The Quest for Better Box Art

A few months ago, I was at a Magic the Gathering event in Portland. I was working check in for VIP which meant that I got to meet a LOT of cool people. Among those people was a guy named Peter Lapp. He made a comment about the awesomeness of my laptop and it started a conversation about what I did for a living. But enough about me, this post is about Peter.

You see, Peter appreciated the awesomeness of my laptop because he himself is in the industry, well sort of. He is a part of a Kickstarter for Better Box Art. Here are a few of the pieces:

So what is Better Box Art exactly? Here's their mission statement:

Simply put it's alternate video game cover art by talented artists from around the US.

Better Box Art is a group of long-time video game lovers and entrepreneurs out of Portland, OR who, alongside a talented team of artists from across the country, believe that video game box art should be as unique and creative as the games they represent. Too often, video game covers are designed by marketing teams whose goal is to find the design which will sell best on store shelves. As a result, video game covers are too often generic, festooned with obnoxious marketing, or simply not a fair representation of the game.

The goal of Better Box Art is to provide cover art which captures every drop of creative vision that went into the game itself. Our covers are unique, personal, and are designed to look good on display.

The games we’ve chosen are among the most popular and beloved in recent years; games which inspire us and others creatively and, we think, deserve to have cover art which celebrates their aesthetic style.

TLDNR: These guys are awesome and you should consider Kickstarting them.

I've personally kicked into them because, well I think they're awesome and I enjoy the idea of sharing awesome art (I'm kind of a sucker for cool video game art).

What games would you like to see alternate art covers for?

Video game box art is a deciding factor for me. This looks to expand the representation of video games while respecting what is actually on the discs or cartridge, so I am considering an offer of my support for this Kickstarter.

• Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition
• Thief
• Wolfenstein: The New Order
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Phoenix Wright (Whenever the next game is shown)

I really like the Watch Dogs one a lot

Well, it's cool looking art for the games, but I don't think that makes it good box art. Besides GTA5, I don't think any of the other covers actually represent the games accurately. The Tomb Raider box art doesn't make any sense to me. Why would an empty cave with a dudes shadow be the front cover of the game?

Terrible artwork. Especially the Second Son one. It looks like a straight up horror investigation game.

While I'll agree there are some box art today that is quite dull, just like back in the NES/SNES days there was box art that made no sense when it came to what a game was about.

I wouldn't exactly say your examples are much better in conveying what the games are about, Like mentioned above Second Son gives off more of a Crime Noir setting.

Watch Dogs gives more of a sense that there's political strings being pulled by infulencial people/organization rather then one man who can use his phone to hack and control aspects of a city.

Destiny...well it doesn't convey a sense of sci-fi at all but rather 3 people walking on a mountain possibly trying to find their destiny.

Now that's not to say the artwork isn't nice, but considering the box art is the first thing a person sees in a store before they play the game, and for the sake of argument that same person has avoided gameplay video's for some reason, The box art itself needs to give them a slight sense of what they are purchasing. If they see Second Son and think it's a crime/noir game then they're gonna be quite surprised when they discover it's about a anarchist teenager with super powers fighting the government.

@shrek: Please refrain from bumping outdated threads.

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