pixel art has a tough break because it is not taught at fine arts schools where students really learn to make meaningful art. much of pixelart is driven by technique and rarely concept, though there are some notable figures that do more interesting things. however, so far as the majority of pixel art remains game-oriented or at the very best art for the sake of being visually interesting it wont be truely respected as an art form until it is widely used as a way to communicate deeper meanings. most of what is considered 'real art' reaches emotionally beyond where most pixelart tends to reach
Agreed, more or less. What's interesting is that a lot of the digital art on the internet also suffers from being empty. It's just stuff that looks good, like deviant-art-cool-anime-girls-and-gun-omg-robots etc or it's bad fantasy with a really silly symbolic undertone "The harp represents DEATH and the lady is playing it she's going to DIE" so it's not only that pixel art isn't getting a break, content-wise. There's just a lot of pretty painting going on, without most of it meaning anything.
But I believe as far as here goes, as long as we help people with their technique, and years pass, and they grow older... if they stick with (pixel) art, they'll either eventually find it personaly mandatory to stop doing empty art, or they'll quit. it's a personal decision, you can't force anyone in making deeper art in any field.