Games
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Authorized Regular Threads
Related communities
PM a mod to add your own
Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
Help and suggestions
By platform
By type
- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
- !LifeSimulation@lemmy.world
- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !CozyGames@Lemmy.world
- !CRPG@lemmy.world
- !OtomeGames@ani.social
- !Shmups@lemmus.org
- !VisualNovels@ani.social
By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
- !CassetteBeasts@Lemmy.world
- !Fallout@lemmy.world
- !FinalFantasyXIV@lemmy.world
- !Minecraft@Lemmy.world
- !NoMansSky@lemmy.world
- !Palia@Lemmy.world
- !Pokemon@lemm.ee
- !Skyrim@lemmy.world
- !StardewValley@lemm.ee
- !Subnautica2@Lemmy.world
- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
view the rest of the comments
I do agree that it's nostalgia-powered and fuelled by millennials with disposable income being a fertile market, but to me here's the weird thing: I think pixel art can look incredibly beautiful while the old early 3D game style looks like absolute ass (such as the OG FF7 screenshot above).
But I grew up much more on the latter than the former. There has to be more to it than just nostalgia.
It's not only nostalgia. Arbitrary limitations drive creativity. Previously the limitations were imposed by the hardware. Today the designer can choose their own limitations.
this is evident when looking at modern pixel art games. something like Celeste could never run on an SNES or Genesis.
even Shovel Knight, which is made specifically to mimic NES games, ignores some limitations of the NES
I wonder how low-poly art styles will evolve with time? even modern pixel art is quite different from the pixel art of the 2010s
I was thinking this recently when watching footage of Dread Delusion, a 2024 game that looks like something out of 1999.
It's a visually interesting game, maybe not profoundly so, but it gave me a passing thought about what makes a game more "artistic". I was looking at a rocky wall texture, low res enough to count the individual pixels, but I still recognized it as rock. And then I asked myself what takes more skill: a high fidelity AAA game that just megascans a real rock surface to capture as much detail as possible, or a game like Dread Delusion trying to convey the idea of a rock in as little detail as possible.
Developers back in the day would have absolutely killed to have the hardware capabilities we have today. No longer needing to worry about fitting games on a tiny disc or cartridge measured only in MB, not even in GB. Even Dread Delusion, despite looking like a PS1 game, could not have fit on even 3 PS1 discs. But it was those very limitations that made developers really have to think carefully about their content, the total scope of the games they wanted to make, how much detail they could afford to include, etc.
I don't think those limitations necessarily made games inherently better, because there were still a lot of bad games back in the day. But it meant that everything had more deliberation to it, where a developer would create a game that was one really good idea instead of a game made of 20 just "okay" ideas.
I think it's because there were more limitations than just resolution that we can ignore nowadays while still considering it pixel art. Things like limited color pallettes, sprite counts, having little memory to store graphics, low framerates, analog video, CRTs...
I still see the fifth generation as a lost one for pixel art. The games that do it really well in that era are few and far between (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Suikoden, Breath of Fire IV) and even those still had 3D elements in them that have aged like milk.
I too grew up more on pixel art, but the problem I always had with 3D in the 90's was that--on an objective, technical level--it was already being done so much better elsewhere than it was on PlayStation and the others. Both PC and arcades were consistently driving much higher framerates, and by the late 90's, far better picture quality. It wasn't even four years after the PSX that the Dreamcast launched and completely outclassed it in graphics potential. I feel the move to 3D in the console market was just too early. I guess I can sort of see why some would be nostalgic for it, but to me this trend is the equivalent of being nostalgic for 19th century movies.
What I don't get is why this trend is happening now. The tech's been there for indies and the like to do this for a while. The demo for people old enough to grow up with these games has also long been in disposable income territory. Maybe we're just oversaturated with pixel art at this point?
And some people just like ass more than others. I personally think the PS1 aesthetic is charming when done right. But that's just my opinion, totally fair to disagree.
I personally like both ass and tits