American Box Art Sucks

[gphjr14]

I'm too busy watching/playing to be overly concerned about the cover art.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Yeah, I'm going to side with the folks that mention the primary style of American movie posters (and the slavish devotion that American box-art creators have to them) with their, as another poster put it, "One man will...." centrism. We don't like big ensemble casts here, what can I say?

But seriously, the utter hack-job Out of This World got for its boxart made me gnash my teeth, especially the SNES version (which also looks nothing like the main character). Thankfully that's been the worst example ever, and certainly box-art designers have learned their lesson and will never again create such an affront to-

Amnesia.
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/9024/boxartj.jpg

Guess what one belongs to who.

...if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go fellate an oncoming bus now. *storms out*

 

[Robborboy]

You should have brought up resident evil 4 boxart.

here is the pal version:

It's very stylise and a litte scary too.

Now here is the american:

So generic. Nothing about this cover is good. It's so damn bland.

American box art is just more descriptive of the game.
So if you are browsing the store, you see both of these game cases, knowing nothing about the game, you are more likely to get a better idea of what the game is from it.

It's not a creepy dark game where you are in a empty desolate place like the top cover suggests, you are in a village packed with zombies carrying chainsaws, like the bottom.

I don't know, the first one definitely conveys the feeling of being alone in an alien and threatening environment, that feeling that something can pop out from any corner at any time.

Completely correct. It conveys something that does not exist at all in the action shooter that is RE4 whereas the American box art shows what it is. An action game

Must be a really slow week if we're sitting around bitching about box art from the DOS era.

True that.

Cover Art is usually irrelevant to buying games as if its on the big display board in shops then its big and you heard about it, if not then you only get to see the side of the box so art is pointless..

Eh? What stores do you go to? Every store I've been to shows the cover not the spine. Some stores like EB Games sometimes have one shelf per console that has only spines showing, but the new releases and so forth are the covers not the spines.

Any Gamestop/EB I go to has such a large amount of games that they stock them so that only the spine is visible.

typical american video game boxart is designed after typical american movie posters, and i think the logic behind those are "shove every characters face on the poster and hopefully people will identify with at least one of them".

secondly, our boxart is NOT meant to convey what the game is about... it is all floaty heads as you said, and it is meant solely to get someone to buy it, with no mind to what the hell its actually about. look at the whole add campaign for dragon age, heavy metal action scenes for a damn RPG, and what does it say about our box art that superimposed witches over a field of swords inside a dragon shaped blood splatter is probably one of the most minimalist boxart designs for recent games? also take the famously atrocious ME2 boxart; not a week after it was shown, forum goers posted their own vastly superior photoshopped boxart pleading for bioware to use that instead, but nope, they had to have as generic a boxart as possible, as apparently no one seems to catch on that doing that makes your game just blend in with all the other floaty head boxarts in the video store.

There is a problem with what you just said. All American boxart DOES tell what the game is about.

Take Enslaved for example. The bottom of the box is covered in red flowers. Red, denoting conflict, strife. But also being represented in such fragile form as a flower. This shows softness, possibly romance. Move up a bit more and on the left side you see ruined buildings. Something wrong has happened. Moving up more, the sky. It is a lightly cloudy blue. This represents that something nice still exists in this broken world.

Now to the characters. There are six total. First you have Monkey. And aggressive look on face, what looks to be metal boxing gloves, and a headband with an ominous red glow. From this alone you can tell he is a fighter, more of a no-nonsense kind of guy. Ready to take something down when the time comes.

With Trip you see a lightly clothed woman, running close behind Monkey with a concerned, piercing look aimed towards Monkey.

And behind them you see a large mechanical beast. It appears to be chasing Monkey and Trip. With Monkey's fierce attitude this shows that there are things bigger than he. Things even he will tackle "cautiously". And that Trip is looking towards him for protection.

The birds and "dragon fly" lend their own part to what the cover-art story is, but I won't bother with it. At this point you either see that you are wrong, or too pig-headed to admit it.

