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[Hayden Scott-Baron]

So, indies are obsessed with pixelated artwork, however how does it slide with the rest of the world? Specifically, what do children think of pixel artwork?  Does anyone have any experience with children and how they respond to new games that use pixel art for the aesthetic?

I sometimes suspect that making a game pixelated closes off the games from a potentially wider audience.

[robertogracia]

I know nothing, but the children I see playing on their pcs and portable consoles love 3d realistic graphics as they have been told by marketing..
but then I know nothing..

[Loren Schmidt]

I wonder the same thing. Here's my personal experience, for what it's worth.

Over the years I've shown various chunky pixellated games to friends and family members. Sometimes people don't bat an eye. Other times they don't really have a context for it: "Why does it look so low detail? Is there something wrong with it?" is one response I've heard. But in general the people I've shown games to don't seem very sensitive to resolution. They seem to notice gameplay and esthetic more than fidelity.

Overall I suspect it's probably perceived as a negative, but a very small one.

[Paint by Numbers]

the children I see playing on their pcs and portable consoles love 3d realistic graphics as they have been told by marketing..

This is true and it pisses me off. There are two people I know who were born in the nineties and appreciate pixel art. Those people are myself and my best friend.

I know nothing of the children of the 00's, but I imagine they like pixel work even less.

Sort of pisses me off.

People in general I think don't consider it as bad, happily enough. 

[falsion]

There is a reason why games with pretty graphics are what sell these days. Kids these days like "nice graphics," which they consider the 3D high poly stuff they see on consoles and new PC games. If you try to show them pixel art they'll say that it has bad graphics and call out old and not understand it.

[robertogracia]

But then you have to keep it real. There is something instinctibly appealing about a sketch, unfinished painting or pixel art as a lot of times conveys lots with little. Then we do pixel art because doing high-res smooth graphics takes much much longer..if it didn't almost nobody would be drawing pixels by hand as I know from doing that for the ZXspectrum.
Keep it simple and beautil I say.

[ionside]

What age group are you considering? My daughter loves anything colourful or ultra cute, it doesn't matter what medium or style it is.
The boys probably love the realistic stuff more, because the games they're keen on have more realistic art. I think it comes down to what the game is and if the game as a whole appeals to them.

[shig]

There are some advantages to super low-poly graphics, tho.

You let the spectator "fill in the blanks" of the sprite with his own imagination.
It's more or less what happens with anime-style drawings. Even though, from a technical point of view, it's a "worse" style, the lack of details makes it easier for a reader to identify themselves with the characters.

[mirosurabu]

Some children seem to like it, but they are minority and most likely not playing games for hours.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

aside: there's a difference between pixel art and pixelated artwork, btw -- pixel art just means the art is created on the pixel level (where every pixel matters). not all pixel art is pixelated, which means something like you can see the individual pixels / the pixels distort the image / it looks blocky. nobody would really call this "pixelated" for example:



my thoughts: pixel art is still used in most 2D games, including most 2D nintendo DS games, many of which kids buy and enjoy. an example is devil survivor, a recently released game for the DS:



of course it depends on exactly how young you mean. my brother is 12 and he still plays a lot of games with pixel art. but maybe if he were 8 or 6 he would not.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

another thought: children will play games with good or at least competent art, whether it's pixel art or 3D. the majority of what people call "pixel art", including most of the stuff in that 'show me some of your pixel art' thread, is incompetent and lackluster, and would be shameful to appear in a commercial game, even in the snes era. because pixel art is often used as a way to disguise poor art skills, people who are actually good at it are rare. i mean, there's a difference between:



and



yet the former is what passes for pixel art on these forums (no offense to the person who created that image)

[JLJac]

From my experience children are generally bad at appreciating a "style" of any kind. For children a good picture is a realistic picture and the one in the class that is the best artist is the one that best can copy a scene/object to a paper in the most exact manner. As you grow up you realize that there are many people who can make a perfect still life painting, but few who have a unique art style.

Still I liked pixel graphics as a child even though it was a bit out-dated even then(mid 90's) because the 3D games of that era was terribly ugly and the cartoony pixel style felt so much more game somehow.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i don't think kids innately like realism actually, otherwise why would they prefer cartoons to real-life actors? aren't live actors more realistic imagery? yet i find most kids (and the same is true of myself when i was a kid) prefer cartoon imagery (which is more abstract and simplistic) to real-life actors when watching television and flipping through the channels. similarly, i imagine kids would prefer games that look like cartoons over games that look like real people. of course, this depends on the age range

[robertogracia]

Another random thought: kids innately do what other kids do, that's called peer pressure, so having the latest hyped console / game is a must for them for that reason alone.
I would say pixel art is anything that hasn't been aliased by hand using a filter or otherwise.
A real photographic image or video takes some time for your brain to process and decompose into elements for higher processing like outlines, motion blur(object speed), diffuse colors(without shadows or light shading)..so the brain (specially infants)has a pleasant time watching things that have all this elements very obvious to them, hence outlines in cartoons and such. When Disney started smoothing and shadowing their cel shaders for animated films they didn't know what audience they were losing (besides caca storylines)
But that's just my opinion..

