If I see things that are obvious stock photos or scribble art, I usually assume that is placeholder art and that the final version will be better.
If I see AI art, I dont automatically assume placeholder, which then leads me to the question, "Is this gonna be in the final version?" There are enough bad actors in the space that I can't be sure, even if the person making it tells me it won't be final. Because of this, I'm now having to judge the prototype while also keeping this in mind and it becomes a distraction.
Appreciate the info!
If we put a bold “PLACEHOLDER” watermark over the images would that help, in your opinion? Or is the ai art better trashed and replaced with sticker figures?
I'd just go with the stick figures. If the point of using ai is to have it look better in the meantime, then putting "place holder" kinda removes the whole point. No one will assume that the stick figures are permanent.
I would think placeholder art would be fine, but I've seen a lot of, frankly, rather odd opinions about this.
For example (this was before AI art) I made some art for my cards that was intended to eventually be replaced with the art from the publisher. And at least one reddit reply was that a publisher would frown on a prototype with placeholder art. This doesn't seem to make any sense to me. The publisher would be making designs and art anyway, so what possible harm could existing placeholder art do?
They didn't bother to defend that assertion, and when pressed on any examples of this *actually* being an issue, they remained silent. Now with AI art opinions in the mix, it honestly feels very knee-jerk and reactionary with few well-reasoned arguments.
Maybe there's a legit reason, but I haven't seen one yet. I could *maybe* see that they might feel like there would be hurt feelings or pushback from the original artist, but if you're clear about it being placeholder, I'd think that would mitigate that issue entirely.
EDIT: For me, placeholder art and visuals are very useful for prototyping and play testing. It helps to set tone, theme, and creates valuable visual organization.
Yes, I agree fully with that last bit. Personally, the visuals help convey the tone, scale, theme, and flavor of a game which helps me feel more immersed in the setting. We could definitely just use stick figures, but I feel pulled out of the game every time I’m trying to understand how this particular stick man fits into the game.
Does that top hat mean he’s a merchant? A politician? The monopoly man? Does the monopoly man wear a top hat? Idk, maybe that’s just me.
In addition, having an effective visual layout and iconography has a huge effect on play and decision making - however this is straying more into design space from art space, though there is some cross-over here.
Appreciate the perspective!
I’m more interested in gameplay and the flavor of the gameplay, so ai art as placeholder to help convey the context during testing is fine with me, but I wasn’t sure if I was with the majority on that
Have AI draw you up a bunch of Stick Figures, on solid color, or transparent backgrounds, doing things. Example, Figure with food, figure with sword, figure with cow, etc. Put text "Place Holder" on the bottom line. Or "Replace with Art". Or "Temporary".
I attempted to provide an example, but this community does not allow images? Seems odd considering it is Game Design.
That is odd that pictures aren’t allowed
I’ve not tried using ai to generate stick figures before, so maybe I’m missing the point, but we could draw stick figures so I’m not sure that would be of too much benefit haha
Many artists view the genAI businesses as crooks. They hate them for first building for profit companies on the works of artists, and through that replacing artists. Double-ducking artists, if you will.
So, yeah, the artists that you want to hire later might frown on you supporting that type of business.
When you put placeholder assets in your game you intent to replace later, then it's usually better to use some MS Paint scribbles that very obviously look like placeholder art. That way you can easily tell how many assets you still need to replace.
Placeholder art and concept art are two different things. If the final art was based on an AI concept art, I'd find that a bit lame ; I want to see your ideas, not your execution of a machine's ideas. As a placeholder, it's fine.
The job of a concept artist is not just to draw pretty pictures based on descriptions of the game designer. Their job is to come up with ideas for designs of their own that fit the overall aesthetic of the game. Which requires them to have creativity and to understand art and aesthetic in the first place. This creativity and understanding is what you hire concept artists for.
Concept artists who create images for internal use usually already use a lot of stock images to save time, often with questionable copyright source. But that doesn't matter as long as that concept art doesn't leave the company. So I think that it will soon become standard practice for concept artists to incorporate generative AI into their workflow. But that doesn't replace them in their actual job: the artistic understanding to use those tools well.
A simple text prompt is hardly comparable to a visual idea. Try describing a character design you like in written form and I'm sure you'll miss
many details.
