I think you meant to quote Gorrath my friend. My comment actual comment unfortunately is not as thought out as his.Zachary Amaranth said:
ARTARTARTARTFART
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
Recommended Videos
All those games mentioned, are shit. No way about it, they're boring and dull.
You want a good compelling game, with a strong, well told narrative, and engaging GAMEplay, and a good matching aesthetic? Bastion. I say it every time, and it's 3000x more fun than Dear Esther will ever be, games like that, to me are what some would consider "modern art". You know the kind, a black square painted on a white canvas which people stare at thoughtfully rubbing their chins as they come up with contrived reasoning behind it, and the social message it is trying to convey from the artist, when really, it's a black square on a white canvas. I feel that is what Dear Esther is trying to be, in short, pseudo-high brow bullshit.
You want a good compelling game, with a strong, well told narrative, and engaging GAMEplay, and a good matching aesthetic? Bastion. I say it every time, and it's 3000x more fun than Dear Esther will ever be, games like that, to me are what some would consider "modern art". You know the kind, a black square painted on a white canvas which people stare at thoughtfully rubbing their chins as they come up with contrived reasoning behind it, and the social message it is trying to convey from the artist, when really, it's a black square on a white canvas. I feel that is what Dear Esther is trying to be, in short, pseudo-high brow bullshit.
Until we stop demanding that a game has to put full throttle on the realism aspect of their visuals it will continue as such.McMarbles said:
You know, next gen graphics and all that.
A. The torch of blame will be passed on to something else eventually. We are just taking the brunt of it now because we are new to the medium field compared to others and the US loves to put the blame on anyone but themselves for stuff like this.erttheking said:
B. I am too. I can sympathize with that. Again this relates back to my A point. Once they realize people aren't that fucking stupid or rather, it's takes far too much effort to convince people otherwise they will find something else to blame.
C. Also relates back to point B. Again this is yet another case of the government not putting the blame where it properly belongs. Every single game console has parental controls implemented in the system to prevent kids from playing games they don't want them to. Every single game has a rating system ranging fro eC(Early child)- Ao(Adults Only) not to mention that Gamestop and other game centric store employees will REPEATEDLY tell parents before purchase that this game isn't exactly appropriate for their kids. If they buy the damn thing anyway, they should have no leverage to whine about anything game related. Simple as that.(of course this is idealistic and we all know it won't happen anytime soon.)
Which raises a whole other issue. Why does something need to be considered art in order to be protected from censorship due to being protected speech? Shouldn't any form of self-expression qualify whether it be "art" or not?Gorrath said:
Since when did video games need government funding?2xDouble said:
Why not?Mimsofthedawg said:
"Art" is kind of a stupid term. But I tend to fall in Yahtzee's camp here, in that most video game stories are shit. I can count the number of truly great video game stories on one hand. The biggest reason why is character issues. Video games don't usually have one, at least on the protagonist side. Since video games hinge entirely on audience participation (unless it's a JRPG or Metal Gear Solid), every second of screen time has to be filled with action: puzzles, enemies, whatever. Anything else, and you risk having your audience get bored. There's no time for deep exposition unless that exposition is being punched into a bad guy's face. Not to mention, the protagonist is usually just an empty shell on purpose so the player can transplant themselves. The greatest video game character people tout (Gordon Freeman) is only different from a Twilight character by not being or dating a vampire. And one of the greatest video game stories people tout (Braid) is really just a subversion of a standard game trope.
Yeah, you have a point. It doesn't make having to put up with this crap any more annoying though. It doesn't help that we've been a popular target for a few decades now.Dragonbums said:
Back when it was still a burgeoning and struggling media, film was criticized as "not being art"; it, and its somewhat-more-reserved brother photography, were called simply a mechanical process, incapable of the "representational" aspects media such as painting and drawing showed- it could only show us what was there, just like our eyes, and not impart the feelings and views of the creator.
