don't mean it in a way that they don't use awesome shaders. Skyrim is beautiful imho, and I've seen some say that it's ugly because it's not using state of the art technology.
I've seen some screens of 8-bit stylized games on greenlight or the Hotline Miami title here. And frankly I don't like the look of them. I realize that the gameplay may be great, but the art design feels lazy and rushed.

The NES had some beautiful games, with very nice art so there's no excuse for such bad pixels.

I wonder if they just want to make the impression "look, it's pixels, it's retro, it doesn't have to be pretty" and count that the younger crowd doesn't realize that the art style is pretty shitty...

But even non-pixelated games suffer from that. MacGuffin's Curse claims to have "charming hand-drawn art", but come on...it was clearly drawn by someone who can't draw and it shows...

Maybe I'm weird, but I sometimes can't take pleasure from a game that plays great, but has unappealing visuals.
I totally agree with you. Graphics should never be something that hurts the eyes even if we are talking about an indie game.
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General discussion (archive)Being indie an excuse for crappy graphics?(167 posts)(167 posts)
(167 posts)