Game art and graphic design and how important they are to you

Boardgames
#9

Ratcatcher is one that I tried to look past. I really thought it wouldn’t bother me, but every time I reach for it to try it, I just struggle to follow-through

I remember looking into the first edition of Captains of the Gulf after hearing about it on the SUSD podcast, but the art just pushed it a little too far out of my interest (after hearing the not-quite-glowing coverage from Mattl and Quinns)

The Circadians: First Light as previously mentioned is not terrible, but there’s a lot of stiffness in the characters that leads me to look right past it.

And then countless Kickstarter covers have issues and I don’t know if I’m going to pick on any of them in particular; generally speaking it’s “the artist can comfortable illustrate people in 2 or 3 positions, so all of the characters have roughly the same stance/pose” or “the foreground detail is all quite good but the composition and backdrop look like it was composed in MS Paint”

1 Like
#10

I’m not a design person, but I do find I’m surprisingly sensitive to “the artist basically just did one page of characters, and we’ve composited them in different combinations and backgrounds”.

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#11

I got the pnp of Ratcatcher and a lot of it makes me twitch. But I did enjoy the amount of feedback from the designer who held his hands up to his amateur ness.

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#12

Hmm, that box cover for Circadians is pretty bad. There’s a comic style to it that does not work for me, I will agree (despite it being better than anything I can manage). The others look okay to me, though Captains is certainly bare-bones, from images I can find online. But maybe I’m just easy to please.

@RogerBW - considering the sensitivity you mention, what are your feelings on the card art in Undaunted: Normandy, if you have any? Since the artist basically uses the same pose for each unit type, but makes small changes to individualize each face and possibly a bit of difference in the clothing. It makes sense, as that way at a glance, you can easily recognize what unit it is, but since they went and named each card, the small art changes makes each one an individual rather than just a bunch of clones.

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#13

From something that just popped up on the BGG Kickstarter tracking geeklist:

It’s not terrible. But it’s not great.

Another. Serious issues with z-ordering (or maybe I’m just perceiving the scales of things wrong)

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#14

There is a (perhaps surprisingly) large amount of psychology and philosophy education in fine arts academia. Without digging in too much, suffice it to say there is no Arts Council deliberating on what constitutes “good” art or a “correct” composition. There are, however, natural inclinations with respect to how we’re wired, a lot of it well studied clinically, and the best artists know how to compose images that attract and lead the eye. You can train yourself to be “good” at critiquing art, but most people are innately skilled at pointing out good/bad art, even if they aren’t necessarily able to explain why.

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#15

I could not buy the 1st ed Glory to Rome, no matter how cheap. That’s how much I dislike the amateurish graphic design. Instead, I made English cards based on the much nicer Polish edition.

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#16

I generally agree that art/production I dislike won’t stop me from playing a game, it’s definitely a hurdle, especially when it comes to purchasing a game.

Part of that is that I’m a very visual person, and want “beautiful things” on my table (subjective of course), but it’s also am easy “filter”. There are simply too many good games to play, let alone buy, them all. So having an easy “that’s ugly I’m passing” test just helps.

I say that as someone who games exclusively at home, and am therefore the sole purchaser of games.

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#17

I’ve only played it on TTS and wasn’t looking at the cards in detail, but it didn’t seem terrible.

One that’s really blatant about it: Exodus: Paris Nouveau. There aren’t a lot of images of this, but you can get some idea from the cards in the middle here (next to the red and blue ones):

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Each card is a composite of:

  • number of runners (0-3; three separate images)
  • how large they are in the frame (1-5)
  • whether there are drones shining lights on them
  • whether there’s fire in the foreground

So basically all the art they needed was the background, three human figures, the fire and the drones, and out of that they get a layout person to make 80 cards. It feels cheap. (Similarly the lady with the long white hair, seen inverted next to the “Leader” token above, is the exact same art as on the box cover.)

4 Likes
#18

Okay, that’s definitely some cost cutting on art assets there. I remember seeing this somewhere and thinking the same thing. It does seem cheap and is off-putting.

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#19

When you start to reach Rocket Robin Hood levels of asset recycling, people really start to notice.

[EDIT] @COMaestro Roland MacDonald is one of my favourite artists in board games, particularly for characters. He’s not always used well; for example, the covers for both Undaunted games and Western Legends seem like gaudy composites rather than cohesive works. But he does some truly stunning stuff.

1 Like
#20

Is there any of you that sort of likes that “not so good” art that has a very board gamey feeling. I am thinking games like Pillars of the Earth or Village. It’s not great by any means, but it has a feeling of… belonging there?

5 Likes
#21

I can honestly say that I don’t look at art too much, I’m much more about the mechanics. I appreciate games that look spectacular, but unless the art is offensive I don’t think I’d ever not want to play something because of how it looks

#22

I grew up on that kind of art… for me it’s just what classic (YMMV on that label) boardgames look like. But there are good and bad versions of it. New Hansa Teutonica is pretty good:

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The details are clear, the background is a background and doesn’t blend with the game icons. The style is consistent. The font readable. The colors are clear enough and don’t “pop” too much.

I do like beautiful games, especially beautiful covers. But again what I think is pretty doesn’t necessarily convince the next person. I think quality of art and materials enhances a game for me and makes it more fun. If a game is really great, the art obviously doesn’t matter. But thematic art makes the game come together as a whole more easily. It supports the game while bad art detracts from it.

Art is incredibly subjective but as @VictorViper stated above there are some things about composition and colors that just draw the eye. Many of us can tell these things without explicit training. I think games are not just art though, there is a lot of graphic design here and good iconography is just as important as a pretty cover–even more so. The best game artists make both and are able to blend them into a consistent looking whole.

There is a reason Lacerda games by EGG are so expensive. On Mars has to be one of the best games I have from a art/design perspective (also the game itself is a piece of art–meshing together so many different systems and still achieving a consistent whole that can be played). I cannot think of another atm that is quite so consistent throughout the game.

We can tell when something is cheap because we know the recycled clip-arts and we see the repeated patterns and the bad blending of assets.

6 Likes
#23

All this talk reminds me of a burgeoning geek cafe franchise in the UK. My opinion is that their chosen colour scheme is an assault on the eyes and I really wouldn’t want to do anything in it.

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(back on topic) I’d take slightly wonky art in favour of good design and clear layout. Ideally both.

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#24

Just a variation on:

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I had to tag it with spoiler. Bad enough under a cloud pixels.

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#25

Clearly the supply chain crisis is hitting so hard in my homeland that stores can’t even buy coordinating furniture and paint.

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#26

The Dobble colour scheme

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#27

I was just thinking that

#28

Which Quinns intimated in a podcast is a best seller for it’s publisher by a long shot.

1 Like