Monday 16 September 2019

What do you think of art in games?

AND WHY?

I'm thinking here specifically at noisms over at Monsters and Manuals, whom I would consider the head of the Puritan Iconoclasts, those who think the need for art if games is overblown.

- It costs a bomb (which keeps the prices of development high and arguably keeps poorer creators out of the market).

- It stops people imagining stuff for themselves. Why do you need it in a game communicated almost entirely through words?

- It seals the 'vision' of what a thing is in one particular way, the 'approved' idea of a thing.

- Other arguments I forgot.

Personally I find myself, by intuition and desire, almost entirely on the Cavalier Idolater side - I fucking love art in games and prioritise it when I can.

HOWEVER

My arguments for doing so are less coherent than the Puritans against.

SO -

What do you think, and why do you think it?

44 comments:

  1. I place a high value on art because I have a tiny baby brain that can hardly feel stimulated without exciting images to get my creativity flowing. Like, good rules and ideas suddenly become great rules and ideas when they are accompanied by a strong artistic direction.

    A game that has a distinct artistic identity is always more memorable and oftentimes helps with buy-in when you are trying to convince others to play that game with you.

    Also, as a response to the argument that it "limits you from imagining things yourself," I have to counter that I sometimes experience the opposite in reality. Seeing a talented artist describe an idea oftentimes captures details and moods that never would have occurred to me had I been left to do it on my own. The idea of "pig orcs" never worked for me until I saw really good art of it, for example.

    I also think it can serve a practical purpose for making a game run well. Not that you ought to show the book's illustration to your players (potentially spoiling some other details on that page), but rather that it can communicate far more to the DM than a read-aloud boxed text can. If the best method of a DM relaying the scene to the PCs comes from them just describing it from their head, then a detailed and evocative image is quite literally worth a thousand words.

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    1. Thank you. So you would consider art essentially an amplifier or intensifier, aiding in communication of a central concept or thing?

      Do you really think it is a 'baby brain' response to lack stimulation without art? More and more I tend towards a more morally neutral conception (though I did just call people Idolators and Iconoclasts above) where I try to conceive of people with different neuropatterns as simply different, without a strong hierarchy of inherent worth between them.

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    2. "Baby brain" is just self-derision since I feel simple-minded in my appreciation for art. I don't think I actually believe it. The more generous way to characterize it would be that some people are more visually-minded and others are more linguistically-minded.

      And yes, it absolutely amplifies positively. As another commenter said, good art cannot save a badly written book. And I thought further on the point about "limiting imagination." I have never felt "bound" to an RPG's art. If I see some shitty drawing of a troll I don't go, "awww man, this sucks! THIS is what trolls look like?" Instead I just substitute something better. But if I see really good art then I'll gladly adopt it. I have an entire folder of art called "monster redesigns" for images that are not in the MM but which add something to the monster that I felt was missing or is more interesting.

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    3. Dwizkhalifa's first response was perfect... wish I had an illustration to go with it.

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  2. I tend, correctly or incorrectly, to link the style of the art with the style of the author. Which is weird because sometimes it is the same written work with different art - so David Sutherland I prefer to Larry Elmore, Erol Otis to Jeff Dee, Jenelle Jaquays to Kevin Siembeida.
    Generally if the art is bizarre in a way that appeals to me I in some respects presume the game material will also be appealing.
    I suppose my thought process is first to see something written describing the game material that intrigues me, then I can get roped in if the art confirms and emphasizes what appealed to me in the description.
    Only occasionally do I use gaming art at the table except maybe to provide a glimpse to the players of some seriously strange thing or vista.
    Ha, of course what about maps? A map is art too for sure and those are definitely relied on during the game 100%.

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    1. True, maps, diagrams and cutaways are a whole other branch of the argument.

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  3. I am completely High Church in this regard, although I do think that fully "illuminated" pages (e.g., D&D 3E) are overly busy and difficult to read at times. I also definitely prefer the use of multiple artists on a project to that of a single artist (you've got to be a Brom or a DiTerlizzi to pull the latter off, and most illustrators aren't those chaps). More artists = more competing visions = more imagination sparked via dissonance.

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    1. The preference for multiple artists and deliberate dissonance seems to be a rare one so far.

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  4. IMO well-chosen or illustrated artwork can add a lot to an RPG book, however it doesn't save a sub-par book, whereas a well-written book will still be good without art.

