Spreading Garage Gameism

#21 Ok thanks for all the support. (even though we got a little off topic) I noticed a lot of people telling me to try not to spam the boards, this was never my intention. Also I dont if the reason you said this was because of my previous board spamming incident but I really am sorry about that GG.

So heres my plan. I'm sure that many of you have heard of gamefaqs so you know that you can use signitures. I plan on putting something in my sig along the lines of
"Why make a mod when you can make a game?" visit - www.garagegames.com
I think that this would attract the attention of modders who really want to make a true game but just dont know how.

If you have any suggestion on what i should put for my sig, they would be appreciated.

I will also try to subtley advertise on other communities as well.

Oh and someone in a post above asked me what I meant be nice. Well let me explain.

I go to gamefaqs and post: "Can I have some help on beating X level in X game?"
Reply - "What you f$%^%@# newb!!!1!1 Are you dumb?!?!?! Dont post on our boards anymore!"

Needless to say there are many flame wars on that site.

On GG "I am haveing some problems getting Torque to compile...blahblahblah"

Not a single reply made funny or insulted me and I even got torque up and running thanks mostly to Matthew Fairfax.

So that is what I mean by nice. as in GG realizes that every one once was a newb and GG really wants indie games to thrive and you know "Garage games" as a concept to s\ucceed. So thanks for you time and I'll start tomarrow.

#22 GameFAQs has a huge userbase from all over the world with a wide variety of experiences...much like a less organized usenet.

I know. I'm a mod there.

The GD&P board is a cyclic place. There are a couple of people on there that have Torque licenses (as well as Blitz 3D, DarkBasic, A6 licenses).

As long as you don't spam the board, it shouldn't be a problem.

#23 Sounds great, Eric :)

Just so you know, I don't think anybody was referring to any previous incident with you. I don't even remember it, and I'm sure it was an honest mistake. :)

#24 Alright thanks and I am just about to change my sig.

#25 Speaking of "spreading garage gameism" check out the new torque banners -- sweeet...

#26 @Gonzo - Hey I read a few posts here and you sounded discontented! So I just wanted to say that your help is appreciated and I thank you for contriubting to the community. I'll also keep a watch out the next time you have a question. Maybe I'll even be able to answer it! :)

[HOW]EdM|EGTGE

#27 I pretty much talk Garage Games up wherever I go.

Oh, I love the new banners as well. The TGE one with the Ultimate Monkey Lacrosse is hilarious.

#28 Any news is good news. I promote garage games as well.

#29 Each an every student I have, gets an earful during any class I teach about GG. Seeing that they are Graphic Design Degrees it just feels right to show them where they can get a get up on the competetion. But we need more artists here.

#30 Definitely would love to see more artists, yep. Any ideas what we can do to help with that?

#31 Yes I agree that we need more artist as I am in fact looking for one right now. So email me anyone if you are interested or you could just post i guess. About the artist I went through all the artists here at GG and saw that there are a lot of people who hvae an account but both never have posted nor have logged in for a couple of years. This is why even though there are many people here at GG there is a very small fraction who are actually part of the community.

#32

Quote:Definitely would love to see more artists, yep. Any ideas what we can do to help with that?

You know CGTalk.com? They have a row of images across the frontpage showcasing peoples work. Now, we do have a developer image of the day gallery, I know... but what I'm suggesting is using the same format roughly... where you can show 6 images at once, giving artist and developers a little bit more exposure.

Or, consider Polycount., where artists make characters for game mods... why not have a section dedicated to characters for Torque mods? Maybe just organize and present things in a different way that would appeal to artists.

Another thing... host challenges! It's a great way to attract artists.

#33 I think the lack of artists can be at least partly ascribed to GarageGames being almost completely geared towards the programmer.

I don't consider the artist to be dispensable, as art can elevate a game from so-so to absolutely awesome just through its aesthetic appeal. But the programmer is involved in the creation of what people consider to be the actual 'game'. A programmer has the skills to create a working prototype with out-of-the-box art, whereas the artist can create a pretty picture but has no skills to create a 3D engine he or she can export their model to. I can understand why GarageGames went this route.

Consider this: besides games, GarageGames offers programming tools, technology, and content packs. There isn't an art tool in sight. No Torque exporters, no level creators, no bright links to the free tools even. Every non-game item on the Torque front page is geared towards programmers, even the content packs, which while being art in themselves, are designed as fill-ins for the programmer when they don't have an artist (which is a lot of the time, according to this thread).

