Bioshock Infinite: The latest victim of the Stupid-American-Box-Art Virus.

[Shadowstar38]

This is actually the first I've heard of this "Americans make bad boxart" issue. But I can hardly give a fuck about boxart at all. Name a game from the past 5 years and I couldn't recall what was on the front. Why? Least important part of the whole package.

Yahtzee does a good article introducing the notion: [URL="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/8631-American-Box-Art-Sucks" (title,target)]American Box Art Sucks[/URL]

This goes into detail about how Japan is just a lot better at it: [URL="http://www.gamesradar.com/why-japanese-box-art-is-better/" (title,target)]Japanese Box Art Is Better[/URL]

It's all about first impressions, really. We might already know that we're getting Infinite and can learn to live with the horrible, horrible box art because we already know and love the series. But it's the newcomers that might miss out; If you knew nothing of Bioshock and saw that box art on the shelf, would you buy it?

I cant say. I only buy something after hearing reviews of it. The boxart tells me nothing. Even if it was spectaclular looking.

EDIT: I remember why I didn't buy Bioshock for so long. I thought the suit on the front meant it would be full of swimming levels.

 

[BrainWalker]

Edit: Oh, it would appear I've posted in the wrong version of this thread. Whoops!

 

[DustyDrB]

It's not a huge deal, just funny. This features two things that have been talked about for a few years now: The hero posing dead center in the box art, and the hero being a brown haired white man with a 5 O'clock shadow. Welp...

Despite all that, it's not like I can say the game with the philosophical story based in a city in the sky resembling the 1910's America is lacking imagination. It's just weird how these two particular things keep repeating themselves.

 

[White_Lama]

Why not one of these instead?
Then again, hopefully with being European, I won't have to look at that cover.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[The_Echo]

After two games with really good, atmospheric box art... what the hell is this?

It doesn't feel representative of the game at all.

Why not use a Handyman, like the use of Big Daddies for the previous games? Or an image of Elizabeth being pulled into the shadows, a la that really cool part from the trailer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw1N2tna4Ss&feature=player_detailpage#t=118s].

 

[Chimichanga]

From the US - I understand why we do this: it's more about making a summary of the characters in the game than it is about the setting, plot, or theme. Also, the Bioshock seems to be aping the "Gruff male hero with a gun walking towards the camera" thing from all the spunkargleweewee games as of late intentionally. It's essentially meant to sell to people on a cover-only basis.

What does this cover art say? It says "this is a game with a gruff male protagonist who fights tyranny or something with gratuitous amounts of gun violence in fashion similar to CoD and MoH, you know, those games you all like - so please buy it".

Still, it is very fucking stupid and I wish we would stop. Hell, I'm also sick of how we always have to staple fucking "angry eyebrows"/"angry-face" to every main character to make it "MOAR INTENSE, BRAH!".

Every time I see my country's game box art and then see it compared to what everyone else did fort theirs, I wish I had acromegaly, or whatever Andre the Giant had, so I could have hands and a forehead large enough to facepalm to the fullest potential.

 

[natster43]

Eh, it isn't the best game cover, but it could be a lot worse. The cover definitely doesn't effect choice on whether or not I will buy it.

 

[Worgen]

The box art for the game should be a big shot of the floating city with the song bird sitting on one of the towers looking over it, maybe having a distant shot of the protagonists running from a mob down a street or something.

 

[Gitty101]

Looks okay to me... If it bothers you that much, buy it on Steam or something?

 

[drummond13]

This looks fine to me. There's a lot of box art out there that actually deserves your hate. Go after those.

 

[Easton Dark]

Who looks at the box art more than the time it takes them to take out the disk after the first day you own it?

Buy it digitally I guess. Not a big deal.

 

[Legion]

I doubt I'll ever actually see a box of the game seeing as almost everything is bought digitally anyway. I couldn't care even slightly less and I'm surprised the gaming community can be this pedantic.
Actually, thinking back on our history for just a brief amount of time, I'm not surprised at all.

It's not that pedantic. Ken Levine posted it on Twitter asking for feedback, so obviously they consider it to be of some discussion value.

Personally I think it looks pretty bad, but it's not like I am buying it for the box art. Most games have pretty average covers as it is, it's not like there is some kind of ratio between good games and good box arts.

 

[Stainlesssteele4]

Seriously people, the box art is bad, but box art is far form a selling point!
If you have any inclination of buying infinite, then the bad box art probably won't deter you. And any educated gamer would research a game before buying it, so its not going to make or break any hardcore sales. Not to mention the multitudes of digital sales, where box art is nonexistent.

 

[kortin]

Def wont buy now.

Not sure if sarcastic joke or serious. I'd like to imagine it's the former, but I've seen people fit into the latter in this subject (which is just sad).

I really don't care what the box art is. I'm not going to be sitting there looking at the box art, I'm going to be playing the bloody game.

And this is one thing I hate most about this forum. Someone hates on any other country? "Dude, what the fuck, chill". Anyone hates on the US? It's perfectly acceptable. Get more hypocritical, aye?

 

[BrainWalker]

In a game like Bioshock Infinite where the setting is as important to the experience as anything else, this is indeed terrible box art. It may be technically sound, it's creatively lazy and doesn't tell you much about the actual game. "Oh hey, a guy with a gun, in America. That's not something you see in every other shooter out there. Wait...

Box art should tell you something about the game, and set it apart from other games. This does neither. I can't believe this box art completely ignores Elizabeth and her crazy time-and-space manipulation thing. AS I understand it, she's equally as important to the game as Booker here. And what about Songbird? Or the goddamned city suspended in the air on a series of massive blimps? That seems like something that might grab someone's attention. What about the Skyline monorail, or the tonics that let you do crazy shit like summon a murder of crows? These are what make Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite, and not every other first person shooter on the market. And the absence of ANY of these things on the box is what makes this box art terrible.

Or it could have ignored all of these things an given you a symbolic representation of the overall message of the story. Something a little more abstract, like that classic games as minimalist book covers [http://www.flickr.com/photos/ollym/3289629265/in/set-72157612646893506/] project thing. All this cover tells you about this game is that there's a dude in it, and he has a gun, and he's involved in some sort of conflict in America. That's it.

 

[Ryotknife]

Oh noes! Something that you look at for two seconds (that has absolutely no bearing on the game whatsoever) is not as pretty as you want it to be.

THE HORROR!

THE ABSOLUTE HORROR!

Have we really run out of things to complain about in this community? This is worse than "bottom of the barrel" material. This is "drill a hole through the bottom of the barrel all the way through the center of the Earth, back up through the other side and into the bottom of another barrel on the opposite side of the Earth"

 

[Robot Number V]

Well, it's not as bad as Portal 2's, but it still strikes me as a missed opportunity. I mean, we have a floating, steam-punk city, populated by giant robots, bird monsters, and science-magic, and instead we focus on Grizzled White Guy #9572? What a waste.

The least they could have done was follow the Bioshock tradition of putting giant monsters on the front. As it is, it's just...lazy. And tells you fuck-all about the actual game.

 

[Broken Blade]

Damn, that's terrible. I mean, especially compared to how awesome the original BioShock's was.

 

[Lev The Red]

Def wont buy now.

are you being sarcastic, or are you really that petty?

i don't care what covers look like. once i buy a game, i put the disk into a big CD case with all my other games. i never see the original case and cover again until i sell the game.

 

[Robot Number V]

Wait, has this thread really been locked?

Yeah, I didn't think so. Goddamnit. I WAS going to quote someone but I guess the forum just fucking hates me right now, and I'm too lazy to go back and find the post to do it again. You can ignore this.