The tech arms race in AAA games and why I'm abandoning it

Re:The tech arms race in AAA games and why I'm abandoning it by falcolas on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @10:32AM (#9652814)

> The problem is that 3D often doesn't tend to age well, as polygon count, texture mapping, terrain sculpting, particle effects and other graphics fidelity has been consistently and rapidly improving over the past 20 years or so.

This hasn't stopped Mario 3D, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or Final Fantasy VII from becoming classics, despite being some of the first games in the 3D space.

> That doesn't mean that it makes the games less enjoyable, necessarily, but certain art styles are just better at conveying timelessness.

However, that art style is not pixel art. I've gone back and tried to play some of the pixelated stars from the past - they don't age well on modern display devices. From their 40pt fonts, to their pixels which actually look worse on LCD monitors than they did on our old CRT TVs.

They are still classics, and frequently enjoyable, but in many ways they require a bit of context to understand why they were such classics.

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Re:The tech arms race in AAA games and why I'm abandoning it by pmarin on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @12:07PM (#9653562)

>However, that art style is not pixel art. I've gone back and tried to play some of the pixelated stars from the past - they don't age well on modern display devices. From their 40pt fonts, to their pixels which actually look worse on LCD monitors than they did on our old CRT TVs.

I have a stash of bulky crt monitors and TVs for this reason. They are almost free nowadays.

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