ArmAs Cover Art

[el_muerko 0]

In todays A.D.D world first impressions are everything. For a game like Armed Assault to sell to the masses and not just a hard core few the cover of the box has to catch their attention,

Frankly this cover is crap, it looks cheap in every way, its bad art that will make people think the game looks worse when in fact ingame pictures could easily look better, immediately my eyes pick out flaws in it, its too clean and the various objects are to scale and the mens faces look bored.

Here are some pics of BHD I've grabbed that show war how many people visualise it now, I'd use pictures from the news but I dont like showing real people getting shot to prove a point on a games forum.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/ent....22b.jpg

http://www.follow-me-now.de/assets/images/Black_Hawk_Down-2.jpg

http://www.impawards.com/2001/posters/black_hawk_down_ver2.jpg

http://www.ziyue.com/movies/usa/2002/BlackHawkDown/BlackHawkDownc.jpg

http://www.ziyue.com/movies/usa/2002/BlackHawkDown/BlackHawkDown5.jpg

http://www.cineastentreff.de/telesch....024.jpg

Get images of a house to house battle with helos and tanks in the far distance, run them thru some filters in photoshop to give them the 'photography' effect, stick 'Armed Assault' on it and you've got a game box that sells.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

A guest on our site, made this one.... Gave me a few laughs

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Add some ACU and a M4 and it'd be perfect

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

Here it is... And wildlife included!

[Nathan Bedford Forrest 0]

rofl @ Espectro

"Star Force"

[Bouben 3]

Here it is... And wildlife included!

great point

[messiahua 0]

Just LOL

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Add some ACU and a M4 and it'd be perfect

That is an M4.

[bravo 6 0]

for the love of god....

.... thats PERFECT!!

[JBâ„¢ 1]

Personally I think the cover is OK.

I dont know about anyone else but once armA is released I dont plan on sitting with the case in my lap looking at the cover for hours on end. I also dont think I have ever bought a game because the cover looked good (or bad).

[Ukraineboy 0]

The cover is fine. I'm sorry, but these guys are developers and they are looking to SELL the game to new people. Want to know why? Because they know, unless the game is utter crap, the community will buy the game even if it doesn't have a good box cover, or such and such little things that we want. They are looking to expand to new players, to new markets.

Do you people understand this is a business? They are trying to sell a product. Just because it's BIS, doesn't make them somehow "honourable" in selling their product

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

I don't see what's wrong with the cover or how it is being deceptive. What's wrong with objects IN scale?

I also don't plan to be making a seminal contribution all over the box cover when I can be installing the game, instead.

Take your whisper advertising of an old game with stupendously sheety A.I. (BHD) somewhere else.

[Lou Montana 101]

Don't treat forum users like sh*t you'll be kind.

Anyway they are developers, maybe this cover is a placeholder, maybe not, they are not publishers so who knows how will it works ?

I say OFP wasn't pretty attractive too, making us just curious; the demo made the game being known, I don't remember looking even 5 minutes to the gamebox, I remember opening the CD box and getting the game installed !

The actual cover is fine for me, I am a OFP-Fan, but even without being one I think this cover will be enough to remember me "it's a wargame, and it's the sequel to OFP".

For those who aren't OFP-Fans and look at this cover, I think the contrast black/white will catch their eye long enough to make them turn the box to read the description.

then, magic, the game owns you once you have the box in hand...

That's the worst I hope for ArmA

[Antichrist 0]

Actually that cover doesn't look too bad.

[Commando84 0]

i thought the ofp cover looked intresting, and different but youre right it was the demo that made it famous and word of mouth..

[hoz 0]

I actually thought the cover looked dark and dreary, but I don't buy the game for the box cover.

Hoz

[lee_h._oswald 0]

I don't like the cover.

We see blackhawks, soldiers, a tank and fire.

The game can about 1 million times more than shown on that cover. How can ppl who don't know OFP/ARMA get an idea about what that game is?

I think, the cover should give a little idea, that "This game is DIFFERENT from all the battlefield, medal of brothers, etc games."

