American Box Art Sucks
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Obviously, you've never been to America. Or if you have, you thought you were in Montgomery the whole time. And if you live here, move. Not out of the country, mind you, but somewhere were you aren't surrounded by the ignorant stereotype of American. Like, say, Utah. I love Utah.Varrdy said:
I never really noticed this difference, but I agree, I really don't like the american box art much, it's all just the same
Sarcasm is really hard to get across in this medium. But I'd have a reaction similar to yours if I thought someone meant the same thing seriously, so no harm done.mjc0961 said:
As long as I can remember, video game box art has always been garbage. I've never relied on it to make a purchase.
Actually I've been to America twice and am a few hours away from booking my flight for this year's jaunt to the States. Ohio this time, for the record.newfoundsky said:
Actually you are right in calling me out but that's the general opinion I get sometimes. Americans try to remake our stuff and generally cock it up (Red Dwarf springs to mind), which is a shame because when they actually come up with their own stuff, it can be pretty funny. Two and a Half Men, for example. Plus a lot of Amercian stand-up comedians could make me laugh at my own mother's funeral (not that she's dead, I was just being hypothetical!).
I think they just like to think they can do things better. I had to post a copy of a book to a friend in Florida once. It was a European novel that couldn't get published in the USA because the authour refused to re-write the book to make the hero American.
Wardy
MY EYES!Ashsaver said: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?
Its not up too us to choose what the advertisers go with. I will say that its also most likely a cultural difference between the two. As for why amerca hates france, i can honestly say after saving our asses in the american revolution, and us saving thier asses in WWI, WWII, call it even. But personally no offense toward french people but fu** the french government. As an artist i can apreciate both forms and i have wondered a few times about this as well.
American culture is obsessed with the hero; we build them up, tear them down, and then enjoy their story of redemption. So we need to see that character on the cover of the game in order to identify with, and conversely, want to buy it. Clearly this doesn't often translate into 'good' box art.
Actually Yahtzee brings up a point that sort of disturbs me.
Every single graphics design course i took both online and in college demanded that your designs look good but still be simple enough to relay the message. It always used European box arts and Japanese box arts as examples of the good and American box arts as examples of the bad.
...professionals are trained otherwise... i wonder if the American games corporations hire barely trained teenagers fed nothing but donuts and Jolt Cola to do those designs...
Every single graphics design course i took both online and in college demanded that your designs look good but still be simple enough to relay the message. It always used European box arts and Japanese box arts as examples of the good and American box arts as examples of the bad.
...professionals are trained otherwise... i wonder if the American games corporations hire barely trained teenagers fed nothing but donuts and Jolt Cola to do those designs...
Except, you know, you read into it wrong.mechanixis said: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.Robborboy said: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 gameAgentNein said: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.Mcface said:American box art is just more descriptive of the game.MacNille said: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.
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.
True that.Atmos Duality said:
Any Gamestop/EB I go to has such a large amount of games that they stock them so that only the spine is visible.Akalabeth said:
There is a problem with what you just said. All American boxart DOES tell what the game is about.Frotality said:
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.
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.
You see a diving suit, water, and fish, yet you extrapolate a setting in space? That is just silly. You can't just pull random things out your ass. You have to use a bit of *le gasp* LOGIC when interpreting a cover. Something you clearly did not do here.
I majored in film in college so I think I can offer possible explanation for shitty American boxart based on first-hand experience. One of the main things I noticed in animation/design classes is that students frequently wanted to do things that ?looked cool.? People frequently wanted to add more crap to a film, a character design, or an animation just because they thought it looked cool and demonstrated the capabilities of something. I got into more than few arguments during group projects because I typically like to understate things; use less animation, use less clutter, know when to stop drawing something. The other students wanted to do more because ?hur hur I think it would be really cool if we inserted this bigger camera movement? or ?dur it would look really cool if you added more accessories to this character.?
In America we have a very shameful (at least I think it?s shameful) ?more is more? culture. Most shitty American box art is shitty because the designers wanted to slap more shit onto the cover than the European/Japanese cover. They probably did it because they have the standard American more is more mentality. They wanted to make it ?cool? and show how much they could do. You can see this in games as well (and this is probably the reason for the awful frat boy shooterification of the entire games industry) the way developers favor ?big set pieces? and other general attempts to make games more ?cinematic? (which they?re not becoming more cinematic, they?re just being crammed full extra crap because someone thought it would look cool).
It?s because the ?American dream? revolves around living in excess and making you the centre of the universe (but don?t you dare be yourself because we don?t want no weirdoes up in here). Shove everything in there because more is more and it?s the American way to amass a vast fortune of crap. The same notion bleeds into our mainstream media; put more shit in there because more is more. Keep piling it in because ?it would look cooler.? I personally like doing more with less and I?m more impressed by that, but other Americans want to see the upper limits of what can be done. They want more/bigger rather than richer/greater. Personally I'm unimpressed with modern graphics as much as cover art.
As far as box art goes, everything nowadays looks unbelievably shitty. When I look at old box art, especially old European computer game covers (the Dune II cover is one of my favorite examples), I often get a sense of wonder. Old understated, minimalistic game boxes are haunting and they immediately spark my imagination. Modern American video game boxes all look like some tasteless idiot?s attempt to show how much he can do with Photoshop (how much, not how well).
With all that in mind, this is just about my favourite video game cover ever: http://www.classicamiga.com/images/stories/jreviews/games/D/artwork/Dune2[boxart][front][01].jpg
In America we have a very shameful (at least I think it?s shameful) ?more is more? culture. Most shitty American box art is shitty because the designers wanted to slap more shit onto the cover than the European/Japanese cover. They probably did it because they have the standard American more is more mentality. They wanted to make it ?cool? and show how much they could do. You can see this in games as well (and this is probably the reason for the awful frat boy shooterification of the entire games industry) the way developers favor ?big set pieces? and other general attempts to make games more ?cinematic? (which they?re not becoming more cinematic, they?re just being crammed full extra crap because someone thought it would look cool).
It?s because the ?American dream? revolves around living in excess and making you the centre of the universe (but don?t you dare be yourself because we don?t want no weirdoes up in here). Shove everything in there because more is more and it?s the American way to amass a vast fortune of crap. The same notion bleeds into our mainstream media; put more shit in there because more is more. Keep piling it in because ?it would look cooler.? I personally like doing more with less and I?m more impressed by that, but other Americans want to see the upper limits of what can be done. They want more/bigger rather than richer/greater. Personally I'm unimpressed with modern graphics as much as cover art.
As far as box art goes, everything nowadays looks unbelievably shitty. When I look at old box art, especially old European computer game covers (the Dune II cover is one of my favorite examples), I often get a sense of wonder. Old understated, minimalistic game boxes are haunting and they immediately spark my imagination. Modern American video game boxes all look like some tasteless idiot?s attempt to show how much he can do with Photoshop (how much, not how well).
With all that in mind, this is just about my favourite video game cover ever: http://www.classicamiga.com/images/stories/jreviews/games/D/artwork/Dune2[boxart][front][01].jpg
Well at least you don't live in Germany. They get censored games AND censored box art.Niccolo said:
