What? Your game isn't a pixelated retro masterpiece?

General Discussions
#1

General rant alert!

Noticed recently that 50% of indie games are now pixelated retro styled affairs. For me, I’ve actually stopped looking at games that aren’t. It’s odd because it used to be one of many “styles” of game.

Do people still play non-pixelated games?

Why are there so many low-res games now? Indie devs find it easier/faster to create the graphics? It’s currently fashionable? Minecraft made it the done thing?

What’s the next fashion to turn up? Are we all going to go and make claymation games? Or is 3D going to start becoming something I give a crap about again?

Cheers,

Kev

#2

IMO indie developers are using pixel art to their games because it’s faster to create but also i think that the minecraft had an impact
on indie game design.
Non-pixelated games requires more resouces to do it so takes time.
Just my opinions.

-Aiden

#3

I hate it. It’s like they dont even bother. ‘lewl! Lewk at my pixuls! Me soo good! Grafiks not evelyfing!’

Grafics arent everything, but it should still be there, and it shouldnt look like its been made by a 14 year old little tit that thinks he knows everything about it. I dont even bother looking at games which use such graphics, if they cant spend the time on their game, then i draw the conclusion that even the creators themselves think its shit.

Oh yea, and the 58 thousand tower defence games out there… seriously, do something else, aaaaand ofcourse the other 108 thousand minecraft and terraria clones.

The indies are killing themselves from within.

#4

@sabomoth

What are you raging about? Pixelated 2d graphics + (nice lighting + shadows) (smooth) look absolutely amazing.

#5

My personal view on this has 3 reasons.

1: Minecraft
2: The age of programmers
3: People are bored with current gen games

I believe that Minecraft has caused a large portion of this pixel style art we are currently seeing. People may have different reasons for this, they might really enjoy the art style, they might want to make the next big thing or they simply want to find out about programming and are inspired by Minecraft.

The age of programmers is likely the biggest factor in why we are seeing pixel art games. I’m basing this point off of an assumption that most programmers are in their late teens+ but I honestly feel that people grew up with games that had pixel art and they get a nostalgia feel when creating their own art.

Finally, I think people are just getting bored of the same stuff we have seen for years. Games are becoming too similar and the market is being harder to please and this creates indie developers to start working on different types of games which fit nicely with pixel art such.

I personally got into programming because of Minecraft and because Markus inspired me. I failed the first time I got into programming as I thought it was going to be a easy thing to pick up and could learn how to do it in a matter of weeks, but as we all know, this is not the case. I picked up back up about a year later and 4-6 months in, i’m still learning so much and about to start my University course on Software Engineering. The art I do (badly) is inspired from the games I grew up with and still even play today(I have an Amstrad and SNES setup right next to me).

All in all I think we are seeing the pixel art due to inspiration from games like Minecraft and the general age of programmers.

#6

I do prefer to use textures with low resolution. Because I like my art in a simple way.
This has nothing to do with minecraft, minecraft is just ugly, because it is nothing to look at.

Another personal reason to prefer low resolutions from others:
Good detailed art takes time, I mean a lot of time, time most of us indie developers just do not have.
Pixel arts is a way to spend less time on making while still having something looking good.
(There are also horrible examples! But not everything.)
Therefore pixel arts is the best option for most of us, because IMO leaving something out is better than making it badly.

#7

Sorry for double-posting, but different message.

@Sabomoth:
There is a difference between real projects and these learning projects. Keep in mind that learning the difference between what the people care about and what not is also an important lesson in game development.
Making these games is good for learning how to actually get a program to run. And also to learn that learning game design is also important.

#8

I use pixel art for my work primarily because I just flat out suck at drawing. Nobody I know is any good with animation, and I find that I can do my best art when I don’t need such a finite control on the art and pixels are great to hide that. I’ll admit it, I won’t call my games “Retro” or “8-bit”, because I’m not using the same constraints that they had to abide by and attempt to work around back then. I’d personally rather have a minimalistic look to my games, which I believe can also be provided by pixels.

#9

I think it’s just a nice eye-catching style. I love pixel art because well, I just like the charming look of it. It also gives the game a less serious tone, implying that it’s “fun”.

Another reason could be a lot of developers lack the skillset to draw true full blown cartoony graphics. For example, I can draw some really nice cartoony static images, but when it comes time to animate it, it’s extremely hard to make it look natural. Thus, for game development pixel art seems to be better suited for my needs. Not to mention it also takes 3 times longer to draw cartoony work than pixel art work and the graphics processing overhead is a lot higher with full resolution artwork.

