Imagination Vs. Immersion: Why Your Brain Loves Pixel Art
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
- Have you ever thought of pixel art and 3D graphics being similar to "books vs. movies?"
Did early 3D weird you out the same way it did me?
Are you bored with hyper-realistic visuals in video games?
Are you also a 40-year old nerd with bad eyes?
This video was born out of a realization that, for a variety of reasons, I just don't enjoy 3D games as much as I used to. I discuss the evolution of pixel art graphics, how and why they tickle your brain, their relegation and use as "nostalgia bait," and their resurgence with the indie gaming scene.
This video focuses primarily on Sergio Paez's "A Visual Renegade: A Phenomenological and Aesthetical Examination of Pixel Art," with additional passages from Sebastian Deken's "Final Fantasy VI," published by Boss Fight Books. (Links below!)
0:00 - Intro
1:12 - I. Nostalgia
7:50 - II. Semiotics
15:44 - III. Abstraction Vs. Conventionalism
24:43 - IV. Hi-Bit & Conclusion
MUSIC CREDITS:
Chiptune - Liborio Conti - @liborioconti
"Long Stroll" Music ⓒ - Kevin MacLeod
"Local Forecast" Music ⓒ - Kevin MacLeod
FOOTAGE CREDITS:
World of Longplays (@worldoflongplays) longplays.org/home.php
- Venture footage captured by DiggerandIndy
- Radar footage captured by RickyC
All other retro footage recorded locally.
Hi-bit and modern footage taken from official trailers.
LINKS:
A Visual Renegade: A Phenomonological and Aesthetical Examination of Pixel Art - www.researchgate.net/publicat...
Boss Fight Books: Final Fantasy VI - bossfightbooks.com/products/f...
Heart Machine - www.heartmachine.com/
Mierdinsky - www.inprnt.com/gallery/mierdi...
Sabotage Studio - sabotagestudio.com/
The Game Kitchen - thegamekitchen.com/ - Ігри
![[New Game+] Episode 1: Recovering Vs. Recovered](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YC73rtaVEeg/mqdefault.jpg)
That intro was hilarious
Criminally underrated video.
true, I was shocked how little exposure this had, when I scrolled down after watching it.
There is an element to this that I have been thinking about a lot lately. I find that limitations in the presentation of a game imbue it with potential and invite the player to imagine what these limitations hide. It's related to the Gestalt you spoke about. There it is the pixel grid that at first confuses the brain and then makes it come up with a plausible and familiar thing that the sprite is supposed to represent. What I mean is more general.
In Secret of Mana many towns have boundaries that are trees. My imagination used to come up with stuff that lies beyond the trees, my brain wanted to know what happens when I entered that forbidden space. Something that should be possible in reality but that is also plausible in the game. Sometimes secret passages exist, a simple transition into a new screen could be hidden anywhere.
In Final Fantasy 7, despite the very detailed prerendered backgrounds you only got specific perspectives to enjoy and my imagination had the exact same process. Maybe there is a hidden door, or something to interact with that I missed.
In Star Fox 1 or 64 you have a full 3D environment to explore, but are yet confined to a slim path through a city or canyon. And again my brain was eager to imagine the space beyond, as branching paths are a feature in the game.
Yet when I compare that to modern games I don't experience that.
The Trial of Mana remake, FF16, Star Fox Zero, these modern games have similar scenarios where you are confined into a play space and a similar arbitrary barrier prevents you from going further. But my mind simply accepts these as gameplay limits, it does not imagine them as possibilities, it does not imagine the potential that they could hide.
Perhaps that is purely my childhood brain being more active and less jaded then my adult brain. There is a good chance that's the case. At the same time I find that modern high definition games are burdened with making everything explicit. A simple treeline can not hide anything if the camera angle can be freely swung around and show that the 3D mesh the designers put there, is in fact not hiding anything. It is further incredibly unlikely that an extremely detailed environment like in FF16 will reveal some secret passage behind a seemingly solid wall; since the player model shall never simply fade through the 3D geometry of the level, anything that is revealed to the player needs to be animated. It turns a simple secret into a big affair that's more costly to implement. And when developers implement something like that, it's usually not a one off thing, they put effort into it, so the same style of secret will be put all over the game, it will usually have it's tells and by the third time it's not a secret anymore, it turns into just another checkbox on your todo list. It removes imagination and turns it into content. While the game might look like reality, it has a crucial difference. In reality I know that every wall hides a plethora of people, and places and stories and stuff to explore, it's a living space after all. In contrast a high def game makes it painfully obvious that everything I can explore and find is visible and accessible. You even get yellow paint and spotlights and architectual framing to steer you, whereas veering away is usually pointless.
In short, the more elaborate the world becomes, the harder it gets to invite the player into that imaginitive frame of mind, that barrieres could be more than simple gameplay restricitions, that they could hold the potential of revealing further parts of the world, that the world is actually a living and breathing place.
