Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: RAV on June 25, 2016, 01:36:43 pm
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We had discussions here about the role of arts and means of practice.
There were good points being made for the prime importance of fundamentals.
While at the same time, we try to develop pixel art into a contribution to the arts.
We try to make sense of pixel art, search for value in it, find its place in today's world.
Maybe we can first think about, what does each kind of practice bring to the table of art?
We are looking for constellations and relations within art. Maybe something like this:
Drawing: Form by silhouette and shading.
Painting: Material by colour and texture.
Pixeling: Pattern by reduction and reuse.
Painting incorporates the knowledge from drawing.
Pixeling incorporates the knowledge from painting.
Painting is not fundamentally different from drawing, but it adds another dimension to drawing.
And so does pixeling to painting and drawing. Or should try. That is what we should think about.
Focus study of an aspect is best done in the "native" craft,
form in drawing, material in painting, pattern in pixeling.
Pixeling builds ontop of the rest. After all, what is there to reduce and reuse, if you can't produce first?
But what do "pattern" "reduction" "reuse" mean? How much creativity and experience is in that? in pixel art?
Can it add a life long interest to the arts like "material" "colour" "texture" of painting did above drawing?
In its simplest form, it is just cleaning up the image after the fact.
In the higher order, it's constructing a scene out of rules and elements.
Thinking about how to stylize reality, has a greater function in pixel art, as greater means of reduction.
And like the art of reduction first needs knowing production, the art of stylization needs knowing reality.
Style is a form of ruleset, which is a kind of pattern, just like the reuse of colours or form can be.
By means of Structure and Suggestion along the mechanics of a grid,
we are looking for a clever ingenuity, that does a lot out of little:
Pixel Art is the Creative Reduction of the world, the design of elements that make worlds.
I think that this is the direction a natural tool for pixel art should take.
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Interesting perspective! I haven't heard anyone contextualize pixel art alongside the other art mediums in this way. I guess you could even extend the conversation to the 3D art forms, say, sculpture compared to... minecraft creations? But maybe that's a whole other topic.
Pixel art's strength is its ability to capitalize on small space and size (both physically small and data-wise small) so it can be a very real-life functional medium in that sense. Technically anyone editing graphics on a computer is working with "pixel art" but we don't call those people pixel artists. They're working at such a high resolution they don't need to use any abstraction or trickery to make something round, for instance. It takes a true pixel artist to make a line seem rounded at a low resolution, and with limited shading values.
Designing recognizable fonts, icons, or UI elements for old devices (like calculators) back in the day took the hand of someone with some form of pixel art sense. Nowadays, though, I'd argue the necessity for that sort of practically applied pixel art is definitely lessened (higher resolutions displays, more storage space, stronger GPUs/CPUs, etc). So here we are today where pixel art is celebrated and practiced not because we need it for practical reasons, but because we derive enjoyment from creating and marveling at it. Not so different from any other art form.
While you make an interesting point about where pixel art sits in the "art heirarchy", I wonder, can an artform based on limitations and reduction really be the "next step up" from drawing/painting, which offers so many more options for expression? (included in those options would be pixel art itself, by the way. I believe they just called it "pointillism" back then.) So is it just the grid, then, that pixel art has to offer? But can you not create a grid on paper and limit yourself in a similar way with drawing? I think what pixel art has done primarily is force people to obsess over and push the limits of that grid. Artists hundreds of years ago would have had no reason or motivation to discover the nuances of micro grid-based art to the capacity we understand it today. So the question is, looking back with our new found pixel-art knowledge, is there anything significantly useful pixel art can offer to traditional art forms that they didn't already have? I'm not sure I can think of a satisfying answer.
I'm reminded of my sister as she was first learning pixel art (coming from a drawing background) expressing her frustration at our limited character sizes, exclaiming, "This isn't even art! It's a puzzle!" I almost took offense, but after some consideration, she's not exactly wrong. There is an element of technical challenge to pixel art. In a small enough space, there are only so many combinations of pixels that will translate as an eye, or a mouth, or a leg, etc. Color and shading often ends up being the defining personal touch to pixel art, where there's a higher variety potential. Translating an idea, or a larger design, to the restriction of the grid often does feel like a problem to solve more than an artistic process. I think that's part of what attracts me to pixel art, actually. The challenge. The self-imposed restriction.
