American Box Art Sucks

[jackpipsam]

because the US cannot understand a silly thing such as story.

good thing us Aussies tend to have euro boxs

 

[Canon Fodder]

After reading the various posts on here, I seem to have come to a sad conclusion: Us Americans only see box art as a bonus, like a art book. I really don't care about the box art myself (guess I have become desentized to the horribleness of it all), but seeing some of the comparasions, I would almost turn my games so I could see some of those covers (the one that springs to mind is the RE4 cover). I have to admit that sometimes, when I have some entertainment money knocking around, I wander down to my local game shop first to see what's available for me to buy. I don't order online, and I rarely preorder (unless the game is extremely popular) because my funds don't allow me to buy all my games brand spanking new. One thing I have seen with the giant wall of games that fly under the radar is that those that have some sort of appealing box art usually (but now always) has a higher quality game inside. I have been mislead a couple of times though (I shortly traded those games in for a better one or pawned it off on my younger sister, lol)

This just makes me sad, and I know that Americans will not change.

 

[goatonastik]

I would have to say because art-sy does not appeal to most american marketing firms. They think box art being closer to a movie poster is a GOOD thing, so they try to show more explosions/cleavage, and taking a que from TV show promotional art, just LOVE having cast line ups and collages for some retarded reason.

 

[scott91575]

Americans don't choose the box art on these games. The box art is more a reflection of what foreign game devs think we are rather than what we actually are.

This isn't true. In these cases the change in box art is usually made by the localization team commissioned by the publisher in the area the game is going to be released. In the cases were the original developer is involved they're essentially commissioned by the localization team and have very little creative control. So if anything this is a reflection of what american game localization companies think the american public is.

and that is probably your answer. First of all, the design house, due to being in a foreign country (foreign to the developer), has no real idea what the game is truly about. It becomes less of an extension of the game and more of a mishmash of ideas.

Plus, does this mean all American design houses are the same? They may employ bottom of the barrel designers. There is obviously a disconnect, because there is a theme here. Games developed outside of the US, and then a US design house developing the artwork.

It's not like US video game players are here clamoring "what are you talking about, those US covers are sweet!" In fact, just the opposite. How about pointing the finger at the companies who let perfectly good box art getting mangled by artists who obviously have little idea about the game, or are simply trying to hit as many marketing demographics as possible (hence why some become a mess from a good minimalistic original).

There are plenty examples of good US based art work. As stated, how about pointing the finger at the game studios instead of the consumers they force it on.

Yet hey, why would I want to ruin another perfectly good American bashing thread?

 

[Elyxard]

I just graduated with a degree in graphic design in the US and yea, I can understand what Yahtzee is saying.

I remember working on movie posters and I tried to do the artsy symbolic teaser type of poster but nooooo. I was pushed into doing the big star sell. And it was like that in every class. If it involved a movie, I had to make sure that the damn actor was the most prominent feature on it. Sometimes that wasn't enough, "Make the head larger, no larger than that! Make it so large that it bleeds off the edges! That's not large enough!". Repeat, repeat.

It really disgusted me, I hated it. It's designed to appeal to uncultured people who don't want their minds to be provoked. So yea, even new graphic design students are taught to make those awful kind of designs. Makes me dread for when I have to work for an actual studio.

 

[Dragonpit]

Yahtzee's guidelines are certainly well and truly valid, but of course, no one said they had to apply. Send in America who, through trial and error, found a few topics that are bound to sell real well. The top three are:

1: Sex
2: Action
3: Weapons/Attitude

Therefore 90% of all box art has to be culmination of all three. Who gives a flick about the story? The average gamer just wants boobs and guns! (insert redneck joke here)

Really...If nothing else, it just shows how behind America is compared to other countries in terms of maturity. But then, if it ain't broke..oh. Wait.

