Screenshots of empty environments. Why??

[Damiana]

For some reason, it seems to be standard industry practice to share screenshots of empty environments. This is just the latest example I've seen:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1139480/Mask_of_Sanity

When I see screenshots like that, either of a completely empty and static environment or of a single arm in first-person view, with no indication of any character, emotional content, or interaction, it just makes the game look boring to me. It's like when movie pirates share screenshots to show how their encoding looks, only they choose shots at random, with no concern for how the lighting looks or whether it conveys anything cool or exciting about the movie, so you'll see empty scenery, talking heads, or lone characters wandering around or just standing there. The astonishing thing is, game developers actually care whether people get excited about and want to buy their game; they have artists and marketing people who no doubt know how to choose better screenshots. So, why are screenshots so frequently boring? Just let some 14-year-old girl play around in photo mode for five minutes and you'd get much better screenshots!

 

[Frindis]

I think it really depends on the developers, not to mention the size of the company. A game can be made by just one person and it is not a given that said person has a lot of experience with this type of marketing. One good thing with the screenshots is that you do see what is happening and it is not just art that has nothing to do with the game at all. I think Valve has tightened the rope a little when it comes to this so that developers actually have to show in-game content.

 

[Zloth]

That game has warning signals all over it. There's two times anything moves at all in the video: once is in a very dark place and another is very fast. Makes me think maybe the developer can't actually do animations and is picking the spooky/moody environment simply as a way to dodge having to make them. Then there's TWO shots of beds with stark lighting which tells me there's going to be extremely little environment variety. The spooky insane asylum has been done to death for about a half century now.

To the topic, though, you can still convey a lot even with no NPCs in your screenshot. What is odd, though, is having no people (or whatever it is the game uses) in ANY of the screenshots, like your example. I don't know if I've ever seen that before.

 

[Damiana]

I think probably I am judging them too harshly, when it could be just one person running the whole company. I've been keeping an eye out for higher production-value games that do their screenshots that poorly and haven't seen any.

It would be cool if gamers who are really good at taking screenshots marketed themselves as freelance in-game photographers. If somebody's really good at it, it could pay as much as an IRL photography gig.

 

[ROFbeddingfield]

Its that sort of game. Its not supposed to be um,,, uplifting.