Progressing gaming

[Vault101]

So the audience is the reactionary one between the two then?

its just basing everything on "well that worked so we'll just do that" is a great way to breed stagnation

entertainment/art by its very nature is derivative but if you make things TOO derivative (for the wrong reasons) then it sucks

its the reason Mike myers was cast as "the cat" in "the cat in the hat" a decision that had absolutely no bearing on weather or not this guy was right for the role it was "he's popular, he's a comedian, put him in this big budget thing"

and its the reason videogame protagonists have become so distilled that when Infamous 2 was in the works [I/]they wanted to take cole McGrath and make him even more unoriginal...COLE MCGRATH[/I]

most of the works we hail as classics were unique/trying something new for their time, like Alien or Star Wars, nobody asked for a movie with Wookies and Jedi in it but turned out they fucking loved it,

that doesn't mean you should rush out and make a game that is literally nothing but a blue screen with odd narration (there is a movie that is exactly that...it exists) but trying new things and innovating is something the industry seriously needs

[quote/]Also, I keep seeing people mention inclusivity, can you help me with why that might be? I don't think it popped up in my starting post at all and I am really quite baffled why it keeps showing up.[/quote]
its a funny word but...basically something that has elements that aren't white bro guys in it

so for example a lot of RPG's are inclusive by default because they allow you amny customization options, Bioshock Infinite can be enjoyed by many people whereas gears of war might give you testosterone poisoning (personal taste applys)

no not everything NEEDS to be "inclusive"

 

[drednoahl]

Does a great gaming medium depend upon a great, superior audience?

Yes it does. It also requires a superior videogame industry that is balanced by an independent press otherwise the economic triangle will be biased too much in to the detriment of the audience thereby weakening it.

The consumer, the audience has been shat all over for years by both the press and the industry. I feel let down and have done for a few years now. I stopped reading reviews seriously here on this site with the review of Mass Effect 3 - if you don't remember the tag line it was "the ending the series - and its fans - deserve." I now only read reviews for entertainment and it's very rare I bother at all doing that.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.353199-Mass-Effect-3-Review?page=13#14043180

Get a grip gaming media or your days will be numbered - you are getting less and less relevant to gamers by the day and you only need to look in the mirror to see who is to blame.

 

[StatusNil]

Well, coming to this from a Critical Theory perspective, cultivating an audience already means that what we are dealing with is not "Art" in any real sense of the term. As Theodor Adorno points out, the artistic process is defined by an autonomy to engage with aesthetic problems that is uncompromised by an economic necessity of procuring the support of an "audience". Art, by definition, is created in a position of privilege removed from the mechanics of production which, as Adorno states, does not invalidate its potential for insight, but firmly situates it apart from the actual practices of labor and thus politics.

Conversely, the pseudo-art of popular entertainment is a product of capitalist industrial practices that Adorno and Max Horkheimer aptly term the "Cultural Industry" (see "The Dialectic of Enlightenment"). Its production is directly dependent upon the appeal to a mass audience, the source of the capital expended in the production and extracted as profits by the capitalist. The very method of capitalist production inevitably compromises the artistic integrity of the product by the necessity of appealing to the prejudices of the targeted audience, causing a circular reinforcement of these prejudices. The folly of dreams of a "superior" audience is revealed as a project of mass cognitive engineering of a population with the "desirable" prejudices by an elite class seeking a parasitic access to this projected population, which is rightly seen as cause of serious alarm for those concerned with the preservation of the intellectual autonomy of the individual.

The unfortunate conflation of art and mass entertainment into an undifferentiated class of objects is a result of the degradation of the postmodernist critiques of the privileged position of the artist into a misguided leveling doctrine (best characterized as "vulgar postmodernism") that would have appalled the more intellectually rigorous critical theorists of the Frankfurt School. Make no mistake, Mr. Chipman's vacuous pretensions to a pseudo-Nietzschean transcendence of this medium of the cultural industry into vague "Uber-consumerism" masks an insidious project of intellectual imperialism. Judging by the deplorable quality of his hateful demagoguery of late, it is reasonable to doubt if he has any personal appreciation of the interests involved, and how he has been made into a tool by them.

 

[runic knight]

So the audience is the reactionary one between the two then?

its just basing everything on "well that worked so we'll just do that" is a great way to breed stagnation

entertainment/art by its very nature is derivative but if you make things TOO derivative (for the wrong reasons) then it sucks

its the reason Mike myers was cast as "the cat" in "the cat in the hat" a decision that had absolutely no bearing on weather or not this guy was right for the role it was "he's popular, he's a comedian, put him in this big budget thing"

and its the reason videogame protagonists have become so distilled that when Infamous 2 was in the works [I/]they wanted to take cole McGrath and make him even more unoriginal...COLE MCGRATH[/I]

most of the works we hail as classics were unique/trying something new for their time, like Alien or Star Wars, nobody asked for a movie with Wookies and Jedi in it but turned out they fucking loved it,

that doesn't mean you should rush out and make a game that is literally nothing but a blue screen with odd narration (there is a movie that is exactly that...it exists) but trying new things and innovating is something the industry seriously needs

[quote/]Also, I keep seeing people mention inclusivity, can you help me with why that might be? I don't think it popped up in my starting post at all and I am really quite baffled why it keeps showing up.

its a funny word but...basically something that has elements that aren't white bro guys in it

so for example a lot of RPG's are inclusive by default because they allow you amny customization options, Bioshock Infinite can be enjoyed by many people whereas gears of war might give you testosterone poisoning (personal taste applys)

no not everything NEEDS to be "inclusive"[/quote]

I'll agree that trying to appeal to broad is bad. I see a lot of gaming industry shifts guided by chasing what is popular fail because of it, so I can certainly understand that.

