Create Your Own Video Game Box Art In 4 Easy Steps

You ever notice that a lot of the box art for the big budget AAA games is starting to look kind of similar? Not a lot is separating Mass Effect from Modern Warfare or Dragon Age from Battlefield. I have simplified it down to four easy steps that will be able to recreate almost every cover you’ve seen in the last two years. Let’s see how this goes…

Step 1

Firstly you need to choose between one of about 4 of the most generic backgrounds you can. My guide will be based on multiplayer focused shooters. With this in mind, I’ll have a choice of: a ruined city, jungle, a desert location or just things exploding. I’ve decided to go with a nice ruined city backdrop.

Step 2

Just about every AAA box art requires, by law, that your main character be walking toward the camera nonchalantly while never quite looking directly at it. Your box art will be no different. Chose your main character and do exactly that. You should end up with something like this:

Step 3

Remember to give yourself a title that people will remember. Something that sounds unique, like so:

Step 4

And finally, given the current trend of releasing about 12 different editions of the same game, you’ll need to let people know exactly what they’re buying. Either maps, items or some sort of pre-order bonus, you’ll end up with something like this:

And there you have it, easy video game box art in 4 steps. I doubt this game would look out of place on any game store shelf.

This formula is by no means limited to one genre. Here are a few I’ve made sticking to the same rules:

Future Soldier 3139 from the “Game set in the future where the blatantly evil corporation you work for turns out to be evil” genre. Notice the common elements.

Co-op focused shooter, Gun Killers. They kill people, with their guns.

This is one for the hotly anticipated “Fantasy RPG XVIII” . It doesn’t matter what type of game you’re making or what genre it is, things exploding always works as a background. It’s universal to all video games.

And finally the sci-fi 3rd person shooter “Alien Attack 3”


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