I’d have agreed until the indie gamedev scene adopted the retro/PSX aesthetic in earnest and, for me, it has become an indicator of soulfulness. It’s not nostalgia at all, it feels to me like going back to an era when AAA high-fidelity open world by-the-numbers games wasn’t even in the cards. It’s people making a game aware of their limitations, which is what people did in the 2D era of slow CPUs and doing the most with what you have.
This aesthetic will keep trucking on in the AI era of slop, which will eat pixel art, will eat vector art, will try to eat high-res 3D art (and fail miserably), while only indies will care about the PSX/PS2 aesthetic with its fake dithering and 960x540 viewport size.
hackeryojo · · focus · HN ↗
vconnor · · focus · HN ↗
This aesthetic will keep trucking on in the AI era of slop, which will eat pixel art, will eat vector art, will try to eat high-res 3D art (and fail miserably), while only indies will care about the PSX/PS2 aesthetic with its fake dithering and 960x540 viewport size.