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    1. So would you consider it almost entirely an extra or an amplifier for what is already there rather than a core organ of the thing itself?

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    2. Pretty much, in general if I buy an RPG book it's the written contents of the book that I am primarily concerned with, the art adds spice and can serve as an enhancer to that, but it isn't 100% necessary nor can it make up for poor written content IMO.

      Now if I buy an art book, that's a different matter.

      Also, art (understandably) pushes the cost of many RPGs books up, if it's not overdone and the price is reasonable then I have no objections (I understand that artists have to eat, pay bills, etc and don't begrudge them this), however if I can get a free no-art copy then I'll inevitably go for that first, although I may later buy the full version if I enjoy it.

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    3. This is how I view it as well. I don't think I've ever bought a book (let alone an rpg book) because it had cool illustrations.

      A good cover can certainly make it easier for me to notice a book, but the interior art basically never prompts me to purchase something, mostly because I usually go for digital copies and print out select pages or make my own abridged versions of it anyways.

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  5. I feel that the "need" for art in most game books is over blown, over busy and over priced. When half or more of a project's budget is going to art (which is nice to have) versus text (which is necessary to have), art has become a detriment and not a benefit. On a more personal level, I am tired of books full of full page and double page illustrations that serve no purpose except filling page count and being art.

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  6. Used well, art can supplant a lot of text. Effective art is denser than text when describing the 'what' of something. But art without a specific pedagogic function doesn't add much to a text.

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    1. Can you think of any particular examples on either side of that divide?

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  7. I like SOME art in my RPGs. A little stimulates the imagination, while too much can actually be oppressive to creative vision. B/X D&D stands out to me in that regard: there are some nice, evocative illustrations, but not every little thing has one. Contrast the 2E Monster Manual, in which every creature is pictured. To me, the first communicates "This is someone's vision of a few things," while the latter says, "This, specifically, is what this thing looks like."

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  8. Pass. I prefer public domain line drawings, as hipster as that sounds.

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  9. Does a game NEED art to be awesome? No. See Moonhop, an awesome game with next to no art:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VbG_146ztfqVSQsjrO1oiVTn3ST70hOd/view?usp=sharing

    Can a game be majorly enhanced by serious thought and attention being given to the accompanying art? I'd say yes. Silent Titans, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Veins of the Earth, Deep Carbon Observatory, A Red and Pleasant Land, and Invisible Sun are all projects made much better by their strong and coherent visual art direction in my opinion.

    A lot of the above examples take the approach (consciously or not) of using somewhat vague or abstract art which leaves room for GM and player interpretation when things are translated into concrete details at the table. Invisible Sun is the notable exception since the art in that game is by and large very crisp and "presentational," but it works for me in that game since so much of what it was presenting was completely novel and typically quite hard to describe otherwise. I think a lot of WotC stuff could do with less art and better writing though, because I already know what "generic adventurer" looks like.

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  10. Consider the Fiend Folio. Pretty much anyone that liked that book did so because the art was so evocative. Good art is a huge benefit.

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    1. Do you think the FF would have worked without art? is it only a benefit or is it a thing in itself?

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  11. In my opinion it was Russ Nicholson's art (and a few others, and that beautiful cover) that sold that book. Flip through the hardback and you fall in love with it before reading the statblocks and realizing most were sort of gamey and not well thought out unlike the bulk of the Monster Manual entries..

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    1. I don't think most of the FF works without art, or even different artists it wouldn't have done as well as it did.

      I believe the limited number of artists gave the book a cohesive feel that really helped the book a lot.

      I also think it would have been amazing if in the 2E world they put out monsters books with monsters grouped in some cohesive way and only a single artist for that book. Russ Nicholson doing Dwarves, Elves, and Tolkien type creatures. Errol Otus doing creatures of chaos and lovecraftian beasts. That sort of thing.

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    2. The concept is appealing to me.

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    3. Veins in the Earth is a great example of this. All of the art works to create a mood that really sells the setting in a way you wouldn't get if Elmore shared the artwork duties. I like Elmore's work but he gives off a clinical Forgotten Realms vibe to me, not the what was that? Form a circle, light that damned torch and get ready, what was that? horror vibe that I get from Scrap Princesses art.

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  12. I have a complicated relationship with art in games. It can be very positive (e.g. DCO) or very negative (e.g. Pathfinder, Dungeon World, and, sadly, Silent Titans). Basically I don't want anything at the table to overshadow the shit we make ourselves, or to interfere with my rather fragile mental images of the game scene.

