ABSTRACT
Aesthetics is the third quadrant of the elemental tetrad. Some game designers have disdain for aesthetic considerations in a game, calling them mere “surface details” that have nothing to do with what they consider important—the game mechanics. Powerful game worlds have a certain “atmosphere.” It can be hard to describe what that is, exactly, but it is created by the way the visuals, sounds, music, and game mechanics all work together. Sometimes, an inspiring piece of concept art can provide the uniting vision of the experience a game is trying to achieve. Game designs are abstract—illustrations are concrete. In the painful process of converting game designs abstract design into a concrete game, illustrations can serve as a simple, effective way to ground their design in reality at the very start of a project. The tight integration of art and technology in modern videogames makes for some very challenging design problems.
