Why do games just suck at colors these days

Pic related is a cartoony game example but it applies to every style, in every corner of the industry, from indies to AAAs and from east to west

Keeps the kids under control.

>>712572512 (OP)
nah man you gotta look properly
lots of indies with great aesthetics
owl boy
frogun
corn kids 64
popucom
atlyss
kill knight
aero gpx
old school rally
go mecha ball
little goody two shoes

>>712573489
While I like the aesthetics of some of them, literally all of them have bad colors, Little Goody Two Shoes is the most impressive from an artistic standpoint, and even that has some sort of shitty Instagram filter over its great artwork instead of having the regular color palette a game like that would have 20+ years ago like Legend of Mana

Old School Rally has the best colors on the list but still doesn't match up to Sega Rally's vibrant palettes, and Owl Boy has great pixel art but a very tumblr-inspired palette, though the devs' upcoming game has a fantastic aesthetic AND color palette which is incredibly rare these days

I forget the specifics but basically the modern graphics pipelines remove all semblance of color theory so unless you're actively making the output 1:1 with concept art it'll come out desaturated

Because in the past hardware limitations forced devs to compensate with aesthetics and art style. Nowadays, devs put less effort into visual design because they're too confident in their graphics.

>>712574035
Here's what I'm talking about regarding Little Goody Two Shoes

>>712574696
There are still ways to affect and correct the final output

>>712572512 (OP)
every engine uses a filmic tonemapper now (either ACES or the Uncharted one) which means as colors receive more light, they become more desaturated (more white)
also artists use PBR workflow now where they don't choose colors directly, instead they supply physical properties like roughness which affects the final color. In the old days if you want something blue you paint it blue in the texture, it gets rendered as blue and shown on your monitor as blue. Nowadays artists don't get to choose the exact color.
also everyone slaps volumetric fog on top of the scene to add depth but that also washes everything out
since no-one makes their own engines anymore we are stuck with this look for every game in every genre

>>712574696
>>712579636
Sounds like they need to do a reverse GBA to compensate.

>>712572512 (OP)
Short answer: graphic design trends.

Long answer: Back then games needed to sell themselves via customers watching gameplay footage on actual hardware.Companies believed that the by using red, blue, and yellow, they could immediately grab customers attention, which was vital to making money. Attention = Sales. Nowadays nostalgic household names automatically sell, so zero effort is needed.Just say MARIO and nintennies immediately defend every bad decision, so long as you *never* innovate because that reminds them they are old.

>>712579636
That explains 3D games but not 2D ones especially hand-drawn like >>712575875

>>712581163
a lot of 2D games use a filmic tonemapper too. With Unreal you're forced to. Unity does let you go old school linear.

>>712579636
fuck, unreal even has a demonstration of that on their website
"look, we've made it all look like shit! no, you can't turn it off"

>>712582395
yup and there's massive threads for years on the forums from artists going "why are my colors all washed out???" and epic just ignores them

>>712583270
So, baisically... Don't use Unreal? That's the lesson of this thread?