isn't their thing having a close up guy on the cover?

I like the last one best.

It will be promotion. Most people dont follow games as closely as we do. So when they see theres a new Call of Duty (which alot of people dont know about) the're gonna look at the box and maybe read the back.

i went to school for graphic design and i can say shit like this isnt easy. they all look the same but it drives you mad trying to pick one. i like delta though.

Tie between Charlie and Delta for me.

I went to school for design, too. I do similar work professionally. It may drive us designers crazy trying to pick a crop for an image, or a typeface's weight, or a subtle variation on a palette, but the fact is that 99% of the audience won't be affected enough by the difference to make it worth the time.

Little things may make or break a cover, but the variations above don't (in my opinion) show any sort of changes that have a significant impact on the consumer's side. They're not even varying their logo lockup. A poorly-added drop shadow on a few of the lockups is not a significant change.

This is just a trick that every designer uses when they're selling a product to a client. It's the illusion of choice. Same photo, same lockup, same palette, same look - but by choosing between a variety of crops and subtle changes to that predetermined cover, the audience thinks that they're "designing" the box. But every decision that will actually have an impact on the audience has already been made.

This is (arguably bad) marketing, dudes.

I don't doubt that they'll go with whatever the community ends up picking. It's not an illusion in that sense. It's an illusion of choice, though - whether you see it as designing the box or having a choice about what you'll see on shelves.

If they really wanted to give the community some sort of choice, if they valued the community's input that much, or if they felt so genuinely grateful to their gamers that they wanted to give them a choice, then there'd be a very different assortment of covers to choose from.

As it stands, these "choices" are the result of an art director handing off finished boxart to a designer and telling him that he has a day to come up with extremely subtle variations - probably to satiate the marketing dept's desire to try this as a form of promotion.

I mean - I wouldn't be saying anything at all if there were two different photos to choose from. Or if there was a different treatment option for the logo. Or hell, even if they just slapped a night background on one of them. If that had happened, I would be applauding this as a genuine gesture of some sort of appreciation. But it's not. It's magician's choice.

out of all of them..1st is alpha.....runner up is charlie

Echo then Charlie.

Echo looks right

One echo for me please, no sugar.

(ECHO BOARD)is the only one i would Choose, It looks amazing to play.

I'll have to go with Alpha since way to many American box art covers use the stark, one guy in the center backgrounds.

I get pissed when I look at box art over here because it's like they didn't even try to make the cover interesting. The actual art is usually well done but it has no sense of composition once placed on the box as if they just lifted some poster or promo art and decided to use it on the cover. American DVDs are even more guilty of it. If these were well thought out box art covers, the composition would have been locked down in the sketch pase.

What about none of them? I'm sick of seeing WWII and combat games in general ONLY have the thought, "Let's stick some guys in uniform on the cover!" Doom and HL don't use imagery from the game to sell it, and I wouldn't expect it...

Bleh to all of these. I might still get the game, since I've seen the gameplay, but the covers don't impress. All they say to me is, "Generic FPS #____"

@dvddesign

That's what I'm saying! Is it THAT hard to come up with some half-way original box art?!

Echoing the Echo

They all look like american soldiers so all the covers fail.

Echo Bravo Foxtrot...Err Echo

All about that Delta.
Mmm.