[polk]

One thing that bothers me in this discussion is the 'business model' justification.

>his audience values that particular kind of game way more than it does art

Isn't that ridiculously self-selecting? If he's always been making ugly games, then it follows that his current customer base will be limited to people who don't care as much about visuals. This will always be true, regardless of what genre games you're making.

It absolutely does not mean that he wouldn't expand his audience by making good-looking games. In fact, if what he said is true and most of his current customers don't care about looks, it's more likely an indicator that the subpar visuals are indeed costing him customers.

I honestly have a hard time grasping that this even passes as an argument. It's like someone who sells shit sandwiches saying their customers don't mind the shit taste.

[eropple]

You might disagree--which is fine--but as one of those folks who've steadily paid his mortgage from his games I don't think the art style is ugly. It's functional. It's not particularly good, nor is it distractingly bad. That's clearly enough for the audience that he, with low-risk projects, makes enough money to get by on.

I assume that you have read the article and read how JV has tried spending more money to update his graphics in an effort to expand his customer base, to little effect. And since I assume you must understand that one can evaluate marginal returns based on cost outlay, I would think that this line of thinking should make sense, even if you disagree with it.

I've said it elsewhere in this thread but I'll say it again: the goal when running a small business is not to take over the world. The goal is to not fail. Expending scarce resources on bets with a ROI ratio under one is not a good way to avoid failure.

[polk]

>JV has tried spending more money to update his graphics in an effort to expand his customer base, to little effect

I'm sceptical of this for 2 reasons

1. It assumes cause and effect are linear, which I doubt. People are put off because the games look bad. Making a game that looks better, but still bad, doesn't solve this issue. In order for Jeff to be able to properly evaluate the ROI of making his games look not-bad, he would need to have made a not-bad looking game. This is arguably not the case.

2. It's clear from the article that Jeff doesn't really understand what makes a game looks good. As a result, if he's spending extra resources on making the game look better, they're likely not well spent. The money would need to go into foundational efforts like consistent color palettes to make it visually pleasing, consistent lighting so everything feels like it's part of the same world, proper shading so everything looks grounded, making sure everything looks to scale, balancing out the level of detail between pieces to make sure the right things stand out, etc etc. In the article, he stated that he thinks good art = AAA level, so I'm guessing Jeff just paid artists to add more details to faces and monsters - which really isn't going to solve anything.

> the goal when running a small business is not to take over the world. The goal is to not fail. Expending scarce resources on bets with a ROI ratio under one is not a good way to avoid failure.

I can completely respect this decision. He's trying to run a certain kind of business and that imposes a certain set of constraints.

The irony though is that Jeff is the one who's not respecting those constraints.

It's entirely possible to spend little on art and still have a good looking game. Just pick a simple art style that can be executed fast. Alternatively, if you want to have a good looking game in your personally preferred style - that also happens to be more expensive to produce - that's also entirely possible. It will just cost you more.

Both options are fine.

But Jeff is spending little on art and at the same time asking artists to make highly detailed artworks. There's just no chance of that working out well. The poor results are not imposed by his business constraints, but rather from his failing to respect them.