    Even art I like can often overshadow my stuff, and art I might like in another context can interfere with my imaging (e.g. Silent Titans). Cartoony art inteferes badly in just about every case.

    (If you want a long and confusing version of the above, have I got a treat for you --- https://mhuthulan.mediumquality.uk/2019/08/31/aesthetic_i_want/)

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  13. I ADORE art in games, am disappointed if it isn't there, and tend to prefer one or few artists with a radically unique aesthetic to a variety of artists working in a variety of different registers.

    I like the cohesion this creates between the art and the text, and the mood it evokes in me. (I recently finally found a copy of 40k Rogue Trader, and I don't think that book would have worked at all without the raving, splatterpunk, 2000AD aesthetic.)

    Also the inspiration, now that I think about it. I can kind of see the argument that art could get in the way of my own creative processes when I'm trying to run a game (both LL and 5E art do this to me sometimes), but I find that personally, good art (or at least the kind that I prefer—see 'radically unique aesthetic' above) tends to jerk my mind in unexpected directions and makes me think about the material in ways that I might not have otherwise.

    It's more than borrowing the artist's creative power, I think. If the formation of a gameable concept arrises from an interplay of mechanics, context, and aesthetic (among many many other factors), then I think a deliberately executed aesthetic can go a long way to *shaping* the other two, rather than just providing adornment or even amplification for them.

    Caveats: 1) Maybe I feel this way because I tend to care little about mechanics and deliberately run games with as few of them as possible because ouch my poor little head and 2) I tend to try and make kinda weird art and maybe this is me trying to rationalize the utility of that.

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  14. I don't really think it's necessary as such, and I definitely feel a bit miffed when I see creators who focus on paying for gorgeous art and then deliver subpar rules and writing, especially when it draws attention from better games written by people who can't afford to shell out for gorgeous four-colour artwork. Crowdfunder culture seems to contribute to this: you're more likely to get funded if you provide something visually magnificent, which ironically seems to make crowdfunders work best for those who already have money to spend.

    However, that doesn't mean I dislike art in games as such. When I wrote Travellers on a Red Road, using illustrations was necessary in order to clearly communicate the cultural differences from bog-standard fantasy (illustrations here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VdbaEb), in a way that would be much harder to do purely through writing. Going without illustrations works fine if your audience already knows what everything you describe looks like, but once you leave that space and don't want to keep things deliberately vague, they have a useful purpose.

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  15. Off the top of my head, I can think of two reason (I am sure there are more) as to why I like art in games. One is the point you brought up earlier that different brains work in varying ways. For some, visual information communicates more effectively that text (or aids in the processing of information). I always think of the US military studies that found that comics are the best communication method for information retention as it engages multiple forms of thinking.

    The other one is that pictures can increase usability. They can create quick triggering associations with info in the accompanying text when used later at the table. It can also provide landmarks in the geography of the text making easier to find sections when you want to reference them.

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  16. I don't want too much art in a game book. I'm not a Puritan Iconoclast... of the three Puritan arguments, the only one I care about is the cost argument. But a lot of the art that gets used is not really all that inspiring and is often just too busy. I can't say I'm impressed with most of the RPG art design out there.

    But I think a moderate amount of art is a Good Thing, for a very odd reason: as a memory aid. Game books are meant to be used, flipped through to find a particular table or stat block. Changes in the visual appearance of pages act as landmarks on your journey through the book. You start to remember that the treasure table is after the full-page pic of the greedy adventurer faces.

    So my idea is that there should be a graphic or other visual change every 1 to 4 pages -- never more than four, and the number should change each time. Tables can be substituted for graphics in some places, but it's important to avoid a routine. If every third page has a quarter-page graphic in the upper left, or tables are always at the bottom of the page and span two columns, that's not enough visual variety to be useful as a mnemonic aide.

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    1. Ha, Nick and I cross-posted about visual landmarks. You see? It's not just me!

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  17. I would distinguish between those games where the art feeds into a wider brand and those where it doesn't. That is to say, if you are selling a game which is intended to be played with a certain set of miniatures, then an image depicting those miniatures or what they represent is not unusual or even wrong. Or indeed, a spin-off of a game using those miniatures when a certain tone is expected.

