Playing at the addictive iPhone games "1000000" and "Box Cat", I noticed how much the 8-bit art style became common in the past few years. Pixel art can look good, and is conceivably easier for a developer with limited drawing skills to draw (at least with enough patience). When done correctly, it doesn't feel (too) cheap and gives an interesting style to what could be a visually bland game.
But it also reminded me of "Sword and Sworcery", which used 8-bit art style as a way to make everything have a retro style. The game was also heavily imbued into a kind of hipster style I couldn't "get", if at least disagree that it's any cool at all. The countless references to LPs, which are before the 80s generation, and on-purpose bland music didn't work for me either, and the people for whom it would work would be way to close to their 40s to play that game.
Which brought me to an epiphany: Like there is "genuine" 8-bit art style, for homage or through lack of talent, there is "fake" 8-bit style, done just to be cool. It's like the distinction between Bit.Trip, using the retro style to actually create a strong emotional narrative, versus Fez, that used the style because it's cool.
The same can be said of hipsters. "True" hipsters have a weird sense of style as a result of their creative, independent-thinking nature. "False" hipsters mimic them to fit in the crowd, feel cool, and thus get the benefits of what they perceive as a social club and not a creative mental state. While on the surface I may seem like just another techno-nerd, I have far more affinity to creative asocial people than those cool "faux hipsters". And as such, nothing infuriates me more than those fakers.
I'll be clear: If you have nothing to say, no artistic statement, then your GameBoy, fluo, pseudo-punk nihilism just reminds me of the worst of the early 90s, and I'll not only avoid you but make it my purpose to make fun of your complete lack of taste. But if you're a freak, wearing messed up clothes because you can't fit in, and are awkwardly trying to yell out your imagination into whatever modes of expression fits you, then what you do is always worthy of consideration.
Published on August 7, 2012 at 21:19 EDT
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