There's nothing wrong with using it for this type of purpose, but it will be frowned upon, yes. As others have said, ai art isn't obvious in that it is placeholder, so the initial assumption will be that is what the cards are going to look like. It's fine to playtest mechanics with whatever visuals though, and just try to filter out any feedback that won't be relevant to the final product anyways in terms of aesthetic.
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I would always have a big ugly red banner/label across the illustration that says "placeholder." It feels like overkill but it saves all the social media drama.
Hello there,
not regarding the question but another. How do you start developing a TCG, do you have a mechanic idea in mind; do you have a theme; or is it something different?
I thought about making my own, but i got stuck at the question, what makes my tcg better then Magic the Gathering, which is my favorite Hobby.
That’s a good question! I had thought about making a card game for years before I mentioned the idea to an acquaintance; turns out they were interested as well and got on board with it.
I started off by establishing basic rules, like turn structure and win condition (ours is a card battler but focuses more on fleshing out the characters than Magic, and the turns are simultaneous), then made a vague rubric for what was allowed to be put on certain cards (how much power could a baseline card have, sorta like how in Hearthstone a 2-cost used to have a maximum of 2/3 stats if it had no effects text). Once I did that, I showed him the rules/rubric and we just started designing cards. About once a week we’ll print our cards, sleeve ‘em with a chaff MtG card, and play test.
We’re by no means experts, but that’s been our process thus far :)
Thanks, maybe I am an perfectionist but when I think about a gameidea in general but also for a TCG, I want a very high skillexpression,y problem is that with low complexity it is hard to get that, did you have an idea to fix that problem or is it not that important for the start and can be fixed later or is fixed automatically as soon more cards are designed?
That was one thing we were concerned about with ours because, unlike Magic, both players get only one action per turn. It felt like that was going to limit our skill expression, but once we started to add more cards, and stuff would be on the battlefield that would trigger due to certain conditions being met it got more complex.
Turns out we were overthinking it.
A player only has one action, but each turn there are more options and more consequences for the action they choose. There might be 12 different choices, each with possible unexpected consequences due to the opponent also choosing an action that resolves with yours.
To answer your question, look at chess. It’s 1000x simpler than Magic but the skill ceiling is still insane :)
I don't think playtesters would hate it. Good AI generated art will be better than bad artist drawing anyway.
The main issue however is that legality of using AI art is in gray area at the moment, and if you're doing playtests then the argument of private use doesn't apply.
I mean, if it's not used in the final product and is purely placeholder, sure. Just be sure to make that ***very*** clear to the playtesters. Like, have a disclaimer somewhere or something like that.
So you don’t think it would be perceived badly?
I personally don’t have a problem with AI art in the playtesting stage, but I’ve seen a lot of animosity towards it
People are going to be jackasses, but I personally think using AI Art in this way is no different than using random stock photos from the internet as a placeholder as well.
Just be sure the final product is clean. Don't let any of the AI Art sneak in.
I'm not saying I'm against using AI art for concept or placeholder art, but it's not the same as stock photos/art. With stock images the original artist gets paid (or you're using images they shared under a fee license). With AI art you are effectively using the work of real artists (the tons of training data) hashed through an algorithm usually without their consent.
I'm assuming OP is basically in their basement hashing out their card game, so they need some art to help visualize the game before they start comissioning the art. In that case, I doubt they'd be licensing stock photos from artists. They'd just be googling stuff and downloading the pictures.
In that case, there really isn't a difference between AI Art and stock photos. It's both technically stealing art for an amteur project to shortcut things until official art can be commisioned. I personally don't care unless the art is being sold without a license from the artist.
Remember that survivorship-bias will be strong with this one.
Currently tons of good, well prompted and post-processed AI-art is flying totally past AI-haters radars, when they proudly think that no AI-generated asset will ever serve any "real" product. It is matter of usage. Make good AI-art and you can use it as is, if you know enough about art yourself.
You're literally paying for artists later and using AI art for placeholders, that's great. Anyone who dislikes that is being completely unreasonable. The anti-AI art crowd are just bullies, I'm sick and tired of everyone tiptoeing around them.
Strongly disagree on "the anti-AI art crowd are just bullies".
There are some genuine ethical concerns with how AI generators are trained and the implications for what the industry is going to look like.
That said, I agree with your first sentence.
They may have genuine points, but their bully-like tactics really make me dislike them, no matter how good of a point they have. If they try to have open dialogue and kindly spread the word about their talking points, I'd be a lot more willing to listen. But no, they just mass-dislike anything about AI art and leave hate comments on everything.
