If you love retro games, then there's a good chance you have a fondness for pixel graphics. Before technology progressed to the point where 3D visuals were viable, hand-drawn 2D images were the only way in which video games could be represented – and despite the advancements made in recent years, there are still plenty of games out there that adopt pixel-based graphics to good effect.
However, recent comments made by Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka have cast some doubt upon the long-term appeal of such imagery, at least when it comes to Sega's mascot. Speaking to Speaking to GamesRadar at Gamescom, where he was showing off Sonic Superstars, Iizuka voiced the opinion that pixel-based 2D games might not be viable in the near future:
"We look at the pixel art - it's great - but when we think about 10-20 years in the future, we don't think it's going to be a viable art style or presentation for our players. And in order to advance and really step things up, we did want to make sure that we're presenting something that 10-20 years down the road we're still evolving and creating new content for."
To clarify and give context, it's worth noting that Iizuka isn't talking about all 2D games ceasing to be viable (Sonic Superstars is essentially a '2.5D' game), but rather 2D games that use hand-drawn pixel visuals rather than 3D models.
It's also worth noting that other franchises, such as Street Fighter and King of Fighters, have already made the shift from hand-drawn 2D to 3D models in a 2D environment. There are clear advantages to this approach; drawing art for 2D games is time-consuming as each frame must be created to produce smooth animation, something that isn't the case with 3D models. 3D games also benefit from additional visual effects, such as realistic lighting and other graphical flourishes. It's easy to see, then, why developers might favour them over 2D art, especially as projects become larger and more complex.
However, hand-drawn games boast a unique quality that simply cannot be replicated by 3D models. Some of the best 2D games from the '90s and 2000s still look impressive today, which cannot always be said of 3D games from the same periods in time. Like any hand-drawn art, 2D games boast a timeless quality, and that's why we're continuing to see a great many modern-day titles adopt this approach.
It's also worth pointing out that Sonic Mania – a 2D, pixel art take on the character – is one of the most highly-rated entries in the entire Sonic series, whereas his recent 3D outings (such as Sonic Frontiers) have struggled to gain the same kind of critical acclaim.
Do you think Iizuka's comments hold weight? As the industry grows older, could we see a time when 2D art simply isn't viable for a project of this size? Or do you think that 2D and 3D will coexist forever, just as they have happily done for the past few decades? Vote in the poll below and let us know your thoughts with a comment.
Do you think there will be a time when hand-drawn 2D art ceases to be viable for video games? (742 votes)
- Yes
- No
- Not sure
Comments 32
For starters, it's not clear what he means by "viable." Is he talking about time and cost at the developer end? Or predicting that consumers will increasingly reject it?
I do think that pixel art will, sadly, become less common, especially as the current generation of indie developers that finds the form nostalgic is replaced by a younger generation raised on polygons. We're already seeing plenty of games meant to evoke the 5th generation. But that's not a matter of it being "viable," so much as aesthetic trends coming and going.
But it's the second part of his statement that really has me scratching my head. I'm entirely unsure what he means about "still evolving and creating content for" something "10-20 years down the road." Is he seriously suggesting that releasing a pixel art game in 2023 is going to somehow have ramifications for what the company is doing in 2033 and beyond?
I am sure that, at some point, developers will be able to make perfect pixel art style with 3D engines and we won't be able to notice the difference. It will be voxels but we will just see regular pixels so saying that pixel art will not be "viable" depends on on how tools evolve and we have seen that a lot has changed during the last 2 decades so it will be probably be the same.
2D hand drawn artwork and pixel art are not the same thing. I do expect that pixel art will start to disappear as fewer developers (and gamers!) have nostalgia for it, but a beautiful hand drawn 2D image will always be beautiful and someone will continue to make them. It is however a much more expensive and time consuming way to work than using 3D models on a 2D plane, so I doubt we'll see a lot of it.
Not on my watch, pixel art is still king !!
