American Box Art Sucks

[hipster666]

I've played a few of the games mentioned in the article and can concur that my initial interest always came from the cool box art we got in the UK. Looking at the US version EVERYTHING feels like a Saturday morning cartoon. I get the argument about wanting to identify with the main character, but isn't that what the game's for? A fatal mistake made by many games in the day was to have cool front cover art then put in actual gameplay screenshots on the back instantly telling you how little work had been put into the game. The American front art has the same sort of feel, like the job was passed to a petulent ad exec who wanted to do something more interesting so they just do the same formula bull-hockey every bleedin' time!

Some of the best games introduce you to lead characters as the story progresses. I really don't need to see the ENTIRE cast on the front of the box. Then again they do the same BS with movie trailers and TV show intros. Look at House for a great, emotive and minimalistic intro and then look at "insert name of cop show here" for exactly how irritating they can be.

 

[jokulhaups]

In America only artistically bankrupt retards are allowed to do our boxart for video games. It's sad but true.

Otherwise we could just blame the lowest common denominator focus groups that the aforementioned retards rely on for their ideas.

-Snobby American

 

[A Weakgeek]

Because America is all about identifying with the main character- becoming the main character, so that's what we want to see on our box art. Admittedly, not always, but mostly. And we can't identify with a character (or characters) if we don't know what they look like.

I'm sorry, fellow escapee, but I could never identify with a main character that looks like this abomination over here:

[small]

What the fuck is this?​

[/small]

And the punchline? MEGAMAN DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE THAT!

What do you mean? i can identify with that perfectly! Oh the white cloacked men are coming again, bye bye!

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

Because America is all about identifying with the main character- becoming the main character, so that's what we want to see on our box art. Admittedly, not always, but mostly. And we can't identify with a character (or characters) if we don't know what they look like.

I'm sorry, fellow escapee, but I could never identify with a main character that looks like this abomination over here:

Spoiler

[small]

What the fuck is this?​

[/small]

And the punchline? MEGAMAN DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE THAT!

What is this i don't even...

...is that a katamari in the background???

 

[DarkShadow144]

oh wow, ive never seen the other versions of Heavy Rain box art. He's right, the japanese version is so much better then the american version, even the version in europe looks better, what the hell happened?

 

[warfjm]

Some of the links in the article are bad.

 

[HeroKing89]

I got to be honest. Complaining about a game's box art seems to me on the same level as complaining about a movie poster or complaining about the flavor text on a magic card. Most people who play games reaserch the game they want before they buy it, the only people i know who are persuaded by box art alone are parents who are picking games for their children or just easily swayed children themselves. At that point one would ideally market to those types of people unless it was a mature game like... Idk... Dead Space. Then lo and behold a very nice piece of art work that gets the message across just fine.

The thing of it is, provided the box art doesn't make a person who would otherwise buy it on a normal day not buy the game. The Box art then is only there in order to attract the naive, and if that's what it does and the marketing department seems to think that American's love their Hollywood poster inspired box art then I just have to shrug and say whatever.

 

[Kumomaru]

Americans tend to lean towards two things: epics and identification with the main character. There's a reason all the movie trailers i remember from when i was kid had the phrase 'one man will'.

The collage format you mentioned works well when a story's atmosphere is about wide space and exploration. So when americans look at it, they get that 'this will be a massive, sprawling story' feeling.

Take the RE4 box art on page 1. The pal boxart is highly indicative of the horror aspect of the game, whereas the american boxart focuses on the protagonist standing alone admidst a sea of monsters.

The problem is, not every game is about those elements (epics and main characters) but box artists try to make it look that way because when done properly it sells better to american audiences. Then they fail miserably over and over. Then fans of specific genres get confused - is this an RPG about a zombie apocalypse, or a survival horror game?

But... when has anyone EVER bought a game based on it's box art? Every time i go to gamestop (i don't buy used if i can help it, but it's close and the only gaming store around here) i know exactly what i'm planning to get.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

I'm from the U.K., so I don't understand why Europe has different box-art to the U.S. Can someone explain?

EDIT: The box-art for Dead space at least doesn't conform to the norm

 

[Danzaivar]

Same reason why Silent Hill loses all of what made it special when it goes to US developers.

Americans SUCK at symbolism. Or subtlety.

What they did to the ICO cover is just criminal. It's like sticking a fucking fake nose/moustache disguise on the mona lisa or something.

/endtarbrushinganentirecountry

 

[loc978]

I blame it on us having too many unemployable art students who were trained for Hollywood.

But personally, I've never given two shits about box art. I unpack it and throw the damn box away... and (even back when you had to buy a few magazines to do so) I've never bought bought a game without reading at least two reviews of it.

 

[oldtaku]

I'm going to say it's all the marketing schlubs who've never read a graphic novel, much less grown up with them all around. It's just not a culture that appreciates art here.

 

[Danzaivar]

The thing about America is that it is fucking huge.