Lastly, to get really abstract and go back to the 3D thing, the concept of reduction does have a certain anchor in reality, considering that the "pixels" that make up our real world are essentially individual atoms fitting together and interacting with light to create everything visible in the universe. I personally wonder what it would be like to be working with "atom art", creating tiny abstracts of real objects in micro form. But for now, pixel art will do.
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Good answer. and question. I too think that pixel art has to offer benefits from its limitation. and I think it does. At least, I see that as our mission to find out. I'd like to first introduce that thought by quoting from my own project page:
And so the question is: what do you have to gain from a limitation? A limitation denies you something. But does it enable something else for that?
Build the purpose of your work around what you can gain, not after what is denied. That the "limitation" is the removal of a complication that disturbs a certain work.
Be certain of your work.
A freedom can be annoying, because the irrelevant options forced on you every step hinder a task. Can you design new opportunities of creativity that make the lack of something a desirable feature instead of annoying restriction. Boil it down to the relevant options that in their ease of access very much enable you to do something. That enable you to do pixel art, and the things it is best for doing. This is the only worthy challenge in it. A good reason for doing this pixel art, nothing else.
So to go further, what pixel art for example does by pattern/reduction/reuse is defining a logical construction scheme within a standardized grid. This practically enables fast generation of content and large scale scene production, while not loosing touch with manual design work. So I do like that "puzzle"-complaint. Ask yourself, if you want to create a whole town by drawing and painting it all down to every inch, or rather create a small set of pixel art puzzle assets out of some concept art, and have infinite variations of towns and folks ready at your finger tip. This can quickly increase appreciation for this craft, as something better than a burden. This is where the fun begins after preparations.
Pixel art was the first kind of art to introduce this to the world of arts in a never before known effectivity. Today it is not the only digital art that can do something like this, but it still is the most straight-forward to do it. Its very particles of operation -- the pixel -- straight-forwardly interlock to tiles and sprites. The sharpness of pixel art makes it exceptionally easy to align and contrast for readability. Tricks like palette swapping also provide easy variation that builds on colour Control by Reduction -- an important concept, pixel art excels in control with its reduction, unprecedented. The most direct simplicity of pixel art is a great strength that only becomes a weakness if you overload with unreduced and unreused content. That's why pixel art is what it is.
So this explains the strange dichotomy of "adding" to the arts by "reducing". Because it has a very directed mechanic for purpose, pixel art can increase the functionality of art in certain ways. It is not exactly the same as some abstraction in other arts. It's more defined and operational than that. And this is why I like to think that the ways pixel art goes about reduction, is a pixel art not as just downgraded digital painting, but as adding a new dimension of creativity that is challenging as much as rewarding for the artist to master, with its own advantages and potential for features.
And to go along that, I'd like to quote myself again from another related discussion on PixelJoint:
I've gone away from making limitation the prime focus of the medium, however. Instead, it's the mechanics. And with them come the limitations as a natural epiphenomenon. Important is that the mechanics are interesting, fun, and useful for something. And herein is the innovation of pixel art. Limitations for their own sake are worthless. Limitations tailored to a task are better. Limitations born out of greater mechanics are best. They make most sense.
My work is on the medium not the art. A medium that happens to be operated by pixel art. And the medium's mechanics are the tools of artwork. Now, the mechanics are not necessarily about making your life as an artist ever so easy, in their limitations. The mechanics do have a desirable purpose though, and the artist lives and works with that.
For me as a coder, the situation is clear. I make an engine that has certain capabilities. It's supposed to solve problems and do cool stuff. The problems it solves are not necessarily problems of art though. That's not the only point in my case. In the contrary, first of all it poses a problem to art by itself. which the artist is supposed to solve in turn, to make the project aesthetically satisfying ontop of solving another problem. Tech and art are in service of something else. So, shoot me, but the way I see it, pixel art died the moment coders decided to make the problems of artists their own problems. And that is entirely okay, of course. That's great. At the same time, there are still other problems worth concentrating on, which needs artists motivated to be part of the solution, as pixel art process. It just happened, that most of the industry decided, pixel art is not the solution to their problems anymore. For some few, it perfectly is, more than ever. At the same time, I must frankly say, if your pixel art is not supposed to solve something you couldn't solve better another way, that's rather pointless. So that's what we should think more about, for a more relevant future of the art.