There's simply nothing that speaks to an artist when they visit GarageGames; nothing that says 'exporting models to Torque is easy!'. However, it opens up new business opportunities for someone willing to take the time and effort. One art tool that comes to mind is the ShowTool (can't remember its new name).

I think attracting artists in the long term is going to require more than just holding competitions and introducing a bigger gallery. GarageGames has built its reputation on its technology, and I think that's part of the problem when trying to attract a demographic such as artists, since they don't care so much for tinkering. Unfortunately I don't have any really good suggestions yet, but it might get you thinking long-term.

All in all, I think GarageGames took the right step in focussing on the programmer though. You can't please everyone, and the programmer really was the key in fueling the indie star. I do hope we can build up the artistic community around here.

Cheers,
Paul.

#34 Hi Paul,

Quote:I think attracting artists in the long term is going to require more than just holding competitions and introducing a bigger gallery.

Pretty much all CGTalk does is host a forum, showcase artist's work for critique/comments/viewing, and hold the occasional competition... that's it. Yet, this manages to draw hundreds of artists and non-artists every day. I don't know how long they've been running, but they're pretty well established.
Same goes for Polycount. What I'm suggesting is only the basic foundation necessary to attract artists to a website.

A while back I believe it was Josh Williams of GG who requested artwork done for the upcoming RTS Pack. He wanted buildings, character units, all textured and animated. Several people submitted there work, posted WIP images on the forum, discussed the requirements... people collaborated too, eg. one person doing the 3D modeling and the other working on the texture maps. Finally, there was alot of work done, all for free, just in the spirit of collaboration and taking on a small challenge. What I'm suggesting is to extend and focus on this as a working part of the GG community.

I'm also reminded of another post, where a GG member was working with TSE, trying to get some better results with normal maps than the demo showed... He took some maps from Doom3 and textured a part of a floor with it... showing how great the normal mapping effect is in TSE if used with good artwork. Of course, he didnt make the map, but it shows that with some good artwork and creative people you can take a powerful engine and really show what it can do.

Quote:A programmer has the skills to create a working prototype with out-of-the-box art, whereas the artist can create a pretty picture but has no skills to create a 3D engine he or she can export their model to. I can understand why GarageGames went this route.

Well, the truth is, although the artist may not necessarily have the skill to create a 3D engine, he or she doesnt have to... the engine is alreay there! That's the whole point of buying a license to use it.... otherwise you would just have to make your own from scratch... something that is seen less and less these days, even from programmers.

John Carmack said something to the effect that, the future for computer games development will not require so much effort on the programmers, but rather the focus will move strongly towards the art side of things. Much like making a movie. You dont have to program anything necessarily when making a movie... its all art: writing the script, making the sets, the acting, etc. Of course, in the computer game world, it will never be like that, because there will always be something that needs to be coded, however the way it's going is towards high-level scripting languages... whether it's writing shaders to work with a video card or working with a scripting language for a game engine... which means, it is becoming something that the average artist can grasp on their own. Again, this will not take the place of the low-level programmer, those skills are always necessary at some level. These are just the trends that I'm seeing.

Hope this makes sense...

Please dont take any of these comments as being inflammatory anyone.

#35 Well, there's some truth that GG is not as artists friendly as some pixel pushers would like it to be. Thats coming from artist who frequents Garagegames more than any other dev related site.

I dont think its some conscious decision or some unconscious coders elitism, though, simply people who created the concept and site are more code-oriented, thats all.

Picsie-people like me love strange bright pictures, places to post new works ,comment on others work, and receive comments like "awesome, dude" etc.
Long story short: we like "masturbatory environment" :]

Having said that, all the options are here already, its just that artists dont use it much, hmm, dunno whats the "problem", really.

Also, the community here is pretty clear thinking and goal-focused (and thank god for that), so waving around pics with "kewl elf chicks" here is no good, if its not textured model for "Leatherette: Elf Chicks Strike Back" FPS or something :)

#36 Heya Will,

Quote:Pretty much all CGTalk does is host a forum, showcase artist's work for critique/comments/viewing, and hold the occasional competition... that's it. Yet, this manages to draw hundreds of artists and non-artists every day. I don't know how long they've been running, but they're pretty well established.

CGTalk is a forum run by artists for artists, so from the beginning that's what it's been about. You'll notice there's no programmer talk on there. CGTalk has a focus.