Hell, way back in the day, another old guy was complaining about a new type of media, saying that it would ruin the memory skills of the young and that only his preferred method could maintain civilization property. The "old guy" was Socrates, the "new type of media" was writing, and the only reason we know that Socrates said that was because Plato wrote it down. And let's not even get into how much some people absolutely loathed the printing press.
Ebert's problem was that he didn't understand video games; he admitted as much not long after his famous "video games are not art" quote. But I think that this inability to understand games as an art form seeped out of a deeper bias: I believe that Ebert was of the mind that art must be engaged passively; basically, that one should sit down, shut up, and look at this thing, and maybe you'll learn something from someone smarter than you. That's pretty much the antithesis of games, where one drives the narrative by one's self (usually) and can alter at least some portion of it themselves, even if only by losing the game.
I believe that a lot of people are approaching this argument the wrong way. Instead of saying "games are art because they resemble other forms of art in ways A, B and C" (and I often feel that cutscenes and QTEs in games are lazy ways of evoking the art aspects of film in games), we should start constructing arguments along the lines of "games are art because they can do these things that no other media can" and work from there.
I will say, though, that gaming's ascension as a form of art will probably mimic that of film in one important way: It will be the independent creators, not the big companies, that will trailblaze the way towards greater quality and art. I expect that we'll see many more independent games looking to push the barrier than any big-budget AAA production.
Condensed version: We'll get there, guys. We just have to stop mimicking and start innovating, keeping an eye on what makes games different from all other media.
Hell, way back in the day, another old guy was complaining about a new type of media, saying that it would ruin the memory skills of the young and that only his preferred method could maintain civilization property. The "old guy" was Socrates, the "new type of media" was writing, and the only reason we know that Socrates said that was because Plato wrote it down. And let's not even get into how much some people absolutely loathed the printing press.
Ebert's problem was that he didn't understand video games; he admitted as much not long after his famous "video games are not art" quote. But I think that this inability to understand games as an art form seeped out of a deeper bias: I believe that Ebert was of the mind that art must be engaged passively; basically, that one should sit down, shut up, and look at this thing, and maybe you'll learn something from someone smarter than you. That's pretty much the antithesis of games, where one drives the narrative by one's self (usually) and can alter at least some portion of it themselves, even if only by losing the game.
I believe that a lot of people are approaching this argument the wrong way. Instead of saying "games are art because they resemble other forms of art in ways A, B and C" (and I often feel that cutscenes and QTEs in games are lazy ways of evoking the art aspects of film in games), we should start constructing arguments along the lines of "games are art because they can do these things that no other media can" and work from there.
I will say, though, that gaming's ascension as a form of art will probably mimic that of film in one important way: It will be the independent creators, not the big companies, that will trailblaze the way towards greater quality and art. I expect that we'll see many more independent games looking to push the barrier than any big-budget AAA production.
Condensed version: We'll get there, guys. We just have to stop mimicking and start innovating, keeping an eye on what makes games different from all other media.
I've had a short attention span of late, due to what has been diagnosed as chronic pain. Makes me spacy. I did indeed quote the wrong person. My bad.Dragonbums said:
This is pretty much my take on it as well. The term "art" was never meant to be applied to something as dynamic and interactive as videogames. Art is something that is crafted a certain way to be viewed or experienced as it is. Videogames are (or at least can be) so much more than that. Some videogames are essentially living breathing worlds of their own.Gene O said:
I've read some of these "Books"... it was about the unhealthy relationships between supernatural creatures, it had some strange ideas about love and sexuality, but it didn't seem to know any of this. It was almost physically painful for me to read.
I cannot for the life of me understand why when people compare games to books or films, they compare great films to mediocre games.
People act like theirs a shortage of artistically profound games, and that simply isn't true. Once or twice a year, I discover a film I consider to be genuinely magnificent, and once or twice a year, I do the same for games.
Excellence isn't any more rare among games than it is among film or literature.
Further more, while it's true that many games ignore or at least neglect narrative, there are still many games with great stories. I don't think storytelling is a weakness of games at all, in fact I think there are certain stories that only work as video games.
