Braid Creator on Games as "Sh**ty Action Movies"

[Something Amyss]

and if its somthing you can understand ,then what is this? fucking kindergarten? true art is incomprehensible motherfuckers!

WRONG! It's only incomprehensible to you! That is brilliant art, and you plebes are just too shallow to understand! (and so am I, I just hope they don't fond out)

hahaha joking aside, while bleak sad endings can be powerful, a happy ending does not make it less "deep" somtimes its nice to feel uplifted and empowered..rather than depressed and confused

I'm inclined to agree. I like a downer ending when it's fitting to the game, movie, whatever.

I was actually kind of rooting for both Harry Potter and Voldemort to die at the end of the series. The "Chosen One" dies, and that's sad, but the good guys have a fighting chance with the undeafeatable leader of the opposition down. I felt the ending to Empire Strikes Back was appropriate. Loved the ending of Planet of the Apes (First movie, don't know about the remake). And Jurassic Bark (Futurama) is nice and touching. The first game example that comes to mind is Actraiser. For some weird reason, I was VERY touched by the fact that the people I had cared for no longer needed me. More bittersweet than bad, but still.

I also like the occasional WTF ending. I think Vanilla Sky would have been incredible if it has ended just a couple minutes sooner.

But it seems like downer or confusing endings are now being tossed on to develop artistic "cred."

There's a certain EA-published game that promoted choices whose ending pissed me off. Partially due to plotholes, but mostly due to the nature of the ending choice.

I of course, refer to Army of Two: The Fortieth Day.

What, you had something else in mind? >.>

Thing is, bad endings are like salt. They're a seasoning. Without a few of them, the good endings don't mean much. You want to sprinkle them on sparingly, or it makes the whole thing unappealing.

To be fair, though, this is kind of the downside to the "art" debate. As a medium becomes more accepted as art, you draw in douchebags. It's the ciiiiiiiircle of aaaaart...It annoys us aaaaaaaaall....

 

[Blind Sight]

*Snip*

I think another issue comes from the fact that the whole 'games are art' thing has driven gamers to accept fairly generic and simplistic deconstructions as legitimate proof of the medium being meaningful in terms of commentary. Bioshock is a good example of this, gamers uphold it as some brilliant critique of Objectivism when anyone with any actual knowledge on the subject can tear it apart quite effectively. But due to most people only having a basic knowledge of it, gamers still accept it as valid simply because it makes the medium 'deeper'. As a result, developers begin to shoe-horn in terrible political and social commentary in an attempt to capitalize on that market. A good example of this is the new XCOM, where in the demo the developers go on and on about how the game will be a social commentary on the 1960s due to characters being black, female, gay, etc. I've already deconstructed the inane historical revisionism associated with this on my youtube channel, but going even down to the fundamentals further shows the simplicity: what are you trying to present? That prejudice is bad? Oh my, what a deep and intelligent analysis.

Another good example of this is the new Rainbow Six Patriots, where the terrorists are going to be American populists. Clearly they're using that to try and make it seem like their game is staying something about the modern American political atmosphere, when in reality (from what I've seen of the game so far) it's something that doesn't really affect the game that much. You could replace them with Islamic or Russian terrorists and it wouldn't matter, they're just using populism to try and make their FPS appear meaningful.

This just further encourages shallow philosophy and commentary in games and the only way to really work ourselves out of it is to expect a higher standard. But since the medium gets attacked so often people rush to protect these shallow titles as games at their finest. It's a bizarre Catch-22. Justifying the medium with weak titles further justifies the creation of these weak titles which stagnates philosophical discourse...while not backing these titles opens gaming up to more criticism.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'd rather play CoD or Halo than Braid any day. I play games to have fun, not to wank over "art".

You dismiss a game because people refer to it as art? That's the exact other side of the extreme you are arguing against. Why not simply take each individual game on it's own value? I think Braid is a fun platformer with great controls and a fun mechanic that is used in increasingly interesting ways. You might think it controls like shit, looks bad and tells a boring story and that would be valid. But to say "Hey, this game is art and I don't wanna be one of 'those guys,' so I'll play CoD instead," is exactly what people shouldn't do.

You are just as bad as what you argue against, only at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I think you just quoted the wrong person there, lady.

I didn't say this.

 

[Blind Sight]

And yet, Mad Men gets hailed as a visionary series for showing just that, so maybe the bar for art isn't so high in other areas.

o called greatest movie ever made is about how William Randolf Hearst had an ego. Anyone who knew anything about the guy coulda told you that. A simple message doesn't mean its not art.

I'm not saying that games aren't art. This is what I'm talking about, how weak philosophy in games is justified under the 'art' logic. What I'm saying is that games like Bioshock shouldn't get a free pass in terms of legitimate philosophy or social commentary just because they're touching on weighty subjects. I've had gamers say that 'Bioshock proves Objectivism is wrong' which is such an inane comment that it really illustrates how far the medium has to go to tackle subjects in a more complicated fashion. The problem is that accepting such simplistic interpretation continues to produce more simplicity. Developers insert poorly constructed commentary in an attempt to appear 'deep' when in reality it's quite shallow. This does not help the medium, it in fact stagnates it. Yes, other forms of media do this as well, and I criticize the hell out of them too. That doesn't justify gaming for doing the same thing.

