2D Or 3D Art, Which Is the Better Choice for a Game Development Company:
I donât normally like to steal traffic away from a site for no reason, but Iâm very confused as to what this post is trying to achieve at all. Basically the article amounts to this:
Ignoring the fact that the article reads like a Search Engine Optimization gone overboard, often at the expense of readability, the base question is entirely wrong.
Even if we buy into the premise that there are only two styles of art, being 2D and 3D (and I would argue there are enough subdivisions and cross-overs between those two categories to justify being considered their own styles), the question is not what style of art should a company use⌠Itâs what style the game should use.
But ignoring even that, youâve essentially told your reader nothing. Thereâs not really any useful takeaway in that blog post. Maybe Iâm missing the point, though. What is it you feel is the key knowledge point behind this article?
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I think you need to spend more time figuring out what youâre trying to say.
âHowever it is 3D which requires more sophistication and attention to detail.â
Not at all, it depends on the style. A photorealistic vector painting takes a lot more attention to detail than a 3D crossy road character. In many ways 3D is more efficient, especially in terms of managing lighting and animations etc.
âPhotos and textures are usually used in 2D-art on an extensive basis where considerable time will be spent on downloading and purchasing images.â
I thought it was the other way around. I havenât seen too many (or any) half-decent 2D games that use photos of any kind, but a modified photo of soil or metal can sometimes make a good texture for a 3D model, if itâs taken properly.
Thatâs just to name a few.
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Totally. Itâs not the style that determines time and expense, itâs the quality, depth, variety, etc⌠All of which can be tuned to different levels for different effect using either style.
Generally I think itâs much harder to make a 3D game, but thatâs because most 3D games have a much bigger scope not to mention another spatial dimension of content, as well as all of the spatial dimensions being a lot longer.
But if I was making a 2D game and wanted to be efficient, Iâd actually make it 3D and use an orthographic camera.
But yeah, ultimately I donât think itâs possible to use any general notion of 2D vs 3D as a marker for estimating project time, expense and difficulty.
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So,
If are a person that find yourself asking this questions,
you are probably oblivious to graphics workflow in general, and probably not very experienced with game making either. And based on those two conditions, you would probably prefer something telling you exactly what you should choose.
And you are in luck,
Based on this thread, I created this chart.
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@Kemonono Nice! 
All indie mobile games must be 2D! All games with budgets are 3D! Itâs the perfect solution!
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Yeah, no.
This was the only true statement I found and it contradicted the rest of the article.
Maybe it would help to explore the different kinds of 2D and 3D art.
Maybe make a distinction between raster and vector graphics, procedural graphics, and even photo scanned graphics. You canât just show a sculpted model and say 3D is more âsophisticatedâ, it doesnât make any sense!
You could ask artists about their different methods and the skillsets required, and try to discern and outline what art style is best for different kinds of people and budgets, but I donât know how useful it is to pit all of 2D against all of 3D.
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I donât want to label @Lehar2010 or Red Apple Games as anything, but there seems to be a growing trend for these marketing companies to attempt to break into the industry by posting only tangentially relevant content as a means of building up a base of content.
These types of articles may stem from browsing forums for common topics, and âURGENT HELP PLZ! Should I made my gaem in 2d or 3D?!!!â is certainly a recurring theme here and elsewhere. The line of thinking must be that posting on the topic and loading the article with targeted SEO will draw traffic from Google searches, while sharing links in community boards will gain additional followers.
Itâs disappointing that this is the route these companies go, pandering to the lowest common denominator and focusing on meta over content. I imagine the people who really have interesting things to say are actually too busy making games to focus on offering compelling content, but how great would it be to have a game info/marketing company that actually knows its stuff, researches methodologies and interviews real industry pros? I guess thatâs more or less why Gamasutra is the de facto source for that type of content. Just a shame that the marketing side of things will apparently remain ignorant and seems happy to stay that way.
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This nails it pretty much.
You also have to take animation into your consideration. Unless youâre making a really simple game without animations, 2D can take a lot longer than 3D.
It takes quite some time to make good 2d animations if you draw it frame by frame and have a lot of them.
3D is a bit easier here, once youâve your model with a good rig.
