Quoted from Aurich:

I'm just salty because now I have to go remove all the radial gradients from my design.
I know some people are going to think I have an agenda here, but I was actually hoping this game would be awesome. I don't work for Heighway, pinball isn't my "job", I'm a fan first and foremost. I love the show, and if the game looked bad ass I'd be stoked for Stern.
I'm really sympathetic to license stuff. I've had my own battles on Alien to try and figure out how to work within the constraints I'm given. You gotta pick your fights, spend your capital wisely. And you have to be creative. If they give you a box of tools you figure out how to use those tools. Might not be the ones you wanted, but you have to stop wishing for a hammer and figure out what to do with a saw.
But it's really obvious there was a lot of freedom here. The big complaints have nothing to do with actual HBO assets. This isn't the "dwarf style guide" conversation from the initial Hobbit design. Whatever happened behind the scenes, whatever frustrations and battles there were, I just can't believe any of it ended with "well, we have to use a radial gradient here, sucks, but they're gonna yank the license if we don't".
I know I'm gonna sound like a dick here, but it's just lazy design. There's no getting around it. Why are the stock art coins repeated? Why are the inserts surrounded by cheesy bevels, that are too big so they overlap, with no rhyme or reason to which one is on top? Then you have icicles off one insert, that's "flat" against the playfield, but the icicles have a big ol' drop Shadow, like they're floating on a plane above the insert they're attached to? This is 101 shit here. It's almost beyond lazy to just pure "don't care". There's no pride in that work.
And to surround all of that with a huge background that's a giant radial gradient, literally the most useless of all the possible gradient shapes ... what in the heck is that about? It's just boggling my mind. At best you can use that gradient to simulate turned metal. People use it to make corny Apple icons like this:
Apple-01.png
Problem is, that gradient didn't even have the attention to detail that the above icon does. And if it did, what the hell is that supposed to be? No one has ever had a shield with a face made from turned metal. It makes no sense at all. That's not what any shield, ever, has looked like. Someone said "shit, what do I do with this empty space now that I've filled it with house shields? Uh, I guess I'll make it metal. Um, here, gradient, done, boom, let's go get some coffee."
I think we deserve more than that for our money. These toys are damn expensive.
Look, I'm not going to promise you that you'll like how Alien's art looks. I can't. You might not like it, you might think I didn't do it right. Hopefully you love it. I can't control that.
But I can promise you this: I've obsessed over it. I've watched the films frame by frame. Want to know how many scenes in Aliens have some interesting typography? Probably in the 70s, because I took 83 captures from it recently of all the UI and fonts and interfaces, just to keep them in mind as I'm working. I'm a huge fan of the movies, there's a limited edition Mondo print of ALIEN hanging behind me at my desk. I have a huge xenomorph bust. Toys, books, and I'm a long time fan of HR Giger.
Maybe I blow it. I'm not perfect. But it won't be because I didn't try. And GOT feels to me like someone didn't try or didn't care. And I wish they had, because I think this could have been something else.
Imagine for a moment that you did things differently than Stern. And you hired the same illustrator to do the playfield art. Gave him the CAD layout, roughed in ideas and explained the inserts, and let him paint that.
Keep the map idea, but have him paint a landscape on it in the style of the opening credits. Not random rusty gears from a straight up above perspective with drops shadows. A proper isometric landscape, with gears and building rising from the land, mountain ranges, forests, all rendered in his almost photorealistic style. Which when applied to fantastic elements, will bring them to life. When you apply that to people that look like PR shots it instead just looks like processed photography. Waste of time. Have him paint stuff his style makes cool. No stiff PR poses.
Rising from the ground between the flippers are the poles of the House Banners. Each one hanging in the breeze, slightly furled and moving around so that each one has a little character.
Towers and castles dot the map, and each house is represented. People would want one as wall art. Why not just go for it? Supposedly Steve has had 2 years to work on this, I bet the layout has been final for long enough to have that done.
For the LE, swap the backglass and side art!
Backglass: Dragon breathing flames, engulfing the frame in fire, and GAME OF THRONES in the flames, in mid-heat, like it is in the intro. Flames almost licking from inside of it.
On the sides of the cabinet stretches the unsullied army, and standing tall above them is the Queen of Dragons, with her dragons flying about her in the sky stretching the sides of the cabinet, and full of clouds and light. Smaller and to her sides are Drogo and her handmaiden, representing the transition points in her rise to power.
I'd be figuring out how to fit it in my game room.

Quoted from frolic:

Stern posted some images of the hand drawn sketches that became the LE artwork. Real effort when into this. I guess they still have to explain the playfield art .
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Quoted from rai:

Bring on the competition. I hope Stern gets some fire back to bring it next time.

Quoted from Aurich:

No chains, but there are gears on almost every location:

Quoted from Aurich:

Still, I agree, the use of the on the playfield doesn't feel right. The gears were mechanisms to raise and move pieces, not objects in and of themselves to just be scattered around randomly.

Quoted from aingide:

Also, if you actually look at each of the gears they don't interact with each other like an actual machine would.
They're almost all just overlapping each other, have different teeth that don't connect, some are metal and some are wood, etc...it's just really bizarre and isn't evocative of an intricately crafted toy like in the show opener.

Quoted from Gov:

If you are going to play a GoT boardgame, it should be this one. It is really, really good.

got-boardgame.jpg

Quoted from aingide:

If any modders take this idea and makes it awesome they’ll have my money. New playfield decal and slingshot plastics will help a lot.
It’s obviously just a sketch (that I wasted almost two hours on ), but is doable with major tweaks (for example, looking at it now I don't think it needs the two big swords).
It works on the Pro as well, finally giving that game a representation of the most recognizable object in the entire series…totally crazy that the throne isn’t on the playfield!
Stern may have tried this and there could’ve been a licensing thing where HBO told them not to cover up the throne, who knows. To me it’s a no brainer to present it as the centerpiece of the playfield underneath house sigil insert lights that go out as they’re eliminated from the “game of thrones.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t solve design problems elsewhere and has to be in the general style as the rest of the playfield as to not stick out like a sore thumb, but hey…what else can you do short of sanding it down and starting from scratch?
got_pf3_1.jpg
got_pf3_pro.jpg

Quoted from aingide:

Thanks. They should actually be different swords, both Longclaw and Oathkeeper, but I thought this got the point across without doing any more work.

Agreed, but if the art is locked, this is your dream theme, and the game is awesome what else can you do?

Quoted from jayhawkai:

A bigger fan than this pinsider?
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/profile/winteriscoming