Box art design is serious business. The road to creating a finalized piece of art for use on a game box goes through countless steps and redesigns. Valve's own Jeremy Bennett shares with us a look at the box arts that "could have been."
Our first designs focused on Bill, Louis, Francis and Zoey, the four lead characters that players would be guiding through Left 4 Dead's post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. Right away this presented problems.
Typically, for a video game (or DVD or book) cover to be eye-catching, there'll be a single prominent element front and center—our "hero" character, for example, with ancillary characters standing around in the background.
As a multiplayer game with an emphasis on teamwork, though, Left 4 Dead didn't really have a central character. Pretending otherwise, we decided, was just misleading—if the box art is selling a different game than the one in the box, it's not doing its job.
Feel free to head on over to the Left 4 Dead blog to read more about the decisions that went into the other box art designs.
Typically, for a video game (or DVD or book) cover to be eye-catching, there'll be a single prominent element front and center—our "hero" character, for example, with ancillary characters standing around in the background.
As a multiplayer game with an emphasis on teamwork, though, Left 4 Dead didn't really have a central character. Pretending otherwise, we decided, was just misleading—if the box art is selling a different game than the one in the box, it's not doing its job.
Comment