Hacker News Reader

> There's a difference between a conscious choice to maintain a certain style or level of detail, and a lack of willingness to improve said style. The whole article reads to me less like "I don't want to upgrade to 3D or higher detail" and more like "I'm too comfortable to want to improve the current art by putting in 10% more detail".

He has an entire section dedicated to this issue though. Which boils down to the fact that improving the graphics sufficiently for enough people to not say "this looks like crap" far outstrips the budget and team he has available. His take:

> I have had games where I worked very hard to improve the graphics, spending a lot of time and money, and they really did look better! But when I released those games, the vast majority of people who had said, "Your games look bad." STILL said, "Your games look bad."

I get his position and I don't see a problem here. Gamers are incredibly fickle and I wouldn't want to be subject to the whims of the gaming community's opinions on graphics. Of course, he's choosing to limit his audience to an extent but ... that's fine. He wants to focus on everything else that can make a game good and valuable and it seems that's something that his business has continued to survive on.

I think he doesn't understand why people say the games look bad (and people may have trouble articulating the real reasons too); I believe 'meheleventyone captured the root issue elsewhere[0] - the game he presented has inconsistent, crappy style. Which can be contrasted to other simple games he uses as a justification - these games look well because they have a particular style.

The solution isn't to go 3D, or add more details - it's to get one artist responsible for the overall style and refactor art relentlessly so that it all fits together. It should be entirely within his budget.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20766174

He explains why he doesn't want to get a single permanent artist in the article. A few times.

... it's like nobody's reading the article. And it's a good article.

It's an interesting pattern to notice; well written articles that pre-emptively address common questions, and then a pile of comments that ask those exact same questions.

Some articles (like this) don't address common questions, they brush them aside, possibly not realizing that actually addressing them would remove the point behind the article.

It's more that people don't like the answer: That he's happy with where he is, feels safe doing what he knows works, and don't want to take risks that could very well give him a massive boost but could also make his business fail.

> and then a pile of comments that ask those exact same questions.

It would be nicer if the remarks in this thread were presented as questions, rather than absolute convictions...

I'm impressed that out of everyone who read the article none have lost their nerve and started responding to every zomg-bad-art-hire-an-art-director poster asking which indy game company they've been profitably running for the past twenty years. Or maybe it's only me feeling that compulsion... :)

I know. But that doesn't change the fact that a single art director would most likely fix the "look like crap" problem.

The article reads to me like, "would-be customers complain about X, I gather that A, B, C are the causes of X, but I won't address them; moreover, I won't address the issues Y and Z (which happen to be the true causes of X) either; so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

What was the point of that article again?

> Lesson 3 is just putting the blame on the freelancers. Yes it's hard to find talent and yes it's hard to afford it, but that shouldn't be an excuse to just give up on trying to strive for better.

As a business owner, you have to do some kind of de-risking to your production process. If that includes not relying on freelancers so you can hit deadlines, that's fine. It's a completely valid excuse.

Lesson 3 is not about blaming anyone but acknowledging the nature of the relationships in the space.