Concept art is the worst unlockable ever.

Am I wrong in this opinion? It seems totally lazy and is of little use to the player. I could understand it kind of if it was significantly different from what ended up in the game, but this usually doesn't seem to be the case. Granted I don't see the point in Artbooks either, but no ones really asking me to care about that. When you put in a tangible reward in a game I expect it to be something worthwile. Concept art just doesn't cut it for me in that regard.

I disagree. I like concept art, and I like to look at it and see how designs developed and changed, what was considered and what was thrown out. I'm always a little disappointed when a game doesn't have a pile of concept art for me to browse.

I can see it being a disappointment when you aren't told up front the unlockable will be concept art, but if i'm told from the get go i'll be ok with it. I just don't want to be expecting something else.

I'm of the opinion that it may not be the worst unlockable, but it certainly is one of the laziest when it comes to developers thinking about how to add more content.

I enjoy concept art.

I love concept art, but I prefer it to be completely unlocked after you finish the game and not something you have to fight for (Mortal Kombat 9).

I enjoy it but it should never be hard to unlock.

It's the kind of shit that should be on the games website where you can navigate it properly with a mouse and grid image layout. I hate games that have art in stupid menus where you have to use the dpad to scroll through everything one-by-one.

@EveretteScott said:

I can see it being a disappointment when you aren't told up front the unlockable will be concept art, but if i'm told from the get go i'll be ok with it. I just don't want to be expecting something else.

I guess if you know you're unlocking concept art from the getgo it's alright, but it's annoying in games like Sonic Generations or Donkey Kong Country Returns where your given an extra menu with possible rewards and a portion of that is concept art.

I love GOOD concept art. For example the MK stuff was really detailed with different poses, battle damage, etc...

Don't really care for it. Just hate when games like Mortal Kombat, Comic Jumper, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow make it incredibly tedious by having way too many that you have to unlock one at a time. I respect the work put into them but I will probably never look at it, just want my nerd points/trophy score to go up.

Yes, it's the worst and laziest type of unlockable. I like concept art, but making me do a series of tasks to see it is stupid and is a let down when you expect something useful to be unlocked.

Only if it's mk. Nothing beats stick figure fatalities

For certain games it's great, like mortal kombat to see the old versions of characters before they were revised to the games present form, and the levels art, seeing how ambitious it starts out to be. But in some games, yes it is a drag, like first person shooters where you don't really care to see yet another post apocalyptic new york scene.

I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned on the Bombcast before. I don't think there's any harm in throwing it in, even if a video game isn't the most convenient way to view concept art, but I don't think a game should make a big deal out of concept art, as if it was comparable to other kinds of unlockables, and if a game is going to have a significant unlock system, it should have a lot more in it than concept art.

Agreed!

Indeed!

You're basically right. On the list of unlockables, it's clearly at the bottom. It's not a terrible thing to have in the game, but if there's any hope or expectation of getting something other than concept art, it's a very disappointing thing to get instead.

I also tend to think that audio unlockables are pretty worthless. They'd be nice if there was a clear way of getting the file onto my PC, but the idea that I would sit there and jukebox with a game menu is absurd.

Yeah, it's pretty crappy. I mean, when you say this, I think of Crysis 2, crap.

It depends. I think a game like Machinarium did unlocked concept art well. They tied it into the hints system, and so, when stuck on a challenge, you could open up a book and look at concept art for the puzzle. It wouldn't show you everything, but you'd get a good idea of it. And so, using that system, you could view helpful concept art which you could also look at later if you liked. I think concept art is great in a game; it just has to be implemented right.

I am ok with concept art and making-ofs as unlocks, but they should be something that is unlocked essentially automatically once you complete the game. As rewards for complicated achievements they however kind of suck, as they are rarely worth the effort on their own and thus will just make me go to Youtube to watch them instead. A game shouldn't lock that content away from the user, just far enough that he doesn't accidentally spoiler himself. 
 
When it comes to sucky unlocks my biggest complaint would be costumes, but not because they are a bad unlock, but because they are incredible badly placed unlocks in most games, i.e. you get them once you finished the game twice or other stuff like that, thus you get them at a point when you are already done with the game and have no longer any use for them. Tomb Raider: Legend was one of the few games I have seen that did it right, it had a lot of costumes and a lot of conditions under which you got them, so you constantly got new costumes to play with and could use them while you where unlocking new ones. Thus you actually had something from your reward instead of it just sitting dead on your hard drive.

I remember playing x-men legends 1 when I was young.I did unlock comic book covers in-game by finding them, they were hidden somewhere.I admired it's worth because they were very old from 30 or 40 years back and I appreciated it for what it was worth. I do think concept art is a worthwhile achievement.

@Deathawk said:

Am I wrong in this opinion? It seems totally lazy and is of little use to the player. I could understand it kind of if it was significantly different from what ended up in the game, but this usually doesn't seem to be the case. Granted I don't see the point in Artbooks either, but no ones really asking me to care about that. When you put in a tangible reward in a game I expect it to be something worthwile. Concept art just doesn't cut it for me in that regard.

why should you expect a tangible reward in the first place? Achievements give you nothing, (not even concept art) but people still care about them. Because it's what you did, not what you got as a result.