 

[ghostchild55]

Artists get very little respect, writers are scorned (unless they're writing the latest bland, vomit-inducing garbage to be gobbled wholesale by the masses, which helps explain the successes of both Stephanie Meyer and Stephen King

You do realize that both authors are famous outside of our country. Japan seems to love Hideo Kojima and the guy is crap. We talk all this artistry but you don't see America throwing in perverted moments like Kojima does in his renowned series. Nor did America ever make a rape simulator like Japan once did. I'm by no means defending my country I despise many of the things we do but I hate when people act superior to us just because they don't live here. And please enlighten me on any fantastic writers that have been scorned in this country, tell me what famous film-maker has been scorned in this country. I would like to know. I tire of ignorant people putting themselves above us based solely on what they hear about the country. Come on really, yes America has it's problems, yes we've done a lot of shit but the worst acts are done by the government not the citizens.

I'm tired of ignorant people, Yahtzee included. He may be something of an idol for me but it gets annoying when everything is blamed on the US. If he loves Silent Hill 2 so much why doesn't he see where the inspiration comes from, an AMERICAN FILM and an AMERICAN DIRECTOR. We're not all a bunch of uncultured idiots who sit around and do nothing every countrie's mainstream that I know of consists of people similar to the majority of the American's you scorn.

 

[mechanixis]

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.

But you see, you would never have been able to put that together without playing the game first, and that makes it all irrelevant. Observe.

Here we see the cover art for Bioshock 2. It features a man in a pressurized metal suit, alluding to the game's extraterrestrial setting; the dark background likewise represents the dark void of space. The rugged, dirty filter on the image and the suit's massive drill-arm suggest the main gameplay mechanic: mining asteroids. However, there is another figure on the boxart, the little girl. Her pale skin and otherworldly glowing eyes make it clear that she is paranormal in nature, possibly a ghost. She is perched on the protagonist's back, out of his sight, and holds the tubing of his life-support system in her hand, threatening to tug it out. She is obviously the game's antagonist. The cracked glass represents the shattering of the Fourth Wall, as the characters of the game frequently speak directly to the player.

See how that works? It's easy to project all sorts of wild interpretations onto images. All that American covers are trying to convey is that the protagonist is LARGE and POWERFUL and INCLINED TOWARDS VIOLENCE. Almost every American boxart you can find features at least two of the following: 1) a scowling male figure, 2) a sexualized female figure, and 3) a sizable weapon.

 

[Metonym]

Well American marketing is looking to sell video games by using aesthetics from "to the American consumer" very well established art context of US mainstream comics. Although the comic industry and the artists are very aware of that fact and are in fact more experimental in their use of "artsy" covers. The artist are also closer to the product in the comic industry, since the art in itself is the product.

That level of self awareness hasn't been reached by the market people selling video games. But the test groups are obviously primed towards the comic style covers.

They would definitely risk something by trying to sell something with "artsy" covers, but again they are only taking cues from their test groups.

 

[Ashsaver]

Some American box arts are not so bad,like System Shock 2's and Diablo's

Beside,have you seen Brazil's Half-life Box art?

Spoiler: You can't unseen what you saw here

 

[Sonic Doctor]

To be fair, (insert generic insult against snooty French people here.)

Seriously, I think game art is really irrelevant at this point. I know back in the day when those without game magazine access had only to go by the cover and back blurbs it was more important, but we can read about games years before they are even released. Many games nowadays seem to assume that you read up on the game beforehand because the box art is hardly a good description of what you do in a particular game.

I like how everyone mentions Mega Man 1 as a horrible cover, but lest us forget that Mega Man 2 was pretty awful as well. Sure it gave a slightly better description of what you were doing, but here Mega Man looks like he's trying to squeeze out a massive fart.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/be/Megaman2_box.jpg

I think the problem is that many artists either don't play/see the game or don't get to see enough of it. What I think is stupid about both Megaman box arts is that he is hold a gun, but clearly in the game there is no holding of a gun, but a giant energy cannon in place of a hand.

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.

The problem with that is while people still look at screen shots, many of those people(like me) don't particularly like online/digital distribution. The only time I will get a game digitally is if there is no way I can get a CD/hard-copy of the game. I would rather have a nice case(box are really doesn't matter to me) with a CD that I know nothing will happen to it unless I am careless and do something stupid with it. With the digital, there is always the possibility that something will happen that is not within my power stop. While the digital data can be recovered eventually, it is a pain that ass to deal with.

