how much does it cost to pay a decent artist for a game

[jon]

just wondering why so many games have really bad artwork

[Konstanty]

It depends. Stylized art is difficult and since fewer people can pull it off they will value their time more, generally. But with how risky the game market is nowadays most devs probably go for the cheapest and fastest art. Especially since you don't always need a good-looking game to sell if the mechanics are solid.

[HolyCow]

>bad artwork
Just voices own opinion

Duh?

[Zeel Ara]

Let's play with numbers

Average full time yearly pay for a graphics artist with experience where I live, not including benefits and overtime: 65k USD. That's if you can find an artist willing to work at that rate. The better they are, they more expensive they are. If the game takes 3 years to make, that's around 200k USD for a dedicated and competent artist.

Game sells for 17$
Steam takes 30% cut
Taxes takes another 30% or so
Rough estimate of 8.5$ per copy sold

That's ~25.000 copies of the game they would need to sell in order to pay a single full time artist for 3 years where I live. Extremely rough numbers and arbitrarily chosen amount of time, but you can fiddle with the specifics yourself.

[Nova Terra]

Originally posted by jonlaura:

just wondering why so many games have really bad artwork

Buy the game, it's fun.

The art is proper for the game.

Thanks.

[Warlok]

The art is if not great then absolutely sufficient. Stolen Realm goes the same route.

I just discovered this title and am not disappointed. Bought a second copy for a co-op cohort after immensely enjoying the Prologue sample.

[Digo]

I don't mind the art. It isn't completely my style, but it does everything they need it to visually. I've 1000% rather buy a great indie game with fun game play than all these bs AAA games that are like 50% complete on release that look good and have crap game play that barely lasts 10 hours

[Rango [Xeno]]

I enjoy the art in this game.

[jon]

Originally posted by Konstanty:

It depends. Stylized art is difficult and since fewer people can pull it off they will value their time more, generally. But with how risky the game market is nowadays most devs probably go for the cheapest and fastest art. Especially since you don't always need a good-looking game to sell if the mechanics are solid.

just bought the game gonna give it a try, im a sucker for rogue like games like slay the spire and so on

[geras]

I think the art is great, one of the most original styles out there.

[Mr. Squeakers]

Originally posted by jonlaura:

just wondering why so many games have really bad artwork

whats bad about the artwork?