Good news, those of you bellyaching about the box art: You'll be able to download and print covers that perhaps are more to your liking. That in turn will, I dunno, make the game more gooder for you?
What the box art looks like is the least important thing about Bioshock: Infinite. The multiple delays and reports of people leaving Irrational are a much bigger worry imo.
Nobody on this forum, or any gaming forum, will decide to buy (or not buy) Bioshock Infinite based on the box art. The box art is not for us. Its for the guy who walks into a store and wanders around looking at box art wondering what to buy. Maybe this box art tempts him to try it out, some money goes to Irrational, maybe it even expands his horizons beyond COD clones. Artists often have to choose when to compromise their art for commercial success, but occasionally they get thrown a freebie like this one. Let the marketing guys have the cover, the artists can concentrate on the game.
One thing I found curious about Levine's explanation is this: Does anyone wander Gamestop with $60 in their pocket looking to buy a game they've never heard of? I don't think I've ever bought a video game without knowing something about it first. Maybe that's just me.
About 70% of non-habitual category purchase decisions are made in-store. So if you've got $60 in your pocket and you want a new game but are just wandering and having a look, box art helps. The box art makes B:I look like an FPS (which it is) so that helps it appeal to the FPS market. So if someone walks in wanting a new FPS but without a specific title in mind, that's when that particular art comes into play.
I've actually seen these kinds of purchases in the wild, and while visiting friends who typically buy one game every couple of months through the method of talking to me on the phone or by wandering into a store and being talked into it by an employee. Curiously, they seem much more satisfied than when I decide I want to see a movie on a weekend and scan down the tomatometer for what's out and looks ok. Again, I think it's silly to pretend that I or anyone else here is "judging" the game on the cover. I don't think even low information consumers who pick it off the shelf are really doing that all that much so much as using their own criteria for what's worked for them in the past and looking for easy markers in unknown products. But I do think in the absence of an actual game to assess, there's nothing wrong with looking at marketing meta stuff and talking about what they think they're doing with it, and that it can tell you some useful things about the game and its design. Otherwise no threads would get made about games that haven't been released.
This cover art thing is out of control. http://irrationalgames.com/insider/poll/ Warning -- page may not load
Design #4 is really well done. I can't imagine anyone would walk into a Gamestop and not turn the box around on that.
Is it really THAT hard to come up with a cover that both reflects what kind of game it is (FPS-ish) and what is unique about it? The existing cover does the former, and most of the new proposed ones are just the latter with no attention to the former (or are terrible, like #1). #3 comes the closest, taking the existing cover and giving more prominence to the unique elements, but seems pretty sloppily photoshopped rather than thoughtfully composed. This was always my complaint about Ken's defense of the cover; I accept his judgement that covers like System Shock 1 did a bad job of communicating what the game was, but it seems weird to say "basically we just want it to look indistinguishable from Call of Duty so we can suck up that market" rather than call attention to the stuff that differentiates it. (Which the existing cover does do, but only very weakly.)
Haha, wow, they really caved in to the complaints. And some of these alternate ones look like they were made in a real hurry.
He is, but it means we keep talking about Bioshock: Infinite without Irrational having to cut together another game play trailer.
Man, even I'm not seeing that. Anyways, #4 is fucking awesome and currently winning. That rules. It reminds me of when cover art had fucking imagination.
I dunno, it kinda looks like it's trying too hard to be artsy and Steam-punky. I like 5 the best, although like the rest it is fairly generic (ok, some aren't generic but are just bad).
The splash screens that come up the first time I run the game will have more impact on my artistic experience of the game than the box art.
I've been pretty up-front in this thread that I think the box-art complaints are overblown. But in case I wasn't clear: I think the box-art complaints are overblown.
Good, now let's try transitioning to specific things people said versus these self-animated complaints of which you speak. Then perhaps provide a frame of reference to your hierarchy of appropriate commentary relative to information available before a game is released. Obviously, we all prefer "things Ken Levine has literally said" to trailers, press releases, art releases, but let's set that aside for the moment. In Quitch's formulation, for instance, the thing he most objected to was my offhand reference to Call Of Duty, and while that wasn't the thrust of my argument, it's a direct criticism that I can address. In retrospect, I would have said "generic spectacle-based shooter", but I was unaware that it would be as controversial as it was.
Ken's been in the business long enough to know you can't really afford to pass up PR opportunities when they arise. I'm sure he thinks it's all silly too, but he's not really in a position to tell those interested in his game that they shouldn't be so interested in his game. Honestly, were you in his shoes what would you do? Just ignore it?
I'd go into the forum threads and tell them what a masterpiece of art I'd crafted and how they were all stupid people. Then, later, when it's flopped, I'd make new posts about how I was too close to the art to see its flaws.
Keep in mind I'm looking at these from the perspective of someone who hasn't been following the game close enough to know what I'm seeing. So maybe I'm seeing something different here: But it stands out enough to me.
