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The Decline of Pixel Art
An anonymous reader writes: Blake Reynolds, lead artist for a pair of popular mobile games, has put up a post about the decline of pixel art in games. He decries the current state of "HD fetishism" in the industry, saying that games with great pixel art get needlessly marked down in reviews for their pixelation, while games that have awful — but high-res — art get glowing praise. He walks through a number of examples showing how pixel art can be well done or poorly done, and how it can be extremely complex despite the lower resolution. But now pixel artists are running into not only the expectation of high-definition content, but technological obstacles as well. "Some devices blur Auro [their game]. Some devices stretch it. Some devices letterbox it. No matter how hard I worked to make the art in Auro as good as I could, there's no way a given person should be expected to see past all those roadblocks. Making Auro with higher-resolution art would have made it more resistant to constantly-changing sizes and aspect ratios of various devices." Reynolds says his studio is giving up on pixel art and embracing the new medium, and recommends other artists do the same. "Don't let the medium come between you and your audience. Speak in a language people can understand so that they can actually see what makes your work great without a tax."
There will always be people who will appreciate well made pixel art, just don't expect whole lot of money in it. Blake Reynolds griping about that and changing his niche is like someone complaining why nobody is buying his DOS application anymore in the year 2015.
Pixel art is very alive and kicking on PC, with some great recent releases, like Crypt of the Necrodancer, Titan Souls, etc. Maybe there is just the wrong audience on mobile.
Games like Duelyst are flying the flag for well made pixel art just fine. It seems to me that one developer has been having problems with their pixel art, and is projecting that onto the rest of the industry. THe Pixel art in Duelyst was actually one of the main things that had attracted me to the game in the first place. The fact that I found the game enjoyable *after* playing it was practically a bonus.
Also, MInecraft is hugely popular and could be considered under the pixel art category, look closely at the textures on the blocks, they look like pixels to me (or more accruately texels...but who is being that pedantic...).
I'm 45. I played Space Invaders in my local bowling alley when it came out - with my limited allowance. I was 10 (it took a while to get the midwest USA).
I hate pixel art. It reminds me of bad games. Why limit yourself to an outdated method?
Gameplay is king, but appearance is important.
Pixel art holds zero nostalgia for me. Give me something that looks good, and plays great, and I will buy it. Pixelated graphics do NOT look good.
I'm writing a game at the moment, it'll never be more than hobbyist-level stuff but I can't do the art AT ALL.
I had a guy do it. Mainly because, instead of fancy 3D models and bog-standard textures and copy/paste, they were willing to create pixel art from scratch. Sure, it didn't look "HD", it didn't scale without using HQ3X scalers, etc. but - it took a great deal of skill and was how I wanted the game to look. I don't get why everything has to be "proper" 3D, for decades games just weren't. I don't get why even the 2D games are displayed using 3D models, or rendered from 3D models. And if your chosen art-style is cartoon-y, then pixel art suits it a lot more.
Finding a 2D isometric, pixel-artist is the hardest thing in the world (hint; anyone available?). Nobody seems to want to do it at all. I'm sure it's no harder than picking up Blender and having to create a 3D model but it's not the "in-thing". Seriously, my guy churned out isometric sprites 32-pixel wide by 64-tall in minutes each, using nothing more than MS Paint, which would have taken half-a-day to model and then render in the right view and had to use Blender or similar.
Sure, if you're just after slapping in placeholders or using free models, it might work, but not everything WANTS to be 3D-rendered, shiny with shadows, bump textures, etc. and all the other stuff. I'm trying to make a game in a certain look and that look doesn't involve 3D.
For some reason, it's like every artist in the world has suddenly decided the paintbrush is old hat and we have to use spray-guns instead. Fine, for trying different media, experimentation, the odd artwork, or even your particular specialist niche. But why does EVERYTHING have to be 3D-modelled even when the game isn't 3D?
Similarly, yes, I could have specified an isometric vector game and scaled as appropriate. But, that's not the look I want.
Honestly, I'm so bored of games having to be rendered all in the same way rather than the way that suits the game best. Indie games like Prison Architect and retro-games are my only way to get away from the norm, it seems. Sure, I like GTA5 as much as the next guy, but - for instance - something like Heroes of Might and Magic, I still prefer the old flat-2D versions.
Times marches on. Technology advances.
Some people will hold to the old ways, and complain while the rest of us advance with the times.
When those people are "Horse and Buggy Makers," we ridicule them. Why should we coddle pixel artists?
Pixel art died when we switched from old style CRTs to TFTs. The art of C64/Amiga/PC(CGA/VGA) era looks good in CRTs because of the blurring. With TFTs we have to increase the resolution and colors.