Is no art better than bad art?

[kylesgames]

Yeah. My main gripe with art is that if you're not capable of having good art, you often wind up with zero-sum art; what the art adds is taken away by its lack of coherence with your material or a lack of quality; I'd take a black-and-white line art image similar to those in Shadowrun 3rd over any number of low-budget Photoshop filtered public domain images that I've seen in other works.

It's not just layout. That is a major concern, especially when you have people who don't follow basic typographic principles (as many one-man productions do), but it's also about the quality. I believe it was in Transhuman that Posthuman Studios included several images that had so poorly drawn facial proportions throughout that it was hard to take them seriously. In this case, adding more images actually detracted from the art; even if they didn't have images Eclipse Phase's typesetting and layout could have carried it, but by using those images it came across as more amateurish than it should have.

For most medieval and fantasy stuff, there's no excuse not to have art, and places like OpenGameArt make it increasingly possible to find good openly licensed art for genres which don't have existing public domain works (speaking of which, are there any alternatives to OGA? I know Deviant Art, but it is incredibly hard to find CC-licensed stuff on there of any quality in part due to its really obtuse licensing).

[Onix]

[Evil Scientist]

On an unrelated note:
Are there any RPGs where the art is an integral part of the game? Not "just" an illustration, but is somehow used in the system, etc...

[disco soup]

Better no art than bad art.

[madunkieg]

I created a collectible cardgame that didn't use any art. Not because I didn't want to use art, but because it was based on current news stories and it would have taken too long to get clearance and money for the photographs. When I say current, I mean the events over the last week or two. The lack of artwork also gave me the whole card to work with for the text. But that's a special case.

No-art rpgs are exceedingly rare, but I can think of cases where the text was accompanied by a big white space near the end of a chapter. It didn't feel like the space was wasted. It felt professional. Now, the document I'm talking about was well typeset, but, if you feel like you're struggling, just post it on here and we'll give you feedback.

The one place where you do need artwork, and good artwork at that, is on the cover. Without a physical book to flip through, the picture of the cover is how people judge ebooks. Make sure it looks clear at low resolution. Pay a little for it to get good quality work, and you won't regret doing so.

[kylesgames]

I think that in 90% of cases where it's tempting to use art, if you don't have a good artist lined up you're better off just having really good graphic design and typesetting, and then using whatever budget you have on a couple really stellar pieces.

[vulpinoid]

Naturally, this conversation is inspiring me to get back to work on my Walkabout graphic novel...the one where I explain the entirety of the game rules in the form of a tightly scripted 160 page comic.

But generally, I'm a far more graphical person. My eyes often glaze over when it comes to walls of text. If I need an image, I'll draw it myself.

For other people's products, I do generally agree that good typesetting and title fonts can add a lot more depth and interest to a game than bad art does. Not everyone can spend hours drawing the right image for the job.

[Evil Scientist]

[kumakami]

I will add that well built charts and colored "aside" text can do the job of art at times

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I think a game can be done without art, but it is not complete without it.

Do you need music in an FPS? Probably not, and done poorly it obscures the sound of shooting and enemy chatter that serves as warnings. But does a good soundtrack improve the mood or set the tone for the level? Certainly.

Doom 3 and Call of Duty 3 are pretty similar in play - walk down a corridor, shoot whatever moves. But the art and sound direction make them play completely different. Doom 2000, Command and Conquer Tiberum Dawn, and Red Alert 2 are all real time strategy games from Westwood studios running on a similar engines but the looks and sound are drastically different.

Bad art with good direction has a bit of charm to it. Good art with bad direction still looks nice and is somewhat admirable. If all you can manage is poor art with poor direction, then it is best left out. However, at least try first and then redact later, rather than simply giving up.