There is a few games who have done it well, but 99% of the time i don't waste my time unlocking concept art, and if it happen automatically i never watch them. So for me it's one of the worst unlockables.

I really like unlocking concept art in games with a great art style . What i hate is unlocking concept art for generic game with no style. Oh look at how many generic space marines we drew before we got this generic space marine, the only difference is he has a scare on his cheek.

@Make_Me_Mad said:

I disagree. I like concept art, and I like to look at it and see how designs developed and changed, what was considered and what was thrown out. I'm always a little disappointed when a game doesn't have a pile of concept art for me to browse.

Yup. I'm generally into drawing and art, and some concept draws are awesome. I liked that feature in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow :)

@Deathawk: I think it depends on the game. Anime and heavy Art-style dependent games generally benefit from those type of unlockables for many reasons. However, like Mortal Kombat, it feels out of place for the majority when really we want more characters, stages, and etc.

Biggest piss off for me was completing the MK9 challenge tower just to unlock a shitty costume for a character I never play as. Thanks, Ed.

I love concept art, as long as it unlocks gradually as you finish a campaign. Not really a good "reward" in itself but still, good content.

If it's the ONLY unlockable then I agree, but if it's one of many then that's interesting, to see how the game developed

It would be more useful if they let you export the images from the game to your desktop/laptop/XMB that would be pretty cool.

I only think that concept art as an unlockable in a video game is lazy for two reasons: It's hard to enjoy a piece of art when it exists only within the menus of a game (this is a major portion of what makes it lazy, since it's impossible to appreciate) and two: it's usually only a single piece of concept art and often the promotional, polished art anyway.

Let's put it this way: If your console spat out a fucking poster of concept art, or potentially even a small page of it, it'd actually be pretty sick. (Which is why concept art is better included in the box, or on the website for everyone to appreciate).

Also, as an artist, I can't wrap my mind around not enjoying an art book. That is the main reason I purchase collectors editions. It's ridiculously fascinating to see the growth of characters and areas in the world, especially when the game has a certain artistic bent to it. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, for example, have pants-wettingly amazing concept art and it's a joy to look at.

tl;dr: So, I won't say that this shit is invalid as a reward because it's art (the game you're playing is also art), but only because it doesn't exist in a form that you can easily appreciate.

I quite like it and always look at any I unlock. Asura's Wrath had some really pretty art in its gallery. More games should do what Comic Jumper did and have ingame bonuses attached to buying the art and videos in the shop.

Yeah, I think concept art is worthless as an unlockable.

@Make_Me_Mad said:

I disagree. I like concept art, and I like to look at it and see how designs developed and changed, what was considered and what was thrown out. I'm always a little disappointed when a game doesn't have a pile of concept art for me to browse.

Pretty much this. If a game has a concept art gallery, it's a safe bet that I'll be browsing it.

Naw, extra art and themes are great unlockable rewards Charging money for these things seems weird to me.

I still believe trophys are the worsed.
Not only are they usually lazily implemented they also encourage you to play in ways that you normally would don't feel comfortable with

What the eff is up with trophys for every single level of the game or worse, watching the opening cinematic like gta4

I'm going to go with "costume sets in a single-player game." I've already finished your game! You think the fact that Ashley is dressed like Britney Spears will be enough to make me play it again?

(In that particular case I did find myself playing RE4 a serious number of times, but that was because of the gameplay; the two costume changes did nothing for me.)

I couldn't give a flying fuck about concept art.

I agree.

In the case of the recent Mortal Kombat games with the Krypt, most people would want to unlock all of the things in the Krypt. And the fact that most the things are concept art that is pretty lame.

@CookieMonster said:

I couldn't give a flying fuck about concept art.

As long as they don't hide it behind ??? unlocks then I'm fine with it. Concept art should just be something you can browse through in a menu somewhere or be on the website for people to see. Making you work to see it is dumb though.

@Sooty said:

It's the kind of shit that should be on the games website where you can navigate it properly with a mouse and grid image layout. I hate games that have art in stupid menus where you have to use the dpad to scroll through everything one-by-one.

Yeah it's the presentation of the concept art that bothers me rather then unlocking it (though I think it would be better if it unlocks when you finish the game instead of using it as a reward for mini-games or whatnot.) I'm sure there's maybe one game or two that does this but it'll be nice if you just pop the game disc into your PC and find the concept art and soundtrack just sitting there in neat little folders. Course nowadays you need to pay for that kind of shit.

It only irks me when it's mixed in with in-game stuff, like costumes or items, and you aren't told upfront. Like in MK9, you either got stuff that affected the game in some way or another, or some gosh-darned art. Given, the art was interesting and cool, but I'd rather have a costume or a fatality code. I ended up going to a guide for the correct unlockables.

I don't care about concept art, unless it is discriptive like in Machinarium and Super Meatboy.

I like some concept art but I hate when there aren't really that many good unlockables in games.

I've always felt that unlockables should be something that give the player a better sense of accomplishment. All I need to do is use Google and I'll be presented with all the art with no work on my part. Unlockables should add something to the game even if it's not that much...new game+, overpowered weapons, a side story/quest etc.

Disagreed, I love concept art.

Concept art can be pretty amazing. Rather than unlocking in game, they should add the option to automatically make it your desktop background.

I feel this would be a cool feature rather than something you look at within the game for 30 seconds.