[Ivan]

I think that most people outside of games think of pixel art as a childish thing.

[Powergloved Andy]

My brother and sister (6 and 9) think 2D games are boring. I tried to open up a whole world of Atari, and NES to them and they really couldn't play them. It's like they just didn't "get" it. They soon after turned the xbawks on. Although my sister does enjoy her DS, but even so it killed me a little inside.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I think pixel art on the DS is acceptable, because it's the native resolution of the machine and tends to garner the best results.

Also, I think it's unwise to drift into "kids these days only like shiny 3D" because this has been proven to be untrue, especially with the popularity of games on the DS as well as flash games etc.  

What I'm really thinking about is when developers intentionally choose a lower resolution than is necessary. 320x240 on PC is a good example of a completely unnecessary resolution to work at, and requires users to view at 200% at the very minimum.  Do children tolerate arbitrarily low resolution game art?

(Andy, maybe your 2D game selection is boring! What does your sister enjoy on DS?)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

putting games into 320x200 resolution is very rare though, i can't think of more than a couple indie games which do it. when people do that they're not interested in targeting children anyway, they're going for nostalgia; i usually prefer at least 640x480 for pixel art games (for instance, saturated dreamers runs in 640x480, although i chose that more because game maker is slower at higher resolutions and i wanted 60fps -- immortal defense was 800x600 and couldn't reliably reach 60fps on my old computer). aside: the prettiest indie pixel art games i can recall in recent memory are made by konjak -- what resolution does he use? i don't know

anyway, i still think very pretty pixel art games can still be enjoyed by kids. we enjoyed them when we were kids. it's just that most indie 2d pixel art games don't look anywhere near as good in terms of pixel art as even the average nes game, let alone the average snes game. so i think the answer to getting a larger audience if you make 2D games and enjoy them is getting better at pixel art, not switching to 3D

[ChevyRay]

so i think the answer to getting a larger audience if you make 2D games and enjoy them is getting better at pixel art, not switching to 3D

That, or using a different style of 2D art, such as vector graphics or paintings. Braid has very nice backgrounds and artwork.

Paul pretty much said it, though. If it's done nice, it will look nice to anybody. When really well done, pixel art shouldn't really look like pixel art at all, because everything will blend together well and it won't be distracting (for example, games at 2X or 3X scale).

I'm taking the risk with my first Flash game, doing it in Pixel art, and I'm hoping it won't damage the size of my audience too much. It's good to see that some Flash games, such as Dino Run or even Matt's recently released MoneySeize (which I did the player/enemy/actor graphics for) are still played by a large group of people despite their highly pixelated look; although MoneySeize was criticized a lot for the graphics (I'm sure Dino Run was, too ) My graphics are having a lot more work put into them than those games, though, so I hope it will pay off.

I still stand firm that well made 2D graphics are better than crappy 3D graphics, no matter what age you are. Especially nowadays that we are used to 3D a lot more, and it's no longer a novelty. I would love working on a few 3D projects, though, if it wasn't such an intense amount more work 0_o

I think that most people outside of games think of pixel art as a childish thing.

Most people outside of games think of games as a childish thing; that's a no brainer.

[Captain_404]

I just released a Flash game, Push, featuring heavy pixel art influence. (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=7018.0)

When you make a flash game, it will typically be played by one of two audiences, bored housewives or boys about 13 and under. Push falls into the latter category, which makes it a valid example for this discussion.

I've gotten some interesting responses so far, including a few people who said they couldn't play more than a few levels because it was vomit-inducing. However, those are a fairly small segment of the population. I'm surprised to see that it doesn't really seem to be an issue, I guess it's just another aesthetic. On the other hand, I've heard nobody say that its art is great either. At least, no one who didn't grow up playing pixel games.

Actually, I guess I'm technically part of the younger generation too. I'm 18 and my first game console was an N64. I don't know why though, but I've always had a certain fascination with pixelated games, beyond simple nostalgia.

Ultimately, I think this is a non-issue for kids.


Speaking of pixels, and this may be slightly off-topic, it really disappoints me how often pixel art devolves either into nostalgia or just a clever way to mask terrible programmer art. It's so rare to see a game that actually uses the pixelated style in a new and interesting way. I find it odd that so many indie games claim to be exploring new territory, but so often sport basically the same, tired graphics.


EDIT: one last off-topic thought.

Is there anyone exploring that N64 aesthetic? Sure, lots of people do pixels, but does anyone really make games in ultra-low poly anymore? I think it would be fun to explore.