Perhaps I'm just looking at things through rose tinted glasses, but I very much agree with this. I like to think that good pixel art works with the imagination. The artist puts down the broad strokes and lets the imagination fill the rest! There is a huge amount of skill that goes into good pixel art. It's not enough to have attention to detail, but an intuition about engaging and working with imagination.
The more realistic the graphics, the higher the risk that it falls into the uncanny valley trap. The brain is already half fooled that it is seeing reality (or something that is supposed to be real) but if it's only slightly off, there'll be a feeling of unease. Of course, early 3d games were far off from feeling real, but they were already a step up and there was less headroom for imagination. The low polygon count models just look janky instead of endearing.
Pixel art completely sidesteps this uncanny valley by not trying to be realistic, instead it tries to engage the brain to fill in the details. It's perhaps halfway between reading a book and watching a movie.
E.g. looking at early 3d games, they just feel dated. One cannot help but compare them to today's 3d graphics and of course the oldies fall short by a very far margin. Comparing pixel art games to a modern AAA 3D game title is just so obviously apples to oranges that there is no struggle due to loss of fidelity.
Again, perhaps my view is biased because I grew up with the pixelated games of old. Still, I'd like to assign the excitement of the early 3d titles more to the novelty (at the time) than from the fidelity of the graphics. I think the pixel art style will (or already does) have much more staying power.
The more realistic the graphics, the higher the risk that it falls into the uncanny valley trap. The brain is already half fooled that it is seeing reality (or something that is supposed to be real) but if it's only slightly off, there'll be a feeling of unease. Of course, early 3d games were far off from feeling real, but they were already a step up and there was less headroom for imagination. The low polygon count models just look janky instead of endearing.
Pixel art completely sidesteps this uncanny valley by not trying to be realistic, instead it tries to engage the brain to fill in the details. It's perhaps halfway between reading a book and watching a movie.
E.g. looking at early 3d games, they just feel dated. One cannot help but compare them to today's 3d graphics and of course the oldies fall short by a very far margin. Comparing pixel art games to a modern AAA 3D game title is just so obviously apples to oranges that there is no struggle due to loss of fidelity.
Again, perhaps my view is biased because I grew up with the pixelated games of old. Still, I'd like to assign the excitement of the early 3d titles more to the novelty (at the time) than from the fidelity of the graphics. I think the pixel art style will (or already does) have much more staying power.