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

[rsvp42]

I think we're expecting games to become something they're not meant to be. We keep comparing them to films and TV series, but they're not really the same thing, are they? I think it's enough for a game to just be fun or scary or intense or gory or whatever the developer wants it to be.

Maybe the reason we haven't had games that make us cry or contemplate humanity (or whatever we believe movies do that games can't) is because those kinds of stories are best told through film or novels. Movies can show us strange new worlds or make us cry, plus many other emotions, as can novels, but games can let us control the action and feel the power. They can give us stories and fill our nights with the kind of fun that movies or books are too passive to provide. Games are a DIFFERENT MEDIUM.

What is this vast new frontier of gaming art that we haven't touched? No one knows. We have this vague sense that games can be so much more and this vague sense of what that means, but no one can really articulate it. Think about board games. Do we expect those to evoke the same emotions as a dramatic film? Do we expect to come out of a Cutes & Ladders game with tears in our eyes as we contemplate our mortality? No! Because it's a game. But that doesn't mean that it's not worthy. That doesn't mean that the experience of a video game is flawed or lower in comparison to film. It's just different.

 

[IamQ]

That's actually a really good idea. Wonder if any of the big-shot game publishers think of this aswell.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

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.

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.

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.

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 would say that this is the problem with being a profit-based art medium, but movies are as well. So clearly it's a problem with changing formats too often. I think another big obstacle though is that there are 3 completely different platforms (4 if you want to count PC) that are not cross-compatible at all. So on top of constantly having to change platforms, gamers are also forced to limit what they can experience unless they can afford multiple systems. So not only are we constantly cycling through games, but we're also creating a divide where most games are only playable by a percentage of the consumer base.

Basically, imagine if in order to watch Citizen Kane, you had to track down a VCR from the 40s (just roll with it, I know there weren't VCRs back then). But not just any VCR, you had to find the Sony VCR because a Phillips VCR from the same era won't play it. Now you want to watch It's a Wonderful Life because Christmas is right around the corner, so now you have to try and find a Samsung VCR from the 40's, because that Sony one you just got won't play it. Yeah...

 

[Dead_Boy]

Really love 2D boy ^^

But talk about being late to the party, what do you think the few official Starcarft mods are all about, and I believe Team Ico actually is such a team. Set up not to be profitable but artistic experimenting. Would also say that portal by valve was the same kind of risk taking.

Actually having Indies doing the experimenting is just a functions of the corporative mindset, wonderful way to externalize cost of operation which only few drawbacks (ownership).

And last no perfect game?

tetris?

 

[e.wlmo4]

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.

 

[House_Vet]

Carmel compared it to videogames and said they've never been as "expressive as the great works of film, television, literature."

Games will never be taken seriously as Art until gamers, critics and the industry alike drop this line of reasoning.

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.

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.

In order to say something is art, you MUST draw comparison with pre-existing art: the idea cannot form in a vacuum. Therefore you need reference points, therefore you must compare games to other media. For example, when cave painting began, what did the people draw? Animals and geography, as well as people - you have to take reference from what you already know in order to make something else. Games today are heavily influenced by film and television, and as a result, we tend to compare them, and indeed must compare them in order to say anything meaningful about games themselves.

You cannot say "this is art because I say so" no matter how many modern "artists" try that one because they don't know any better. Picasso learnt to paint classically to a great standard before he began cubism and similarly, we need input from our classics (film, tv, etc) until we find our own voice expressed within the mechanics and sensory feedback (and feedforward) of games.

Games should indeed be judged as games, but first and foremost, rather than first and last.

 

[House_Vet]

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.

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.

 

[V8 Ninja]

While I could argue about whether or not we've seen a video game masterpiece, I definitely agree with his main idea. The problem is that I don't see it happening anytime soon. Game companies don't want to loose profit, no matter how small of a profit it is.

 

[smudgey]

I have to disagree; i think there are some wonderful masterpieces of gaming out there. If Super Metroid can't be declared a masterpiece (thanks to brilliant design and telling a story mostly without words) then what is this guy expecting?

 

[More Fun To Compute]

What a lot of rot. I've lost some serious respect here. World of Goo was a lot of fun but these guys are nowhere near the point where they can be talking down all the history of games.

All that a masterpiece is, is a painting that an artist creates to prove that he has mastered the craft and can be viewed as a master craftsmen. Is he saying that nobody in the industry can be viewed as a master craftsman of their trade? Is he saying that all TV before The Wire was made by journeymen? Pointless use of language to look down on people for no reason.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

This fella has not played Animal Crossing

 

[Demodeus]

Theres been several Masterpieces in gaming.
So I'll just name a few:
Starcraft (Perfect Balancing and Perfect Gameplay)
Unreal Tournament 99 and 2004 (Perfection of Gameplay)
World of Warcraft (Well I cant find any fun in there but roughly 15 million people might have a different opinion)
Monkey Island
Gears of War I

Thats 6 just of the top of my head. And Ive only listed PC games in a tiny spectrum (like 99.5-100% of Awesome) and only of the games I played. So if this guy thinks that theres been no real masterpieces he needs to shut his trap and just look harder and past all these stupid casual games..

