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🦇 Hexavier 🎃
@xavierck.com

I think Nick's right, and there's value in seeing all these amazing looking games... but! I agree that game art direction has gotten worse. Because all the limits are essentially gone these days, there are very few technical hurdles forcing people to make good art decisions.

Nicholas Kole - LBX #636@nicholaskole.bsky.social

A friend recently was reflecting that they felt art direction in games has gotten generally worse. I think it's a good use of our time & energy to celebrate the fact that while there are a lot of whiffs in the world today, the recent era has also seen some of the greatest of all time

11 reposts59 likes

🦇 Hexavier 🎃
@xavierck.com

I'm not talking about a year of grey slop, I'm talking about the overall trend as art direction has become decoupled from gameplay design and technical constraints over the past decade or so It used to be that compromises absolutely had to be made, but now the ship is being driven by the money men

Nicholas Kole - LBX #636
@nicholaskole.bsky.social

I agree with you that the slop is a nightmare, the money men are heinous aliens with the worst intentions, I just really don't think there's proportionally more bad art direction decisions being made than there were before when you look beyond AAA...I think we're doing better than we could be

Nicholas Kole - LBX #636
@nicholaskole.bsky.social

I feel like the era I graduated into was a genuinely worse time for video game art taste writ large, and it stayed that way until gradually project by project we proved that the world didn't want uniform brown sludge to be THE defining look of gaming

🦇 Hexavier 🎃
@xavierck.com

This is a problem in both film and games, but it's also bleeding into illustration, animation, comics, basically all the creative industries We've reached a point where making pictures is easier than ever, so all the barriers that held you back and forced you to work smart are dissolving

🦇 Hexavier 🎃
@xavierck.com

AAA developers are no longer tasked with coming up with an art style that fits gameplay restrictions, technical budgets, and art team capabilities The Good, Fast, Cheap triangle for video game graphics capabilities is going away, so suddenly high fidelity realism has become the default

Chapy
@chapyguy.bsky.social

This reminds me of something the devs on Doom 2016 and Eternal talked about that was cool. They tried very hard to optimize all their assets as much as possible so 2016 and Eternal especially could look great and run fast. Shame Dark Ages changed to ray tracing always on

Dan Johnson, 💀Socialist💀
@coil.bsky.social

I don't think the triangle has gone away, it just changed shape. It's easier to hit "fine" without sacrificing speed or cost, so studios are less likely to invest enough in "good". But "fine" is really just "engine defaults" and everything looks like AC or Fortnite.

Dan Johnson, 💀Socialist💀
@coil.bsky.social

To twist the analogy further, the "good" axis is probably still the same length, too - investment in quality has even more potential than it used to, but you have to sell that to the penny pinchers. And that counts for everything from VFX (Control) to fidelity (007) to art direction (MIO).