2D Boy: Gaming Hasn't Seen a True "Masterpiece"

[Internet Kraken]

I think we have seen a "masterpiece." It's called World of Goo.

While I do love World of Goo to bits, calling it a masterpiece is a bit of a stretch. Sure it may be when compared to other video games, but when compared to other forms of media, not so much. Of course video games are a much younger medium, so it's only to be expected that it hasn't yet produced something that can stand up to them. I would argue that the industry is certainly making progress though.

I bet if Activision took Carmel's advice, it'd do a lot of good towards repairing the tarnished reputation they have in many gamer's eyes. I think they have more than enough money to go for it to.

I personally feel like Minecraft is headed in the right direction... a set of rules defines what makes a game. Nearly everyone has the same first Night in Minecraft... evoking fear and excitement and curiosity... the rules of the game, not scripted sequences or narrative, evoke these emotions--that is the true use of gaming--where the ruleset and logic of the design evoke real emotion, not scripted sequences or narratives.

I don't know about Minecraft, but I do know that Dwarf Fortress has spawned some incredibly creative pieces of writing due to the emotions players experience when playing the game in their own way. I imagine this is somewhat similar to what you were saying with Minecraft.

 

[Andronicus]

So, they're basically indie games, except with proper funding and skilled developers at the helm?

Sounds pretty win-win to me. Somebody make this happen.

 

[Jumplion]

I think he is absolutely true, no video game has really come close to achieving "Citizen Kane" status, or "A Clockwork Orange", or "Bladerunner", or "Shindler's List" status, or any other number of hugely influential movies. Sure, Shadow of the Collosus was great n' all, but it did not have such a worldwide impact and unfortunately remains a cult classic rather than a reknowned work of art.

But before we can get the "Citizen Kane" of gaming, we need the "Orson Wells" of gaming. [sup]*coughMecough*[/sup] There needs to be that one game that transcends "just a game" status in the eyes of the public and truly transforms gaming into a well respected artform. I doubt it'll happen over night, and in fact it may take several games like that, but I am truely confident that somewhere, someday, someone is going to rise up to the challenge.

[sup]*ehem....me? perhaps? Seriously, I know what I'm doing, I swear![/sup]

 

[Radioactive Bob]

This sounds like a really exciting idea. A company that has no other motivation than to make the best, most creative game they can? I'm all for it, and hopefully this sort of idea takes off and from it, bigger companies can adopt these ideas and they can build off of eachother into some truly outstanding concepts.

 

[Teeth Kicker]

I feel as if a gaming "masterpiece" can only be defined by the person playing the game themselves. Sure you have to consider all the technicalities within the entire game, however, over 15 years ago you could have called "Super Metroid" a masterpiece. Hell, I love SotC with all my heart, and it definetly lives under my gaming masterpieces. But so does Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. I enjoy those games down to the last pixel-y cell.

I could go on with a list of my favorites that I cherish more than anything. Some people will call the original 'Halo' a masterpiece. However I could disagree since I grew up playing Quake and Unreal Tourney. But I'm sure they're are few out there who could claim that 'Castlevania: Circle of the Moon' for GBA is a golden egg (and yes that's preferred over Symphony of the Night).

The point is, it's all your taste. Also your choice of genre is another factor. I dislike fighting games, no matter how much technical perfection is sunk into one to make it 'everyone' friendly as possible, I just don't find them entertaining.

Art is made to move emotions and senses by placing elements together to create an experience for an individual. And any art can be considered a "masterpiece." It is all in the eye of the beholder.

*On another note, I've been playing "Amnesia:The Dark Descent" lately and I may bump it up to my masterpieces collection, just because it's so immersive and really touches your senses.

 

[Shindiggity]

Obviously he's free to voice his own perspective, but I think it's slightly presumptuous to say we haven't seen a masterpiece yet. In my opinion, the games of my childhood (Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Silent Hill among many others) were all masterpieces of their time. Even some modern-day games are masterpieces in my view (Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption to name a couple). It could, after all, just be that I have an extremely lax view on what a masterpiece is, but those games absorbed me utterly in their universe. Isn't that all we should really ask of a game?