When they brought over the Office, they had to change quite a bit about it before it would be palatable?not to An American Audience, but to an incredibly massive and varied one. Lowest Common Denominator doesn't mean that we're a pack of idiots, it means that we're a nation that's so loosely connected, there's very little that we can all legitimately enjoy.

Design by Committee happens so often here because we usually Enjoy by Committee, too.

That's changing, it should be noted. Inception, Mad Men, Even Kanye West. The vision of a single auteur seen through from beginning to end is coming out more quality, and getting the critical recognition and commercial success we hope for it.

As for why we hate the French, it's partly that we're jealous of their cheap wine and delicious bread, and partly because they take every chance they can to just up and quit working, and that looks too much like laziness to be ignored.

Europe has twice as many people and a dozen times as many languages, and completely different cultures every few hundred miles too. Don't try selling that varied culture crap.

 

[Urh]

Well, at least video game box art is free from the disease of excessive orange/blue contrast which is plaguing movie posters.

Oh, wait:




Shit!

Quite frankly, the entire article is rather moot. Thanks to digital distribution, box art is going the way of the dinosaur, much like instruction manuals (remember those? I do. I actually READ those fuckers before playing, and really admired developers who put some effort into them). The whole article comes across as a bit like an old fart complaining about poor quality saddles around the time the Model T came out.

 

[The Real Sandman]

Who knows really.

I don't have any particularly notable games to mention, but I do have my own personal gripe.

The Secret of NIMH

Fucking. Amazing. Film.

It was a family flick filled with all the adventure and fantasy animated films about talking woodland critters were required to have as rule of thumb, but it still managed be pretty damn dark and atmospheric, very story and character driven, beautifully artistic and it took itself quite seriously. In the end, it was a family movie that defied conventions and was actually about stuff.

The poster for it's theatrical release summed that up pretty well.

The VHS box was made a little more approachable, but it still kept the overall style and mood of the actual movie.

Then came the time for its DVD release...

[HEADING=1]WAHT THA FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUCK!!?!?!?[/HEADING]
This doesn't look like The Secret of NIMH, this looks like "Stupid Wholesome Generic Kids Movie #57-9B"!

I nearly lost it when I saw this in Wal-Mart. Its just fucking offensive.

 

[loc978]

The thing about America is that it is fucking huge.

When they brought over the Office, they had to change quite a bit about it before it would be palatable?not to An American Audience, but to an incredibly massive and varied one. Lowest Common Denominator doesn't mean that we're a pack of idiots, it means that we're a nation that's so loosely connected, there's very little that we can all legitimately enjoy.

Design by Committee happens so often here because we usually Enjoy by Committee, too.

That's changing, it should be noted. Inception, Mad Men, Even Kanye West. The vision of a single auteur seen through from beginning to end is coming out more quality, and getting the critical recognition and commercial success we hope for it.

As for why we hate the French, it's partly that we're jealous of their cheap wine and delicious bread, and partly because they take every chance they can to just up and quit working, and that looks too much like laziness to be ignored.

Europe has twice as many people and a dozen times as many languages, and completely different cultures every few hundred miles too. Don't try selling that varied culture crap.

How many French companies have to design things with a committee full of Germans, English(wo)men, Spaniards and Italians, though? Our organizations are so decentralized that few of 'em ever even remain in the Americas for long.

 

[DSQ]

So you blame American consumers for art choices made by a few foreign game companies when they import things here? Thats like blaming Australians for "choosing" to have Paul hogan be their national spokesman for 20 years, or the British for "picking" the ugliest royal family in history.

Although the companys have *some* say in what the covers will be, most companys hire american marketing firms to create the campainge and the covers.

And for some reason the companys think that having the hero on the cover is what the american conusmer wants.

Maybe they tryed artsy and it didn't sell....

 

[DSQ]

At about 5 years old, that looked pretty awesome. But it wasn't the box art I remembered, it was the game. I'm finding this to be a very trivial thing to ***** about. You mean that out of all of the problems with modern gaming, you had to mention box art? What's more, you only mentioned American box art. If you really don't like us that much, fine - keep your ass out of here - but you really don't need to keep calling us out for all the world's fucking problems.

He only mentioned the american box art because the artical is *about* how american box art all looks the same.

Also he isn't "calling us out for all the worlds **** problems", It is called a joke. I don't think Yahzee *really* thinks that america should be condemed for bad box art. For all the shitty things american does i'm pretty sure that isn't one of them. And i don't know why you think america is the only one being made fun of, in fact i would say he takes the piss out of the uk and japan the most....

I guess you may be a bit touche...

 

[CitySquirrel]

As others have said, they are trying to align the box art with the most recognizable tropes. However, with some of those old box arts...don't discount cheapness. Were there copyright issues with the box art? Because if US publishers had to make their own box art they might just have gone with the lowest bidder. At least for the older games.

Some of the links in the article are bad.

You have to reload the page a few times if they don't work. I got them all.