MfG Lee

[max power 21]

I think the cover works. I do like those shots of BHD, though. That one with the convoy leaving with the helecopters above is pretty sweet. If there were a few soldiers in the mix, it would be representative....

but that's the problem, isn't it? How do you cram everything that OFP was/is and ArmA will be into one image? The OFP cover didn't do it. It was iconic, though. This new one is somewhat less so. It attempts to tell a story. It also attempts to lead you to believe that that is an ingame shot, what, with the simulated HDR in the form of some bloom filter. BIS is attempted to sell you on the graphics and the cool soldier-meets-helecopter-with smoking-tank aspect. It's attempting to tell you what the game experience is like. I don't think it's fully successful, but it's a well composed piece of art, even if the bloom filter is a little strong.

[Garcia 0]

People keep stating they don't buy the game for the cover, but when you say that, you haven't understood the reason why a game should have a good cover. A game needs a good cover to catch peoples attention. When a person who haven't even heard about ArmA goes into a store to look at PC games, that person won't look at ArmA if there's 40 other games there with much better cover. If the ArmA cover looks intresting and catches peoples attention, they will look at the game because it looks promising. Then, when they turn the box around to read about the game, they at least know the game exist and what it's all about. And ArmA got quite a bigger chance being sold to a person who knows about it than it got being sold to a person who have never heard about it and never will because he never looked at the ArmA box in the store because the cover looked shit...

So, the cover is not to sell the game, it's to get peoples attention so they look on the box and read about the game. It's the information on the backside that's supposed to sell the game to people who haven't heard about it...

[dinger 1]

Everything sells the game. For me what sold it was the very beginning of the demo, where the helicopters flying casually overhead while I was told to get in the jeep.

The title is a harsh font splashed against the image. The image is too busy (besides, everyone has their guns pointed outward, and here's this dude looking to get back in the helo?) You can't communicate the scope of a game on a cover, at best you can hit the core idea.

It should say, "Buy me". It shouldn't say "I'm different" any more than it says "I'm the same."

So what is the idea?

A sniper scope view of a squad fastroping with the sun behind the blackhawk's rotors?

I dunno... it's much easier to criticize than it is to construct

[TiNMaN 0]

I have to say the first image isn't that ........ attention grabbing for me? Yea i 'know' about the game and packaging wont affect me. But to those who are clueless to the ArmA concept, they might bypass the box all together.

My idea for a box.....a full troop transport flying over the battlefield. They look like hardened troops, armed with powerful weapons they survey a column of tanks manuvering below them..... anyways it looks perfect in my head but heres the best i could edit from my own pics. Hope it helps.

[Zorbtek 0]

To me, it just doesnt capture the essence of what the game is like.

A few things I see they are trying to do here, they don't want the soldiers in a pose, because this is about realism, not a Hollywood photo shoot.

I'm thinking something like a Star Wars movie cover collage, here me out:

You have the main soldier in the center pointing his gun or whatever, with a fiery/smoke effect in the back and you have smaller tanks, helicopters, soldiers etc running, flying at a tilt, rolling; something.

You can tell people alot about your game just by having them look at the front cover.  They would know it involves modern day infantry, helicopters, tanks, possibly squad combat, and action.

Don't hate me for using this as an example, but you can see what EA games did with Battlefield's cover

[jasono 0]

Dont judge a book by its cover lol

I dont think this is final cover. There should be a lot more info (age rating, publisher etc) on it so when you start seeing that, you know the wat the final cover probably could be.

[GBee 0]

There is a series of adverts running for different branches of the Army here in the UK. At the end they all show the same, well choreographed scene from different angles with all the different branches represented ... if you could somehow mimic that scene you would be onto a winner IMHO.

Check out one of the ads here:

http://www.army.mod.uk/linked_....rog.wmv

Edit: Added a couple of screenshots from the ad

http://www.actiongames.co.uk/images/screenshots/uk_army_ad.png

http://www.actiongames.co.uk/images/screenshots/uk_army_ad1.png

The last few seconds are the bit I'm referring to. You see the paratoopers in the distance, the APCs driving in from the right, the helecopters flying low in the foreground, the tanks, the support vehicles and infantry. In short everything which Arma offers, including the large environment, roads and bridges.

If you could capture that scene in a single image on a box cover without being overly busy ...

I'm not sure if it's possible though

[Zorbtek 0]

Thats another thing. OFP and Armed Assault have SO many different scenes while playing the game either online or in Single Player.

This box only shows me one rather boring perspective.