    One might also say that where a certain, very definite feel is intended in some games, comparable to the miniatures example above - LotFP, perhaps and so artwork might be called for or even central to proceedings.

    However, otherwise I should say that art in games is more a spark than anything else. However appealing the image on the cover, it is fairly clear that you might end up with a different party of adventurers than those shown or that a goblin might not carry a spear.

    I suppose I accept most of the Puritan critiques on art, to an extent - and would have it used sparingly in most cases.

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  18. I think good art is really important to a game. My definition of "good" here is essentially "a strong unified aesthetic," and ideally it would work well with the graphic design. Warhammer is my go-to example for a strong aesthetic and great graphic design, and I don't think it would have had anywhere close to its level of influence without it. But I've also seen single-author retroclones that achieve a similar effect with just public domain Henry Justice Ford art and a decent font choice. Art is good at selling a particular feeling, and I think having a particular feeling is what gets a lot of people to think about picking up a game in the first place.

    There are a lot of corners to cut on an art budget, however. The worst way is to plan for lavish illustrations and then just pay people poorly. Better options can help you build up that aesthetic if used correctly.

    -Softcover instead of hardback
    -Reduce your pagecount. This is probably a good idea anyway.
    -Use black & white art.
    -Use more spot illustrations
    -Re-use your spot illustrations (Warhammer does this all the time, to really nice effect)
    -Maximize the illustration's effect on the page (Pathfinder monster books are a good example of what to avoid - hundreds of lavishly executed illustrations just sort of plonked onto the page with text swimming around them). A small number of really memorable illustrations can go a long way, especially when supported by thematically consistent spot illustrations
    -Public domain art. I wouldn't mix original and public domain stuff myself unless you're going for a very specific effect (e.g. the Wormskin zines did in a really cool way), but there is a lot of good stuff out there.

    D&D 3.0 had a nice idea of full-color hardback core books, with a large-ish stable of artists who were able to present a variety of pieces that all still felt more-or-less cohesive, and then released short, softcover supplements with black and white interior illustrations all made by a single author. They also re-used a lot of nice Wayne Reynolds ink spots. It was smart, seemed well-budgeted, and I thought they were really good looking books.

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    1. I should also asy that I think a lot of games (as well as a lot of childrens media, so some overlap there) would benefit from being more expressive than descriptive. Impressionism, scribbly line art, and so on can convey a lot of tone without necessarily nailing down exactly how a setting looks.

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  19. These are strange questions to me. Should we use pictures to convey information? We've been doing that before we had writing.

    And it's just as prescriptive to tell me what a character says or thinks. Or what the rules to a game are.

    I am now interested in the idea of creating an RPG using only pictures though. So thanks!

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  20. I like the art in games. The prose itself might be evocative, but a well-placed image will amplify it tenfold. I don't mind if the art creates the vision of the world that isn't my own vision - it doesn't stop me from imagining things and, if anything, the art in the book might help by being an inspiration for my own ideas about the place, as some kind of moodboard of things to come.

    Art being a subjective thing, if the art style doesn't work for me (as in main mainstream books and especially already-mentioned Pathfinder where it is often plainly and boring illustrative instead of being surreal, drastic, stylish or evocative) it does look like a waste of potential, although it will be useful as a visual marker for certain sections of the book.

    One artist or many - I prefer one artist or a couple who has styles that work well together for this particular world. "Through Ultan's Door" part 2 is most recent example for me.

    Approval argument I don't understand at all.

    Financially, I don't know much about how to handle art as a part of the business. I certainly prefer books with art in them, but (looking again at Pathfinder) it is better, I think, to have few pieces of quality than multitude pieces of 'so it is just here'. My ideal approach, if I am to make a book and be able to get all art I want for it, would be to make few big pieces, few half-page pieces and many little vignettes (quarter-page at most) that I can embed into a text in right places.

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  21. If art were truly irrelevant or deleterious, creators would choose to save money and the top spaces in Drivethru would be filled with text-only works.

    The fact that they're not means that, on the free market, art:

    * draws attention
    * conveys care and investment (a "costly signal")
    * conveys information about the tone and tenor of the setting in a way that text cannot
    * may be purchased and enjoyed for its own sake, in parallel with the text

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    1. I miss your blog

      also, this is genius

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    2. That is a very Panglossian perspective. Since we live in the best of all possible worlds and the big sellers have lots of art, that means art is good!

