What is going on with art design in big games these days? Especially character/armor model design?

I cannot remember there ever being a bigger disconnect between:

1) What a large subset of mass market video game developers/art designers are shoveling down gamers’ throats.

and:

2) What gamers are CLEARLY signaling they actually want through:

• F2P skin and cosmetic purchases
• popular looks in other forms of media (movies, tv, comics, etc)
• extremely vocal complaints and requests in forums, social media, etc.

I am primarily and particularly talking about chararacter models and armor/clothing/appearance skins and cosmetic options.

There is something rotten in Denmark.

I don’t know how long this has been going on… 5 to 10 years now? Maybe longer? But art direction in a major percentage of the video game industry has gone completely off the rails. It looks TERRIBLE.

I’m not talking about graphical fidelity or the tech side of graphics. I’m sure the number of polygons being pushed is significantly amazing and people could gush about shaders and anti-aliasing and texture density/quality and a million other things. That’s fine. Whatever.

But the ART design – the actual things being imagined, drawn, and created – look boring and dull.

Premium Skins? More like Peasant Skins.

Look at the recent launch of Avowed – an RPG with huge expectations from Obsidian Entertainment (formerly Black Isle Studios). For those of you not up to date in your video game/RPG history – Black Isle was Larian Studios (Baldur’s Gate 3) before Larian Studios. They collaborated with Bioware and then worked alone on some of the biggest and most beloved RPGs of the 90s and 2000s (Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate: 2, Fallout 2, etc).

Look at these “premium” skins you pay $20 for:

Are you kidding me? Premium PAID skins that look like this? Why would anyone, ever, ASPIRE to look like this?

Now before anyone says I am trashing the artists: I’m not doing that. From what I can tell, these are well made armor/clothing skins. They just happen to be very drab, generic, and boring. Almost as if they were supposed to be.

Heavy use of brown, earth tones, bulky fabrics, and utilitarian design. This looks like standard peasant/merchant fare for the most part. That’s not the sort of thing fans/gamers get excited about.

I wouldn’t pay 10 cents for all of those. I’d delete them from the game entirely if I had.

If I bought the game for the 4 days, and I had the option to NOT install these skins, I’d prefer that.

I am an RPG fanatic. I’ve had Avowed on my wishlist forever. These garbage skins have STOPPED ME from buying the 4 day pre-order. They are that bad and that insulting.

There is something PROFOUNDLY messed up with character model/armor/skin design in RPGs right now and I cannot figure it the hell out. WHY ARE PEOPLE DOING THIS?

Everything looks like DOGSHIT. And yet…………….

How come F2P Games Seem Uniquely Able to Make Stuff Look AMAZEBALLS?

Oh, that’s right. Because if their skins/cosmetics look like dogshit, they don’t eat and the servers go dark.

F2P games figure that shit out REAL FUCKING QUICK!!! Marvel Rivals has fan service out the ass:

And it’s not just them. Look at:

League of Legends

Overwatch

Fortnite

I Can Keep Going. It Gets Worse.

Look at some other recent RPGs and boggle at what the hell they are doing.

That’s No Rest for the Wicked. More like: no rest for my stomach as I’m projectile vomiting until I’m barely retching up bile between dry heaves. Those proportions are an absolute abomination. Tiny head, no shoulders, forearms of a horny teenager with too much internet access and mainlining Trenbolone into his veins, atrophied legs, wtf?

Here’s Enshrouded. A very cool upcoming RPG with tremendous building capability and pretty fun combat/game mechanics. I am really hopeful this game will be a blast eventually. But my god, the character models:

Is this the story of the cute delivery boy who becomes a hero? Sadly, no. And you never grow up either. For your entire life you’ll never be more than a scrawny, ill-proportioned, malnourished little boy who bravely survived tuberculosis, polio, malaria, and rickets. Again, boring silhouette. No shoulders. Insanely narrow chest. Very short upper torso. This is a child.

Would I object to this being an OPTION in a game? Absolutely not. But why is this it?

Here’s some stuff from Dragon Age: Veilguard. A much beloved franchise from Bioware. I absolutely adored DA1 and DA2. Here’s the most hulking Qunari and human warriors you can make:

These are not terrible. But they aren’t very impressive either. I see 20+ different dudes like this at the gym every time I go. These are not impressive fantasy male warriors by any means.

And again, I’m not objecting to this being an option. But this is a midline. There should be options above this that people who want it can choose. There should be skinny, agile, type options also. DA:V had none of that really either.

Why am I…… a 52 year old video game nerd, developer, and professor *MORE JACKED* than the fantasy warriors I am able to create in ~90% of modern video games?

Can someone please answer me that?

(NOTE: If your answer is anything at all similar to, “Well Professor Hartman, you are, after all basically a silverback gorilla. How could any video game keep up?” I will rationally disagree with you, but illogically accept the compliment, shut up, and go away smiling.)

One of my oldest gaming buddies and I wonder if this is a big reason why City of Heroes still continues to attract tens of thousands of active players despite being 100% fan run. Because at least that game gives you OPTIONS to fulfill all your various class and power fantasies.

Where Is the Fan Service?

You look at F2P Games like League of Legends, Marvel Rivals, Fortnite, and even Overwatch, and you see incredible character models and skins that look amazing.

You look at popular movies (super hero movies of course), and tv shows like Reacher (Alan Ritchson):

And while I have obsessed a lot over the hulking man beasts, we aren’t even getting stuff like this (Timothy Chalamet and Josh Brolin from Dune):

Or Johnny Depp from the Pirates of the Carribbean:

And What About the Women?

I have deliberately stayed away from this a bit as I don’t want to trawl in the trash of the internet who start making this an anti-woke thing. I’d love to hear some women chime in on how they feel their options are lately for RPG characters.

Personally, women gamers complain to me all the time that they are being genericized as well. My friends from the cosplay community routinely complain “Where are the slutmogs?” to which I can only laugh and nod my head.

So for their sake, I’ll ask the question here:

Where are the Slutmogs?

Of course, I want “slutmogs” for my male characters as well.

Ruthless Pantheon (from League of Legends) was always a favorite of mine:

But seriously… look at this guy:

Show me a main stream RPG of the last 5-10 years that can TOUCH that character design in raw badassery? Holy shit, Pantheon is incredible.

What Are the Eastern Game Developers Giving us?

This almost deserves its own blog post, so I’ll keep it short.

Look at Black Desert Online or a host of other eastern MMORPGs and RPGs.

Their art design is DESTROYING ours right now. Their character, armor, cosmetic, skin design obliterates ours in quality, beauty, and options.

Is that because they embraced F2P with more open arms and less cynicism than the west, and so they indulged their love of fancy cosmetics while for us in the west it is still somewhat of a guilty pleasure?

In Conclusion – Fire Back. Tell me my head is up my ass. Or agree and share your own examples.

I should probably stop right there. I invite you to react and respond any way you want. I’ve been making video games professionally for almost 40 years. I have a thick skin – I can take it.

I also have an open mind. Tell me where I’m going wrong and I’ll listen. But most importantly, I’d love to discuss this and see more examples.

1. How do you feel about character designs, armor designs, skin/cosmetic designs lately – particularly in mass market, non-F2P games/RPGs?

2. Are these designs exciting you, entertaining you, and drawing you in? 

3. Are you being given the range of options of characters you want to play?

4. If you want to be beautiful, or hulking, or beastlike, or insanely lithe and agile… are you being given these options?

5. How much is this affecting your willingness to purchase modern western games (RPGs in particular, but any game where this happens)?