But I think you may be overselling the novelty of aliens of start wars, since the former was almost a throw back to the horror movies that were big in the past, but done a different way, and the later was a remake of an old Japanese film in a new setting.

Conversely The Cat in the Hat movie was rebuked by the public as the cash-grab it was largely in part that it was shamelessly ape-ing the Grinch movie, and did so without capturing the redeeming bit of heart that movie had (and that one wasn't exactly well loved itself).

Still, I think it sort of suggests that the responsibility is still on those making the art to bring forth ideas the public will react towards favorably. Star Wars and Aliens were passion projects inspired by past works and attempting to add their own touches to them and for that, they received a lot of praise and fans. Cat though, well, I doubt anyone was really championing that project out of any sort of love or desire to create, and I am damn sure the regurgitated and instantly dated humor of it wasn't trying to be creative.

So the audience reacts to the art, meaning the art has to step up before the audience follows it?

As for my other question, I wasn't asking what inclusivity itself is, I was asking why people are talking about it here.

Why are people talking about inclusivity in a thread initially meant to be about who hold responsibility for guiding the progress or "improvement" of a given medium, the art creators or the audience that consumes it, not what does or does not qualify as improvement in someone's eyes.

Why I was baffled was because talking about inclusiveness seem really out of left field. Like people picking a very specific example of what might be called "better", in a topic not meant to be about that specific a thing, you know?

 

[Emcee_N]

I would like to think that everyone has a part in making gaming better. The problem is that if you ask twenty gamers how to make gaming better you will get twenty different answers. Personally I think gamers and games press both have a lot to answer for: for all this division now, there has been a lot of joint effort (by promotion and reaction) to essentially slap most games out there with a 1/10 "Not Call of Battlefield " Rating Penalty. I think my own definition of "better" is "giving more credence to things other than Grey-Brown Military Shooter" but that would be a very large hill to climb at the moment even if the gaming situation wasn't so polarised right now.

 

[mmiki]

Much like a lot of the people that published the 'Gamers are over' articles, he's imagining a fantasy future where "progressive people" (read: people that think like he does) have moved onto a brave new world of gaming and left the vast majority of people who currently identify as gamers in the gutter. It just doesn't correspond with reality. Wherever capitalism meets entertainment you get a medium that primarily caters to a consumer culture.

If we're going to draw a comparison with movies, most of the time what's going to be drawing the biggest money and ratings will be the blockbuster with a rudimentary story and lots of CGI explosions, and movies like the Three Colors trilogy will be unknown to a wider audience. Most people won't watch Citizen Kane or get as much out of it as most critics do. That doesn't mean that there isn't space or an audience for more artistic stuff, but that's never going to be the majority of your audience.

Insisting on a "progress-minded" audience is part of the problem, not the solution. If those same journalists went on a tirade about how movie blockbusters don't have a socially progressive message and how people who go to the movies to see them are all popcorn-munching zombies in superhero t-shirts that eat whatever the marketing departments serve them, and how they are all going to be left in the gutter and replaced by a "progressive" movie-going audience, they would be laughed at.

EDIT: To elaborate a bit further, I do think gaming as a medium can progress, but not by insistence on "including the right message". It's by making better games that engage the audience on multiple levels.

There's a couple of videos on this topic that came out yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPUlN0dnKk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsybY6dcXAQ

 

[Smooth Operator]

No it simply needs a mature audience with some degree of civility, nothing more then that.
Because then you can approach all mature topics in gaming just the same as any other medium, unlike now where most of the gaming audience flies off the handle and turns into barking monkeys at the first sign of mature content. You seriously can't have a civil discussion with raging monkeys.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well, yes, at least to an extent.

If the audience only ever wants to play brown shooters about white males killing foreigns, then games will be brown shooters about white males killing foreigns.

For gaming to progress, their has to be a desire for it amongst the gamers.

 

[tm96]

No it simply needs a mature audience with some degree of civility, nothing more then that.
Because then you can approach all mature topics in gaming just the same as any other medium, unlike now where most of the gaming audience flies off the handle and turns into barking monkeys at the first sign of mature content. You seriously can't have a civil discussion with raging monkeys.

A day where people can talk about games with civility. Thats something I think everyone wants.

 

[Thaluikhain]

A day where people can talk about games with civility. Thats something I think everyone wants.

The day everyone wanted it, it'd be that day.

