Hey all, Inspired by my other thread on removing resources from RTS game, an idea I had in it caused me to consider the implications of game style. I have to say a lot of games I've traditionally played have been gritty and full of atmosphere, but lately I have also started playing many more games that are cutesy or neutral in style and I find that they also have a lot of appeal, more than I ever gave them credit for in the past. I am caught up in a constant battle of indecision when thinking about what style to use in my games, I feel that cutesy game possibly open up a wider audience because many casual gamers in my opinion, are likely put off by games tha take themselves too seriously. I know my girlfriend wouldn't even entertain a game of Oblivion or Doom 3 or anything in any way gritty, but she would definitely have a go at something like Super Monkey Ball or Donkey Konga (I think it was called :P). Now I could be wrong in that assumption, but I have a feeling I'm right. On the other hand, I can sometimes find cutesy games can be a little off-putting to some because they are seen to be too childish in nature. I wondered about this because I half considered the idea of a cutesy RTS game, but my instinct tells me it would be original, but probably a failure from the start because cutesy and war don't really mix too well. Again, on the other hand, I think cutesy games have slightly more potential for stylized graphics to stand out from the crowd, and should generally require less graphical resources to produce just as pretty a game, because everything by it's nature is simplified. So, I'm no closer to knowing what is best for my own games, in which case I'd be interested in knowing what styles others prefer, what pro and cons people see. Granted there is no definitive answer, but I'm not really looking to know which is best.... just gather some opinions such as how you think it effects your target market, how it affects the development of your game, peoples outlook on your end product and whether either of the styles could work wih games not traditionally associated with said style. Cheers, Steve

Well, for RTS gritty has been done to death.

Cutesy games can be great, worms rocks.

I even enjoyed the blob game, it was good fun for a bit and I really enjoyed the graphical style.

Go for it.

Lemmings was a cutesy game that was fairly similar to an RTS and it was quite popular.

I think there are more styles to choose from than just cutesy and gritty. Myself I prefer a romantic style with sensawonda (the awe you feel from looking at beautiful stuff. Many people like a gothic style, which is often mixed with surrealism, and then here's also a flashy materialistic style...

Yes, that is true there are many more styles than I'm putting forward, however I think most things can be lumped into very general categories of cutesy, gritty or neutral. For instance, I would probably class a romantic style game in the cutesy category given what I have seen of your work (IIRC which I may not!). But to that end, I'm not particularly after a hard set style to follow, but just trying to see what other people think of the matter.

Maybe my question has no answer. I think cutesy and I think 'cool... maybe I can make something my girlfriend would play with a strong concentration on fun and possibly less graphically demanding as an intermediate level project.', but conversly I then think that perhaps I need to please myself more and go for something based on storyline, atmosphere, a dose of combat and a generally gritty feel.

Maybe what I need is to break free of these boundaries I'm placing on game type and invent something new :P I liked the Avernum games for instance, setting up a reasonably serious gritty world, and then throwing in jumping happy magical spiders who are all named 'Spider' into the mix. =)

I think the important thing is that your art style looks like just that. One single art style (Nothing worse than graphics where a screenshot looks like a cut & paste from three different games and a photoshop background)

And secondly, that your art style supports the atmosphere you want for your game. Half-Life just wouldn't work with a cute art style, and Worms would lose a lot of its charm if it tried to do "serious" graphics.

So it all depends on what you want your game to be like. If you want to portray blood and war and people fighting for their surival, gritty tends to work better than cutesy.

Or drawing inspiration from your RTS thread, try to imagine WH40k in a cutesy art style. It'd just fall apart. It wouldn't be fascinating, it wouldn't look cool, it just wouldn't work. And your girlfriend *still* wouldn't play it. [wink]

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Original post by Mephs Again, on the other hand, I think cutesy games have slightly more potential for stylized graphics to stand out from the crowd, and should generally require less graphical resources to produce just as pretty a game, because everything by it's nature is simplified.

Don't be so sure on that. Stylised graphics can actually be harder than
'realistic' because it's harder to maintain a consistant look and feel, and it's much more obvious when something doesn't fit. And thats without going into the whole process of finding a suitable style in the first place.

