Estéticas digitales precarias: Autolimitación artística como estrategia nostálgica en el videojuego contemporáneo

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomenon of utilizing precarious digital aesthetics in contemporary videogames as a deliberate strategy to obtain an emotional bond through nostalgia. In a technological context that enables hyperrealistic visualization through advanced real-time lighting techniques via ray tracing, post-processing, or physical calculations on high-resolution devices, the conscious choice of aesthetics that emulate the limited capabilities of obsolete consoles and computers responds to a specific strategy. Framed within visual culture, it analyzes how the use of what we call precarious digital aesthetics, which refers to a lived or imagined past, functions as an activator of the viewer's affective memory and as a resignifying language capable of conveying political, existential, and emotional discourses, operating in two differentiated economies: an aesthetic-critical one and an economic-industrial one that shapes gamer identities.