 

[Emily Boogades]

I'm pretty sure people that actually decide what will go on the box are from marketing, or advertising, not the actual graphic arts department, so insulting the people who design it is largely unfair. It's like when you (if you work in retail) are told to go stack a product so that it's a cube, or so that it's an inverted pyramid. It's idiotic, possibly unnecessary, but it's what they want, so you do it so that they will give you money.

I think that, possibly, the difference may have to do with American social relations. First - I don't appreciate Americans on a whole being insulted. It happens a lot, I get it, we're all apparently retarded and violent and we love beer or... whatever it is. That said, Americans do tend to be more detached from the people around them than certain other countries (see: Japan) when it comes to the workplace. I don't know about other people's jobs, or people who love their jobs, start companies with friends, etc, but most people are doing the above: doing what their boss tells them to avoid conflict and to get "teh moneiz." You never ask your quest givers why they can't just go find twenty badger eyes for themselves, you just start mowing down badgers to get them.

Some other countries (and this comes from a place of heavy conjecture, so if I sound intelligent, I'm sorry) tend to have more inclusive attitudes towards work. They work /together/. I'm not saying people in other countries love their jobs like no tomorrow, but there are notable differences in the way that some countries raise their kids in mind to work.

This is an extremely long, rambling post, and I've gotten away from the point. Basically, box art in America may suck - and I'm not saying it does every time because, well, I buy off Steam and there is no box involved - because certain larger companies in America don't give a rat's backend what their graphic design team thinks is a bad idea. Marketing says slap a giant floating head on it to grab people's attention, so you slap a giant floating head on it and die a little more inside, go home, drink, and write a webcomic.

 

[Senaro]

The main one I can think of are all the subtle changes we get in some covers, like Kirby being given an angry face on US ports of his games instead of a smiling one.

 

[Strixvaliano]

As an American I can say that I am not proud of most of the alternate box art that we get. Then again now most of my sales go to steam so I don't really care about box art much anymore.

 

[senataur]

Bump for Flashback!
One of the greatest games ever and who's title music will forever be burned in my brain.

But I do have to say that I think the issue of box art is increasingly becoming a null point as we move to digital distribution.

 

[Thedarkness77]

I really do hope they start doing a better job on the box art in the future.

 

[templar1138a]

Yahtzee, you're awesome, but I fail to see your point. Mainly because you primarily refer to games from an era that was 1. Before I played console games (I was only a computer gamer until late grade school, in the last couple years of the 90s) and 2. Back when console games were kinda lame in general (which is what I felt even back then, hence my not playing console games until the late 90s).

Also, haven't you heard the phrase "Never judge a book by its cover"? Actually, I bet you have already. And probably dozens of times again since you posted this article. Point remains. I don't judge games based on their box art. What I care about is the game content. I go into stores knowing ahead of time which game(s) I intend to get, and if I see one that I haven't heard of which looks interesting based on what I read on the BACK of the box, I do some research before deciding to buy.

Finally, I have to be honest and say I don't like the condescending tone you took when making remarks about Americans. Yes, we do have a lot of stupid people. But then again, stupid people are everywhere (just take a look at some of the legislation being put in place in Canada, the supposed paradise of tolerance and progress in North America), and honestly, there are worse places to be from. Granted, I believe you are a misanthropic limey with a pole up your ass, but that's only because it's what you present yourself as (quite intentionally) in Zero Punctuation and Extra Punctuation, not because of prejudice due to you being English.

 

[Littlee300]

Yup. We sure get some weird boxart over here in the States. I also submit for this discussion, Kirby:

Spoiler

http://www.brawlinthefamily.com/?p=288

Last one is a joke obviously, but really, why did they keep making Kirby angry on our box art?

Many Japanese game designers things we want boobies and bad ass violence. Does that say more about us or them?

