I accidentally agreed with an older PA post. I was talking to Tim after seeing him on Xbox Live playing the Crackdown demo. My IM was something like:

Me: Crackdown is cool I guess. It’s way over the top but … not to nickpick, the font is so lame. I wonder if the developers were forced to use it because it’s a MS font.
Tim: lol

Or something close to that effect. Of course I sound whiney but that’s not really the case. I’m in the throws of beginning gamedev and the very first thing I played around with was fonts. Default OpenGL fonts suck. They look horrific. And there’s very few people that care enough to work on it. FTGL is something I’ve messed around with but it’s not a great solution for reasons I barely remember. Getting in bed with MS is your only option on the 360 but even on the Mac some of the best font tricks are NSObjects which means your audience better be running a Mac.

Bleh to portability. And bleh to me pretending I’m a real developer. I’ll post some screenshots later today of my “nice” proof of concept. It’s mostly stolen code but I can’t afford to reinvent the wheel when I’m sizing up effort. Nice fonts or nothing at all.

So while all of this is klinking around in my head, PA posted this about Crackdown. Remember Crackdown? That’s the topic that I started this raging post with … O_o

So, yes, I do like it, but there’s something I don’t understand.

You’ve got this big, open-world game that runs well and has a unique look. Against all odds, you’ve managed to carve out a multidisciplinary gameplay niche and make it work. What’s more, your game is now indelibly tied to one of The West’s most potent action franchises. So why does your entire interface look like a first-pass prototype?

I have to say that red flags are raised whenever I see that default Xbox system font in a retail game. You’ll know what I mean if you see it. Talk to Nate over at Blambot, for fuck’s sake.

The font is just the beginning of it – every time data is communicated to the player it’s done in a lackadaisical, lifeless fashion that looks like it must be the example code they ship with the Goddamn devkit. It looks cheap, and it is cheap, only it’s not, because this thing costs sixty fucking dollars. I’m not going to deprive myself of otherwise solid entertainment because of it, but this is nonsense.

Yes! Yes, exactly. Thank you. The Xbox system font he’s referring to is Arial 14 point and it’s so played out. I don’t want to be reminded of Outlook when I’m blasting space alien vampire hooker mutant rockstars. Blambot, yes, buy the $20 font you bastards. Wouldn’t this look so much better than that Arial crap?

Windows typography just isn’t even a phrase. It’s an afterthought. Lose the Age of Empires frontrosity.