I guess it all depends, there’s many games out there I think are best suited for pixel art, like They Bleed Pixels, and some that are best suited for cartoony art, like PixelJunk Shooter.

I guess it really does all just boil down to style preference, and pixel art is just really popular right now. One huge benefit to pixel art though is you can do a lot more graphics processing at a lot lower cost, so you can add all kinda of fun particle effects and fun stuff that you normally couldn’t with full-resolution art. (See They Bleed Pixels and it’s pixelized explosions, for example)

EDIT: Should also be noted I disagree with the notion that pixel art is the “easy way out”. In a lot of cases, I’ve found good pixel art even more challenging than my cartoony work. :smiley:

#10

I am talking about the huge influx of released indiegames on steam and all the other markets. I myself use very simple graphics in my games, since i havent released them, but i know that they are just temporary. But soooo many of the released games use graphics that keeps you thinking, what the heck were they thinking of? Using pixel graphics because they think its cool, without understanding what it is. They want it because they have smoked themselves high on ‘lol retro’ and ‘graphics isnt everything, lol’. pixel graphics is all fine, but not when you try to use as few pixels as possible, with the result that you cant see what anything resembles, but hey, remember, ‘retro, lol!’, ‘graphics isnt everything, lol!’.
Retro games had to get as much detail as possible in little space, while todays ‘artists’ think they can be just as good, but by removing as much detail as possible. Its a very different result.

#11

In short: It’s easy to learn pixel-art, and pixel art is easy to make. Creating an entire character from start to finish with animations shouldn’t take more then 3-4 hours (but of course that depends on the complexity of the piece) if you know what you’re doing compared to the regular few days (or to a few weeks in extreme cases) in drawing. Since retro looking games became popular recently small dev companies and startups simply don’t feel the need to make their game look any more modern when they can get away with the old-style and less work. A really big point here is that not everyone can afford artists, and not everyone has years of time to learn drawing. :point:

With that being said I would like to point out that pixel art can look just as good as AAA 3D games (but that of course that comes down to taste) with a nice art style, lighting and particle effects. :slight_smile:

#12

Absolutely. It’s super hip and super over-used.
Hey I’m indie and hey it’s retro or 8bit looking. Look at me - and it still kinda works for attention I guess.

I’m very sick of it - and I play NES and SNES games every day, but back then those were really the limits.

I personally wanna reach this level:

So yeah I think its a big bandwagon and a cop-out way for the problem “cannot create art”. When it was first done it was kinda clever, but now its really getting old.

and yeah that’s the apex of 2D art so its very hard.
But in general I’d rather try and fail than playing it safe.

#13

Might have me a bit wrong here guys, I do loads of 2D pixel art - I just find it easier - but then I always have. Just wondering why it’s all the rage now.

Cheers,

Kev

#14

This, very much this. Good pixel art is not all that easy to make. It still might be less time consuming than good hand-drawn art though, and good 3D art. Having good 3D art is part of why triple-A games are so expensive to make these days.

Also for me there’s a large “nostalgia” factor with pixel art as well. Takes me back to my younger days when all I had was a sega genesis and a super nintendo.

#15

I think it’s because it’s rather hard to do 3D, or even 2D-with-tools, and any fool can cobble something together in Paint and call it art. Mostly it looks shit though and just like everything else it takes years of practice before it looks good.

Let’s not forget that pixels on their own aren’t a “style”… the whole thing’s got to come together nicely.

Minecraft I don’t think had anything to do with pixel art’s popularity - but it is one of the most popular games out there and it’s a bit pixelly.

Cas :slight_smile:

#16

Well absolutely, however 16 bit games look way better than those fake retro indie games today

#17

I think at least a large part of this is that people want the ease of the limited color pallet but don’t know how to make/use a good pallet.
Finding colors that look good together and in context of your other stuff is surprisingly difficult.

#18

it’s a bit different when you render at 10% resolution.

#19

Funny thing is… if you actually go back and look at 8 bit or 16 bit games today, say, in an emulator… by God do they look shit. And, in fact, the games are largely total shit too. Rose tinted spectacles. Even the games I used to worship - eg. Paradroid - turn out to be woefully shit by any modern understanding of game design.

Cas :slight_smile:

#20

I watch 8 and 16 bit game reviews and play those games every day.
Cannot agree at all.