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Thanks for the elaboration! Analyzing pixel art based solely on its aesthetic merits can only go so far, but as you've pointed out, it's when you consider pixel art along side the functionality of a computer that it's true purpose really shines. It all comes back to efficiency not just for the platform being developed on, but for the artists own speed and ease of creation. Even a concept as basic as tiling, which was born out the need to solve a problem, made it's debut working with pixel art. And that contribution has been long lasting even with modern games that aren't using a pixel art style.
But yeah I'm just reiterating what you expanded on at this point, very compelling stuff!
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Indeed. Your input is appreciated and helpful. We try to understand what happened in pixel art for the past 30 years. Many things we take for granted, we reinvestigate and reformulate in the many discussions we've been having here, as a means to find new impulses for our work.
Yeah, Aesthetics versus Usefulness is forever grounds for heated debate. Pixel art as the vanguard of digital art, originally brought a new level of instrumentalization to the arts. In the digital era as melting pot of culture techniques, art has become a more integrated service. There is a special satisfaction in creating something with the potential of manifold use. And that creative use beyond aesthetics, is the new dimension that pixel art first added to the arts far beyond anything before. Pixel Art was the creation of art to technical specification. Pixel Art was a functional component of a greater system. Pixel art was a Reduction to Function.
Now you may say, but art shouldn't be just reduced to its function. I agree, and that was not all to pixel art. But the problem pixel art most often has today, is being only reduced to aesthetics, which is sort of a complete throwback to the "dark age". We are struggling to find greater use for pixel art. Other digital arts now have more of both, aesthetics and function. And they thrive accordingly.
So what is pixel art for then? Is pixel art just about making an image look sharper and clearer? we may as well automate that as an after-effect filter, to a degree sufficient that manual work is a too disproportional effort for just slightly better results. Pixel art needs to be intriguing, of course in how it looks, but not only in how it looks. And that is to come from a creative magic -- the only true human element, that makes things exciting.
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The way we've been talking about pixel art here is almost as if it's some kind of dying language struggling to adapt to a modern age haha, but it's actually not a far off comparison. We are already at the point where its necessity is diminished, and the only people keeping it alive are hobbyists and indie game developers using the style to evoke nostalgia in a particular demographic (I should know, that's been my team's strategy as well). It's also an attractive art form to those solo devs who might not have developed art skills, they're thinking (maybe naively), "how hard could it be? It's just squares."
Then we have to ask, are there enough devs and hobbyists producing games and pixel art to keep it alive and well forever? Or will we reach a falling off where the upcoming younger generation fails to see the appeal of pixel art (having no nostalgic hook as many of us here do) and it gradually fades away? Personally, I don't believe it would happen to that extreme, at least not for awhile. There are still indie games hitting main-stream appeal (like recently, Stardew Valley) that will keep the pixel art torch burning bright. Or maybe I'm just idealistic and blinded by my own nostalgia. Time will tell!
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Pixel art was invented part of the greatest culture revolution ever: digital games. It made a new kind of experience possible, that was not possible before. And following up on that, it is nice to see that even today in the indie scene, pixel art often is still the means of exploring new types of influential gameplay. Even though often to the dismay of the traditional pixel scene, that shuns a lot of the new age pixel art for visual deviance. But by serving an innovative goal, it honored most the legacy of pixel art.
However, a common reason for pixel art today seems to be something like "It's easier and cheaper to do".
Lackluster work is always easy to do, of course, no matter the kind of work. But with this overwhelming flood of indie games today, you need to excel in some way. Part of that is offering quality and innovation. And that is always hard to do in any kind of field. On the other hand, digital crafts keep evolving at an astounding pace, motivated by the industry's requirement for cost effective production. Modern engines are incredibly productive and powerful. And in this will grow great indie innovation from free experimentation. These things are actually starting to become easier and cheaper to work with than a GameMaker. Just "easier and cheaper" are resting laurels that do not save pixel art in the long run. This is what some random guy does for fun on UE4, you'd be shocked to learn how easy and cheap this is to make, from Asset Store to Engine Scripting:
But not just about any innovation will do for pixel art to compete. The rules of pixel art have often become too arbitrary, detached from a more meaningful purpose it had in the past. You can look at the above video and honestly ask yourself, what is the point of trying to look like pixel art. You could have invested all the effort in so much more meaningful things. Unless you "win the lottery", trying to survive on pixel art takes a lot more ingenuity and dedication than most people are prepared for, much more actually than doing anything else but pixel art. It's not all doom and gloom though, maybe, if you're clever and dedicated enough, and know your audience.
