Video Game logos of today
Times change, art changes. Things were flashier in general in the rather recent past, games, clothes, furniture etc. This period tends to be way more minimalistic because people got tired of that, and at one point people will get bored of this and we'll go back or come up with something new. Plus, colorful or more complicated logos wouldn't really fit most of the games (mostly AAA) from now. I couldn't imagine The Last of Us with a Donkey Kong-like logo or vice versa. But, if you're really looking for those kind of logos these days, you can find a bunch among the indie scene. Games like Verdict Guilty, Nidhogg, Party Hard are some examples. The trick is to make sure to make the logo fit the vibe and the way the game looks.
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I agree, is more a trend than a quality related thing, the thing is that while new games mostly aim now for "realism" they tend to create these bland plain mono-chrome logos, the battlefiled logo for example, I can't imagine a colorful design there, not saying they could not use shapes etc, is a mixup of feel and trend, but you can still find nice logos in some indie games, super house of dead ninjas have one worth looking at for example.
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+1. Also, it is not fair to strip logos of their context — in 8bit era perhaps the logo is all you could see (slapped on a cartridge etc), now it is usually part of some art — a poster, a box, a Steam banner, — art so screaming, flashy and bombastic that the actual text has to be subdued for balance.
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Not much 90's in there, if you think about it. Just Tomb Raider, Doom and (barely) Street Fighter 2. Most of the examples are 80's and 70's
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It's not like old games didn't have their share of shite logos
(See original 8-bit Ninja Gaiden, the 19xx shooter series, the original Super Mario Bros. - Just adding a shadow effect to your font is also lazy design.)
And it ignores the likes of Bioshock, Titan Souls, Pillars of Eternity, Heroes of the Storm and plenty of other more recent titles.
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Either trying to be edgy and finding new ways to hate on modern AAA titles, or blinded by Rose-Tinted Glasses of +20 Nostalgia.
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WHO THE HELL CARES? can i have a decent game and no logo at all? That would be awesome!
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And after buying it, you see that the game does not look anything like the trailer XD
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Where the hell is the mention of Trials of the Blood Dragon? Or even Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon? Why do I feel that this article is biased over the writer's opinion that almost all new game logo sucks? Also why would you need a stylish logo, when people only see it, when they buy the game, look at its retail box art and play it? In the 90s a good logo design was needed because the arcade machines mostly showed the main menu with the "Insert Coin" line, so they needed something to catch the gamers' attention. Oh and the "logo" was taped over the arcade machine so it needed to be more than just the title of the game. I'm sad that the writer of this article didn't bring up counter-examples and he almost only mentioned AAA games for having dull logos.
I'd have mentioned Bioshock, Soul Axiom, Layers of Fear, Titan Souls, Hotline Miami, FC 3: Blood Dragon and Trials of the Blood Dragon as counter-examples too.
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This article only shows a few logos that reinforce the author's statement. There are plenty of games now that have flashy logos. As to your question why logos suck, in the past the box was what sold the games. If the logo wasn't atractive, people would not look at the game as soon as with a flashy logo and box art. Now they don't need to attract attention to the game. The media takes care of that (social media, gaming sites / magazines, youtube etc).
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back then they market games mostly by defining their products by the logos. people weren't into video games as much as kids these days, so they have to make it eye catching to attract attention.
nowadays the devs spend their budget developing the games because it's the gameplay people rate, not logo. but i agree on the fact that most of the logos are generic. then again, when you say Tomb Raider, the image that pops up in your head is Lara, not the title and that is part of the point i think.
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Weird article from a weird site I don't personally know. Quite honestly, I very much prefer the 'modern' look of the logos instead of the cartoonish outlook they used to have. Currently they are more simplified and aesthetically pleasing, and more appropriate for the age games are aimed for if you wish. Moreover, all the examples there are in the article (both new and old) are typographic logos and do not include proper logo (simplified picture). Most notable examples of such logos I can think of are Half-Life, Assassin's Creed, Destiny, Atari, Steam etc.
Tl;dr If you give that article to any graphic design student or teacher, they would laugh very much at it.
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They do? I just recently thought: "Hey this (below) is actually pretty well made". It keeps the franchise look (you may not like it) and adds this subtle "horizontal" cut, which refers to the weapon the main character is known for using.
The Logo is simple but recognicable and tells me already something about the game, without overloading the composition.
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I't's not a game logo but a logo from the developers that I really like, see below.
