Hacker News Reader

Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

> When looking at games developed for one platform versus games developed for multiple platforms, we found a few advantages and disadvantages to choosing one over the other. First, 46% of developers that used multiple platforms listed art as something that went right, while only 33% of developers that used a single platform listed this. Additionally, 15% of the developers that used a single platform listed this as something that went wrong, while only 17% of developers that used multiple platforms listed art as having gone wrong. Therefore, the evidence shows us that games developed for multiple platforms may be more likely to have better game art.

I didn't quite understand the correlation between development for multiple platforms and quality of art. May be those who want to release for multiple platforms in general care about quality more?

View on HN

I don't think this as anything to do with the quality of art. Dealing with assets is a pain, dealing with assets on multiple platforms is worse. I'm guessing those dealing with multiple platforms paid more attention to the process. Where those working with a single platform probably didn't think about the issues with at a much. Getting the art right, it's probably more important on multi platform.

Do you mean stuff like making shaders for multiple incompatible platforms or all art in general?

I don't think it is a stretch to say that art directors don't have to worry about what platform the game is on, generally. Programmers, on the other hand, definitely have to worry. I imagine the art is seen in a better light on multi-platform games because a) what I first stated, and b) if something goes wrong in programming then "at least the art is good". I don't know if this is a specific kind of bias, but thats what it is.

However I think the authors took a bit too much liberty with the conclusion (i.e. "may have better game art"). It sounds more like the designers of multiplatform games may just have a higher opinion on the art in the game, due to bias.

Maybe "having your art under control" is a prerequisite for "being big and seasoned enough to work on multiple platforms at once". If all your games look like trash, nobody's going to give you the funds to scale up to the point where you can easily develop on multiple platforms.

I understand art beyond mere looks. It can include narrative, music, immersion and many other artistic aspects. May be the simple correlation is just being thorough and not superficial (which translates into reaching more users, rather than excluding everyone except one platform).

Some games have targeted consoles, created a bunch of console-resolution textures and other art, then ported to PC and been slated for the low-resolution textures and art.

Or at least, that was the case last time I read the gaming press about 10 years ago. I don't know if it's still an issue these days.

In some ways. Consoles had insanely long update cycle, so their hardware was always behind a lot. This caused badly developed games (which weren't made scalable) to use the lowest common quality and performance on all platforms.

Only now consoles seem to be speeding up, possibly because of increasing competition like Steam Machines.

Another problem were interfaces. Too many developers cut corners and didn't develop separate interfaces for controllers and keyboard & mouse. This resulted in very bad UIs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com