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I feel like that video is better example of "lackluster work is always easy to do" than of what newer technology can let us do with the same amount of effort. I look at that video and see the same problem in it that I see in many indie pixel art games: uninteresting art direction. Pixels for the sake of pixels is just as boring and pointless as advanced rendering techniques that are there just to be there, rather than to add to the experience. That said, high-res art (3D and 2D) combined with solid art direction and skill is more versatile than pixel art, simply because it's less limited.
So, why do pixel art at all? Because it's fun. Because it's a puzzle*. Because it can teach you about colour and composition faster than working in HD can. Because it's what I feel fits the thing I want to make. Because of whatever other reasons an artist might have, even if I might think they're weird :] Why should it need to be innovative or useful? Portrait and landscape painting lost much of its practical usefulness and financial viability with the spread of photography and never recovered. Photography precipitated more abstract art as an attempt to keep painting relevant and innovative, which I think is equivalent to those "non-traditional" pixel art games RAV mentioned. But has portrait/landscape painting become obsolete or worthless? No, because it's still enjoyable and because there are still projects for which it's a good fit for various reasons. It's the same with pixel art. These kinds of threads try to find some deeper meaning and use to it every single time, and I just don't see the point.
What makes pixel art a good fit for a project when technology isn't the limiting factor is an interesting question, and I'm glad this thread has already touched on it. I feel like this is another one of those things that will differ from artist to artist, since each artist's reasons for liking pixel art are different. For some people, the strengths come from the reuse. For some, the strengths are the relative ease of creative cohesive visuals due to the limited palettes. For some, it's the nostalgia factor.
My own pixel art games are pixel art because I have the most fun making pixel art as opposed to the other options available to me, and because pixel art sufficiently conveys what I want to convey in those games. When met with a project for which pixel art isn't the best option (factoring "will I enjoy making it" into account), I don't use pixel art, simple as that.
* I wanted to touch on the "puzzle" aspect of pixel art that nessx007 mentioned. I agree with that assessment, but I don't feel it's unique to pixel art. My main medium is comics, and comics are absolutely puzzles to solve! I think most (if not all) kinds of art are comparable to puzzles, it's just more obvious with comics and pixel art because there are fewer pieces to work with, and therefore fewer successful combinations. Among my comic artist buddies, "I need to solve this comic page" and "I can't figure out [how to solve] this panel" are a fairly common turns of phrase.
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The video as such indeed is not intended to be a representative of innovation or good taste, but a demo sample of production merits that are often cited in favour of pixel art. What the video does show is good work, that doesn't rely on render tricks, even if it takes advantage of it. A lot of pixel artists and pixel game makers could learn much from the craftmanship involved. It isn't really innovative, but to a lot of people it looks exciting as if it were. Even on the low end of production, this is something that easily happens with the creative advantages modern engines have. The point is, that in terms of what many believe the advantages of pixel art are, we shouldn't get all too comfortable in that believe but look further.
While not every pixel art must be innovative and useful in every way, not everyone should give up on that either, and it's interesting to note that pixel art projects are often enough criticized likewise for a far reaching interpretation of pixel art. Curiously, if the founders of pixel art had such a sedate mindset, many of the old pixel art works cherished today wouldn't exist. Pixel art wouldn't exist. And so we look at the qualities and conditions of what brought pixel art to life and made it successful in the past, in hopes for inspiration on what can make it more thriving today.
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@ nessx707: In some ways you could say pixel art is dying, but the timeline is just too short. The whole field of digital art (I include 3d, CG, and pixel in that) is so young that I don't think anybody has real perspective on where these things really "belong" in the world of art; the best they can do is comment on current trends.
I feel like that video is better example of "lackluster work is always easy to do" than of what newer technology can let us do with the same amount of effort. I look at that video and see the same problem in it that I see in many indie pixel art games: uninteresting art direction. Pixels for the sake of pixels is just as boring and pointless as advanced rendering techniques that are there just to be there, rather than to add to the experience. That said, high-res art (3D and 2D) combined with solid art direction and skill is more versatile than pixel art, simply because it's less limited.
