Okay okay, so "dawn" was a poor choice of words, but you know what I mean. Seems every "masterpiece" comes mostly from the 40's and 50's.Fronzel said:1941 was not the dawn of movie-making. Movies had been a big thing for many years by then. What else was there back then? Plenty. Incidentally, it was years before Citizen Kane received the recognition it now enjoys.
That's a problem I've often contemplated; that by constantly switching from platform to platform, we're constantly pushing older games out of the picture, and thus prevent anyone new from experiencing them. Where any movie can played on any player, a game always requires a very specific gaming system. If I want to watch any given movie at any given time, I only need one piece of hardware; the DVD player. If I want to play any given game at any given time, however... it gets to be a headache. Just watch this video [http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/17031] for an idea of what your set-up would have to be like in order to accommodate that (skip to 3:35 if you don't wanna watch the whole thing). So it's certainly hard to get a game to "masterpiece" status when the industry insists on cycling games in and out of the house too quickly for them to really settle into anyone's minds (save for the most devoted of fans).I wonder if video games just need to exist for a certain length of time for it to shake out as a medium and for the gems to be recognized. But how long? And there's another problem; how many people play old games? Less than watch old movies, I wager. There's technology barrier to it, too, given the many formats games have appeared on.
I'm not sure I completely agree - Art is supposed to change the way you see the world, fundamentally altering your viewpoint about life, everyday things, God or people, or anything really. Portal is clever, sure, it's mechanics are amazing, it's humorous and I bloody love it, but ART? Not quite for my money... It's not really something I can describe easily, but games tend to lack the singularity of vision that comes through in music or poetry or painting. So for that matter do films and television, but they tend (thus far) to push the boat out waay further than games.Sixcess said:Games will never be taken seriously as Art until gamers, critics and the industry alike drop this line of reasoning.Tom Goldman said:Carmel compared it to videogames and said they've never been as "expressive as the great works of film, television, literature."
Portal is Art, SotC is Art, and I could list others. To dismiss them as somehow not worthy because they don't deliver the same kind of experience as a non-interactive medium is idiotic and speaks volumes about the inferiority complex the industry suffers from.
Start judging games as games first and last. Otherwise it's like dismissing a novel because the reader doesn't have any control over the direction of the story.
Starcraft is derivative to the point of abject cliche. Everything in it has been tried (give or take) 5 or 6 times elsewhere before, and the themes in it are just hokey sci-fi tropes that have been going as long as we've been making films about swarms of aliens vs empowered humans vs spindly elfin humanoids. It's polished, sure, and it's fun, but I'll say it once: THAT'S NOT ART.e.wlmo4 said:In an interactive medium like this you cannot use the same guidelines for a masterpiece that are used in fields like movies, books and such because the situation at any moments notice and in multiplayer you need to have every player be on an even playing field even when players have often have access to different options available to them and to me a game like Starcraft deserves to call itself a masterpiece.
What I think 2D Boy is saying here is that video games haven't seen that "Masterpiece" that has changed the view of video games in the eyes of the world.WhiteTigerShiro said: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: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?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.
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.