Re: RFC - first batch of OGRE images

[Chris <chris@starforge.co.uk>]

Mark Collins wrote:


> I'm not too sure on the images. They look a little sterile, and don't reflect 
> the entertainment side of things. Maybe a picture of an Ogre in the 
> background (yes, I'm going to milk the fact that I came up with the name, sue 
> me)?


Guess I should explain why I went down the "sterile" road really...

When I started work on the images I had four aims in mind:

- small size. This makes inclusion on a website far easier and less
   obtrusive. Creating huge graphics would allow for lots of twiddly
   stuff, but it would mean developers would need to give more screen
   real estate to simply show the game rating. We need this to be as
   simple to adopt as possible: something large may force devs to
   redesign their whoe webpage to fit the rating image in properly.
   The small size restricted the possible representations.

- clarity. As Steve mentioned, pictures of an Ogre in various positions
   would allow the Ogre to be used as a metaphor for the rating, but IMO
   it would not convey the rating as unambiguously as an abstract
   representation based on age ranges or easily recognised words. We need
   these ratings to be simple to understand for everyone, even stressed
   parents who are tring to make the dinner while the kids are looking
   for games. If people have to go off and look at what Ogre position
   corresponds to a given rating it will create frustration (ok, so this
   is worst case, but the last thing we want to do is add to people's
   problems)

- speed. I put these examples together in under an hour, doing something
   more complex would certainly be possible, but I've had too much
   experience of things like this being started and then loosing momentum
   because everyone is waiting for one thing or another and then somthign
   else comes up. I wanted to get something up as a focus for discussion
   as quickly as possible.

- legality. I wanted to tred the fine line between something that doesn't
   look a million miles away from the ESRB rating graphics (for familiarity
   with parents) while remaining distinctive and individual enough to avoid
   possible legal incidents.

There is plenty of scope for including Ogresque pictures on the website, but
IMO ensuring that the graphics are functional rather fancy - at least at 
first - is important. YMMV of course.


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