The resurgance of pixelart games

Video games, y'all! They are a thing. And like many things, they have trends, interesting trends; some are fads, some are long-lasting. Most are interesting.

One of them recently got me thinking: the resurgence of pixelart games, most prominently PC games. There was a time not long ago when making a 8 or 16 bit style game was a strong stylistic choice, a conscious attempt to make a 'throwback' game that would tickle your nostalgia bone. Now such art design is commonplace and nothing surprising, and it would be quite a challenge to find a month that doesn't feature a pixelart game release on Steam, or one with no reveals of a forthcoming pixelart project.

Pixelart games often have the budget to feature 'normal' graphics, but go out of its way to stick to a throwback style. They can do so for nostalgia reasons, but, to their credit, blatant 'buy this because you played games like this when you were young' cash grabs are overshadowed by the plethora of genres and themes that these titles can feature.

The 8 or 16 bit-ish style suits simple games, and is universal enough to be recognized as 'game-y' without feeling invasive and dictating the theme. But its simplicity has also proven to be extremely effective in games featuring complex systems, since it removes a possible layer of clunkiness and information overload.

And so, a question appears: when do you guys think it started? Nowadays it's a given to see a pixelart game being released in almost any given month, but looking back, it certainly doesn't seem to have been the case. Was it 2012? 2011? Or maybe earlier?

What do you guys think?

It probably also makes the games easier to make, and easier to make bigger. I don't see it as a harmful trend, it's not like there aren't any real-looking games being made.

I don't think people realize how easy pixel art is for games compared to to 2D art and 3D models. Especially for small teams. Combine that with easier game making tools and you have the main reason you see so many of these on Steam. Not to say that there isn't a trend(that slowly morphed into a retro thing), just that not every team has an artist.

As for when it started, I don't know. I think it was less of a resurgence and more of an increased awareness of indie games, which have been doing pixel art for years.

Also Super Meat Boy isn't pixel art. It had those retro themed levels but the base game is 2D art.

It's cost. Indies can't afford to hire artists. The trouble with going for photo-realism using 3D, you have to go whole hog, or your game just looks dated. 2D games can get away with it, because people still like pixel art and/or sprite art. There have been a few that went with hand drawn stuff - Cuphead and Dust: An Elysian Tail come to mind - both of those projects have developers with a background in art and animation, not programming. It's easier to learn to code than it is to learn to draw.

At this point in the history of video games pixel art is a valid aesthetic that represents 'old games.' Old games have a distinct style and design that many game designers probably want for there games. It's like a movie being made after 1960 being black and white, it can come down to budget but it was often a choice. As already mentioned I'm certain money is a factor when it comes to games as they are labour intensive to make. Despite that, I'm also certain it's appealing artistically to the creators of the game because again it represents the past of the medium. So adding pixel graphic legitimizes something as a game to a certain extent. They could use a more traditional simplistic art style without pixels but most people label that as cheap looking. So it's a little bit of everything mentioned thus far I think. for the record I like pixel graphics, they look harsh to me and I think that's dope.