 

[Wolfenbarg]

I feel as if a gaming "masterpiece" can only be defined by the person playing the game themselves.

Yes yes yes! To say that gaming has yet to see a masterpiece is crap in my opinion. We've had many games whose stories have touched people and gameplay mechanics that have wowed them into a state of necrosis. Just to name a few that I would consider masterpieces:

- Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX, XII, and Tactics
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Portal
- The Baldur's Gate Series
- Knights of the Old Republic 2
- Arcanum
- Fallout
- Gothic
- Planescape: Torment

There are probably more that I've played, but those are a few off the top of my head. Planescape: Torment was so good that it pretty much made me reevaluate a lot of things in life. If something we used to consider children's toys as a medium can do that, then it is a freaking masterpiece. Just because the industry is saturated with shovelware doesn't mean that it hasn't even produced an amazing product.

Also, even if people claim the staying power of films like Citizen Kane, I guarantee you that a majority of modern audiences haven't seen it. Claiming that gaming doesn't have such a game is no standard to measure its quality. It mostly depends on the genre, but in my opinion if we had to choose our Citizen Kane, I think many would cling to Final Fantasy VII or Baldur's Gate 2.

I appreciate the desire to continue evolving and improving games, but I find it slightly ignorant to say that gaming isn't yet on par with films, books, and television because of such broad subjective statements.

 

[mattaui]

What a ridiculous and presumptuous concept. While we all may differ on what constitutes a masterpiece, as people do in any artistic field, there have been games that soared far above and beyond their peers to attain that status.

 

[Anti-Robot Man]

I think this is a very good idea, and financially sound as well - at worst the big developer can write it off a advertising expense, better yet, a game developed in such a way might be a break out success (especially the first few as they will recieve extra media attention). Innovations developed in these "art-house" games may also find their way into the blockbuster titles. It will also keep the industry healthy, you can't have a whole industry of wanabe blockbusters (which unfortunately is what Hollywood is attempting at the moment), you need low and midrange projects as well - a particularly artistic or story-rich experience will help sell such titles in place of prohibitively expensive production values.

I do think one thing holding back videogames from being regarded as art is the lack of auteur recognition. Videogames like film are a collaborative medium (traditional art and literature are distinctly not), film managed to find it's auteurs in the director (and as a result the director's role is actually a little overstated in the popular consciousness). The closest we've seen to this in games is probably Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto (and even he is probably more akin to a Stan Lee figure than a Stanley Kubrick). That's not to say they're aren't other prominant names, who've arguably had even bigger impact like John Carmac, but they do not have the auteur reputation. Until a recognised videogame auteur arises I don't think the medium will recieve the critical attention it deserves.

On a personal note, to me the Mass Effect series is a masterpiece.

 

[Muhkoo]

I disagree with the 2D Boy man, i don't believe we will see a masterpiece of gaming just because you throw millions or billions of dollars after designers, i highly doubt that the things he considers master pieces had Avatar or Starcraft 2 like budgets. On that note i dont believe that there is masterpieces at all mostly because by the very definition of the word masterpiece is something every person should make sure to be critical about which is critical acclaim, which more or less means that someone else is saying this is a masterpiece and you should accept that because i know what a masterpiece is (possible thats not entirely head on but i may have looked up a wrong definition of the word then).

Point being that "masterpiece" is in the eye of the beholder as said above.
In my eyes and probably a lot of other gamers Portal could be one such game, its very critical acclaimed and we've all heard a "the cake is a lie" reference outside of the game by now. But believe it or not there are also people who don't like Portal, or haven't even seen or heard of it yet. On that note, maybe its something everyone should know, like the Mona Lisa painting(possibly a Masterpiece, although i've seen more interesting art in a 5th grade special kids class) then World of Warcraft comes to mind, not that everyone likes it or it being as critically acclaimed as other games but maybe besides pacman, tetris and mario its one of the few games that most people in world have heard,seen, read or even played.

