I'm a relatively new member here (although I lurked for a long time before joining) so feel free to take my opinion with the largest grain of salt you like... but I think two different things are being conflated here. On the one hand, we have subjective taste, and it's clear that a lot of people on VI Control prefer traditional orchestrated scores. That's fine! There's no arguing with taste. On the other hand, though, there is the objective reality of scores that really do exist in the world, and it is a fact that plenty of scores use synthetic/chiptune sounds. (See eg Uncut Gems and It Follows, the latter of which has been very influential.) Now, you may not like these scores, and that is fine of course! But I see a lot of people going further to argue that scores don't usually sound like this and thus a chiptune-style score should not have been picked as the winner -- and that is objectively false. There is plenty of precedent for scores like this; it's just that such music generally doesn't get discussed here (or, when it does, as in the case of Uncut Gems [a score that I like very much], the response is overwhelmingly negative).
In short: VI Control is conservative when it comes to what is considered an "acceptable" score, so be aware that the view here of what constitutes a "normal" score is not the generally accepted view. If you listen to music that includes the many synthesized scores that exist out in the world, this winner is not outside of the norm.
In short: VI Control is conservative when it comes to what is considered an "acceptable" score, so be aware that the view here of what constitutes a "normal" score is not the generally accepted view. If you listen to music that includes the many synthesized scores that exist out in the world, this winner is not outside of the norm.