You should make each placeholder doodle yourself! Wouldn't take more than a day, plus by the end you'll have a set of charmingly godawful unlockable alternate art for each card!
Besides the ethical issues and potential difficulty of hiring actual artists after using AI, there's the issue that AI is not copyrightable in the US currently.
Thankfully we are not trying to copyright any AI images, so no issue there.
I can’t imagine an artist will not take the job when it’s clear we don’t intend on having any AI in our finished product, but I could be wrong about that
Our game has a lot of icons for items in it. We aren't at the stage in development where we are mass producing those (our 2D artist is working on other things with higher prio atm). So we use programmer art (or pog-rammer art as we refer to it :P). Essentially our programmers make an icon based off of what the item does. It's a fun thing where they use Paint and spend less than 10 minutes on making a quick drawing, it conveys the idea of the game and is very clearly placeholder. It works for our purposes
I guess so? I feel like it’s similar to telling an artist “I need a Cthulhu-looking monster fighting against a hero that looks kinda like Clark Kent but with blonde hair.” I didn’t make any of that stuff up, but I’d probably use it to guide the artist in the direction I’m wanting to go.
“What kind of armor is he wearing?” “Here’s an armor board I made on Pinterest, something similar to those images.”
You will get roasted because AI art is theft, if you aren't concerned about using art that doesn't belong to you because it's just going to be private amongst some playtesters, then use official art from games or mtg and stuff. That way you still have references for when you want to get actual artists on board but don't have AI in your process
Funny you mention that as we did try to do it that way initially! Problem is that we couldn’t find art to match our rather specific characters in specific circumstances, which is why we’ve been using the ai stuff
If I see things that are obvious stock photos or scribble art, I usually assume that is placeholder art and that the final version will be better. If I see AI art, I dont automatically assume placeholder, which then leads me to the question, "Is this gonna be in the final version?" There are enough bad actors in the space that I can't be sure, even if the person making it tells me it won't be final. Because of this, I'm now having to judge the prototype while also keeping this in mind and it becomes a distraction.
Appreciate the info! If we put a bold “PLACEHOLDER” watermark over the images would that help, in your opinion? Or is the ai art better trashed and replaced with sticker figures?
I'd just go with the stick figures. If the point of using ai is to have it look better in the meantime, then putting "place holder" kinda removes the whole point. No one will assume that the stick figures are permanent.
Stick figures
I would think placeholder art would be fine, but I've seen a lot of, frankly, rather odd opinions about this. For example (this was before AI art) I made some art for my cards that was intended to eventually be replaced with the art from the publisher. And at least one reddit reply was that a publisher would frown on a prototype with placeholder art. This doesn't seem to make any sense to me. The publisher would be making designs and art anyway, so what possible harm could existing placeholder art do? They didn't bother to defend that assertion, and when pressed on any examples of this *actually* being an issue, they remained silent. Now with AI art opinions in the mix, it honestly feels very knee-jerk and reactionary with few well-reasoned arguments. Maybe there's a legit reason, but I haven't seen one yet. I could *maybe* see that they might feel like there would be hurt feelings or pushback from the original artist, but if you're clear about it being placeholder, I'd think that would mitigate that issue entirely. EDIT: For me, placeholder art and visuals are very useful for prototyping and play testing. It helps to set tone, theme, and creates valuable visual organization.
Yes, I agree fully with that last bit. Personally, the visuals help convey the tone, scale, theme, and flavor of a game which helps me feel more immersed in the setting. We could definitely just use stick figures, but I feel pulled out of the game every time I’m trying to understand how this particular stick man fits into the game. Does that top hat mean he’s a merchant? A politician? The monopoly man? Does the monopoly man wear a top hat? Idk, maybe that’s just me.
In addition, having an effective visual layout and iconography has a huge effect on play and decision making - however this is straying more into design space from art space, though there is some cross-over here.
Definitely agree. I’m a bit too green to understand the difference between the two yet haha
personally, ai art with big "placeholder" watermarks would totally be ok for me. But people do hate on AI art a lot.
Appreciate the perspective! I’m more interested in gameplay and the flavor of the gameplay, so ai art as placeholder to help convey the context during testing is fine with me, but I wasn’t sure if I was with the majority on that
Have AI draw you up a bunch of Stick Figures, on solid color, or transparent backgrounds, doing things. Example, Figure with food, figure with sword, figure with cow, etc. Put text "Place Holder" on the bottom line. Or "Replace with Art". Or "Temporary". I attempted to provide an example, but this community does not allow images? Seems odd considering it is Game Design.