By the same token, using a media that is less limited means you have to solve those variables you unleashed (hence insane development budgets for AAA games). 3d seems to me to be like comics squared in terms of problem solving requirement (you have to do most of the same stuff, plus your ability to cheat is limited and you have to make it work at least semi-interactively)
No, because it's still enjoyable and because there are still projects for which it's a good fit for various reasons. It's the same with pixel art. These kinds of threads try to find some deeper meaning and use to it every single time, and I just don't see the point.
Definitely agree. There is a certain thread of pretentiousness that you see typically brought up in relation to fine art, looking down on non-fine-art (so called "industrial" art like concept art and pixel art), but you can also find it in relation to any art form IMO... Even if the artist finds particular meaning in what they make, it's still a thing made for a purpose, not some kind of expression of a platonic ideal of art. It's as functional a thing as plumbing or wiring, even if we're a lot more vague about exactly what its function is, and different people want it to perform different functions.
* I wanted to touch on the "puzzle" aspect of pixel art that nessx007 mentioned. I agree with that assessment, but I don't feel it's unique to pixel art. My main medium is comics, and comics are absolutely puzzles to solve! I think most (if not all) kinds of art are comparable to puzzles, it's just more obvious with comics and pixel art because there are fewer pieces to work with, and therefore fewer successful combinations.
I may be biased by my programming background, but IMO all art is a structure of algorithms (ie. a program, albeit informally written and frequently redundant) and the best art instructors take this tack (eg. Vilppu).
I've encountered plenty of resistance to this idea, but I think that springs from a mistaken idea that emotions (or people) aren't fundamentally algorithmic (straw vulcan fallacy, I guess).
[...]it's interesting to note that pixel art projects are often enough criticized likewise for a far reaching interpretation of pixel art.
Do you mean they're criticized for taking too broad of an interpretation of pixel art (gradients, opacity, etc)? It was hard to decide what you really meant here.
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There is a difference between sharing an aspect in some sense, or being the most defining trademark brought to a whole new level for unique consequences that changed a lot of things. That is then making the aspect a new contribution.
Of course art had purpose before, and even pure aesthetics can have an important function, for example psychological, and to communicate various human affairs. Art has been used and made to requirements, long before the digital revolution. For example, ornaments on buildings and ships, or advertizing, or propaganda as less flattering example. And the creation of art certainly involves functional craftmanship. And so likewise, the other way around, a greater functionality of art in some way, can benefit every other purpose. But what we classify for functionality changed and expanded in the digital age, up until today, so compared to now, art from a hundred years ago can seem relatively non-functional.
However, no doubt the digital era starting with pixel art greatly exploded the possibilities in which art connects and interacts with things, works and people. It expanded the ways art as a profession can be exercised, and how meaningful it is to society. The desire for art experience, and the desire to make art a useful service, both greatly increased. The countless consequences were unlike anything before, on the computer art medium. That is the new dimension of functionality added first with pixel art.
The precision, amount and kind of specifications, to make art part of something, what a "puzzle" can do, in the process and result, what experience this can create, the role and importance, the flexibility of art, the consequences were something else. And traits that were dormant in art became more dominant in digital art, starting with pixel art. This is what pixel art brought to the table of arts, by means of pattern, reduction and reuse. The means have been increased today, but many of the principles that pixel art stood for are still important to what makes art so versatile today. And it is amusing to realize, the other arts learned a lot from the master, they became strong from pixel art. I think it's important to learn what the nature of its strength is, most of all to better learn pixel art.
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Just to clarify, by "the other arts" you mean the higher-fidelity digital mediums that followed pixel art?
But yeah I agree that "functional" has a fairly broad definition in the arts. You could say artistic realism "functions" as a means to game immersion, or a generally attractive art style "functions" as good advertising for the game, etc.
It occured to me recently, hearing people discussing the look of old Playstation games, that there is a timeless quality to 2D pixel art in particular that extends beyond just rose-tinted nostalgia glasses a lot of us wear. Don't get me wrong, the PS1/N64 era had some amazing games and occupied an even larger slice of my childhood than SNES games, but you don't see many (if any?) indie devs or hobbyists recreating that extreme blocky/sharp polygonal aesthetic. And maybe there's other reasons for that, but I think you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone, who have no connection to that era of games, that they were objectively pleasant to look at. Even in spite of my fond memories, I look back at some of my favorite games from that time in surprised at the rougness of the visuals. Granted there are stand out examples, and from a technical stand-point, what devs were able to achieve with the hardware was impressive. But you would think, if the pixel art wave was motivated purely by nostalgia, shouldn't we now be seeing a wave of people "bringing back" PS1/N64 games? Anyway, just a thought (might be slightly tangental to original point of this thread).
