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. :)
Thing is, the target market for his games is not "the average gamer".
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
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.
im talking white text on a black background.
the gameplay was and always will be much more important than the graphics.
There's 13 people listed as working on graphics. That's legitimately pretty small for professional games... but it's still huge compared to what Spiderweb can afford.
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.
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.
This isn't a complaint, really - I have plenty to fill my time - just surfacing my experience. The art has never been an issue.
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760
That said, I would not fault the makers of Planetary Annihilation for prioritizing bugs according to the size of their customer bases.
Maybe. And more to the point, even if it were often viable it might not be in a particular case, and the developers likely have a better sense of that then I do. Which is one part of why I'm not complaining.
> Planetary Annihilation made a Linux version and despite representing only <0.1% of sales Linux users accounted for >20% of bug reports[0]. That's pretty damning.
Damning of what?
Daming of the economics? Those numbers could hold despite it being tremendously profitable - it depends on how many bug reports there are relative to sales, how much you're spending per bug report, etc. It's fundamentally looking at the wrong thing. What portion of Linux users had issues? If it's high, maybe that's a big reason you didn't get more Linux sales.
Damning of the platform? Insofar as it's the fault of the platform. It's true that there's fragmentation. It's also true that less effort is often put into the Linux ports, and there are nonetheless plenty of games that I can play without problems.
Damning of Linux gamers? Submitting a bug report is a virtue, not a vice.
Damning of the developers? I don't think that's what you were saying.
These days, though, I prefer the iPad versions when available.
You only expand sales if you have the money/time to invest in doing the things to expand your sales. And even then, it's a risk (they might not expand).
Go on one of the colour palette generators and create a colour palette to stick to for each level. Or use one of those photo to colour palette tools. He doesn’t have to learn about colours himself, he can rely on the tools to get him a palette.
Pick a position for the sun/light source and draw shadows on the opposite side of objects consistently.
His style is already consistent enough so those two would probably be all he needs to do.
Then again, if he’s happy with his sales figures and doesn’t need to expand into the almost-customers then fine, it’s his game and his call after all.
"Picking out a few colors" is not something that's easy if you are not an experienced artist.
Sure, he could probably learn to do it, if he spent some time learning how to do it, but he needs to budget his time, and he decided that story / gameplay is more important than fancy graphics.
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.
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'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.
Also, who are you to be the judge of one's technique and craftsmanship?
Apparently enough people enjoy Jeff's technique and craftsmanship to continue buying his games. And that's all that matters.
I think we're just talking past each other. I'm explicitly saying that from a developer's perspective that's precisely not all that matters. From your perspective as a non-game developer you're right, but if you're going to address game developers and say that they're wrong you should consider their perspectives as well.
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?
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.
Maybe he can't do better than that? Maybe not everyone can get good enough at art to make decent looking modern games on a tight budget? Using contractors well requires artistic skills so that doesn't solve the problem.
And don't come with the bullshit "Everyone can become great at X, it just takes practice, see I sucked once and now I'm great!". Sure you will never be great at something without practice, but it doesn't just take practice it takes a level of talent as well. Some people are just doomed to be mediocre at some things.
> His older post was disrespectful to all people that do take pride in what they do and want to improve it.
No it wasn't. It was about him not being able to make better art on his budget. Not about others not being able to make better art with similar budgets.
That's absurd. It doesn't require artistic skills, all it require is trusting them to do a good job. There's plenty of ways to confirms they are good at what they do.
> It was about him not being able to make better art on his budget.
The thing is, he can do better art with his budget, he just don't want to and don't need to.
He said it himself multiple time that he don't want to invest time in that. He said it himself in this new post that his latest game was much longer to complete because he invested MONTHS in a new engine.
He can do it, he just won't.
He currently uses contractors. What exactly are you arguing? That he is bad at using contractors, but that lack of skill is separate from his lack of skill in art?
> The thing is, he can do better art with his budget,
How? I am sure he would love to have better art at no cost, so please explain these mysterious methods.
He use contractors to do his graphics, not to do the art direction. He choose how to do them, when to do them and how much effort to put in all of them.
> How? I am sure he would love to have better art at no cost, so please explain these mysterious methods.
I already say it on the following paragraph.
> He said it himself in this new post that his latest game was much longer to complete because he invested MONTHS in a new engine.
Based on his budget, that's quite a bit of money spend for that. It would be easy to take some of that money from his budget and instead invest it on art.
That's also not considering that he most probably pay more than needed for some of its graphics.
The fact that he think it's worthwhile to invest months into a new engine show why an art director will help greatly. As a developer, he knows how building an engine is an investment that will gains more in the long term. In art, he clearly doesn't know much and don't want to know more by is own admission. He don't know what deserve more budget, what deserve less, what can be done to get a good look for less. Another comments gave a link to a picture of someone that did a few tweaks to one of its screenshots and it was already so much better. It was mostly color corrections.
There's so much he could do, that he doesn't. It's not that he can't, it just that he won't.
Again I'll repeat myself from many others comments, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to get better arts (at best it's sad to see that its stories won't be seen by as many people, but that's not a requirement at all). The only thing I believe is wrong is that he act like it's not his choice, that he legitimately can do nothing about it.
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.
Calling his art bad is not presumptuous. Saying his has "extremely poor technique and care for the craft" is.
> 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.
You may not want to make games that look like those he makes, but that doesn't mean there isn't something (probably quite a lot) you could learn from him about integrating mechanics and world design.
> In some ways it's the most important aspect of a game.
Visual art may be critical to a game reaching widespread success.
However, as someone who spent a large part of their youth ensconced in MUDs, I disagree whole heartedly that (visual) art is needed to make a good game.
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.
>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.
No, just comments pissing on the work of others, who have managed to be in the industry for 25 years.
I don't get how somebody who does this:
https://twitter.com/adnzzzzZ/status/1148009596801507329
Gets to complain about the graphics in Jeff's games.
>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.
What if I don't find you 20 years from now, because you didn't make it and quitted the industry?
If someone manages to do something for 25 years they're somehow immune from criticism? I don't think that follows.
>I don't get how somebody who does this: >Gets to complain about the graphics in Jeff's games.
People generally decide to get into a craft like game development because they think they can do it better than what exists out there. This sense is what guides you and what keeps you moving forward. But there's a gap between your sense of what is good and what you can actually create with your current abilities. And this gap can only be diminished by working and creating new things all the time. It takes time and patience.
I'm constantly in the process of improving my abilities and I'm happy with my progress. I know where I am and where I want to go. But when I see another developer simply say that they have given up on this process in some fundamental way I will view that with disdain because I see it as a failure, which it is.
So, you get a free pass at crude graphics because you're "constantly in the process of improving" and will "get better in the future", but veteran developers, with fans, many titles, and 25-year old careers don't, even though they have perfectly good (not to mention objective and spelt out in 2 posts) reasons for not investing in better graphics, and their whole genre is not about graphics but gameplay/story anyway.
This is Dunning-Kruger meets entitlement meets rudeness.
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.
> 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.
You can't argue with that!
> 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.
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".
I don't think people get that making something a little less sucky doesn't really result in appreciable sales. Even if he improves the graphics a little, it's still going to be a dated text-heavy PC RPG that is based on a certain time. Like, if you don't enjoy retro styling, the difference between a game like The End is Nigh and Iconcolasts isn't really going to draw you in, nor would End's simpler graphics be an issue. Maybe a huge stylistic increase like Hollow Knight might though.
Coherent art would cost him more than 3 times his current art budget.
I've been buying Spiderweb Software games since the Exile: Escape from the Pit shareware days.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.