Article: The Importance of (Placeholder) Art

My imagination runs wild as I design my card game The Vortex.  I see an extensive variety of alien species, locations through the universe, and a plot coming together that might rival the scope of epic poems.

But other players cannot see what I see.  At present, the only descriptions of this vast setting are in the titles of the cards, and possibly the barest clues as to their characteristics given through the mechanical details described on the cards.

On many cards, the flavor text real estate is being taken up by card-specific rules, leaving the primary source of detail to the artwork.

Which there is none of.

Since The Vortex is in its early alpha stages, and since I am a terrible 2D artist, I designed the cards to leave room for later artwork, but I kept the spaces as just gray boxes for now.

Almost as good as The Last Supper.

Unfortunately, there are nearly two hundred unique cards, and the names are not enough for a casual player (my current testers) to be able to recall the rules on any given card at a glance.

As the testers memorize the cards, it will become less of a problem, but there is still a barrier of entry as I ask new players to test.

For players to be able to quickly identify and memorize new cards, I must throw in some placeholder artwork.

The problem becomes, then, a struggle between playability and ego.  I want players to easily be able to grasp the unique traits of each card, but I also want them to see at least some semblance of the style and tone I envision, without their imaginations being compromised by bad placeholder art.

Of course, the simple solution is to eschew ego and slap some art on the cards no matter how bad or irrelevant it is, because I'm testing mechanics, not my storytelling.

Though the solution is obvious, pride is a big thing to swallow (as much as I may pride myself that I have no pride), and I have to constantly remind myself what the right decision is, both for the present and the future.

I think the awful placeholder art also serves as a reminder to work on my art skills, which is good to cultivate.

So even though ego takes a hit, placeholder art is useful for both the player's grokking of the mechanics and my own improvement in the field.

This is a lesson that doesn't exist solely in non-digital games, of course; the same idea can and should be applied to videogames:

The exception.

When trying to test new mechanics pre-alpha, even if testers know they aren't getting the true experience of the game, they still want something interesting to look at.  Gray terrain and props bore the player, but some quick and dirty placeholder art is an easy fix.

It seems counterproductive to clutter a stage when the player should be concentrating on a mechanic, but it has the opposite effect of distraction.  Gray, bare geometry is in fact more distracting than art, because it is more foreign and sterile than is expected.

Personally, I've never been much of an art guy.  I used to hold the snobbish opinion that all that matters in games is mechanics, and art was unnecessary.  I slowly warmed to the idea that art is useful depending on what aesthetic you're going for; surely my favorite horror games like Silent Hill 2 needed the art just the way it was, and it wouldn't be the same if it was made for an NES instead of a PS2.  But now, the more I study how games create flow, I realize that most often, pure mechanics cannot sustain a videogame, and that art, sound, and story all contribute.

Of course, games that have little or no art, such as old Text Adventures or Dwarf Fortress inherently do not suffer from this problem, but in general, the sooner art can get in, the better.