 

[tkioz]

Yahtzee, this just seems kind of irrelevant in this day and age. With online distribution on the rise there's not much of future for box art. It's all screenshots nowadays.

I don't know, I've brought games on Steam because I like the little "box art" icons in the browse list, well not because, but that was what attracted me to the info page in the first place.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Why did our boxart in the '80s need squids/octopi? Were there squids and/or octopi in those games? And if there were, why were there mollusks in each of these games? The hell is that about?

It's a trade off. You Aussies get good box art. We Yankees get games before they become irrelevant.

We are not all Yanks. That word is not synonymous with American, pal.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

once again subjectivity misconstrued as objectivity. i don't see how any box art is better than any other and to randomly claim that one country's box art sucks doesn't make it true.

plus i have yet to see box art from bioware or EA that sucks. most of our blockbusters look good. no one can really say that box art for Red Dead Redemption or Mass Effect is really bad.
Besides that, we like seeing who our protagonists are. so we'll know who and what we'll be playing as. most of your examples are old and (by now) don't matter, so don't ***** about nothing

 

[Son of Detroit]

If it's any consolation, PAL box art for SNES games were terri-bad, while the US covers were, for the most part, okay.

Art Lesson #1: Giant, obstrusive borders make for bad box art [http://timewarpgamer.com/features/box_art_disparity_snes.html]

Not just the SNES, PAL regions always got the shitty boxart in the PS1/N64 era.

 

[murphy7801]

Why is he losing touch with his British side there are many great British artists.

 

[Silversheath]

Why are American versions worse?
Simple.
Ruining perfectly good things is practically our national hobby. Why drink one can of beer when you can have twenty? Why throw a ball around when you can throw darts at eachother? Why have a descriptive cover when you can show a white guy punching an alien in the face?

 

[TheRealCJ]

Yahtzee, this just seems kind of irrelevant in this day and age. With online distribution on the rise there's not much of future for box art. It's all screenshots nowadays.

Besides, most of these examples are from the 80's. We Americans prefer not to talk about the art that came out of our country in those days.

You mean ICO, which came out in the PS2 era, and Heavy Rain, which came out only last year?

 

[EvolutionKills]

Because American box art is controlled by a committee of people with marketing degrees, instead of a few artists with any skill in design.

A few of my favorites...

Mass Effect 2 - Collector's Edition
http://files.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/181672_S/Mass-Effect-2-Collectors-Edition-Detailed.jpg

Left 4 Dead
http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2008/08/medium_left_4_dead_boxart.jpg

Fallout 3
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101021004329/videogame/images/thumb/8/84/Fallout_3_(Box_Art).png/250px-Fallout_3_(Box_Art).png

Farcry 2 (PAL version or US Gamestop pre-order sleeve cover)
http://www.xgn.nl/images/boxarts/ps3/big/far-cry-2.jpg

The Witcher (original red edition)
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4005/242764-the_witcher_boxart_super.jpg

The Elder Scolls IV: Oblivion
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c331/Trazac/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-box.jpg

Knights of the Old Republic
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/5/516675_47672_front.jpg

(Yeah, I know KotoR is one of those 'collage' covers, but it's also an awesomely good homage to the style of the movie posters for the original trilogy. So its easily one of my favorites. Hell for what it's worth, I think it's better than the posters for the new trilogy too.)

 

[TheRealCJ]

Do you all just genuinely have the aesthetic sense of a kipper, or is this part of that big "defiance of authority" thing you guys have going that makes you equate "stubborn pig ignorance" with "down homey wisdom"?

The second one. And, as an American, it perplexes me on so many levels.

I love the public's opinions on Politicians (not just America, mind)

Someone has an opinion, changes said opinion based on new facts and/or convincing argument: Common Sense.

Politician does the same thing: Untrustworthy flip-flopper.

 

[Ciran]

I don't like the box art, nor do many others. I really, really wish we got the same kind of box art, but you seem to think that we have some kind of control over this kind of thing, when we just don't.