It will be just as viable as any other art style in however many years. It's gone beyond being just a technical limitation of the hardware and graphics in old video games to a legitimate art style in its own right. And, just like any other art style, in the right hands it can produce some gorgeous results relative to the style they are in and that anyone who enjoys nice art can appreciate. If anyone is stating that pixel art will go away or become irrelevant or something along those lines in the future, I think that goes more to their own misunderstanding of what constitutes good-great art that appeals to a lot of people in and of itself. It being drawn in pixels is as relevant as someone making something out of Lego blocks: I wonder if those same people ponder if Lego blocks will go out of fashion in ten years time and every kid will be just be building stuff with real bricks or whatever. Also, there's not a single 2.5D or 3D Sonic game in existence that looks as visually/artistically appealing to me as the best 2D pixel art Sonic games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Mania for example--not that there couldn't be, but there isn't--so the dude at Sega isn't saying anything to make me feel more optimistic about the future of Sonic games.
I could see Square Enix’s HD2D style evolve with technology to allow 3D design to take place and then have it ‘flattened’ in real time to give it the look of 2D pixel art without some of the more tedious aspects of the design. Will it have the same personality as hand drawn pixel frames? I’m not sure
Pixel graphics stop looking nice, if not timeless in 10-20 years? Why would anyone say that? Oh, leadership within modern day Sega is saying that? Well there’s the problem..
I’d never trust anything that Iizuka says, dude is full of himself now and will follow up this by not understanding what people liked about Frontiers and will most likely seriously screw over the next game because of this to the deferment of Morio Kishimoto who seems to sincerely want to turn things around and listen to feedback.
"Some of the best 2D games from the '90s and 2000s still look impressive today, which cannot always be said of 3D games from the same periods in time."
i agree, but id add that most 3D games released today are unimpressive, "good looking" 3D games from 5 years ago are generally unimpressive, and cutting edge 3D games made tomorrow will mostly be ugly in 10 years.
@ludotaku Cassette Beasts is a beautiful example of this
developers have been saying this since the mid 90s btw. it's BS.
I can foresee artists drawing a few images of an object or character and then AI being used to create interpolated frames of animation as a means to cut costs and speed up development.
Honestly, as far as I’m concerned, this guy just wrote his own obituary. It shows how out of touch he is with the fans; no wonder the past bunch of Sonic games fell flat.
He needs to step down sooner than later and get someone in there that knows the fans.
For the new generation, I can see the nostalgia factor being non-existent with the hand drawn pixel art and stuff but that’s it.
Viable is a funny word. Does it mean it will be impossible to turn a profit with pixel art games? (That would be highly doubtful) Or does he simply mean that the percentage of players interested in that style will be trending down? (That’s more plausible).
Ultimately pixel art is popular because it looks good and it looks good because it employs art techniques that are well established. “Broken color” techniques have been a staple of painting for over 150 years. Artists discovered that these techniques enhance the visual interest of an image because the viewer becomes actively (subconsciously) involved in “completing” the image. Pixel art can work the same - our imaginations are more activated by the ambiguous graphics and people find that satisfying. At the same time, pixel art is very orderly. The whole image is constrained to a grid. It also represents maximum intentionality because it is pixel-level attention being paid to the art. So ambiguity, imagination, the grid, and enormous amounts of artistic intentionality, all combining. This is like modernist art! See Paul Signac or Chuck Close for comparisons.
So in that aesthetic sense I think pixel art will always be interesting and viable and there will always be games coming out with a pixel aesthetic.
@BLAZINOAH absolutely, I am already experimenting with this in my hobby games. In the near future pixel art programs like Aseprite will have AI helpers specifically trained to do this.
people here and elsewhere implying that pixel art only stands on nostalgia have produced zero evidence and in my opinion, are wrong.
@MSaturn
i really like your comment, well done 👍✌️
Just look at Owlboy and it's very high level of Pixel Art.
It's just so damn amazing to look at!
Here is an amazing article by DPad Studios (developers of Owlboy) about why pixel art is still heavily desired today: http://dpadstudio.com/Blog/postHibit.html
The fact that 2D pixel art has made such a big comeback with the modern day indie scene is proof of how timeless it has become. I mean pixel graphics really went away in the 32-bit gen as 3D graphics was the big thing, and you would be hard pressed to find much in the way of pixel graphics in the PS2 generation. Having made the comeback it did, I would say it's become a timeless art style.