Citizen Kane is more then just Kane's ego. It's a character study, a slow analysis of how events shaped who he was and how he destroyed himself. That's the ultimate focus of the work, not that he simply had an ego. Mannerisms, line delivery, and shot work are all used to portray that story effectively, i.e. all the things that cinema conveys well. Games have to focus on this, taking what they're good at and successfully merging gameplay and story to produce a compelling experience. This is how you advance the medium, not ham-fisted philosophizing.

 

[Grunt_Man11]

I get Jo-Blo's message (if people don't already call him Jo-Blo they totally should) but the way he comes across when conveying that message makes me want to kick his pretentious teeth down his throat give him a stern talking to. Then I see this and laugh:

I was going to post that video, but I'm hours late. Oh well.

Blow has a knack for stating the obvious in a pretentious manner.

It seems he could also benefit from watching a few episodes of Extra Credits.

 

[KindlySpastic]

No, I'm citing games that people go out of their way to miss the point of and then complain about because its trendy to. In essence, we then come to the root of the problem - people find it easy to be negative, and think it makes them special.

I think thats the biggest obstacle to gaming - it is growing up in an era when cynicism is seen as cool, as such, even a lot of its staunchest defenders will try to pretend they're insightful, relevant or remotely intelligent by attacking it, by taking things out of context, moving the goalposts, or in this case, just presenting a strawman version of the games and attacking it.

The problem with this is that you just assert that people are only being critical for the sake of perceived identity. Without providing a rationale for this assertion it's sort of hard to take your word for it.

I will admit that my own statements on the listed games were on the simplistic side. The problem with having a discussion like this is that there are so many facets you could discuss when it comes to games as art and this discussion seems to focus on very general statements . You can discuss game mechanics, you can discuss aesthetics, you can discuss writing and narrative, you can discuss moral choice systems and so on.

Funnily enough, I think it's more of a problem that people tend to be defensive about games they like because they think of it as an identity marker. So many games get away with bad aspects because people want to believe they have good taste - whatever the hell that means.

 

[Soak]

First i think, wow, his critique may applie to some games, but which statement doesn't at some point, but this one is far from being "evaluating", or "insightfull", what a proper critic can be. And then i think that Jo-Blo (i like that one) is nothing but trolling, pointing out the flaws of others to overshadow his own and then i think of Bertolt Brecht, who did the same in dramatic theatre, acting like his way of dramaturgy would be so much better than all the others, but failing miserably at developing his own and in my opinion, he never did a good play himself.
Sure some like Brecht and why not and sure some like Jo-Blo and i bet his game is playable too, but neither should nore is close to being able to act like they would be any better.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Oh, please save us, Jonathan Blow, a man so genius and artistic he forgot to actually make his game fun! A one hit wonder that has us all mesmerized for about long enough to write a raving review, only to then realize we'd never read a word of the wall of expository text it dropped on us in lieu of narrative or structure! Let us remember to bask in it's hand painted still aesthetics, as if we were playing with a high quality puzzle book for children!

Sometimes, when I go to the theater, I want to see a piece like Citizen Kane. Other times, I want to see Kill Bill. A different night, a different mood, maybe I'll want to catch something like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or even Army of Darkness.

When I want to talk about art in games, or games as art, I hold aloft such titles as Bastion. When I want transcendence, I put forth Journey. When I want to take the role of a hero, I'll play one of the many wonderful Legend of Zelda titles. When I want to find the best way to murder tons of dudes, I'll play Saint's Row the Third.

But, when I want to be reminded of someone who wanted games to be art so bad he stopped making most of the game move, removed all of the immersion with construction equipment, and removed as much of the "game" part as he could from the game beyond a movement mechanic, then I'll play Jo-Blo's "opus".

 

[aoi287]

Oh, please save us, Jonathan Blow, a man so genius and artistic he forgot to actually make his game fun!

Took the words right out of my mouth.
Sometimes I wonder why a man who seems to hate video games so much insists on making video games.

 

[MrBaskerville]

He isn´t entirely right, Games are aren´t just shitty action movies, they can also be crappy art movies (*cough* Dear Esther*Cough*). Unfortunately they are rarely good in the story department, though there have been a fair amount of enjoyable, and sometimes amazing moments. Like watching public domain movies, for every gem there´s a 100 poorly written borefests.

Luckily most games comes packaged with a nice "skip story" button, so you can enjoy some of the things the medium is actually good at: Gameplay.

 

[Evan Halfmann]

shitty action movies?

other way round actually

a decent action game lets me actually have some fun

a shitty action movie has a few explosions....

also action does not= shit

Good point man. Funny how the connotation of the word "action" changes when in the context of movies and then video games.

 

[Vault101]

Sometimes, when I go to the theater, I want to see a piece like Citizen Kane. Other times, I want to see Kill Bill. A different night, a different mood, maybe I'll want to catch something like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or even Army of Darkness.

".

what annoys me is that action does not always mean "micheal bay" it can aslo mean "kill bill" which is light years ahead of anything micheal bay ever crapped out

in other words....mabye games cant or arnt citizen kane...but they can be kill bill

 

[SanguineSymphony]

In general gamers are more interested/invested in games being art than other people involved in the process. Most publishers are perfectly fine with games being merely products.

I personally care more about a game being fun than "artistic". Obviously you can do both but thus far most games that try at least for me fall flat.

I'd rather play NMH, Bayo, or DMC than Braid...

Oh and I like movies like El Topo, Holy Mountain, Eraserhead etc... so even on the film front I disagree with Blows.