Progressing gaming

[Elfgore]

That tweet would be my prime example as to why I despise that man. Just everything about that causes me to cringe.

No gaming does not need that. That statement screams elitism at me, which is the last thing gaming needs.

I will argue that some elitism is needed but as always, it will be on a bell curve. The average person who can understand themes but not to a full critical extent are in the middle, the people who play connect the dots with themes and narratives and who love the art of things will be a much smaller 90 percentile and the people who just want to indulge in action without themes or the consideration of them are in the equally small 10 percentile. I would argue that the gaming audience is a bit to the left in terms of the curve but as our hobby becomes more culturally important, it will shift back to normal.

I'm a little out of it right now, but I think I have your numbers down. 80% would be a common gamer, someone who understands the themes, but doesn't take it further. 10% would think their better than everyone else Critique it further and be the progressives. With 10% being the guys who just wanna shoot stuff. Is that correct? I want to be sure before I respond.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

That tweet would be my prime example as to why I despise that man. Just everything about that causes me to cringe.

No gaming does not need that. That statement screams elitism at me, which is the last thing gaming needs.

I will argue that some elitism is needed but as always, it will be on a bell curve. The average person who can understand themes but not to a full critical extent are in the middle, the people who play connect the dots with themes and narratives and who love the art of things will be a much smaller 90 percentile and the people who just want to indulge in action without themes or the consideration of them are in the equally small 10 percentile. I would argue that the gaming audience is a bit to the left in terms of the curve but as our hobby becomes more culturally important, it will shift back to normal.

I'm a little out of it right now, but I think I have your numbers down. 80% would be a common gamer, someone who understands the themes, but doesn't take it further. 10% would think their better than everyone else Critique it further and be the progressives. With 10% being the guys who just wanna shoot stuff. Is that correct? I want to be sure before I respond.

This is a very general assumption based on my understanding of a bell curve. the numbers may very well shift from generation to generation but all media has it's proponents that just want mindless fun, it's proponents that are overly analytical and devote themselves to study of media and the rest will just be people who know the themes but don't devote themselves to the study of media.

While I understand the sentiment of the 90th percentile to have everyone be their intelligence, this is impossible. Critics can influence and inform but not control.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

I will argue that some elitism is needed but as always, it will be on a bell curve. The average person who can understand themes but not to a full critical extent are in the middle, the people who play connect the dots with themes and narratives and who love the art of things will be a much smaller 90 percentile and the people who just want to indulge in action without themes or the consideration of them are in the equally small 10 percentile. I would argue that the gaming audience is a bit to the left in terms of the curve but as our hobby becomes more culturally important, it will shift back to normal.
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Why does it matter? Why is one thing superior to other? It doesn't matter if you play/watch/read anything for just the action or if you play/watch/read anything for themes/narrative. They are just different ways of enjoying entertainment/fiction.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I will argue that some elitism is needed but as always, it will be on a bell curve. The average person who can understand themes but not to a full critical extent are in the middle, the people who play connect the dots with themes and narratives and who love the art of things will be a much smaller 90 percentile and the people who just want to indulge in action without themes or the consideration of them are in the equally small 10 percentile. I would argue that the gaming audience is a bit to the left in terms of the curve but as our hobby becomes more culturally important, it will shift back to normal.
.

Why does it matter? Why is one thing superior to other? It doesn't matter if you play/watch/read anything for just the action or if you play/watch/read anything for themes/narrative. They are just different ways of enjoying entertainment/fiction.

This is not an implication of superior or not, this is just a distribution that I believe to exist. The reason why I suggested the curve will shift to the right over time is that gaming will become more culturally important so courses and texts will appear in their analysis and discussion will increase. This will cause the number of people who are more aware of themes to increase and so the curve shifts.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

My God, the amount of smugness and pretentiousness in Bob's post is mind-blowing.

"For gaming to progress as a superior medium it needs a superior, progressive audience"
In other words, if you don't enjoy the games that 'superior progressives' (as Bob considers himself, of course) like, then you're part of the problem and are holding back the medium.

I mean, how DARE you prefer to play Call of Duty or Gears of War or Madden '14 instead of Gone Home, don't you realize you're "holding back the medium"?!