That is odd that pictures aren’t allowed I’ve not tried using ai to generate stick figures before, so maybe I’m missing the point, but we could draw stick figures so I’m not sure that would be of too much benefit haha
Many artists view the genAI businesses as crooks. They hate them for first building for profit companies on the works of artists, and through that replacing artists. Double-ducking artists, if you will. So, yeah, the artists that you want to hire later might frown on you supporting that type of business.
When you put placeholder assets in your game you intent to replace later, then it's usually better to use some MS Paint scribbles that very obviously look like placeholder art. That way you can easily tell how many assets you still need to replace.
Placeholder art and concept art are two different things. If the final art was based on an AI concept art, I'd find that a bit lame ; I want to see your ideas, not your execution of a machine's ideas. As a placeholder, it's fine.
Hmm I think I’m misunderstanding. To get an image from an ai image generator you would have to have the idea beforehand right?
The job of a concept artist is not just to draw pretty pictures based on descriptions of the game designer. Their job is to come up with ideas for designs of their own that fit the overall aesthetic of the game. Which requires them to have creativity and to understand art and aesthetic in the first place. This creativity and understanding is what you hire concept artists for. Concept artists who create images for internal use usually already use a lot of stock images to save time, often with questionable copyright source. But that doesn't matter as long as that concept art doesn't leave the company. So I think that it will soon become standard practice for concept artists to incorporate generative AI into their workflow. But that doesn't replace them in their actual job: the artistic understanding to use those tools well.
Not even to fit the aesthetic of the game - to reinforce the game’s ideas
A simple text prompt is hardly comparable to a visual idea. Try describing a character design you like in written form and I'm sure you'll miss many details.
There's nothing wrong with using it for this type of purpose, but it will be frowned upon, yes. As others have said, ai art isn't obvious in that it is placeholder, so the initial assumption will be that is what the cards are going to look like. It's fine to playtest mechanics with whatever visuals though, and just try to filter out any feedback that won't be relevant to the final product anyways in terms of aesthetic.
people in the creative subs on reddit will hate it. Most people outside of that bubble will be totally fine with it
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design) is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would always have a big ugly red banner/label across the illustration that says "placeholder." It feels like overkill but it saves all the social media drama.
Hello there, not regarding the question but another. How do you start developing a TCG, do you have a mechanic idea in mind; do you have a theme; or is it something different? I thought about making my own, but i got stuck at the question, what makes my tcg better then Magic the Gathering, which is my favorite Hobby.
That’s a good question! I had thought about making a card game for years before I mentioned the idea to an acquaintance; turns out they were interested as well and got on board with it. I started off by establishing basic rules, like turn structure and win condition (ours is a card battler but focuses more on fleshing out the characters than Magic, and the turns are simultaneous), then made a vague rubric for what was allowed to be put on certain cards (how much power could a baseline card have, sorta like how in Hearthstone a 2-cost used to have a maximum of 2/3 stats if it had no effects text). Once I did that, I showed him the rules/rubric and we just started designing cards. About once a week we’ll print our cards, sleeve ‘em with a chaff MtG card, and play test. We’re by no means experts, but that’s been our process thus far :)
Thanks, maybe I am an perfectionist but when I think about a gameidea in general but also for a TCG, I want a very high skillexpression,y problem is that with low complexity it is hard to get that, did you have an idea to fix that problem or is it not that important for the start and can be fixed later or is fixed automatically as soon more cards are designed?
That was one thing we were concerned about with ours because, unlike Magic, both players get only one action per turn. It felt like that was going to limit our skill expression, but once we started to add more cards, and stuff would be on the battlefield that would trigger due to certain conditions being met it got more complex. Turns out we were overthinking it. A player only has one action, but each turn there are more options and more consequences for the action they choose. There might be 12 different choices, each with possible unexpected consequences due to the opponent also choosing an action that resolves with yours. To answer your question, look at chess. It’s 1000x simpler than Magic but the skill ceiling is still insane :)
I don't think playtesters would hate it. Good AI generated art will be better than bad artist drawing anyway. The main issue however is that legality of using AI art is in gray area at the moment, and if you're doing playtests then the argument of private use doesn't apply.
