Rant on Pixel Art

I am a huge fan of Pixel artstyle and the games that use it. I even planned to start drawing pixel artwork, but then I remembered how shit I am at that.
Dead cells' artstyle is gorgeous.

Personally I care much more about the story, and the gameplay. That said, I think that some games are really well suited for a retro visual style - so it becomes an added value. :)

Pixel art is a-ok for me. The real suffering was EGA/CGA graphics, especially that North & South PC-Port i once bought thinking it would look like it´s amiga cousin. Holy fucking shit was i wrong (and desperately disappointed) :-(

I'm not the biggest fan of pixel art but I can appreciate it. However, the matter of fact is 3d (models) take a lot more work to look great, because there are so many more things to consider. As you said, 3d games tend to age badly, but the well-made ones actually age quite nicely.

I love pixel art, but you know what really grinds my gears? Pixel art games where there are various sizes of pixels. If the sprite goes away from the screen it shouldn't just be resized by making pixels smaller it should maintain pixel size. Many games nowadays are culprits. Instead of true 320x240 they make 1920x1080 with varying sizes of pixels.

I hated pixel art for many years because I was sick of all the games trying to cash in on the "retro" market. It took finding a couple of good games that did pixel art well to change my mind. Nowadays I consider it a different style, one that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't--just like every other art form. As for all those crappy retro games? Sturgeon's Law, man. Can't get away from it.

As an aside, this reminds me of when Wind Waker came out for the GameCube. So many people hated the cel-shaded graphics because they were "cartoony". I thought it was one of the prettiest games ever made for the GC, and appreciated how the new art-style separated it from the older Zelda games. (Particularly because in my opinion the plot was a big departure as well.)

I agree with almost everything except the part of you having a girlfriend. I'm just not buying it

the great thread, the noice poll.

i'll surely -later- read that Gamasutra article, surely not doing that with Factorio friday's facts comments. cause, well, i can stay, stand still, with my little man, looking and enjoying just the rocks that Factorio generates. for hours.

i like to watch at "juicy" pixels. "heavy" ones. Qora, for example, has those kind of pixels.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/304460/Qora/

i do make choices based on artstyle, guess that's au pair with gameplay. sometimes, tho, artstyle is... enough for me to make my choice. last one, yesterday, it was Death Fungeon : very little gameplay, also short. still, pixels imo were enough for a good experience, not a memorable one... a "good enough" one

really donno what i've wrote up here, sorry fo' that!

View attached image.

I enjoy retro style games if they're done well. Hyper Light Drifter and Dead Cells as you mentioned, Axiom Verge, Terraria / Starbound, Stardew Valley, Towerfall Ascension, Broforce, Fez, Hotline Miami, all great examples.

Real 8-bit / 16-bit, or pixel "style" games are all good with me if the game is enjoyable. There are plenty of low quality games trying to jump on the bandwagon that can be easily ignored.

Well, it's hard to make a judgement about pixel art. I may be wrong, but I believe that people who like pixel art are usually older ones, who remember "good old times" when pixel art wasn't an option - it was the only way to make games, because of technical limitations. And for now - there is no reason to make pixel art, other than to play on feelings of those old people for profits. So, it's quite possible, that for younger people this kind of graphics looks poor and cheap. Actually, I don't care, I just play what I like. And I guess game makers don't care too - this kind of games has a certain target audience, and if they keep making them - it's enough to get profits.

I've been playing Super Blood Hockey nonstop on my Switch. Pixel graphics done well are always welcome!

I'm an old retro-gamer, but I really hate pixels in 2019, they look terribly outdated now as technology. Every stuff is good in it's time, imagine you when using horses to make it from home to work nowdays...more like an exotics.

It depends on the quality of art but most of the time I like new games with pixel art in old genres like adventure and rogue like.

