Does Unpolished Placeholder/Pre-Alpha Assets Help Sell A Game?
polycounter
Have an interesting discussion with a programmer friend of mine.
I was always of the mindset that publicly showing hastily made "placeholder" assets were detrimental to the game.
Other developers feel that showing something that sort of resembles the game, even with sloppy textures, and basic colours will really help to visualize how a game is made, and makes it easier to develop a following.
What do you guys think?
I was always of the mindset that publicly showing hastily made "placeholder" assets were detrimental to the game.
Other developers feel that showing something that sort of resembles the game, even with sloppy textures, and basic colours will really help to visualize how a game is made, and makes it easier to develop a following.
What do you guys think?
Replies
We tried to implement grey box play tests at one studio but the bosses just got frustrated and insisted we continue bringing levels to a near finished state before they could decide whether the layout was fun or not.
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It really depends on what you are trying to sell and where. I'd recommend polishing a level or area, or creating a vertical slice, if you are trying to sell the game as a whole package, on kickstater or otherwise. If you are trying to sell your games as a mechanics based game, or a proof of concept, it doesn't matter as much. Antichamber to me looks like programer art, but it doesn't need a polished art pass.
Thats the image that sticks in there mind when they remember your game.
I have a good number of friends who are huge God of War fans, owned every game in the franchise. But when Ascension was announced and they showcased Multiplayer first and didnt show any single player component that completely turned them off from it. They never got the game and never realized that there was actually a single player portion to the game. The first impression was that the game was just a MP game and didn't bother following it from that point on.
Its another reason why studio pay gobs of money to have a beautiful trailer done by Blur before they show any gameplay. People just see that gorgeous pre rendered trailer and are like, omg I want that game!
This has been my experience 100%.
Also, rough characters and assets let the players use their imagination to fill in the gaps. Like rough concept art.
Do you guys think you can develop a following for an indie game with polished concept art, and Greybox placeholder gameplay videos?
Yeah, as long as you had a mockup screenshot of what you want the game to actually look up.
Here's an example
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/harmonix/amplitude
Only gameplay video of the last game, that came out on the PS2. Only new art is concepts and zBrush.
Well anything is possible, but some things are going to work better than others.
For example, take a look at the sort of stories that get picked up on rockpapershotgun. Go through their archives a bit and pick out the stories that are about "this new game on kickstarter." I think you'll find most of them have a polished trailer. In fact, it seems to be the norm now for people to put out a trailer that looks like a release trailer first. Even if they don't have a solid game behind it. Those are the sorts of games that get the most funding/interest.
I think it's pretty rare to just see concept art for a new game announcement. And I've almost never seen a grey box placeholder video.
I think the most effective way to build up a following is to get together the best assets you can, and do a game announcement blitz all at once and try to get your story picked up in as many places as possible. Focus all your PR all at once. And for that, you need some killer assets to show off. I don't think concept art and placeholder gfx is enough to get interest at the maximum amount of gaming news sites.
edit: Zac's example is an established company. Totally different than an indie.
when you are going to kickstarter you are bringing the sizzle not the steak as depressing as that may sound, you only need to give them a slice, essentially a partial level but it needs to look final to near final, you can explain the future features over the sizzle, demonstrating part of the steak thats yet to be fully cooked.
Expect your customers to not get it the same way as your peers, if you showed a movie trailer and it had some credited actors, some half made stages, and showed you the wardrobe, would that make you want to see that movie? while a fellow director might say, you have everything you need to make a great movie, you have lost the customer entirely.
so this is why you need to demonstrate the sizzle to the public, not the steak.
If you have something very compelling, yes. Take the Wolfire guys, they have a huge following, but have been showing alpha/beta/placeholder stuff for years. Awesome procedural animation system though, which is their thing.
Whats your thing?
I do agree if you want to get some traditional marketing done, you need to be able to provide the press with pretty pictures.
Yea, but those are established studios once again. They have hundreds of thousands of followers that eat up their every word on social media. We're talking about building a fan base from scratch. You've gotta reel em in with something exceptional.
Not sure how well it would have been taken by the publicity back then tho.
Both can be pretty important though, while there are gamers who will throw harsh judgement at a game with low quality placeholder art, there are still a ton of people who will hate on a game that uses solid, blocky, untextured geometry placeholders too. I've been reading all of the comments on every UT4 video I've watched on both youtube and I've also read comments on sites like reddit, and I see quite a few people who don't understand that the "art" of these levels are placeholders.
