Alexander McKinney-Raphelt

When does adding more detail actually make game art worse? In a long-running mobile RPG, art direction isn’t only about making every new character more elaborate. It’s about knowing what needs to stay recognizable, what can evolve — and where additional polish stops creating value for the player. In a new article for Mobidictum, Valeria, Art Director at Age of Magic, shares how the team approaches that balance. Among the lessons from Age of Magic: — Start with a recognizable archetype, then find the one or two details that make a character memorable — Treat character art as part of the interface: silhouette, weapons, proportions and VFX should help players understand what a hero does — Build factions as visual systems, so individual heroes can experiment without breaking the identity of the world — Don’t spend production time polishing details players won’t notice. On mobile, readability and focal points can matter more than maximum detail — Standardize repeatable LiveOps production, then invest more art effort where player attention actually goes The broader lesson is simple: mature art production isn’t about endlessly increasing visual complexity. It’s about making better decisions about where creativity, time and detail actually matter. Read full article here: https://lnkd.in/eW6mAXnu

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So, now there starts a movement to remove the "Made with AI" label in Steam, because apparently everything is made with AI. It would be "too hard" and "too much work" to define which part of the game was made with AI and to fill out Steam's forms. And my favorite joke? "It stigmatises the use of AI!" Seriously? No, the label is not meant to be against AI in general and no, not everything is GenAI. Also, people aren't against the general use of AI - there can be use cases which make or can make sense in a game, even in the creation process. But people have the right to know which aspect were done by AI. Generated everything from the smallest asset to full-blown characters from scratch with GenAI? Especially GenAI trained on stolen unlicensed data? I absolutely don't want to support your game and that is my good right. No shame to customers hesitating to pay the same as for a handcrafted game which did not.

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Finnish developer Nitro Games Plc has promoted two long-term team members as its new chief operating officer and chief people officer. Antti Ruonala has stepped up from head of operations and into the COO role. He first joined the company back in 2014 as business development assistant. Milka Tarkiainen, meanwhile, has stepped into the position of CPO. She first joined the studio in 2017 as marketing coordinator, before moving into office, HR and people ops roles.

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This week on the #GameMakersNotebook Podcast, Trent Kusters chats with Ubisoft Mainz Creative Director, Manuel Reinher! Together they discuss his extensive work in the Anno series and his path from the art team to direction; the creative and technical challenges of working in the historical strategy game genre; their approach to depicting the Roman Empire in the latest series release, Anno 117: Pax Romana; how a seemingly simple transition from square to hexagon tiles comes with massive ramifications in all parts of game design; and how they tackle accessibility without sacrificing complexity and depth. Watch the full episode now on YouTube or listen on your favorite #podcast app! Support the show and get all of our episodes early/ad-free on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gAy8-N7

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Still on my way to AD and wizardry, but it is nice to have clear goals:) Come to Turku next week if you like gamedev. The event is not focused on art, but being cross-discipline is a super power. In my talk I will make a humble attempt to connect dots between game design, visdev and neuroscience. #gamedev #event #neuroscience

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I'm not an artist, so I judge an AI tool by one thing: does it actually do what I type, or does it do something that looks close enough and hope I don't notice. This time the sentence was "leather dice cup and five bone dice, one die cracked". And yes, one of the dice comes out properly cracked, which is the kind of detail most generators quietly skip and call good enough. What comes back is game-ready prop art, a few variants to flip through, and the one I like going straight onto the canvas. All inside Photoshop, without leaving the file.

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The artistic side. The technical side. You need both. 👉 Swipe to see what our Lead Character Artist Evtim Todorov says it really takes to produce top-quality characters... ... and then dive into the full blog post: https://lnkd.in/dKF-Pjy3

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At Rovio Stockholm – home of Angry Birds 2 – we are pragmatic dreamers with ridiculous ambition!   I had the pleasure of speaking with Harry Phokou about lessons learned on our journey of transforming Angry Birds 2 into an Evergreen game and building a world class game making culture in our studio.   Enjoy the full podcast on all channels here: https://lnkd.in/d4t9xrjU   The topics we covered in 64 minutes include - Managing 3 types of debt under fire - Shifting from reactive mode to strategic and sustainable growth - Aligning and empowering large teams - Live games as innovation projects - Unshackling the raw power of your brand - What’s cooking at Rovio Stockholm If you know great game makers who can dream big and aim high while executing pragmatically and want to help us make the world a ‘birdier’ place, please send them our way! (link in the comments)

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I'm due a final NOMAD showcase video about analytics (will post later this week), but for a deeper dive, sign up for my FMX online talk "Reinventing the Production Pipeline". I'll walk step-by-step through the creation of a full animated episode using NOMAD. Link in comments! #BadBatchStudio #NOMAD #ProductionWorkflow #AIForCreatives

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