 

[Direwolf750]

It seems that this person must follow this site avidly. The creator of World of Goo just said, almost word for word, what was said on Extra Credits about indie games

 

[Jumplion]

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.

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.

With "Citizen Kane", from what I've been told everything that was coming out at the time was either a musical, romance, or a comedy, and Citizen Kane was one of the first to come out with a serious storyline or whatever, from my basic understanding of it.

Sure, we could say that "There are loads of 'masterpieces' in games!" and start listing off the ones we think are said "masterpieces", but that's moot. Most of the games we would list would only be great inside the video game industry, few if any people know what the hell Planetscape: Torment is, let alone Shadow of the Collosus, Portal, Half-Life, Okami, Bioshock, whatever.

That's my take on it anyway, but I still vehemently believe that we need an "Orson Wells" or "Stanley Kubrick" of gaming before we can get a "Citizen Kane" or "A Clockwork Orange" kind of impact on the world through a game.

 

[boholikeu]

It all depends on how you define masterpiece. I guess I'll have to see The Wire before I can say whether or not I agree with 2D Boy.

Nice idea. Financially, it's unsound though.

People with money got that way by not taking risks.

It's not financially unsound. Giant movie studios essentially do the same thing all the time with their "arthouse" divisions.

I don't cite Valve games because, while great games, they don't really advance the humanity of the art. What does HL2 say? What does Portal say about being a person? Nothing that other media have not ignored.

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 think you'd be surprised how much HL2 and Portal actually have to say, and how much of that message is actually contained within the game mechanics.

Also I don't see why games need to forgo narratives in order to be "true to the medium". That's a bit like saying that films need to be all about visuals in order to be their best.

LOL, actually [sub]some[/sub] PC gamers have seen more than one. There are two games: Pathologic and The Void, both games by the Russian indie studio Ice Pick Lodge. Truly great games, though the most hard and stressful ones as well, you know, just like everything is.

They are great games, but I would still say they fall short of masterpieces in other mediums. Pathologic for one is quite crippled by some pretty bad bugs, brilliant as it is.

Sure, we could say that "There are loads of 'masterpieces' in games!" and start listing off the ones we think are said "masterpieces", but that's moot. Most of the games we would list would only be great inside the video game industry, few if any people know what the hell Planetscape: Torment is, let alone Shadow of the Collosus, Portal, Half-Life, Okami, Bioshock, whatever.

That's my take on it anyway, but I still vehemently believe that we need an "Orson Wells" or "Stanley Kubrick" of gaming before we can get a "Citizen Kane" or "A Clockwork Orange" kind of impact on the world through a game.

Actually this is probably the best definition of a masterpiece that I've seen here yet.

 

[Femaref]

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

ninja'ed. That game is indeed a masterpiece.

 

[Casual Shinji]

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]

Games are never going to reach such a status in the world today. Movies have been around alot longer and are all around more well respected. The majority of people see games as toys and if games like Silent Hill 2, Okami or Shadow of The Colossus won't change their minds, nothing will. In their opinion, they're holding a controler hence it's a toy, not to be taken seriously.

 

[Danpascooch]

YES! We NEED a bit of risk taking!

 

[esperandote]

Wasn't that idea mentioned in Extra Credits?

 

[HellsingerAngel]

Games will never be taken seriously as Art until gamers, critics and the industry alike drop this line of reasoning.

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.

The unfortunate thing is that games will never be art. I think the definition for art being wholely non-interactive is one based upon certainties. When was the last time you felt some ping of emotion for a movie? If you can quantify it, is it the same as when you last felt the same for a video game's narative? The problem is that when you invest yourself in an activity that takes multiple facets (logical problem solving and emotional story reading) one mutes the other, as they take from two seperate parts from the brain. In the case of a gamer, it tends to be the latter because the "game" portion of the experience is most prevelent.

Now, it could certainly be argued that more experienced gamers gain a greater exeprience because the "game" portion is more muscle memory than anything, but that destroys the entire basis of the medium right there. Saying that you need to be good at art to experience it is something that will always seperate games from real art, which can pull out emotions from anyone or anything, so long as they have invested interest into the presentation.

Being a toy isn't bad. It just invokes different emotional responces. Nostalgia, memories and good times are just as important as feeling for a particular character.

EDIT:

I do agree that we've had a few masterpieces in our time, but few and far between. I think for a game to qualify as a masterpiece though, we can't exactly hold it to the same standards as other medium, or else gaming will never be allowed to stand on its own as art. If we look at a game and just say "Wow that has great writing." well, that's great if the game was a book; that's all a book is. Movies can't even be based on just the writing because it's also dependent on camera angles, lighting, music, acting, etc. For a game to be a masterpiece, it needs to incorporate the gameplay and/or mechanics as a major aspect of what it is. I'd be just as willing to call the original Super Mario Bros. a masterpiece as soon as Bioshock, among a few others have mentioned.

This. I would say the farthest we've come are titles like Super Mario Bros. where the game mechanics are the central point. Everyone knows it, everyone loves it, everyone can agree it is a great game. I'm not sure what else we'd need to say "this is a gaming Masterpiece" but there you go.