This is essentially a nice way of saying "well you can play whatever games you want, but if you play the games I don't approve of you're making everyone suffer", which is basically a passive-aggressive way of saying that your opinion is wrong and mine is right.

 

[VVThoughtBox]

As someone who studies fine arts in college and plays video games, I reject the idea that gaming needs a superior audience. This has to be the most elitist and racist thing that I have ever heard in my life. First of all, who is the superior audience that he's talking about? Without any definition, or clarity of the word, the superior audience would technically translate into the rich. Only the rich have the money, education, and power in the world to be considered the superior audience. So when Moviebob talks about gaming depending on a superior audience, does he really mean that gaming companies should cater to the rich?

If the superior audience he talks about isn't the rich, then the only group who fits the description would be the church. The church has lots of money and with it, they can commission game companies to produce video games the promote religious message. Since most games are made in the West, or in Japan, I only see a lot of games with mainstream Christianity, Shinto, or even Buddhist themes being made. Either way, the concept of gaming being decided by a superior audience is too Social Darwinian for modern times, and would result in giving the rich more power over the common man.

 

[Negatempest]

Here's my two cents.
I find it more insulting to completely ignore the fact that games have already been progressing for the better. Games like Ace Attorney and Proffesor Layton are just a few examples of games branching off from the usual mechanics games have done. But are ignored because people after a specific agenda do not give those games credit. Games were naturally going the diverse route. All people like movie Bob are doing is hiding the natural progression for the sake of agendas.

 

[Verlander]

I disagree that it needs a superior audience... it needs superior creators. It needs the freedom to exist, without prejudice, and for it to be communicable in a low cost and easy manner.

So I think that games need to be superior? I believe that there should be a market for it, but it's not the be all and end all. Other media balance quality well.

 

[VVThoughtBox]

One more thing: Where do women and minorities fit in the who concept of a superior audience?

 

[Verlander]

I'd like to add, however, that while I disagree with those tweets, that Twitter conversations don't even touch the blurb of a proper argument. It's nearly impossible to tell exactly what Bob means with those tweets, and regardless, I respect his opinion and right to express it.

 

[Irick]

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.

I have to disagree with this assertion, again from a critical theory perspective. I feel that your quoted definition of art gives too much emphasis on the artist/author and not with the interaction of that work with the culture at large. While this is a valid way to interpret art, it ignores the larger context. In this, I hold with Barthes[footnote]Death of the Author [http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes][/footnote].

I don't think in a post-modern perspective the definitive lines between high art and low are really all that definitive, or the distinction all to relevant. Popular culture is influenced by popular art and vice versa. In this day and age nearly all forms of art are popular, we are eliminating scarcity and availability is soaring. In this way we are eliminating the aesthetic vacuum, instead art is a cultural dialog around the ideas and principles it embodies.

This leads us to the question of a 'superior audience' (I swear, the more I read from this man...). I would say no. No, we do not need a supirior adience. We need better and more open lines of communication between the audience and the artist. Popular culture and art is made through continuous transformation, that cultural dialog. The audience interprets and critiques and the artist is influenced by those interpretations and critiques. The audience also appropriates and creates, and in this way we have fan culture.

For gaming, the intersection of fan culture and art are the essence of the thing. From house ruling D&D to creating total conversion mods for quake 3. This is our way of improving on the process, making better games and expanding the context of the medium.

 

[KokujinTensai]

The market will dictate gaming's future much like natural selection.
Games are made by corporations.
Corporations exist to turn a profit.
These corporations spend millions on market research to find the most profitable market for their projects.
Should games like Gone Home end up becoming profitable then similar games of that mold will be made. If not then the opposite.

Remember when Adventure games where plentiful? Remember when JRPG's were huge? Remember World War 2 shooters? Remember the Wii and the Casuapocalypse?

I say we trust the market. There are millions of gamers who dont frequent these sites. They will buy what they like. These progressives need to learn the truth that they cant force change. Things will change if you let it happen organically.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Man, Bob posts some ridiculous stuff. The gaming audience we have today is the primary gaming audience we are going to have at least during my lifetime.
People think that gaming is getting wider and attracting new people, it is, but it isn't leaving anyone behind. The primary, core market is still going to be the people buying 20+games a year and reading the gaming sites. It is going to be us. This sounds like wishful thinking on Bob's part.

 

[briankoontz]

So are video games art? Who cares? Can video games provide artists experiences to certain audiences? Of course. Are video games entertainment or art?

It's the same thing. If you care about your life and want to have the best experience in the world that you can, then it's the exact same thing. The Tempest and Hamlet are great entertainment *because* they are great art, and vice versa.

Deus Ex is great art *because* it's great entertainment.

Now, if you're a "human" living in a post-human dystopia and seek to self-negate through "zoning out" playing games or whatever, then it really doesn't matter what you do with your time. You can call your time spent "entertaining" or something else but it doesn't mean anything.

Art is not separate from life. Nyan Cat is art - it's entertainment. The same thing. It's entertaining because it's a formulation of something important in the world that had previously not been so accurately formulated. It's art for the exact same reason.

If one has a dark vision of the world, filled with mayhem and terror, then games featuring mass murder make sense. They are "teaching" the gamer something or at least reinforcing his worldview. They are, to the gamer, art. In other words, entertainment.

 

[PirataMan]

Deus Ex is great art *because* it's great entertainment.

And those the experiense is subjective, those it can be great art or waste of time. In movies people are used to blockbusters and author films, and they make the distinction between entertainment and artistic vision, because you can one without the other.

If one has a dark vision of the world, filled with mayhem and terror, then games featuring mass murder make sense. They are "teaching" the gamer something or at least reinforcing his worldview. They are, to the gamer, art. In other words, entertainment.

Not necesarelly true, it is an hypothesis but representations on a society need the corroboration of that society to have an idea of the value. Let say you have a society that have faced war conflict from 50 years, the entertainment they produce could glorify, demonize or dodge any issue related with war, but without knowing that society we are unable to know their actual stance, we only know what they produce but not the intention of the production or in extreme cases, what they intended to say. And as that society has its own way to deal with their subjects through the medias, these can be seen as art or as entertainment in different ways. Which again come to the problem of art challenging what we define as art, and even more the problems we face at reading art to reach a society.

 

[runic knight]

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.

Interesting.

Why do you think gaming audience is somehow inherently "worse" then that of tv or movies, who would probably have something close to 95% or higher overlap (meaning that all game audiences would also be movie/tv audience members as well). Does that mean that all audiences are then lacking, or just gaming's for some reason?

Also, is what your saying that the audience itself needs to be the ones to mature before the medium will mature?

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.

I think you may be concentrating a bit too much on audience taste. One could make the same statement you made here about movies and blockbuster films. Do you think that movies require less explosive action flicks to be a better medium as well? And I get the sense that you feel the maturity and progress of a medium depends on the audience itself growing into it and then the medium responding to that, is that right?

 

[Thaluikhain]

I think you may be concentrating a bit too much on audience taste. One could make the same statement you made here about movies and blockbuster films. Do you think that movies require less explosive action flicks to be a better medium as well?

Sure, if people only want to watch bad teen comedies, all we'll get is bad teen comedies.

And I get the sense that you feel the maturity and progress of a medium depends on the audience itself growing into it and then the medium responding to that, is that right?

At least to a large part, I'm not saying there aren't any other factor, but that it's a big one.

 

[Agkistro]

>Gaming needs more diversity.
>Gaming needs to be populated entirely by people who share my sociopolitical views.

Choose one.

Umm... I am sorry, but your post doesn't touch on anything I was talking about. At all. What exactly are you trying to say here and where did you make that mental leap to get there?

I am talking about if gaming as a medium requires a superior audience in order to grow and progress itself. I personally disagree.

Nothing about any of that relates people wanting or not wanting diversity. How did you even get to that point?

It totally touches on what you're talking about, I almost wrote the same thing myself. You're posing the debate as "Should we only allow people with my sociopolitical viewpoints to play videogames, or should we use video games to manipulate people into my sociopolitical viewpoints?" It seems to me there is at least one more option; maybe leftist/progressives aren't right about everything, and it's ok for people who disagree with them to not only play video games, but to actually have games that cater to their sensibilities.