GarageGames on the other hand, isn't just a set of forums, it's a company selling technology and publishing games. Beyond that, it's a vibrant indie community, with new people coming in all the time. GarageGames' focus is the indie community at large. That's a different set of people, with a different set of values.

You'll notice that artists within the indie community aren't just in shortage at GarageGames, they're short everywhere you look. It's not just up to GarageGames, it's up to the indie community to get active and find ways we can bridge communities like this together.

There's no one easy solution.

Quote:Well, the truth is, although the artist may not necessarily have the skill to create a 3D engine, he or she doesnt have to... the engine is alreay there! That's the whole point of buying a license to use it.... otherwise you would just have to make your own from scratch... something that is seen less and less these days, even from programmers.

Yes you can do that, but if you buy the engine, you still have to compile it, export models, etc. At least I think, I can't say for sure because I don't have the engine myself, I'm just going on what I've heard from other people. Correct me if I'm wrong on the process of getting your models into the game.

The first impression you're likely to get being a 3D artist is GarageGames is highly technical. Even as you continue into 'Make Games', there are 'Developer Profiles'. They're all coders! There's no real home for artists on GarageGames, and while people like me don't have a problem with this, I would say that's a major contributing factor to the lack of artists.

None of this stops me from pimping GG when I can though, I should point that out. I'm a big fan of this community, and always will be.

Cheers,
Paul.

#37 You don't have to compile the engine yourself if you don't want to. There are precompiled binaries of exporters and the engine itself. From there, the process of creating a model, export and import it into the engine is up to the artist. So that should be no problem for artists.

#38 I think that Nauris hit the nail on the head. Artists like to pat each other on the back rather than actually do "work". That is, its easier to find artists who create great looking uber-insanely high poly work than it is those that create uber high quality low poly work. Why? because its HARD.

Getting Maya or Max and finalrender or one of those high end radiosity programs and producing a great looking mech is FAR more fun in comparison to sitting there shaving poly's and moving vertices around by hand. So you get that. lots of it. All over the internet.

We see the same thing with the programmers here too. Get torque. Have a play. Do some small changes. Notice its hard work. Give up.

I really doubt we could ever parlay "more artists" coming to the site into more artists working on games. We dont NEED more "artists" in general. We need more artists who are capable of making games.

This means we need to attract people who create MOD art.

Now, the problem here, is that generally, people who create MOD's are doing it because they love thier game but want to see it move in a slightly different direction. Most MOD's arent hugely different from the basic game. The build on the game itself but try and take it in a different direction.

The biggest issue is that we simply havent got a really strong game (i.e. > million sales) with which to attract the mod guys. For all torque's strengths, its still not as easy to see the direct line from Tribes 2 -> Mod -> Own game as it is Halflife -> Mod

I dont have an answer, just my own opinion that having "more artists" isnt going to solve the core problem. It just means there IS a need. No idea how to fill it.

#39

Quote:A programmer has the skills to create a working prototype with out-of-the-box art, whereas the artist can create a pretty picture but has no skills to create a 3D engine he or she can export their model to.

A good artist working on a game will contribute more than just visual fireworks; game art does not exist in a vacuum, as an independant component to a game to be simply "plugged in." Art is an intergral and inseperable component to the game, affecting everything from level design to gameplay. A good artist will anticipate how art will affect not just the part, but the whole. The worst thing a game designer could do would be to compartmentalize their artists and view them as being suited to only one task, creating visual assets. Everything I just said about artists is every bit as true for programmers -- the programming does not exist in a vacuum either. Finding such artists (and programmers) that will contribute in this holistic way is not easy, but it's a competitive field out there and they need to understand this to make themselves truly marketable.

Quote:I can understand why GarageGames went this route.

Somehow I don't think GG sat down and said "how can we make GG appeal to programmers and leave the artists in the cold?" but I'm just guessing on that one :)

#40

Quote:Somehow I don't think GG sat down and said "how can we make GG appeal to programmers and leave the artists in the cold?" but I'm just guessing on that one :)

Definitely not. In fact, at IGC we devote an entire track just to art, and it's usually home of some of the most popular sessions.

We certainly want to appeal to artists, and I think there've been some good ideas presented on that topic. We've got some ideas of our own too, and hopefully we'll start seeing some work on this end in the near future. Soooooo much stuff to do. :)