 

[This Place is DEAD]

A future built on the concept of the "Superiority" of certain people, thoughts or cultures? As a German I have to decline.

or to say it with Hayek/Clooney: "Welcome to slavery." - "No, thanks. I've already had a wife."

 

[This Place is DEAD]

It seems a bit ridiculous to think that gaming needs to "be progressed" in an active sense. Gaming is progressing. Of course it is. It will never stop. It's no longer the domain a tiny number of insecure nerds trying to escape from their lack of social skills in imaginary worlds- gaming is universal. That means gaming will gradually come to resemble the people who game. The scant fringe of people trying to hold back the progress of gaming under the premise of "GAMES JERNALISM!" are very much like the scant fringe of people trying to hold back gays from getting married- maybe the have the power when they're the only ones in the conversation, but in the long view of history they won't even be remembered for their obstinance. They are irrelevant. The avalanche has already begun. It's too late for the pebbles to vote.

Thanks for posting right after me to illustrate the point I made.

"insecure nerds"
"fringe"
"obstinance"
"pebbles"

Boy I wish I had a horse with legs that long.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

What I personally think is that gaming needs a strong guiding voice to represent it, someone who has respect within the medium and outside it that give people cause for thought(someone like Adam Sessler, who has instead chosen to take a consultant role. Nonetheless, he was a positive figurehead). Instead of what we currently have, which feels like a fractured country of bickering states rallying under their respective banners.

Gaming doesn't 'need' anything right now. Games are getting better, crappy business practices are being ousted, indies are getting more attention, gaming is becoming more accessible, the community is becoming more self-critical and awesome tech awaits at the horizon!

Things are good! Things are getting better! It's easy to get mired in the current goings-on and speak aphorisms on how 'gaming should change' in the same vein that teenagers talk about how 'society should change to promote individuality'. Taking a chill pill helps, and I'm sure that we will begin gushing passionately, or pan-handling furiously when the Christmas Flood of Games comes around!

 

[Souther Thorn]

Well that's all kinds of self righteous 'progressive' gaming master race hot air. I used to expect better out of Bob, not anymore.

 

[This Place is DEAD]

It seems a bit ridiculous to think that gaming needs to "be progressed" in an active sense. Gaming is progressing. Of course it is. It will never stop. It's no longer the domain a tiny number of insecure nerds trying to escape from their lack of social skills in imaginary worlds- gaming is universal. That means gaming will gradually come to resemble the people who game. The scant fringe of people trying to hold back the progress of gaming under the premise of "GAMES JERNALISM!" are very much like the scant fringe of people trying to hold back gays from getting married- maybe the have the power when they're the only ones in the conversation, but in the long view of history they won't even be remembered for their obstinance. They are irrelevant. The avalanche has already begun. It's too late for the pebbles to vote.

Thanks for posting right after me to illustrate the point I made.

"insecure nerds"
"fringe"
"obstinance"
"pebbles"

Boy I wish I had a horse with legs that long.

You might not want to be too eager to pat yourself on the back, as you appear to have completely misinterpreted my post in order to fuel your own insecurity.

"Insecure nerds" is the perfect way to describe gamers for much of their history. I know, because I was one of them as far back as the Atari 2600. I had my own BBS with TradeWars 2.0 to game with my friends,back when we thought we were hot shits for putting ASCII graphics in color. I've been at it long enough that my P&P RPG group was getting out of RPGs about the time White Wolf studios was making a splash. We remember being really excited about the 3rd edition of Warhammer 40K when we were old enough to already be veteran gamers. And we were all giant insecure nerds.

There's no denying it, insecure nerdery is what drove gaming in the decades before it became mainstream. Why do you think people with fast cars and girlfriends didn't tend to be drawn to memorizing how to work THAC0? That's not an insult to gamers, that's a factual statement of where we came from. And I think it's awesome we came from that place. We had a bunch of people who didn't really know how to fit into the world, and we built something wonderful that now the whole rest of the world wants to be a part of. It's fucking ace.

As for your indignancy at the word "pebbles", hello, one does not quote Kosh Naranek The Fucking Awesome and then edit his word choices on the off chance that someone online is so threatened at the possibility of being disagreed with that they'll complain about the word "pebbles".

But the fact is, in the long view of history this whole summer and autumn will simply not matter. Gaming will become what gaming will become because people who love making games will make the games that they love to make. It doesn't matter what you or I or anyone else spends hours and days and weeks pounding out onto keyboards. We are the pebbles. We're not in control of where gaming is going. Because to do that, we'd have to be in control of every single person in the world who makes games for the next several years.

It's just not going to happen. It doesn't matter what we think. Gaming is bigger than all of us.

Your rethoric sounded like the stuff I've been hearing from MovieBob for the last weeks, so I took it for face value. Your reply is much more nuanced and less offensive in the choice of words. I would have reacted in a different way if I read this first. Also, I am not familiar with Babylon 5 so I did not recognize the Kosh reference. Sorry for jumping to conclusions.

And in one point I disagree: As long as the pebbles have to buy the games, they have leverage.