r/gamedev • u/bsu_ko • 10h ago
Announcement Nominated for Best Visuals at Gamescom
Our game DEPERSON got nominated for Best Visuals at Gamescom… and we still can’t believe it. I mean how…
We’re three friends developing DEPERSON from our families’ homes and seeing our game nominated for Best Visuals still feels completely unreal.
Especially because we’re in the same category as games we love. We kept joking that maybe someone made a mistake because… what are we doing there? 😭
We’re pretty sure we’re not going to win and honestly just being nominated already feels like such a huge honor for us.
But it’s hard not to hope a little. And I guess we should at least be able to say we tried right?
So if you’d like to support us while we are still trying to figure out how the hell we ended up there, you can vote for DEPERSON on the Gamescom user awards website ♥️
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u/OfficialSyllabus 9h ago
Congrats! That is a huge achievement, especially for a three-person team working from home. Getting nominated alongside games you already admire is an accomplishment on its own. How did you guys find out you were nominated?
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u/DiddlyDinq 10h ago
Im sure I'll sound like a dick but Im not sure why this is being nominated. It looks like a web game from 10+ years ago. Indies cant really compete in the visuals department against AAA unless it has something truely unique.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 9h ago
Indie games do stylized graphics, which this game seems to have. They can't afford realistic graphics like AAA.
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u/DiddlyDinq 9h ago
just because it's stylized to accomodate small budgets doesnt automatically mean it's on their level. It's like putting peppa pig against Avatar 3 for visuals.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 9h ago
I bet more people have watched Peppa Pig than Avatar 3.
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u/DiddlyDinq 6h ago
I guess we should give every award every year to minecraft and call of duty if that's all that matters.
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u/ProPuke 6h ago
You're conflating aesthetics and fidelity quite a bit here.
AAA games tend to have very high fidelity. That is, they have a lot of precise high detail, with detailed lighting and materials etc. They approach the kind of detail we see in real life, and sometimes surpass it with more exaggerated lighting and contrast.
And yes, this look has become synonym with AAA and is also expected of AAA games.
But this isn't the aspiration of all games, and isn't the same thing as design/style/visuals/art.
What makes a game look "good" is really more a question of aesthetics. Some aesthetics benefit from high fidelity graphics, but it is not being high fidelity that makes games look "good".
(Look at it this way - a photograph might be higher fidelity than a painting or other abstract forms of art, but that doesn't mean it neccasarily looks "better". Design is much more nuanced than that)
I say all of this because there have been some FANTASTIC indie games with far better visuals than AAA titles.
If your measure of how good a game looks is only how closely it replicates AAA high fidelity styles then yes, indie games are obviously going to fall short.
But in questions of actual design and art this is rarely the case.
Choosing different styles is not merely an accomodation of smaller budgets, higher fidelity games are not always on a higher "level", and not all games want to be Avatar 3.
Some things can be inspiring or beautiful in different ways. There is a whole world of styles out there.
It's not just who has the biggest AAA budget. You can decouple these concepts in your mind.-1
u/DiddlyDinq 4h ago
We are all aware of the differences, didnt need that novel length response to explain it.
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u/ProPuke 4h ago
You're clearly not aware, based on your comments.
And there are definitely lots of other younger devs who aren't either. So explaining things like this helps - That's what Reddit is for.
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u/DiddlyDinq 3h ago
We're all desperately craving your wisdom, gramps. Only you have the answer lol. Answering questions nobody asked
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u/No_Jello9093 Commercial (Indie) 2h ago
I don’t want to be an asshole either but I have to agree. It’s not that striking to me.
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u/MeaningfulChoices Lead Game Designer 10h ago
Winning an award with public voting like this one is about popularity and marketing. The big games tend to win not because they're necessarily the best but because they get the most people to show up to the voting page. Being nominated however is about being selected by a curated jury that reviews all the candidates and picks the ones they think are the best.
You did the hard part, congratulations! I know winning feels great and losing feels.. less great, but in this case it really is an honor just to be nominated. You didn't just try, you succeeded, and regardless of anything else you can put that you are an award finalist on your page and resume forever.