Case in point: My friend's 360 of 4 years red ringed. He got a new 360, but when he transferred all the data from the old hard drive to the new one, all his DLC got corrupted. Since it was different 360 it didn't have the licensing rights to the DLC. To get the stuff to work again he has to have his 360 online and also be on a computer with his account signed in for it to see he is the same person, but just with a new 360. The problem is that he doesn't have a good enough Net connection for that. If he wanted to do it he has to wait until he can go over to another friends house that has a good connection, which he had to wait two weeks for.

 

[Varrdy]

Simple.

America always thinks it can do everything better than anyone else can. When called on it, they either put their collective fingers in their collective lugholes and go "La-la-la-la, buddy!".

Or they get very angry and threaten to shoot / sue you.

Wardy
PS I'm with you - Flashback was a brilliant game!

 

[SeiichiSin]

I think American box art is like that because people think that they should cram as much crap into one place as possible. They may give some bullshit answer to say it is more detailed or something. But, lets see, it looks like shit. When I look at a video game's box art, all I am looking for is the title. I think that is mostly because the box art for almost all the games in America just do not catch my interest. I think the only game I bought for the box art was that one that they haven't made yet.

 

[Crazyshak48]

Funnily enough, I was reading about this very phenomenon the other day (which TVTropes refers to as the "Floating Head Syndrome"). After reading Yahtzee's article, on a whim I looked through my library of games and movies on my bookshelf. Nearly all of them fit the collage descrption. If they couldn't have the floating heads, then they had an illustration of the action in the game with no hints at the story save maybe the title, with the maximum number of explosions/gunfire (case in point, Mechwarrior 4, Motor Storm, HAWX). The only notable exceptions I found were the following:

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction: Here we see Ratchet looking out across a huge sci-fi metropolis, contemplating some unknown threat to all of it. Granted, Clank looks like he's having a seizure, but overall it does fit the idea of a small hero contemplating the vastness of his task.

World in Conflict: Yes, I realize the regular box art was simply a battle collage. However, I ended up getting the collector's edition, which has a unique box and a variety of special content. This box is a larger, two part box (meaning it opens like a board game box), and the two halves are painted differently. The bottom half is painted in the colors of the American flag and has the game's English name printed there. The top half is mostly red, with the hammer and sickle and the game's name in Cyrillic painted on it. Furthermore, the top half mostly envelops the bottom half, signifying the Soviet Union trying to envelop America in game. I have noticed collector's edition boxes generally seem to be more artistic in a lot of cases than the regular ones, so it seems that in America, you have to pay extra for your art (no surprise).

An honorable mention does go to Lost Planet 2, surprisingly. It's more of just a straight battle scene than a collage, but one that does demonstrate the fact that in game, you will be fighting things from the God of War School of Boss Design. Perhaps simply descriptive rather than artsy, but still effective, even if the game itself is lackluster. However, EVERY other game I have either suffers from Floating Head Syndrome on the box, has a battle collage, or some combination of the two.

In any case, after looking through these, I really do find myself wishing the box artists in the US could try being a little more inventive. No one I know would describe me as artsy, but it would be nice for once for the companies to at least try and acknowledge that gamers (and the public in general) have an appreciation of something besides explosions and cleavage. Admittedly, that's like demanding Bobby Kotick buy back his soul, but I digress.

 

[newfoundsky]

I didn't know we got to vote on our cover art. . .

EDIT:

Besides, its just the fucking cover. You get the same product either way, so get off it.

 

[newfoundsky]

snip

Space fish in the background?

 

[Thisbedutch]

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

This comment leads me to inform you that I would gladly have your internet babies.

 

[Niccolo]

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

Ouch. Burned! You forgot that we also get half the content cut for fear of upsetting our nannies.

Though, they are getting better about that... sorta... okay, they're considering getting better about it.