But of course, there is software like Spine2D that let you rig and deform 2D images as well.
Do bone based animation in 2D, and itâs typically less work the a similar bone based 3D animation.
The people who say 2D animation is more difficult are also the ones insisting that pixel art is still relevant.
Thanks for the feedback,we would definitely correct our flaws and offer you something great next time.
Good to hear!
I know others have complaints about them, but Black Shell Media actually puts out some pretty useful content. If youâre going to play the Me Too game, itâs worth trying to emulate the right people!
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Great post @Schneider21 . Just fantastic all around.
While this is true, it is incredibly disappointing.
After a few great blogs from visiting authors I really appreciated gamasutra. Or perhaps âback thenâ it was much higher quality and simply went downhill around this time Iâm talking about butâŚ
I quickly lost all interest in gamasutra. Iâm bad with names; likeâŚreally bad with namesâŚbut most of the regular authors of gamasutra content drove me away from that site. I also never pay any attention to the names of any article I read. Up until gamasutra, which changed this habit for me, for all the internet. I remember reading a bad article, and scrolling up to see who wrote it. Iâd read a few âokayâ articles, but then Iâd encounter another bad one. Scrolling up, Iâd see the same name. It became where I could guess the author of the article, without looking (as I never do), based on how bad the article was. And despite being so bad with names and never looking, gamasutra taught me to remember specific names like âChristian Nutâ because authors like him drove me to this:
No doubt gamasutra has some amazing articles on there. However those are quite rare IMO, and always from a very talented or very successful game developer who posts once & then vanishes back into their lives making games.
When it games to game journalists, I am always skeptical of why they existâŚor moreâŚhow they exist.
You have some truly intelligent, wonderful people like the creator of Games From Scratch, who helps newbies & novices tremendously- but because he was already quite experienced as a programmer before teaching.
Meanwhile you have âgame journalistsâ, forum moderators, and âStack Exchange Expertsâ who spend their entire lives (full time job or post as if it was their full time job) talking about games, nitpicking others, answering questions they seemingly know nothing about, etc. This makes me skeptical because thatâs all they ever do, and all they ever will do: Talk.
Needless to say, that is probably the difference between these high quality articles from real developers or career programmers, and low quality articles or power users spam-posting on gamedev.stackexchange while simultaneously claiming minor experience in big companies like NCsoft. âSo what?â A few years in gamedev as some code monkey isnât impressive. Especially when respectable articles are usually written by those with decades experience in programming. A few minor releases of some not-successful mobile title isnât impressive. Being the creator of Braid or Spelunky is.
But you already said all of this perfectly in one line:
That simply has to be true. It explains everything. Everywhere. In almost all cases. It sums up entire places like reddit even. It explains why a âGame Design Degreeâ or a âComputer Scienceâ degree still doesnât seem to stop the incredible levels of incompetence, like how 99% of game programmer applicants canât program. I assume this is because the âindustryâ also struggles with quality teachers too. Just so many positions that need filling, but most capable of filling them are instead chasing their own dreams or extremely lucrative profits cause of the high demand.
And this is why I think that any such company would be quite successful (in popularity; I donât know whatâs required to monetize that stuff) and zoom past gamasutra, which seems to be the only thing around that even tries to fulfill this hole.
But that seems to be the game industry. All the competent people are actually busy making games. So all you have remaining to âfill the gapâ, a tremendously large gap, are the âWhen you canât do; Teach!â types.
It explains why companies like Unity can pop up and despite their endless criticisms still fly to the top. No one is really doing anything great. It was only recently that Godot popped up and surged to popularity; being something very appealing. I never heard about it in all my years in gamedev, then suddenly it becomes more suggested in communities than Unity or Unreal? 5 minutes on their site, and I instantly see why.
And GameMakerâs âMade with GameMakerâ impresses me a lot more than the âMade with Unityâ page. Both engines thrive, because the demand is just really high for this stuff and those engines I named did good enough to âNot Suckâ.
In the game industry, for both tool and games, it seems to âNot Suckâ is to achieve the highest honors & greatness. Much respect for these types. The demand is just that high & so few ppl to do these highly technical jobs. And the cost of employing these types is so high, itâs not easy to do anything great without loads of cash.
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