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[gollumsluvslave]

I'm no design guru, but even a cursory look at recent box-art threads show that at least 90% (probably closer to 95%) of gaming box-arts are bland, lifeless crap... Xbox being the worst offender.

Are there companies that exist to soley to design crap box-arts? It amazes me how games do very little to distinguish themselves with 'cool' box art to attract casuals...

I'm not big on Japanese games, but one thing they do have is far more stylish boxarts than western ones - far more decent boxarts for Playstation 2 - mainly because of the Japanese games...

Western game publishers must pay a fair amount of money to designers/marketeers for box-arts - and what do they get?

Forza

If I was the devs for this game i'd be going to MS and sayin 'Change the freakin box cover for fucks sake!'

Ghost Recon 2

:lol :lol :lol

too many other bland and downright crap ones to post

Some decent ones IMO

GTA boxarts have STYLE

People will pick this up just because of the boxart IMO, maybe subjective tasetwise, but it's DIFFERENT...

 

[Joe]

i really doubt they go out and hire someone. its probably someone already on payroll.

 

[Gek54]

Kakusha should be paid.

 

[arhra]

Whoever got paid for that Ghost Recon boxart, they were paid too damn much.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Whoever got paid for that Ghost Recon boxart, they were paid too damn much.

Along with Rainbow Six:

 

[jiggle]

Probably in house designers that put these together.
Don't think they actually create the artworks. They can only do so much with the art they're given. It's not like the compositions or layouts on these boxarts are particular bad.

The ones commissioning/hiring the artists to produce those art, and the ones that actually approve their use, are the ppl to blame.

 

[lexy]

Don't the people who market the games have a significant say on what the box-art ends up looking like?

IIRC, back in the PSX-era (when 3D games were still a new thing) I remember reading something that said all, or most games released in NA at that time had to have CG box arts to show/advertise the fact that the game was in 3D. I don't know what the rules are now but I'd imagine the same type of thinking is still involved for the majority of games.

 

[gollumsluvslave]

loxy:-

Don't the people who market the games have a significant say on what the box-art ends up looking like?

This is what I was curious about - who researches the value of box arts, who approves etc...

 

[Chittagong]

It really depends on company and the marketing manager in question.

Cheap and/or untalented managers have the development team just "come up with something". Or they get a couple of renders from the team and have a crap advertising agency to "come up with something".

Managers with the insight and budjet commision a talented design agency to do the whole marketing artwork concept, including box art, and give this agency a good access to the dev team artists. Then the agency comes up with a range of concepts, and the manager uses his/her talent to select the best one to promote the game. At this point, team creates then the art as shown in the concepts, and hands it to design agency for finishing touches.

A step beyond this is to have the design agency to interact also with ingame art - typography, menu layouts, even character designs. But it's a lot more work!

That's the way movie biz works too - ever wonder why movie posters are so much better? Because most of the marketing managers in the games industry are lazy fucks without any insight or taste of style whatsoever.

 

[IgeL]

Does anyone here actually know what kind of covers sell, i.e. is there some kind of research or basic "knowledge" of such design.

For example, I've read somewhere that people tend to respond well to human characters, especially human faces. Dunno how this holds up in the gaming world.

I don't think the Forza box art is that bad. The car is a bit large maybe. Otherwise I agree with the opinions...

 

[Nerevar]

who the hell buys a game based on the boxart alone? Hell, I'd say I mostly ignore 95% of movie posters too. Why are boxarts such a big deal to some people?

 

[NotMSRP]

who the hell buys a game based on the boxart alone? Hell, I'd say I mostly ignore 95% of movie posters too. Why are boxarts such a big deal to some people?

Don't casuals buy games based on boxarts? Isn't this the reason why marketing does boxarts as the way they are to get people to buy games based on box covers?

 

[gollumsluvslave]

IgeL :-

I don't think the Forza box art is that bad.

It's just bland and generic - not bad, but for one of MS's bigger games, surely they could come up with more inspired boxart...