Too many good points to mention in one comment, just wanted to say I really enjoyed!
Been a NOMOWO listener for years and just wanted to chime in here. I know you've been looking to eventually transition from running Critical Hit into being a content producer at some point after you hit the 10 year mark running the bar (game shop? is it still not okay to refer to it as a bar?) And I've gotta say that if this is the kind of content you're going to be making moving forward that it's a totally attainable goal. This will now serve as a linkable explanation to all my Triple A video game friends misunderstanding of why I love my pixel games. Good information with a nice mix of your personality that has made listening to the podcast such a joy for me for several years. Congrats on sobriety as well as moving forward from one dream to the next with great finesse. You make it look easy, but it'd be foolish to say that it's easy in general, I know you're working very hard. I love the VOD channel and now this! Congratulations all around. Keep up the good work. I'm sorry this comment is so sappy and long lol
Here's to you continued success! I look forward to seeing your growth and wish for your continued success.
"WHAT HIT ME?!" a great video by a great dude. that's what.
Great video, this is something I've been thinking about for a few years now but this video really put a lot of my thoughts into words. The way I used to describe this preference to friends who much prefer the higher fidelity stuff as "wanting games to look like games". Where I would add to this is that while for a long time the SNES aesthetic of pixel art has been a big comfort for me for decades, I've recently have been having this fascination with 32 bit era low poly 3D, I've grown really fond its imperfections and limitations as well - that includes the texture warping and the jagged aliasing those games had.
Like you, it's not that I have a problem with the fancier, flashier graphics but also those graphics do physically hurt my eyes at times and can get a little too much.
Pretty stellar video Alex
3:26 is from Venture for the Coleco, for those who might be wondering.
an exploration of my favorite nomowo episode title, "HDMI don't give a shit"
Great video synthesizing the varied perspectives of why pixel art is such a treasured medium. While the "book vs movie" and "practical vs CG effects" are good comparisons, IMO a better comparison is traditional hand animated movies (disney/don bluth) vs 3D animated movies (pixar/illumination).
Awesome video, got me thinking.
Imagination is wonderful, and I agree it can be exhausting and cause burn out sometimes.
So it can be nice to just turn off, or relax, that part of the brain and do something incredibly simple, or immerse myself and auto pilot.
It's been a bit since I've played it, but MineCraft hits that sweet spot, where it can be as complex as you want it to be, while also possible to just auto pilot and relax and recuperate.
Thanks for the video.
This also reminds me of Scott McCloud's comparison of realistic vs iconic images in his graphic novel 'Understanding Comics'. You might enjoy that book! And great video Alex! Hope we get many more!
I have been meaning to read Understanding Comics for like 20 years!! That's my winter vacation goal.
Loved this video essay! Tons of great points.
Loved listening to this, felt nostalgia not only for 8bit games, but English philology studies when you mentioned semiotics lol
Wow, someone put it into words! I always felt like such an odd one out for liking pixel art and even old 3D graphics to new 3D graphics. I wonder if the same principle applies for why I adored like PS2 or DS style graphics to PS4 and 3DS growing up and also felt like, yeah it "looks" "better"....but I felt like for all the detail it was missing something and didnt like it as much. It makes so much sense that its my imagination that I'm enjoying! That's probably why I prefer books to movies too haha. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I feel less alone now ^^ I really wish studios would still make pixel art games too, I feel like there's plenty of room for both!
This is great. I hope you make more videos like this.
That's the plan!
@3:27 that is VENTURE and I promise it is better than Bayou Billy
Great video! I really enjoyed it. As someone who started playing games more regularly around the mid 90s, I really never had much of an attachment for Pixel art so for me it's just kind of another way you could make your game look (thankfully I think I avoided the thought of Pixel art games looking dated.) But always happy to see discussions about this stuff going deeper than just nostalgia. I do think what we play when we're kids I think has a big impact on our tastes, but I think I've always preferred to not refer to that as a bad thing.
Great video Alex! Informative and funny
I KNEW IT!
Nice work Alex
How did you feel about FF9 which was an attempt to bring the ascetics of the pixel games to a 3D art style? I love a 3D game with a bold art direction a lot more then a hyper realistic one. Wind Waker for life, that game again looked like an attempt to make a 3D art style that was based on the character dimensions from its pixel form. Kind of like they grabbed the sides of the screen for Zelda and tilted it.
I like FFIX's look for that reason! Late-stage PS1 3D like that and Chrono Cross are still beautiful and fun to look at.
1:01 💭
As a youngin currently I live pixil art because the pixil art is so apealing terraria looks so good and is one of my favorite games
Jank is texture
Whats the game at 26:45?
edit suikoden
atari and colecovision are 8-bit lol
Yes, that should've been "third generation," but it's super cool that that was your takeaway from the entire twenty-eight minutes.