I cannot for the life of me understand why when people compare games to books or films, they compare great films to mediocre games.
People act like theirs a shortage of artistically profound games, and that simply isn't true. Once or twice a year, I discover a film I consider to be genuinely magnificent, and once or twice a year, I do the same for games.
Excellence isn't any more rare among games than it is among film or literature.
Further more, while it's true that many games ignore or at least neglect narrative, there are still many games with great stories. I don't think storytelling is a weakness of games at all, in fact I think there are certain stories that only work as video games.
Ok ok, settle down. Firstly, ok I misread your post. Secondly who says games can't do that stuff you said without the vindication of being called "art" by people who are too stuck up to give games the time of day anyway. Why should developers go out of their way to try and impress these stuck up snobs when trying to do so is completely futile. Shouldn't they focus instead on making the games they actually want to make? If these games are compelling and have artistic merit and whatever, great; if not then as long as they're still fun nothing is lost.Mimsofthedawg said:
Video games are a legitimate art form and as such deserve all the legal protections and social freedoms as other art; the artistic merit of each individual game is up to the player to extract and interpret as they see fit.
It doesn't. But surely developers being handed millions to billions of dollars, free from expected financial returns, is good for the betterment and advancement of the medium, is it not? especially if a significant portion of that goes to college-level education in the subject and to allow new and up-and-coming artists to practice and perfect their art without constraint (within the confines of education space, of course... it's tax money, not miraculous civil reform). I'd say that's worth having a title.canadamus_prime said:
A man can dream, though... a man can dream.
Well said. I think it's hard to pin down what qualifies as art, but for every GTA IV there is a Saints Row, for every Lord of the Rings a Dead Alive, and for every Bram Stoker, a Stephanie Meyer, and so on in EVERY media, and I wouldn't have it any other way.Archangel357 said:
It's what makes the human experience itself a work of art.
Ebert was the biggest reason for this, and he never fully understood the implications of him bashing art. Other critic friends of his tried to buy him a PS3 and the games Flower and Journey to try and show him, and he refused to play.
I still have respect for him, because in the end he addressed it with "I don't know this media, and I never should have spoken about a media I do not know" at that point I forgave him. His words had meaning in that field, though, and it's taken some time for the injury to soften.
I liked this strip, but it seems like old news. The Museum of Modern Art has now gone on record as recognizing specific games as art, and saying that some games are art. I'm okay with this, a Video Game isn't art, but some Video Games are. Some Video Games are just Games, and neither is wrong or bad, nor should either be shamed for not being or being art. Video Games are a new media altogether, and so some of it will be art. I have the same feelings towards Books, and Movies.
I still have respect for him, because in the end he addressed it with "I don't know this media, and I never should have spoken about a media I do not know" at that point I forgave him. His words had meaning in that field, though, and it's taken some time for the injury to soften.
I liked this strip, but it seems like old news. The Museum of Modern Art has now gone on record as recognizing specific games as art, and saying that some games are art. I'm okay with this, a Video Game isn't art, but some Video Games are. Some Video Games are just Games, and neither is wrong or bad, nor should either be shamed for not being or being art. Video Games are a new media altogether, and so some of it will be art. I have the same feelings towards Books, and Movies.
Do...do you not know how most comics are done? Because most comics have a bunch of different people working together to make them, not just one guy that draws, writes, produces, and everything with it. Very few major works of art are actually made by one man alone, and quite frankly collaborative projects tend to be the best. If each musician in an orchestra just decided to do whatever the fuck they felt like doing while paying now mind to the other people in the orchestra, I'm afraid to say it will sound like utter shit. It might be art, but that doesn't make it any less shit. That's how games work, someone has an idea, and they work with multiple people to help them flesh it out. That one person does NOT call all the shots, because I'm doubting one man can be a brilliant writer, programmer, animator, musician, voice actor, tester, and mass producer. If that's what you define as art, you have the most superficial standards I've ever seen.ticklefist said: