Critiquing Game Visuals: Common Problems and How to Solve Them

[@cristianobrogna1225]

I don't know how tf I've been living all my life playing vidya without watching GDC videos. This is academic knowledge, from people who make games, FOR FREE.

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

GDC is great, because a whole bunch of it is aplicable in a dozen different fields.

[@GermyJer]

what a fantastic speaker! She could do a session on how to present something as well. Her use of slides to demonstrate things, not just blast text at the audience, was great. And the way she restated the questions at the end was very helpful.

[@younesskafia4189]

This is one of the most interesting GDC i've seen. It's very rare to see these kind of talks. I'm thankful it was made and shared! I'm actually color blind and doing my best to understand colors and composition and this has come to be very helpful to me

[@deeliciousplum]

Me, too. And, I 2nd your comment. Great talk.

[@GonziHere]

While this talk is interesting (especially because people ignore other areas), its like photo editing 101. Games are an incredibly new medium. We are just stumbling in the dark. There are things that you cannot easily find elsewhere (interaction), but the rest of the medium can and should heavily research other forms. If you care about storytelling, you should look at books, movies, standups, campfire stories... If you care about visuals, you should look at movies, photos, paintings, webdesign... If you care about multiplayer, you should look at summer camps, sport events... * *) Everyone was talking about The Fall Guys... it's almost literally just "Jeux sans frontières" the videogame (google the images if you don't know it)

[@younesskafia4189]

@@GonziHere You're very right, it did sound like visual art 101 in general but i think the talk offers a way to look at video games and apply this knowledge to it. I'm totally inexperienced in visual arts, i lack the neuron connection to understand and apply the knowledge on games, but explanations like this talk helps me understand how to use it

[@smort123]

@@GonziHere My thoughts too! Im not a game designer at all, but I know many of the concepts from photography. Like color contrats, good distinction between foreground and background, lighting etc...

[@018FLP]

Very cool indeed! I'm not color blind, but i always put into consideration not just to help, but to force intentionality in my design, and it's always a good practice

[@midge_gender_solek3314]

Usually when people say a game "looks bad", they often fail to understand why, and you shouldn't expect anyone to be an artist. As with anything, feedback shouldn't be interpreted literally, it should only be a way to discover whether a problem exists

[@milanstevic8424]

Exactly. When faced with a problem they can't define, people will always rationalize with the irrelevant problem that they actually can define. However, the real trouble with the feedback begins if your game is in an extreme state of either having an exquisite visual repertoire, or because it's doing something invisible -- deals stress, or induces certain emotions in its players. Usually non-visual, intangible design choices such as difficulty can throw off people in giving the game incredibly bad reviews on Steam. Recently I've investigated a case where this runaway effect would be pretty hard to nail down exactly because the indie game in question literally copy-pasted all the major features from a much bigger and more successful game in the same genre, and yet all the people would say the same thing "the feature XY is stupid" "if only it wasn't made so that XY was like this". The confusing thing is why didn't they give the same reviews to a sequel for a multi-million dollar franchise, as it surely have had exactly the same problem. Unfortunately, this particular indie game had a very pretty pixel art, and nobody could say a thing about the visuals. This also had a side-effect of drawing in the players who haven't already played the big hit by a AAA studio and weren't keen on understanding what exactly went wrong with the design. Finally after playing the game (and coming across an analysis of some incredible guy on the internet who studies game design and was interested in this for similar reasons), it became apparent that this game had an extremely unfair difficulty ramp in mid to late stages and -- in this situation, and this situation alone -- under cortisol overload, a standard feature in the genre would become very apparent and critically annoying to most of its players to the point of giving massively negative reviews. For this reason, if your game is rushed into market as this one was, most likely -- and I think this was a mistake made by their small publisher -- I believe it is better to make it less difficult, regardless of what you think your game was supposed to be. Yes it will be mellow and people would think less of it, BUT a game that doesn't frustrate its players => will have balanced reviews => will sell slightly better => will get an opportunity to be fixed or expanded. Ultimately it won't be remembered badly, or even worse -- completely forgot.

[@tobymdev]

loved the focus on failure cases and good solutions

[@OrdinaryOcean2001]

Fantastic talk! It's the stuff art directors are constantly thinking about, but spelled out in a way that non-art directors can understand.

[@ryanquinn1257]

I’ve never actually had someone explain HSV so well

[@CurtisJensenGames]

Same, finally makes sense

[@concernedspectator]

What a clear, concise style, and really insightful for me. Appreciate it

[@bzdirt]

Also, the part about having a clear vocabulary is super important! At one point an art director was telling me 'I want it smaller but bigger', for thin and long. And to add to the vocabulary thing: to art people, know that your fellow programmers (juste like print people) usually know of 2 more colors: magenta and cyan (the pink that isn't pink and the pale blue that isn't blue). Don't hesitate to use those terms!

[@JulianTunru]

Such an excellent talk - straight to the point and jam-packed with information. Thanks so much!

[@Lunareon]

Excellent talk with great, clear guidelines for both giving better critique as well as making better visual design choices. Thank you for sharing your expertise.

[@Entereri]

Examples were so helpful in understanding the different available options

[@__dane__]

Great talk, concise and to the point. A lot of people have never been taught how to give art feedback so this will definitely help a lot of people

[@018FLP]

This talk is great, and a hidden masterclass about art direction

[@jaydenwebster7510]

This was a great talk presented in an easily digestible way, thank you. The use of imagery helped a lot.

[@tristanwegner]

The examples were great and very convincing. Hope she gives more talks

[@MacShrike]

Not putting the highest sarurated colors next to each other. Easily overlooked yet in your face if you do =) good tip. Also: providing a proper vocabulary to this is invaluable. Thank you.

[@soraaoixxthebluesky]

Games in early 2007 be like: "Brown brown brown"

[@maxhuk]

This talk is a real gem! Thank you 😊

[@StBlueFire]

At around 13:30 she talks about Saturation. Is there a way to "gray scale" saturation? It appears like viewing contrast just involves setting Saturation to 0. But setting Contrast to 0 doesn't have the same effect for Saturation.

[@lainred2900]

watching this talk made me understand understand the properties of a color more than what I knew when I'm studying it. it might not be pretty lengthy but it sure is a pretty good talk about visuals.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I think you might like marco bucci's channel - it's aimed at painting, but he has some videos on color, lighting and contrast which are great

[@deeliciousplum]

Wonderful talk. As someone whose artwork can best be described as 'Are those poorly drawn couches with terrible upholstery?' while I am trying to draw a horse, any tips do help. 😊

[@galgr]

Why does a GDC talk from 2019 only gets uploaded just now?

[@MrOzzification]

If you see an old GDC talk uploaded recently, it was probably locked behind a pay-wall.

[@wizvanmeter]

I'm guessing that uploading older videos preserves the value of the vault in the short term and gradually releasing them all for free helps the industry in the long term.

[@aminthemar]

Okay, now you're just God-of-War-baiting!

[@galgr]

Yep, GoW wasn't mentioned at all

[@8butsideways295]

Lol

[@GonziHere]

I took it as a joke and I loved it.

[@arcan762]

A lot of the thumbnails are just bait and have nothing to do with the game being talked about...

[@samstallion6541]

I disagree with the assesment of value for the puzzle game at 12:35. When the value of the pieces is adjusted to the same level, and color removed, the solved pieces are almost indistinguishable from the unsolved pieces (requiring more cognitive load to distinguish pieces by context rather than value). It is convenient that yellow/blue is used, as its a good choice for colorblind players, but it isn't mentioned at this point. Having close-to but not matching value could work in this instance, or equidistant contrast from the background of the pieces could also work (equally dark as the solved pieces are light).

[@bzdirt]

Feels magical how a few tweaks can save a picture!

[@ColeHolio2294]

Fantastic talk, thank you so much!

[@lhmsc]

Would be nice to point out as well that if you have a well thought moodboard and study this moodboard to understand why these references look the way it is it will make it easier for you to break down your own art as well and understand how to get to the result you want.

[@erickh555]

definitly REALLY usefull, this was GREAT. really straight forward, and clean explanation. she is a real pro!

[@lemonke8132]

Super useful talk, but am i the only one who thinks 18:15 looks better than 18:20? I feel like some of the spookiness of the forest was lost in the de-contrastification

[@levisymons208]

Thank you, super helpful as a programmer artist

[@studio.pentecost]

This was sooooooooo good!

[@vitotito12]

Good talk.

[@YondaMoegi]

Good talk!

[@daveyhu]

an unexpectedly good talk

[@ccalo]

Pam Beesly

[@damie9412]

Nice

[@freshstart108]

This is a good one. She's absolutely fantastic.

[@babasemka]

That GoW clickbait tho!

[@JoshMarshain]

Hel.Yes.

[@qazzi2436]

She looks like Pam from The Office

[@eddiefreakinmunson]

Ragnarok reveal soon boys n gals!

[@spectrobit5554]

Amy Adams if she was a game dev

[@hypejuice1321]

Come on man.. Baited us with the masterpiece God of War

[@krevetka9744]

Cute girl talks valuable stuff in the way even an absolute me can understand. Bravo!