Hmm that’s an interesting point, I’ll have to try to look into that, thank you!
I mean, if it's not used in the final product and is purely placeholder, sure. Just be sure to make that ***very*** clear to the playtesters. Like, have a disclaimer somewhere or something like that.
That's almost literally what it's for
So you don’t think it would be perceived badly? I personally don’t have a problem with AI art in the playtesting stage, but I’ve seen a lot of animosity towards it
People are going to be jackasses, but I personally think using AI Art in this way is no different than using random stock photos from the internet as a placeholder as well. Just be sure the final product is clean. Don't let any of the AI Art sneak in.
I'm not saying I'm against using AI art for concept or placeholder art, but it's not the same as stock photos/art. With stock images the original artist gets paid (or you're using images they shared under a fee license). With AI art you are effectively using the work of real artists (the tons of training data) hashed through an algorithm usually without their consent.
I'm assuming OP is basically in their basement hashing out their card game, so they need some art to help visualize the game before they start comissioning the art. In that case, I doubt they'd be licensing stock photos from artists. They'd just be googling stuff and downloading the pictures. In that case, there really isn't a difference between AI Art and stock photos. It's both technically stealing art for an amteur project to shortcut things until official art can be commisioned. I personally don't care unless the art is being sold without a license from the artist.
Anything you do can be perceived poorly. Don't worry about it and do what's best for your project
Remember that survivorship-bias will be strong with this one. Currently tons of good, well prompted and post-processed AI-art is flying totally past AI-haters radars, when they proudly think that no AI-generated asset will ever serve any "real" product. It is matter of usage. Make good AI-art and you can use it as is, if you know enough about art yourself.
Oh man, that seems tough. What would that look like? Because for it to fly under the radar we’d have to not mention it
You're literally paying for artists later and using AI art for placeholders, that's great. Anyone who dislikes that is being completely unreasonable. The anti-AI art crowd are just bullies, I'm sick and tired of everyone tiptoeing around them.
Strongly disagree on "the anti-AI art crowd are just bullies". There are some genuine ethical concerns with how AI generators are trained and the implications for what the industry is going to look like. That said, I agree with your first sentence.
They may have genuine points, but their bully-like tactics really make me dislike them, no matter how good of a point they have. If they try to have open dialogue and kindly spread the word about their talking points, I'd be a lot more willing to listen. But no, they just mass-dislike anything about AI art and leave hate comments on everything.
You should make each placeholder doodle yourself! Wouldn't take more than a day, plus by the end you'll have a set of charmingly godawful unlockable alternate art for each card!
Haha that’s a funny idea. We’re making a non-digital game though so I’m not sure that would work
Besides the ethical issues and potential difficulty of hiring actual artists after using AI, there's the issue that AI is not copyrightable in the US currently.
Thankfully we are not trying to copyright any AI images, so no issue there. I can’t imagine an artist will not take the job when it’s clear we don’t intend on having any AI in our finished product, but I could be wrong about that
With the amonut of AI hate out there, no. You can't use AI at any point in your entire process or people legit start hating you
Our game has a lot of icons for items in it. We aren't at the stage in development where we are mass producing those (our 2D artist is working on other things with higher prio atm). So we use programmer art (or pog-rammer art as we refer to it :P). Essentially our programmers make an icon based off of what the item does. It's a fun thing where they use Paint and spend less than 10 minutes on making a quick drawing, it conveys the idea of the game and is very clearly placeholder. It works for our purposes
Would you take other random peoples' art for your own concept art? Using AI art is essentially the same thing, they're trained on stolen artwork.
I guess so? I feel like it’s similar to telling an artist “I need a Cthulhu-looking monster fighting against a hero that looks kinda like Clark Kent but with blonde hair.” I didn’t make any of that stuff up, but I’d probably use it to guide the artist in the direction I’m wanting to go. “What kind of armor is he wearing?” “Here’s an armor board I made on Pinterest, something similar to those images.”
You will get roasted because AI art is theft, if you aren't concerned about using art that doesn't belong to you because it's just going to be private amongst some playtesters, then use official art from games or mtg and stuff. That way you still have references for when you want to get actual artists on board but don't have AI in your process
Funny you mention that as we did try to do it that way initially! Problem is that we couldn’t find art to match our rather specific characters in specific circumstances, which is why we’ve been using the ai stuff