Showing Half A Face On Box Art

Why do some games only show half a face as their box art? Perhaps it's a sense of power or mystery. Either way, it makes for captivating boxart.

In the early days of gaming, box art was rather important. Gamers did not meet and discuss games over the internet back then, and the medium was not yet used to advertise games. As such, if a customer entered a store and saw a game that he did not know, the only thing he had to go on was how the cartridge looked.

These days, the industry has grown quite a bit, and the internet has become its main way of promoting games, through official websites, and through sites such as www.giantbomb.com. Consequently, most gamers already know more about a game when they walk into a store than the look of its packaging tells them.

However, that hasn't--and shouldn't--detain artists from producing good-looking box art that does the game contained within justice. A technique that inevitably draws attention to the box is putting a face on there that looks mysterious, and then cutting that face in half. Sometimes, even more than half of the face is cut off, leaving nothing more than an eye or a mouth. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly's box art is a good example of this.

Name	Platforms	Developer
James Cameron's Avatar: The Game	WII	Ubisoft Montreal Studios
Phase Paradox	PS2
Max Payne 3 released on June 1, 2010	X360, PS3	Rockstar Vancouver
God of War III released on March 16, 2010	PS3	Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated, SCE Studio Santa Monica
Yakuza 3 released on March 9, 2010	PS3	Amusement Vision, Ltd.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat released on Feb. 2, 2010	PC	GSC Game World
Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble released on Nov. 10, 2009	PSN, PSP	Spike Co., Ltd.
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time released on Oct. 27, 2009	PS3	Insomniac Games
Way of the Samurai 3 released on Oct. 16, 2009	X360, PS3	Acquire
Tomb Raider: Underworld released on Nov. 18, 2008	X360, PS2, WII, PS3, DS, PC	Crystal Dynamics, Inc.

Concept Name:	Showing Half A Face On Box Art
Appears in:	26 games
First appearance:	Immercenary
Aliases

	Donald Duck
	Tony Hawk
	Spider-Man
	Joanna Dark
	Solid Snake
	Spyro the Dragon
	Sweet Tooth
	Akira Yuki
	Thrall
	Arthas Menethil
See All »