Eh, in the end it's down to personal preference. Maybe your girlfriend just doesn't like pixel art or something. Or maybe she hasn't played enough games with beautiful pixel art to charm her and it's up to you to remedy that. ;P

I personally am more of a gameplay person than an art style one. Pixels are just as viable as everything else. (Although I do hypocritically immediately dislike games that try to make their 3D characters look like they're from Minecraft... just... why?!... It looks so bad. <.< ... ... ..See- personal preference. :P )

Well made pixel art graphics leave you room to fill in with your imagination. If you're bad at it you just see ugly boxes. But if you're good then it can feel better than any AAA 3D graphics.

The thing is with pixel art, in my opinion, is that there's pixel art and then there's pixel art.

There are games with amazing pixel art, but they're rare. The issue is that pixel art can be very cheap and that allows developers to cut corners. Bad pixel art is an eyesore, in my opinion. Good pixel art is great. Just like with any art style: do it well and it'll be great.

I don't really care about graphics as long as the game is fun, though colorful pixel art does a pretty good job at catching my attention.

I do judge a game by how good the art is, not the art style, though. The art more or less reflects how much effort/money the developer put in to create the game, so if the art looks crap or inconsistent, it's a good indication of the quality of the game.

Personally, I actually prefer stylistic graphic (comic book-like, cell shaded, pixel art etc) over realistic graphic. If I wanted to see something that looks just like real life, I'd look out of my window :D

The problem is that lazy or inexperienced developers will often use pixel graphic to hide their own incompetence, and it really shows. But when done by skilled developers/designers, stylized graphic can (and does) look so much more beautiful then anything photorealistic. Luckily, it seems people stopped being so obssessed with super-realistic graphic nowadays :)

Do you like Pixels?

no. to me it feels like:

• devs are artists that can't draw / have no imagination,
• they use pixel art so they can cut expenses,
• they exploit the nostalgia factor to attract customers,
• they appease the "OlD GaMeS WeRe BeTtEr" culture.

it works most of the time, especially if games are well done like stardew valley or like you said, dead cells. but i'd rather play a modern-looking game than pixel art stuff.

there are other ways to make games look simple and good (see oxenfree). i find this pixel art trend to be like the minecraft era, when 500 voxel games popped up from everyone because the style was popular.

I prefer a good art direction / design to the realistic look, filters and lightning, even if the later one is an engineering achievement .
Like how I will always take Crypt of the Necrodancer's everything dances and music-styled over one "it's brown because it's real" shooter, even if it is photorealistic.

Well, considering that I absolutely adore Wadjet Eye artists and some of their collegues who also use AGS, you could say that I do like pixel art indeed, yes. And I don't even mind stuff like The Last Door or Detective Di (haven't played the latter yet, but it looks right up my alley). Still, adventure games are the only genre that goes fine with pixel art for me (must have something to do with the fact that I've only got notable personal experience with old VGA/EGA adventure games but not with other genres).

I love pixel artstyle, not just when it comes to games but in general. There are some amazing artworks out there made in that style.

I don't like when people lump all pixel art games together and say they're cheap. It takes a lot of effort to make quality pixel games, especially when it comes to animations.

I don't get how could someone take a look at games like Mercenary Kings, Enter the Gungeon, CrossCode and what not and say their artstyle is cheap, when in my opinion they're amazing looking and there's no doubt that their artist(s) put a ton of hours and effort into them.

The difference in art quality when it comes to pixel games is HUGE though, and there are lots of games with bad pixel artwork

Anyway, the most important thing for me when it comes to game graphics is that the artstyle actually fits the game.

2D art tends to be hard to animate, so it makes sense animators would use basic 3d models to help make fluid animations.

And I think as long as the game sticks to a specific focused style, it usually looks good. I just like that there is variety of looks in the first place. A unique look also helps as it can make the game easily identifiable.

I don't have problem with pixelart. But some games are just "too pixelated". I lost all fun when my eyes are bleeding after 1h of playing.