Game Card: From Mockup to Release
The Story of One Photoshop Abuse.
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During the existence of GAMER.ru, many stories have happened. Epic and non-epic, big and small, about penguins and not about penguins... in general, a lot. Some of them become public immediately, while others will someday be written about in some chronicle. And there are those that are better left unknown.
And today I want to tell you a small, yet proud tale about how Whitesunset and I developed a game card:
Background
My acquaintance with game journalism — as history has it — began with the magazine Best Computer Games. In fact, that is why I have a dislike for slang within articles, by the way. But it's not about that. At that time, this wonderful publication had a remarkable, in my view, rating system. In particular, an overall rating, ratings of some individual components of the game, and the so-called "award." This system is outlined in a separate article on the website.
After quite a long stay at Gamer, a perfectly logical desire to "do it cool" emerged. In general, this desire rarely leaves many of us, but desires and opportunities, unfortunately, do not often align.
One way or another, glancing through my contact list (and these events started on July 8, 2010), I identified only one candidate capable of realizing the idea in the necessary form and within acceptable timelines...
Development
After just half an hour, I was diligently sketching a layout in "paint-style."
Overall, at that time it was almost pure plagiarism and it was supposed to differ only in the "Gamer-style" design and some "messiness" of the forms. The latter, however, would be realized a bit differently than originally envisioned.
You can even compare this layout with the prototype:
By the way, just a couple of months later, LKI would almost completely redo their rating system, keeping only the core of "rating-award."
After 4 days of digesting the layout, the work picked up steam. Whitesunset, after all, understands much more about design, so he held the overall line while I was left to correct this line with a huge sledgehammer.
"Award"
Initially (according to the project), these beauties were planned to be placed instead of the "award":
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The first of the orders was supposed to be repainted "to bronze." Later, due to the fact that there was no bronze on Gamer and, of course, due to extreme laziness, only one of these orders lived to the release.
Working "by points"
In the final version, Gameplay, Game World, Graphics, and Sound are evaluated. In the project, as you might have guessed, everything was quite different. Graphics, Game World, and Sound were also present. But there was no Gameplay. There were "Interest" and "Buglessness."
"Buglessness" received a stop signal from our Photoshop Lord with the characteristic "weird point." "Interest" was replaced with the more concise "Gameplay."
Actually, here we got the first prototype.
Card v0.1
In general, the main downside is obvious: too much free space. The second — in the incomprehensibility of the structure for an outsider. Among small issues, one can note the unfinished minus icon, the rather strange placement of the word "Verdict," and more.
Pegazs: It's quite inconvenient to count these squares. It would be better to somehow highlight the numeric value.
Whitesunset: =( I've been nurturing this idea for seven years!
v0.2
We sharply reduced the card's height, placed the word "Verdict" in the verdict field, and added the word "rating."
Getting used to Paint, I fervently drew with a black marker my vision for further actions. In particular, I reminded about the numbers and suggested making a dividing line, which is depicted in this vandalistically drawn image.
v0.3
At this stage, Whitesunset was eager to call the resulting result the final version. But he stumbled upon a bunch of quotes from me from the dialogue above. Particularly about the long-suffering numbers and the still uncorrected "minus images."
v0.4
We simply shifted the order.
v0.6 (aka sex-version)
Pegazs: The order is perfectly positioned. The minuses are mega cool.
Whitesunset: And everything else is crap, I got it =D
We shifted the order once again, and Whitesunset finally redrew the minus into something reasonable. Finally, numbers appeared.
v0.9
Actually, this is already the pre-final version. The size of the word "Rating" increased a bit, and the numbers took their optimal position. Also, at this moment, the aforementioned change in the composition of the orders occurred.
Copyrights
But seriously, we stopped at a vertical inscription in the lower right corner.
Beta Test
In the final version sent to me, three orders stood in a row. It was at this point that the last design decision was born — the transparency of the "extra" elements. This move also allowed us to immediately understand which order is cooler.
The card was planned to be used as a "chip" for my reviews. Before the public release, three reviews were written with it. However, it turned out that this card is liked not only by Whitesunset and me but also by a reasonable part of the progressive... um... gamerhood? Gamerdom?
...in short, the portal's population. And now, on November 9...
v1.0 (release)
...Whitesunset officially "cut the ribbon". During the au courant of our "beta test," a significant downside of the template became evident, related to the long-suffering squares in the subpoints. The fact is that at the time of the beta, there was only one layer, and to change it, one had to create a layer copy and move it. If the rating had to be increased compared to the template, there were no particular difficulties. But if reducing...
In general, I insisted on the introduction of layers, blessed Whitesunset, and he, armed with ceremonial scissors made of pure gold (oh, to lie so, to lie) with diamond dust and covered in diamonds, unveiled this engineering marvel to the public.
Card v1.1
Even the final version had a fundamental imperfection. Namely, it did not allow for a rating of 0 (zero). Indeed, it’s hard to talk about the game world in some kind of next "Tetris killer."
This omission was corrected today. You can download the latest version at the end of the post.
User Instructions
The technical side of the matter was already discussed in the release post and has not changed particularly. However, there is not a word about the principles of assessment.
The rating is taken from Metacritic. Sometimes it can change by about five percent one way or another due to, for example, localization. This is an objective assessment.
The order is an indicator of the author's subjective attitude. In descending order: "Masterpiece," "Excellent Game," "[Good Game](/games?search=Good Game)" and, if all orders are transparent, then everything that is worse than "[good game](/games?search=good game)."
The assessment principles for points can be read in the aforementioned article.
The verdict is a very brief summary of information about the game.
Why is all this even necessary?
We have many enthusiasts who like to "meander through thoughts." This is not particularly bad. But on Gamer, there are people who want not to "admire the author's coolness," but simply want to form an opinion about the game. This is particularly true for those coming here from search engines.
And besides, it simply looks beautiful.
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Familiarize yourself with the technical instructions
Thank you for your attention and have a great day.