@JayJ Pixel games were still huge during the PS2 gen, just not on consoles. They were all on GBA, and case in point- tons of people still wanted them. I don’t think they’re going anywhere
@ludotaku You've probably already played 2D pixel art games on 3D engines without even realizing it! Shovel Knight is an example of this.
There are also some indie games now that use polygons, but render in 240p by default (like a PlayStation or N64 game), which gives the impression of pixel art when played on a modern screen.
And of course, there are voxel games like 3D Dot Game Heroes, but this is a specific aesthetic, not a more efficient way to create pixel art.
@-wc- So you think all games with realistic graphics look ugly, then? Or just the ones from 5+ years ago?
I still think Crysis (16 years old!) looks good, though the humans are a little uncanny and CG-ish, of course... but then, don't the human characters in all games still look like CGI? The gap between game graphics and reality is closing ever so slowly now.
There was a period at least in the west during the 32/64-bit era that many games coming out that used pixel art were shunned by games media as being a step back and it was mainly only fighting games for the most part that were still praised for it. If publishers and developers are still having the same conversation nearly 30 years later then it's a sign it's not going to stop being viable in the next decade because those same people seemed to think the same thing back in the mid 90's.
People are crazy…
@smoreon
"So you think all games with realistic graphics look ugly, then? Or just the ones from 5+ years ago?"
i wouldnt go that far, but there was definitely a point where i stopped seeing the "art" in hyper realism and started to kind of dislike it. id say after ps3 era i just stopped caring about "realistic"
looking games and when i do tune in, im still not compelled.
I think "realistic" is just kind of a boring mandate for an artist. there's alot more to "reality" than simply what things look like photographically. emotions are real, memories are real. dreams are real. other senses are real.
I just watched some videos about Starfield and i know it's crisper, more detailed, bigger, and so on, but it still looks just how i remember "realistic" games looking on PS3. it asks nothing more of the artist or beholder than the last umpteen "AAA" 3d shooty games did on the last few MA17 consoles.
also, as you alluded, the uncanny valley is real, and if we are crossing to the other side its so slow i cant tell. the people still dont look right.
and the zero gravity setting really helps because things never look the right weight or density in 3D games. 😆
anyway i think im rambling. thanks! ✌️
This was the question that was being raised when 3D and polygons became all the rage in the 32/64bit generation. Yet, sprites/hand drawn video games still exist and still have appeal. I'm not exactly sure his context, but I don't believe every game is good hand-drawn just like I don't believe every game is good with polygons. A designer stylizes a game in a certain format and hopefully it works for what the designer is trying to capture. If a game is a bad game, it's not going to matter what it looks like. Viable lies in the game play ultimately.
@-wc- Thanks for clarifying! I may not agree 100%, but I think I see where you're coming from. And I did feel particularly apathetic towards gritty PS3-era games at the time, though sitting out that generation and falling behind has made it (and subsequent generations!) all feel a bit fresher to me now.
I guess there's only so much that can be done with (attempted) photorealism- and especially the brown '00s AAA look... I personally feel that both pixel art and full-on cartoonish 3D graphics are also pretty well played out by this point, but there's still plenty of potential in the broadly semi-realistic middle ground that was seemingly a lot more common in the 5th and 6th gens. That, and all kinds of overtly stylized graphics, of course, of which the possibilities are endless!
PS: Ah, styrofoam blocks... have we not moved beyond 2006 Havok physics yet?
Where there is demand, there will be supply
There are always so many games, some can certainly be made with pixel art. Nothing wrong with variety.
Sea of Stars is fricking gorgeous.
I was talking to a teacher friend of mine and they have founf an open sourced 8bit pixel art suite that she is going to use in her school, so I think pixel art will carry on.
What do SEGA know? Have they still got a console? Do they still do good Sonic games? Just saying
I don't think he likes what people have said about some of the Sonic games he's directed. Which explains his cold, corporate speak regarding Sonic. He comes off defensive and baffled by Sonic Mania, and the consumer's love for 2D Sonic.
Do consumers prefer 3D sonic? Really?
@BionicDodo I question if it really is more expensive and time consuming. If 3D is easier to produce than 2D, then why are the 3D Sonic games some of the buggiest and broken outings of the Blue Blur? Not just janky, unfinished programming, but also wonky plot and pacing.
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