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Yes, because the other arts all transitioned to digital now as well, and learned the lessons that pixel art pioneered, just like pixel art learned from classic arts. It's kinda the "student has become the master" thing.
I'd even say, most art today is experienced as interactive content. And how interesting that interactivity is, has become part of qualifying art. Functionality can affect aesthetic perception.
Usually we compare old 2d and old 3d, and can only see a disadvantage in that 3d, today. But just for a moment, let's turn that around, assume a perspective back in the day. At the beginning of digital, there were no digital artists. You hired traditional artists, and taught them what they needed to know. They were the first generation of digital artists. Now, with the eyes of a traditional artist, who's used to study the greatest artworks in history, imagine how ridiculous the first attempts at pixel graphics would look. An absurdly huge downgrade in aesthetics. But also in process they expected from what they knew. So what fascinated them about pixels anyway then? All the new creativity and experiences it allowed functionally. And that made pixel art look interesting. It looked good. And likewise, what did people see in the first 3d games? "Objectively", the first 3d looked so horrible compared to the latest pixel art of the day, not only today but also back in the day. So what fascinated them? Again, it looked fantastic because it allowed new creativity and new experiences, that "skewed" aesthetic perception. So that is a bit the irony, when pixel artists today reduce other things down to just their own established sense of aesthetic, and don't get what other people see in it. What do kids see in Minecraft? Pure Love.
Only just about now has 3d reached a fidelity that it can actually stand the test of time. But I noticed that of those few 3d games from long ago that look any decent at all, it's those that designed their content such as if it were for pixel art. And those indie games today that go for simplified 3d graphics that work, do so with much style -- they don't have to fully leverage graphics power, since it's past the point of saturation.
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Rather than 'as if it were for pixel art', I think it's a fully general principle about technology (cf. Systemantics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics#Elementary_systems_functions)): If you attempt to push the technology to the limits ('hide the seams'), you get a overly-complex system that initially looks flashy but ages rapidly. If you work with the technology ('make the seams interesting'), you get something that is more modest but maintainable and robust.
Pixel art exemplifies that principle of 'an interesting, robust system is more valuable than a polished system', IMO.
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Pixel Art was absolute high tech in its heyday. For the entirety of its relevancy, it was an engine of progress, and games drove the hardware to its breaking points. Actually, the lengths people went to edge out just a little more, the systemic complication this caused, was quite ridiculous and awkward, barely manageable and error prone. I was visiting some Retro Conventions, and they exhibited games on all original hardware, and I've got to say, it was not all so pleasant to look at, as we sometimes believe today from emulators and resource extraction. The slowdowns, flickering and other hiccups that were sometimes taken as acceptable trade offs for gaining a feature advantage over competition, were glaring now more than ever.
Now you might think that's all different today, we learned to appreciate pixel art in a different way now. But I'd not be so sure about that. Actually, when you look at the market today, a pixel art arms race has once again begun for upping the ante, with people making great efforts in their development, pushing not hardware but middleware, to make their pixel art stand out. If you were to look at their project sources, you'd notice it ain't that pretty as you'd hope, often much more complicated actually than doing straight 3d nowadays. And even in communities for pixel artists, you see them often push it with unimaginable amounts of effort put into high fidelity images. That graphics arms race never stopped. No matter the subject, some people will interpret design as to do more with less, others will interpret it as to do more than was thought possible.
However, in the past, no matter the push, the restrictions were still so harsh, that the art styles developed to make pixel art work were necessary in a way that they were not after. It is even so, that the wave of realism that came with 3d was a conscient decision to break away from the aesthetics of pixel art. 3d was meant to be a revolution, and even the graphics design was meant to communicate that. But it is pretty much only today that realism actually works. And those 3d titles that held themselves closer to the design principles that were developed first for pixel art, aged best.
Hell, in a lot of ways, today's Minecraft is actually a step back even from the original Doom! However what we also learn to appreciate is not only the visuals of pixel art, but its mechanic behaviour for how to create and play, and clearly Minecraft is in many more ways a huge step forward in that above the old Doom, or any other modern title for that matter. So what is at first surprising to think about, how can all these people today accept Minecraft's visuals, not only accept but even love? And the reason is, that its aesthetic makes perfect sense in light of the functionality.