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Lines like this:
How much better would the Halo logo be if it had been drawn like this? Just switch out that Pac-Man and Ghost with a cartoon Master Chief and Covenant.
does show hos detached the article writer is from reality. The Halo logo works well with representing the game, and its slightly more (but not exactly) hard sci-fi theme, having a highly stylized logo along the line of the pac-man one would create a huge gap between what the logo communicates and what the game is actually about.
The article write is just blinded by nostalgia, and does not realize that logos have to change with the games.
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In my opinion, part of the "problem" is that almost all games nowadays are trying to look gritty and realistic, hence the "minimalistic" logos.
The players themselves might actually be to blame here, as a fair share of gamers wouldn't touch anything that's not super-realistic and a fair share of people still tend to think that stylized games are for little kids.
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That guy admires the typography in the Minecraft logo and shows The Division next, missing the whole point and just goes ugh, dull. That guy apparently knows nothing about typography and/or design. I don't either, but hell... That's an annoying post.
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I don't think you've demonstrated at all that prior art was superior, but let's just say it was.
You're comparing logos and typography from the arcade start screen era to now where the arcade is a niche, a novelty.
Back then you literally had to sell games based upon the start screen in the arcade, the art on the cabinet, and for early home systems in stores, the box art. Other than specialized game magazines there were no good references that allowed you to tout your superior product.
Nowadays that isn't the case.
Edit: Also, the writer of that post at that site ignores that there has been an overall movement in typography and graphic design for flat, two-dimensional logos that easily fit a variety of schemes and media. This is probably because the author of the post has no experience with such things and just pines for his youth.
Double Edit: So many of the logos that the author is jizzing over were on arcade cabinets in bright, multi-colored rooms with distracting lights and sounds everywhere. You had to go with bright, flashy, distinct.
Triple Edit: The author participated in the comments but notably neither he nor anyone else responded to the poster who pretty much said, hey that was the arcade era of course it was colorful and distinctive--it had to be. Nor did he seem to respond to any of the other criticisms of the article.
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They are going for minimalist looks, just a typography and done. It's just a different approach, I'm not bothered by it TBH.
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Yes. Exactly. I was thinking the same. Here are some more.
The author of that piece seems to think bright and busy is almost always better. I don't agree. Some of these examples are rather minimal but still quite good: they suggest the content of the game and are attractive and recognizable.
There are also games like 'Borderlands', 'Half-life', or 'Gears of War' which had a fairly forgettable graphic for their title but also came up with an immediately recognizable symbol associated with their franchise. That shows how the logo of a game and the title art that appears on the box don't always need to be the same thing.
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Yeah there are heaps of examples of cool game logos these days
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Minimalistic looks sometimes work even better than flashy logos... I mean why should stuff like BF or COD have some blinky flashy logo? Simply wouldn't fit imho... and there are many wonderful logos created even today, but I have to admit that, for nostalgia's sake, there are some logos I'll never forget from back in the day and nowadays there might be some half-hearted attempts at creating logos like he describes (while he mixes up just typos and logo design) and vice versa, but hey - most times in that case the title behind it doesn't look that good either to me.
Games or media in general are art and therefore the whole package has to be coherent - sometimes a simple typo like Arial is sufficient and sometimes you have to go all flashy and blinky, simply depends imho.
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That guy is mixing up typography with actual logo art.
I.e. Rise of the Tomb Raider:
typography... boring as expected, for good readability.
actual logo... not so boring, right?
Or that Overwatch "logo" he's talking about? Actually it's this:
Hm, how about Forza?
Damn, they do look way cleaner and nicer, no?
Edit: damnit, i hate the markup language of this forum :P
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They're just more professional nowadays. You can still see plenty of 80s & 90s style logos on cheaper games.
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Yeah, he seems to conflate the game's logo with the artistic rendering of its title. Sometimes they're the same, but sometimes they aren't. Other examples might be 'Borderlands', 'Half-life', and 'Gears of War', each of which had an iconic logo that didn't always appear with the title on the front of the box.
They may not look the way Notabene and the author of this piece would like, but they do seem like pretty good instances of logo design.
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Yup. Major titles nowadays got their own typography, which shouldn't be confused with the actual logo, as OP & the linked author did.
I.e., what's so great about the Star Wars logo, or Metroid, or MegaMan? Also just some font and the text - done.
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You know what other beloved franchise had very minimal logos? Mario. It was almost always just text in one color.
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Here's a very interesting article on something I've been wondering for some times: how come not only cover but also actual logos of video games today, are absolutely ugly, dull and horrible when we had beautiful, masterful, colorful and original logos back in a time when photoshop didn't even exist?
http://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/modern-game-logos-are-rubbish
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