FA+
Shop
Dev Post - Low Poly is Lazy?
a year ago
Haven’t done a game dev update in a while. I’ve not done much, but also not been completely lazy. So not much to report, unless things like a “I modelled some shelves, and a nail” are of interest.
Instead, today I want to talk about an opinion I read online and how that might change my development focus going forward. It’s a dumb opinion, but a surprisingly popular opinion too.
The gist is that game devs who want others to play their game are posers who are just in it for clout. Game devs that go for a pixel art or low poly art are lazy hacks trying to cash in on nostalgia. Game devs that focus on graphics over gameplay are also hacks.
To some degree, these people are right. The end user doesn’t care about how a game is made, just that the end result is fun to play. It doesn’t help that some games really are lazy nostalgia bait.
But this puts devs in a catch 22. If you don’t have professional quality graphics, you're a lazy hack. If you do focus on graphics, you’re a clout chasing hack. No option is acceptable, and examples of “how to do it right” like Darkest Dungeon are chosen after the fact.
I could go on at length, “debunking” the argument with examples of low poly and pixel art hits, but that’s not the point. Again, the end user doesn’t care.
So what’s the take away from this? How will it change things going forward? Well, in the same way the soft one-hour asset challenge greatly sped up my workflow by removing perfectionism. I’m thinking of using more programmer art and shortcuts. Ie. Becoming more lazy.
To give a simple example. Weapons in a FPS. Normally I’d model and animate a gun. Makes sense. But in future I might just have an image of the gun at the bottom of the screen. Not like Doom, but like Resident Evil Survivor, or the original Rainbow 6. Is this what I want? No. Will it work for the sake of gameplay? Yes.
Instead, today I want to talk about an opinion I read online and how that might change my development focus going forward. It’s a dumb opinion, but a surprisingly popular opinion too.
The gist is that game devs who want others to play their game are posers who are just in it for clout. Game devs that go for a pixel art or low poly art are lazy hacks trying to cash in on nostalgia. Game devs that focus on graphics over gameplay are also hacks.
To some degree, these people are right. The end user doesn’t care about how a game is made, just that the end result is fun to play. It doesn’t help that some games really are lazy nostalgia bait.
But this puts devs in a catch 22. If you don’t have professional quality graphics, you're a lazy hack. If you do focus on graphics, you’re a clout chasing hack. No option is acceptable, and examples of “how to do it right” like Darkest Dungeon are chosen after the fact.
I could go on at length, “debunking” the argument with examples of low poly and pixel art hits, but that’s not the point. Again, the end user doesn’t care.
So what’s the take away from this? How will it change things going forward? Well, in the same way the soft one-hour asset challenge greatly sped up my workflow by removing perfectionism. I’m thinking of using more programmer art and shortcuts. Ie. Becoming more lazy.
To give a simple example. Weapons in a FPS. Normally I’d model and animate a gun. Makes sense. But in future I might just have an image of the gun at the bottom of the screen. Not like Doom, but like Resident Evil Survivor, or the original Rainbow 6. Is this what I want? No. Will it work for the sake of gameplay? Yes.
