"Games should just be fun."

[Azaraxzealot]

snip

well, what i, personally, mean by it is that just because we're moving towards straight faced, emotional tales doesn't mean that we should sacrifice the occasional Prototype or God of War or Bulletstorm.

For a game to be a game, it needs to focus on being fun FIRST, then all else should be focused on. Because you can have the greatest story ever written with beautiful visuals and heart-stopping moments of intensity coupled with tear-jerking moments of sincerity, but for it to be a GOOD game it needs to tie that in seamlessly with the gameplay.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I realize that cross-media parallels don't have much meaning in these kinds of debates, but let's roll with it.

1) All games are art, just like all films are art. There can be stupid art and lowbrow art and art whose only purpose is to laugh at farts, but that doesn't stop it being art. It's a cultural product which stimulates the senses or emotions, therefore it's art.
2) All art is meant to be enjoyed on some level. Even deliberately counter-cinematic movies and deliberately dense alternative films are meant to be enjoyed. Enjoyment doesn't have to be limited to being excited or comforted or made happy.

So no. It's not about art vs. fun. It's about a cultural conflict between people who feel that all games should restrict themselves to being lowbrow entertainment, i.e. that they should be uncomplicated, unchallenging, exciting, accessible and fast-paced versus the idea that video games should incorporate a greater diversity of experiences and above all shouldn't be afraid to be highbrow, pretentious, complicated or try to 'push the boundaries'.

And really.. I don't see the conflict. Sure, it's a bit annoying that the AAA industry seems to be so mindless right now, but at the same time we live in an age where it's becoming easier and easier for small developers with big ideas to distribute games, and that's only going to get better. So yeah, we already have our Hollywood, we're just developing our arthouse right now.

Why fight over something as trivial as personal taste in time-wasters?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Videogames should be fun for the same reasons that board games, card games, tabletop games, and sports should be fun; by definition, that's what they're for. People keep comparing them to books and movies, but they're a completely separate medium, one that excels at making games, not telling stories. Expecting a game to be like a movie is like expecting a painting to have the character development of a book; it's completely barking up the wrong tree.

All of this reminds me of an article I read years ago about becoming a game designer. The main piece of advice was that, if you want to break into the industry, you should be able to take a standard deck of playing cards and come up with a new form of solitaire. If you can't do that, no amount of story hooks or character designs will make you a good game designer. While it may have been somewhat hyperbolic, it gets to the heart of what game design is -- designing a game, not a painting, a book, or a movie. It's a lesson that we as gamers should take to heart, lest we go back to the days of mid 90's style FMV games. Anybody remember that horrible attempt at making games more like movies?

 

[Grunt_Man11]

The problem is that many 'art-games' are boring. I have no problem with thought-provoking games, but it has to hold my interest.

This right here.

Being entertaining, or fun, should be a priority with games, movies, and such. Why?

Let's look at all these "great works of literature" that "explore the human condition" which many of us had to read in high school. Now, be honest here. Who here actually remembers any of these pieces fondly?

I'll be honest here. I had to read "The Grapes of Wraith" in high school. I found it to be unimpressive tripe. Why? Because it was boring!
Face it people, if a person is bored then they don't care. That's a fact.

How valuable is a message on the human condition in a book, movie, or game that hardly anyone can get interested in? Answer: None, it's worthless.

An unheard message is meaningless, and trying to plop people down and force them to listen to it will only earn their ire.

If you want to make a thought-provoking story about the human condition that's fine, but if you fail to make it entertaining then I don't want to hear you whine when I fail to care about it.

"Art is not enough."
Unless they want their "work of art" to nothing more than high school curriculum forced on students who will forget it ever existed the first chance they get, instead of truly appreciate it, then the artists of the world need to understand this.

 

[ckam]

Things can be fun and be art, too... Yeah.

 

[42]

The whole argument that game should be fun is always used without back up, but luckily i do so here goes,

When you play Minecraft, do you play it because you think there's some underlying meaning within the blocky world? No, you play it because you want to create stuff and you wouldn't do that if you didn't think it was fun.
When you play Call of Duty or Battlefield, is it because you think you're immersing you're self into what it feels like to be a real soldier? No, you play because you enjoy it, and you're there to either play online, or go through the story campaign an then move on to something else.
When you play puzzle games, do you do it because of it's art style and charming visuals and mechanics? No, because those just make up the game for what it is, and you play because you found it challenging.
When you play GTA or any other type of sandbox, do you play because it's supposed to be realistic (applies to shooters as well?) No, because sandboxes are there to mess around in. (see minecraft example above)

In short games are obviously played to entertain, and if it's not fun for the player then why bother with it at all?
It all has to do with what the person wants out of the game. Games are supposed to be an entertaining experience, and everyone has their own definition of what fun is, but as for the defence that Games are supposed to be fun, they are half right, because i mean would you play, or do something in general if it wasn't fun?

 

[Kahunaburger]

Artful = Usually the kind of games that you look at and say "Aha... I see what you did there", beyond which you might play them for a while but they don't have much long-term appeal...
Examples would be "The Path", "Dear Esther", "The Void"

Entertaining/Immersive = Movie experience, usually all those story-heavy games that you usually go through once or twice to get/play the story and be done with them.
Examples: L.A. Noire, Heavy Rain, MAFIA 2 etc.

I'd go so far as to say that something that engages in original storytelling and mechanics such as L.A. Noire has much more artistic merit than something like The Path which sets out to be art and does so by throwing a stack of imagery at a wall and seeing what sticks.

Unless they want their "work of art" to nothing more than high school curriculum forced on students who will forget it ever existed the first chance they get, instead of truly appreciate it, then the artists of the world need to understand this.

I think the problem with, in your example, teaching The Grapes of Wrath to high schoolers, is that high schoolers are generally too young to fully engage with it. There's nothing wrong with The Grapes of Wrath as a book, and there should be room for the gaming equivalent of The Grapes of Wrath in an ideal world. The issue is that the people who buy, read, and enjoy books like The Grapes of Wrath are, more often than not, not playing video games, so we don't have the market yet for the video game equivalent of The Grapes of Wrath. Give it another 50 years, and you might very well have stuff like that out there. (In fact, you're starting to see more "literary" games in stuff like interactive fiction - it's dirt cheap to make, and tends to attract a very specific crowd, so that sort of fiction is actually viable.)

The thing I'm keeping an eye on is Six Days in Fallujah. If it's actually what the developers are hyping it as, it may very well be a landmark in interactive media as an art form.