General Gaming News and Discussion

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,592
11,908
That banner for the dnd link is so telling itself.

I'm pretty sure this is A.I. art, not official. but.. this is EXACTLY the kind of modern dnd, magic, and 40kart that is everywhere now.
1729089643623.png


i love owlcats rogue trader... but it also is a prime example of this.


1729089895510.png

1729089895149.png
 

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,494
23,956
we can't blame wow for this. unless we think its people who grew up on wow/n64 somehow incorporating that into their art.
Mario was always explicitly cartoony from SMB3 onwards. That does not count.

Not sure how you can say "somehow" because that's how art works. If kids who grew up on WoW, Spiderverse, anime, are entering the artistic workforce, of course they're going to reflect that in their art.
 

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,592
11,908
heres another. this is the wrath of the righteous adventure path. 2014.
1729090221022.png

this the crpg keyart. 2020ish. still some flavor... but, you can really see the modern art style creeping in.

1729090249021.png


most recent wotr dlc. we are 100% modern art style.
1729090293092.png
 

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,592
11,908
Not sure how you can say "somehow" because that's how art works. If kids who grew up on WoW, Spiderverse, anime, are entering the artistic workforce, of course they're going to reflect that in their art.
that is a fair point... I wonder if pixar/dreamworks then is the actual cause of this. THAT would be a stronger argument.
Spiderverse/arcane, and any number of the 3d animated movies. And games too. The textures and shaders from these 3d animated movies/games all having a certain quality, that is now being reflected in hand painted work.
PhotoShop might also be partially to blame. digitial art has a quality as well. little pencil or water color art these days in game design...
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,494
23,956
that is a fair point... I wonder if pixar/dreamworks then is the actual cause of this. THAT would be a stronger argument.
Spiderverse/arcane, and any number of the 3d animated movies. And games too. The textures and shaders from these 3d animated movies/games all having a certain quality, that is now being reflected in hand painted work.
PhotoShop might also be partially to blame. digitial art has a quality as well. little pencil or water color art these days in game design...
WoW was an incredibly influential game 20 years ago. Fortnite has been very influential for 7. That this style dominates video game art now is not surprising based on that timeline. And that video game art styles bleed over into adjacent categories like miniatures and TCGs is also not surprising.
 

Penance

Silver Baronet of the Realm
6,982
9,523
You guys are missing the mountains for the trees. To blame the pussification of games on stylized low poly art directions is ignoring all the influence of pussification of western culture in the first place. Wow ain't got shit to do with it. This shit is deep seeded and will take years if not generations to recover from.
 
  • 8Like
  • 2Truth!
Reactions: 9 users

Furry

🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭
<Gold Donor>
22,421
29,523
Mario was always explicitly cartoony from SMB3 onwards. That does not count.

Not sure how you can say "somehow" because that's how art works. If kids who grew up on WoW, Spiderverse, anime, are entering the artistic workforce, of course they're going to reflect that in their art.
Having been an intense fan of the fine arts my whole life, I can tell if someone was born a male or female or sometimes more personal things by looking at just their art. These things are much more obvious early in someone's career, as intense art training can make the tells very hard to see. This is entirely true and there's definitely a MASSIVE influence your upbringing has on your art as a starting point. I don't follow the culture close enough to know where this change is coming from, but there's definitely been a massive shift in the style of new artists in the west who started appearing ~5-10 years ago.
 
  • 1Faggotry
Reactions: 1 user

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,494
23,956
You guys are missing the mountains for the trees. To blame the pussification of games on stylized low poly art directions is ignoring all the influence of pussification of western culture in the first place. Wow ain't got shit to do with it. This shit is deep seeded and will take years if not generations to recover from.
Manchild complains on manchild forum that video games are designed to appeal to actual children.
 
  • 2Moron
  • 2Picard
  • 1Edgelord
Reactions: 4 users

Penance

Silver Baronet of the Realm
6,982
9,523
Manchild complains on manchild forum that video games are designed to appeal to actual children.
Where did I mention anything about appeasing children? Also, games have ratings grandma, not all video games are made for children.

You've outdone yourself with this statement. I mean you usually post dumb shit but this one takes the cake.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions: 4 users

Chris

Potato del Grande
19,658
-10,593
you know what started this trend?

WoW.
WoW kept the same aesthetic as Warcraft 3 and 2. Warcraft 1 was a bit grittier but most of that was due to resolution limitations. They all had a very cartoony look though.
No Mist is right.

Female Night Elf Druids
Male Night Elf Hunters

That was the start of it. There's a clear line from there, to Gamergate, to Trump 2016, to Concord.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1Moron
  • 1Picard
Reactions: 3 users

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
12,197
18,371
Can they play roms? I forgot when i looked at their game boy. Mostly bc i am lazy to go buy old carts vs oh the pirates!!!
 

Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
46,773
99,863
Problem has never been WoW's art style.

1729137954482.jpeg


Its themes and storylines where like most media much more mature and metal up until 2009-2010. Then the SJW redguards descended upon everything its all gay and lame now.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions: 4 users

Tmac

Adventurer
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
10,070
17,137
You guys are missing the mountains for the trees. To blame the pussification of games on stylized low poly art directions is ignoring all the influence of pussification of western culture in the first place. Wow ain't got shit to do with it. This shit is deep seeded and will take years if not generations to recover from.

Hard times create strong men.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

CaughtCross

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,977
5,821
Can they play roms? I forgot when i looked at their game boy. Mostly bc i am lazy to go buy old carts vs oh the pirates!!!

Not officially. But it has wifi and an SD card slot so will probably be a way to. I plan on getting one and using an everdrive 64 cart in it to play n64 roms.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,592
11,908
Problem has never been WoW's art style.

View attachment 553019

Its themes and storylines where like most media much more mature and metal up until 2009-2010. Then the SJW redguards descended upon everything its all gay and lame now.
man, that image just nails what we are talking about.
It occurs to me, I used to know many of the early wow artists. I kind of abandoned social media so don't really chat with them much anymore. not even sure if the old art forums are still around.. I probably still have them on facebook. ha.

I do remember a number of their work getting replaced from early wow to the newer more on brand designs.

The Blizzard design metastasized with Hearthstone.
Was it here or somewhere else I saw someone mentioning on Dnd art is like everyone hanging out in bars, parks, etc having a grand ole party, instead of out adventuring these days?
I think it might be heartstone that really made that goofy, not serious party vibe a major thing.

With this, I wonder how much of this is ex-blizzard employees all going to work every where else, after having trained and forced to work in this style. so not cal-arts trainging, but, Blizzardarts training.

who is art director at blizzard? is it Litchner? he went over there with Diablo 3 iirc. If so, I could see the path of his art style from comics, into the blizzard template of now. (he was Liquid from back in the day, teamed with Joe Mad)