All in all, do we need a masterpiece of gaming? What would be the point, what is really the point of calling anything a masterpiece of the world? Let masterpiece be the original intent, a designers best product, then sure i can agree that some tv shows, movies, music and art are masterpieces of that designer, but certainly it wouldn't be the masterpiece in everyones mind. Although could you live with the thought that even Uwe Boll would have a masterpiece (possibly the movie of his that is the least amount of bad) on second thought, lets just drop the word masterpiece completely, stick to Classic.

 

[Signa]

This is why I play old games. Old games had both design and profit in mind, compare to now where we only have profit in mind. It really shows when you go back to around the 2000 era of gaming.

 

[Sinspiration]

Now this is a guy who knows what he's doing.

 

[TheSkaAssassin]

Half-Life 2
LoZ: OOT
Goldeneye

All three of those are masterpieces to me, and frankly that's all that matters in my mind.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Nice idea. Financially, it's unsound though.

People with money got that way by not taking risks.

No, they got there by taking calculated risks. A 2 million dollar venture is a relatively small risk for a company like EA who routinely finances projects with budgets 10 times that.

This is, incidentally, more or less the same solution proposed by Extra Credits.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I really think we're over-inflating the definition of the word "Masterpiece [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/masterpiece?&qsrc]". Seems the most appropriate definitions would be the second and third ones:

2. anything done with masterly skill: a masterpiece of improvisation.
3. a consummate example of skill or excellence of any kind: The chef's cake was a masterpiece.

That said, I think it's fair to say that the gaming industry has had plenty of masterpieces, especially when you're working with that third definition. The problem though is that we're too busy being the little brother to movie's big brother; that is to say, we're too busy saying "I wanna be just like him" to realize that we already are "just like him". People keep saying that we haven't created the "Citizen Kane" of gaming, but I honestly think of a lot of that is just "been there, done that" mentality. Citizen Kane was such a booming hit because... let's be honest, what else was there back then?

Not to say anything against the movie, having never seen it I can neither vouch for nor decry it; I just can't help but notice that nearly every "masterpiece" movie anyone can list was usually created back at the dawn of movie-making (Schindler's List being one of few examples). It's the same way that long-time gamers will insist that Ocarina of Time or Mario 64 are both better than their Wii sequels, yet newer gamers will go back to play them and not really see what the fuss is about.

Edit: That being said, I do agree with Ron Carmel, though it should be noted that the idea of combining Indy ideas with Corporate dollars is hardly a new concept. It's an idea that's been kicked around a lot (especially recently), we just need to see a company with that kinda money actually launch a program like that.

 

[TheBaron87]

Apparently this guy has somehow avoided playing Super Mario Bros. 3, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Starcraft, Shadow of the Colossus, Portal, and a whole bunch of other games, despite being a developer himself. If you ask me the industry has seen plenty of masterpieces.

 

[PrimoThePro]

Nice idea. Financially, it's unsound though.

People with money got that way by not taking risks.

I think that's arguable, I mean, as it is said, starting developers have to try something edgy and new, a leap of faith to get started, to get noticed. And even if that weren't the case, now that they have so much money, it wouldn't be unreasonable to set a small amount a side just to test out new ideas.

 

[Podunk]

This is, incidentally, more or less the same solution proposed by Extra Credits.

Hey, and here I was, going through the comments, thinking I was the only one to notice!

Apart from this good idea that has been come upon by separate people independently(I would assume), I think it's also interesting to see everyone list the games they feel are 'masterpieces'. And though I think that every game mentioned so far here is a great game (except maybe for a couple from the guy with the laundry list), for some reason I hesitate to call any of them 'masterpieces'. With the technical limitations of todays games stretched so far, I have to agree that a team of well-funded designers looking to make a statement could certainly make a game unlike those we've seen before. It might not make us throw all our old conventionally good games away, but it would certainly be something difficult to compare to anything that came before it. I would love to play this game.