Realism is, by contrast, quite easy. You know what you're after, you know how to achieve it, it just gets done. It's also very bland and soulless, which is why practically no game goes for a pure realsim approach.

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Original post by OrangyTang Quote: Original post by Mephs Again, on the other hand, I think cutesy games have slightly more potential for stylized graphics to stand out from the crowd, and should generally require less graphical resources to produce just as pretty a game, because everything by it's nature is simplified. Don't be so sure on that. Stylised graphics can actually be harder than 'realistic' because it's harder to maintain a consistant look and feel, and it's much more obvious when something doesn't fit. And thats without going into the whole process of finding a suitable style in the first place. Realism is, by contrast, quite easy. You know what you're after, you know how to achieve it, it just gets done. It's also very bland and soulless, which is why practically no game goes for a pure realsim approach.

This seems to be particularly true for 3D graphics - those cartoony curves and blobs are apparently really hard to model out of sharp-edged polygons.

You only need to look at the pictures in my journal, or even just look at my avatar, to know which type I prefer. Cutesy wins hands down as far as I'm concerned!

To start with, with a cute cartoon style, you no longer have to worry about realism. You don't have to worry about realistic physics, or ensuring that the weapons are historically accurate, or even if they make sense. Heck, if you want to add a cartoon duck wearing a Bavarian helmet and a jetpack who throws vegetables at enemies, it still works! As a consequence of this, it opens the possibilities of your game to pretty much any mad idea available. It also makes it a lot easier to put in gameplay elements purely because they make the game fun, rather than worry about limiting it to what makes the game real.

Secondly, it's far easier to make endearing memorable characters in a cutesy cartoon style, at least visually. If you look at the enduring game mascots, most of them are cartoons: Mario, Sonic, Pikachu etc. I know that some of these stem from the limits of the earlier systems that meant cartoon representations were pretty much the only way to go, but cartoons have historically been far more recognisable (which is why there are much easier to defend as IP [grin]).

Thirdly, in my view it is easier to make a cutesy cartoon game that "works" on a visual level than a gritty realistic one. Not necessarily on a technical level, but on the amount of bells and whistles you need to put in to satisfy today's audiences. I know there are a few counter-examples of reasonably low tech 2D gritty games (Fallout springs to mind), but I think there's a danger these days for people spending too long working on realistic games spending too long working on engine details rather than games. Today's gamers are now used to the tech arms race in game engines, so it seems prudent to side-step this and go for a cutesy style which audiences will be more forgiving of not having lens flare and realistic real-time shadowing or whatever.

Heck, I could go on for ever on this topic, so I might as well wrap it up for now [grin]. Just to mention though it is possible to combine some elements of cutesiness and gritty war elements. The one that springs to my mind is the Metal Slug series. And I am planning on combining cartoony graphics with a war setting in my present game (still in early stages though).

And since this is vaguely relevant, I'll close by putting in another shameless link to something I threw together a couple of weeks ago to test out the new version of Inkscape:


Postcard from Hell

I guess Doom would have played a lot differently if it had looked like that, but I still would have found it fun [grin].

'Realistic' games today require incredible levels of detail that just aren't feasible for small teams. Bungie is employing something like 50 artists for Halo3. How many artists did it take to produce Prey's single player campaign? And it's only six hours long!

The contrast to these games are the 'cutesy' cartoon tie-in games that seem to be mass produced by very small dev teams. What's the difference? The models are usually primitive, the texturing crude, and the environments overly simplistic.

The difference isn't in the style, it's in the quality. I suppose what I am trying to say is that high-quality 'cutesy' like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker are just as much work as realism. However, 'cutesy' programmer art can still look good. Poorly done realism looks really bad.

Just because it's not realistic doesn't mean it has to be "cutesy"!

While I don't really agree with his final catagorizations, the point stands. For one example, look at Homeworld. It's not very realistic to paint spaceships in wonderful colours with all sorts of stripes in a second colour here and there, but it fits very well, not only with the cutscenes, but in setting a mood of fantasy and adventure. Choose an art style that fits the game; I particularly like the Realism/Abstraction/Iconic triangle for this reason, as it can be used to identify gameplay as well.