      I do agree art probably does what you say but I think there is a naturalistic fallacy at work in your comment.

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  22. A couple thoughts:

    1. Art establishes tone. Not that this is impossible to do with text alone, but I think art tends to this faster and is easier to share with your players. Unless you're reading out the box text (which tends to feel kludgy and bland), it can be tough to maintain tone while describing things on the fly (at least for me). Also with art, you can leave it in front of players and it continues to contribute to tone.

    I've had a lot of success, collecting images on Pinterest and then texting them to a group SMS thread during play.

    Although you raised the Sealed-in Vision as an issue, I think this is a feature. When constructing a shared imaginative space, it helps to have some shared touchstones.

    2. As someone who reads lots of gaming material, the experience is more fun if there's something cool to look at. The bottom line is that I enjoy seeing pictures.

    That said, good art and janky- but-heartfelt amateur art are both fun to see but bland art is a detractor. I feel like in a lot of RPG products it feels like the art was included because the maker felt they had to put it in, not because they had a particular, compelling vision to share. I see way too many generic dwarfs.

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  23. Full fellow Cavalier idolater here in that I really, really like it when a game has a lot of evocative art, but on the flipside I'd rather have a spare, stripped down text-only game than aggresively boilerplate art, or art that is badly mismatched with the content.

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  24. A few corrections for what it's worth:

    - I said "less is more", not "I hate art" or "There should never be art in RPG books"

    - It's not about less well-off creators not being able to afford art so much as it's about less well-off PURCHASERS being excluded and D&D becoming a bourgeois pursuit

    - I'm not concerned about people only imagining the "approved" thing; it's just that once you've seen one image it's hard to shake it.

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  25. There are times and places where artwork simply sets a tone for the game. As an example I picked up the Dyson Logos illustrated version of Neoclassical Geek Revival by Zzarchov Kowolski, and going through that the game has a particular feel and sets an image of "how" the game is played and what the setting is. Not the only way but just a way. Looking at the artwork that was presented by Alex Mayo, Luka Rejec, Chris Huth, and Scrap Princess. I was presented with a radically different view of the game from each of the presented artworks. While the rules of book are the same, with nothing more than layout changes.

    I do agree that once you see an image of a creature, or a character played out, your mind's eye goes to that since it is the path of least resistance. I am intrigued by these Crocodile headed Orcs, tell me more.

    I prefer less art with more impact. One trick that I have heard is designers giving an artist free reign to draw and image and then writing the mechanics, or settings around that. I admit that when I am sitting down to work on an adventure I head over to Pintrest and go through "Fantasy Locations, Ancient Architecture, or D&D Inspiration." From there put on a little music for the tone I want to set and start writing. Working off of a singular image for inspiration.

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  26. My position here is mostly pragmatic. On a theoretical level, I do believe in pure, no-frills text. My first RPG is 180 pages of dense 9-point text with a bare minimum of explanatory diagrams, and it did reasonably well among its hobbyist audience. It was deliberately free of what I considered banal art, and instead struck for what I called a "Tesco Value look". Here is what it looks like: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RlNFsQUDUYk/W_qufDfaiSI/AAAAAAAAC_4/XE_hm7s8cEgSDXVg25uZ9yR1qqLrZvDjQCEwYBhgL/s1600/kem_budget.png
    RPG Calvinism, almost. Of course, it had a message: that RPGs are not handed down from on high, but built and rebuilt by all of us.

    Geoffrey McKinney's infamous Carcosa has two editions, and I think the first, art-free one (except for one piece of cover art made with a felt-tip pen) is stronger for not having any interior art at all, and deliberately sticking to the 1974 OD&D booklet format. It feels like a dodgy underground artefact, and the lack of art is part of that appeal.

    But art does serve a function after all. It communicates mood, it breaks up and structures text, and gives weight to it (or interacts with the writing in other ways). Fighting Fantasy is half the text and half that high-budget art. I consider the text and art in DCO or Veins an integral whole. You could re-illustrate these books, but it would feel like a falsification of the original material. Or: my second RPG is a love letter to early printing, chapbooks and penny dreadfuls (among other things), and it uses a lot of woodcuts and engravings from the historical period it focuses on. It would be a lesser game without that illustrative material - or without using a reconstructed historical font.

    So all in all: use art where you have to; use art that speaks to you; and feel free to use public domain art if it fits the work (in tone AND content). But sometimes, being unornamented *is* the art.

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