I think if you have high quality placeholders like the weapons of UT3 for example, then there's no reason not to recycle them (animations also, for example) but you shouldn't go out of your way to make something you're going to replace anyway look less ugly.
Bazinga.
Placeholder items do not really help sell a game in the marketing sense. anything that looks unpolished is usually a turnoff unless its a white object that is clearly a placeholder.
What is really beneficial about placeholder items is that it gets the ball rolling... Its a quick way to get all the technical stuff down in the game and working.
for example:
-proof of concepts ; is that idea really what we want, does it suit the gameplay needs. if its not working all we are trashing is a temp object, which didn't cost a lot to make.
-size placeholder ; are usually very helpful to make sure the base mesh has the right proportions, if an artist is going crazy in zbrush, baking, etc.. he has all the basic info to upgrade that asset.
-get testing asap: If something like a cover or barrel or physics objects is missing, that will often delay the work of the designers, lighters, whoever else is waiting after the asset to get some testing done
so imo white box or primitive shapes are better that cheap assets because they more obvious at being a placeholder.
Do these people even know what product they are selling?
Either game play suffers because of this or hours of work may have to be discarded in some places.
This is not even not understanding video games anymore. This is just being pure idiotic. They can either lose sales of their product or lose the time of the people they are paying chose one.
That's not placeholder, that's generally known as target footage. Placeholders are generally grey box levels with simple character models to work out game play. They look like ass but it lets you get going working how the game will play. I've worked on too many games that were not in grey box stage long enough and art assets have had to be reworked due to design changes.
My personal take is that its like the uncanny valley. If it's clearly a placeholder then people will forgive it, and assume the graphics will be better for release. If it looks like effort has gone into it, then people assume that IS as good as it will get. So I'd keep it simple until the gameplay is nailed down.
If it's just grey box, moving around, then it would easily turn ppl off.
On the other hand, a character looking lowpoly mesh would be quite fine without texture or details.
What I personally think it that if you have something finished to show off (and even if it's just a small part of an environment and a character) it will be much easier for people to accept unpolished alpha footage, because through the already finished examples it will be easier for them to guess where it's going.
Now for me personally as a dev, along side the pretty art to draw me in and give me a representation of its finished appearance; I prefer to see a strong foundation already laid down, proof the game exists, even if its a blockout testmap demonstrating the core mechanics, aslong as it shows there is a working proof of concept and that they are not just saying "we'll make some amazing game mechanics later, I promise". (This is also why I backed Overgrowth, they have a working game at the core alongside their pretty art.)
I know everyone's opinions differ. But not to insinuate any stupidity on their behalf but the public don't have as much context as we do on games. So what may look good to us unfinished may look bad to them and vice versa, even with finished games, we'll be able to approximate better from our more informed opinion.
So IMO it depends on whether it is really worth showing that video? Is it completely 100% required, something so good that it deserves that video. Because whatever you show has to outshine the unfinished placeholder stuff so much that peeps won't care about that.
I've seen projects a couple times with good art and poor blockout vids dissappear and alright art with a strong conceptual explanation and no vids get backed.
So I'd choose wisely if its better to conceptual explain versus placeholder video, IMO.
I think, a game, that can demo well, that can also demonstrate through it's play, the concepts or actual functionality, can get away with it
Couple examples of games I can think of that pertain to this:
-Braid: Most of the actual game of Braid had been completed prior to any art being made for it. It was entered into the IGF competition with it's programmer art and still won. However, I would say the game didn't get real mass attention until it got it's art.
-Minecraft: I know the art style of this game has grown on people but back when it came out, I dont think many people thought highly of the art at all. It definitely had programmer art written all over it. However, that clearly hasn't stopped it from being popular, acclaimed, or successful.
Ultimately, it comes down to a per project basis really and what the devs can pull off.
It's the equivalent of the snowball marketing approach rather than the AAA atomic blast, face melting approach. When people show early stuff there trying to turn the viewers into marketers for themselves.
Now going back to what Jacque initially asked, id have to agree with most and say its probably a detriment IF you don't show any really intriguing game-play, and that game-play HAS to overshadow any place-holder art. Also like people have said it needs to be clearly place-holder art or finished stuff probably not both. I think showing place holder art is fine it just needs to be stupid obvious that it is place-holder art. But then again, "Stupid obvious" still might not be enough for some people.
Good discussion though, some interesting crossovers from AAA to small indie projects.
As most have said; if its for erryone to see, make sure it looks pretty (first impressions). If it were just for devs to peep that'd be fine but should totes make sure you have somthing nice to show off for the majority of peeps