Game covers, movie posters, and book covers all work to do a few things for a viewer: Attract attention, give viewers a general idea about the genre, and goad them to look into the product further.
He states that most viewers will take a design at face value if they don't know anything about the item. For example, the Bioshock 1 cover art implies the game is about a robot and a creepy little girl. The poster for The Matrix shows that the movie is about cool people with guns. For Bioshock: Infinite they opted to go for a "generic guy with a gun" design because they want unaware customers to know that it's a shooting game set in vintage America.
So how do the Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind through Skyrim) get away with such simple cover designs? Take a look at them here.
(Note: I like the minimalist covers, I just wanted to see your thoughts here.)
I'm just gonna read the covers at face value like Levine mentioned:
1) "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind". Sounds weird, likely a fantasy game. There's weird glyphs on it, it looks like it's on parchment, and there's a strange dragon picture. Is there dragons in this game? Could be an RTS set in an ancient alien world, or something.
2) "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion". Sounds like it has something to do with haybale. There's glyphs on it, there's tattered-up cloth, the center glyph looks burnt. Kinda apocalyptic. It says "Best RPG" on it, so it's an RPG game. What kind of RPG? Could this also be like a medieval Doom game or something?
3) "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". The rim of the sky? What's that? There's a dragon icon on it. I guess I fight dragons at the rim of the sky? That sounds alright, but there's another game over here with a knight surrounded by ghost knights. Maybe I'll look at that.
I'm thinking these covers do work for a couple reasons:
1) Despite the simple designs, they do convey the general sense that it's a fantasy game set in a different world. This may be enough to get customers to flip the cover and look into it.
2) The high contrast (at least for Oblivion and Skyrim) of the icon on the background can draw the eye. It could also draw the eye because the cover is so simple compared to the games around it so it stands out.
3) Bethesda probably has game stores display additional promotional material with their game releases, so customers will see promotional art of just what Oblivion and Skyrim are. I'm not sure they had so much content for when Morrowind came out though, and not every game store will have that promotional content.
With Elder Scrolls VI coming out in the future, they may stick with the tried and true cover design too. The "Elder Scrolls" name carries a lot more weight than it did before.
Great design resource
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter)
Submitted July 04, 2018 at 03:46AM by jkk45k3jkl534l https://ift.tt/2z89UKG
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