Judging by the Cover

The video game industry is growing quite rapidly on next generation consoles such as the Xbox One and the Playstation 4. These two competing consoles and companies do share one thing: the vast amount of games you can play on them. The range of games is incredibly expansive, just about any genre of game can be found. Amongst the most popular game genres are: action, shooter and sports centered games.

Aside from the actual gameplay another major aspect of video games are their covers in which they are enclosed. In fact in many sports games that feature one or multiple players, Electronic Arts actually allows the public community to vote on who they want to be on the cover.

Lionel Messi features on the cover of FIFA 16

The first example of a video game cover comes from the game FIFA 16, a soccer game that is widely popular across the globe. The cover of this game is pretty simple but effective in following the guidelines and dodging amateur layout errors. With the main focus on the player Lionel Messi the rest of the design background is somewhat blurred out. This keeps the cover from having a "busy background" and draws attention to the center. Another effective technique it uses is clustering items together. The cover keeps the company's logo as well as the game's title together in the center. In addition to this in the upper left hand corner has additional information of the game clustered together for quick reading. Also, in the background the cover even clusters together two players together to avoid having clutter.

While this is a somewhat simple cover for the game, many times it is better to keep it simple and clean rather than try and force unnecessary objects in. When looking at the four corners, they are relatively empty other than the top left hand corner. This design really does a fine job of balancing and displaying all the objects and information needed.

The second game cover comes from a completely different genre of game. As FIFA 16 is a sports game, I thought it would be interesting to compare the cover of FIFA 16 to a shooter game cover. Although, Star Wars Battlefront comes from the same company as FIFA 16, Electronic Arts, the two covers are extremely different.

Rebel soldier stands in front of Imperial AT-AT

First, this cover has much more going on than its counterpart. Immediately there is focus on the center of the machine, title and a soldier. Much like FIFA 16 the cover presents the title of the game, the company and a look into the game. However, the background of this cover seems much more busy. And while there are plenty of objects flying, shooting and running in the background, the design still does a good job in avoiding the busy background layout error.

Despite the numerous objects on the cover, the design once again utilizes clustering techniques into the background. Planes on the left hand side are clustered into groups of three, as well as fighting soldiers side by side one another. And on the right hand side again planes and soldiers can be seen clustered together. Due to having so many objects, the design does a good job of balancing the amount of action taking place on either side, and avoids centering all the objects. While the cover has a lot of action taking place, it still holds true to the layout of a professional cover.

Comparing these two different covers by the same company shows how video game covers are designed and utilize the layout techniques described by Golombsky and Hagen. Both covers are efficient in their use of limited space and utilize clustering techniques to create professional cover designs. Despite being from two completely different game genres each cover follows common principles when it comes to their design.