The word "pretentious" is mostly useless or self-defeating

[remnant_phoenix]

So there's this favorite indie game of mine that was released many years back; I just got around to replaying it and I was looking some stuff up about it online when I discovered that a huge swath of "the internet" that decries the game as "pretentious." After seeing this, I realized that I wasn't even sure what the word "pretentious" actually meant, so I looked it up:

"adj. attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed"

This definition nagged me, and I couldn't figure out why until I looked up some synonyms for "actually": truly, absolutely, indeed, literally, really, a matter of fact, de facto, genuinely, in fact, in point of fact, in reality, in truth, veritably

It seems to me that the only situations where I could confidently call something pretentious is if I had an objective basis for determining its quality as being lower than what it is being presented as. Here's a hypothetical: a furniture store owner touts that his wares are high-quality pieces, but inspection reveals that they are unevenly painted/stained and that they are made of particle board. One can objectively judge the quality of a paint job by smoothness, coat, etc. One can objectively say that particle board is lower quality than hard wood by bringing up matters of durability, resources required to shape/maintain it, etc. The thing is, in situations like these where the word pretentious is fitting, either the guy is a con artist (in which case he'd be more appropriately called a "liar") or he actually believes his nonsense (in which case he'd be more appropriately called "crazy" or "delusional"). The word pretentious, here, where it fits, is mostly useless.

Returning to where this started, let's consider how the word is often used regarding games. Let's say a person, we'll call him Randy, plays a certain game and calls it pretentious. Here's what he's doing: he's making a subjective judgement on how much importance/talent/culture the game actually possesses, then making an additional value judgement, using the first as measurement, on the attempted motivations/intentions of the work's maker. Randy's entire proposition revolves around the idea that he has the power to determine how much ACTUAL (as in true, objective, bound by reality) value something has, when value is highly, HIGHLY subjective.

I usually don't subscribe the idea that it's important to preface your opinions as opinion, the whole "IMO" thing--I think it should be able to go without saying--but in this instance, given the nature of the definition, I can see a big difference between saying "I find this pretentious." and "This is pretentious." The definition of the word seems to invite this conclusion: unless it is clear that Randy is expressing his personal perception that applies only to him, it would seem that he is claiming he has the discernment and power to judge the objective value of something. That, to me, makes Randy pretentious, making him a self-defeating hypocrite. Of course, some others could say that it's pretentious of me to call Randy pretentious, since I am making the judgement that he doesn't have that power, and now we have an infinite regress?

I'm not sure what the point of all this is. This may be the biggest semantic knot I've ever become tangled in. I guess I'm hoping that some responses might help me untangle myself.

How do you feel about people using the word pretentious to describe video games?

 

[Zhukov]

*shrug*

So it's subjective. When talking about quality, especially of something like a game that is judged by the experience it offers, damn near everything is subjective.

It's just as "useless or self-defeating" to call a game good or bad. Or awesome. Or disappointing.

I do find the term pretentious to be a very overused and often misapplied. Basically any game that tries to do anything beyond than the usual kill baddies, save world, get girl B-movie action schlock will get called pretentious at some point.

I can't really think of many games I would personally call pretentious. Most games don't have the ambition to be in the same room as pretentious. Braid perhaps. Or Thomas Was Alone. But even those games were, I think, ernest in what they were trying to convey, meaning they can't be called pretentious.

Oh, and despite quoting the definition right there, you are also misapplying the term. In your example Randy would not be pretentious. Not unless he's saying that in order to impress or appear smarter than he really is. An honestly held belief or opinion expressed for its own sake cannot, by definition, be pretentious.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

(Quote button is broken because of my workplace's firewall)

Zhukov: "I do find the term pretentious to be a very overused and often misapplied. Basically any game that tries to do anything beyond than the usual kill baddies, save world, get girl B-movie action schlock will get called pretentious at some point.

I can't really think of many games I would personally call pretentious. Most games don't have the ambition to be in the same room as pretentious. Braid perhaps. Or Thomas Was Alone. But even those games were, I think, ernest in what they were trying to convey, meaning they can't be called pretentious."

I think that that's my biggest issue. The word seems to come up too often and many things I've read when it comes to calling certain games "pretentious" make me wonder if the writer even knows what the word means and how it should be used.

 

[TheIceQueen]

Objectivity is pretty overrated when it comes to video games. Very little about them is objective. You might say that the mechanics are objective, but that's not entirely true either. People argue about mechanics all the time. What someone else considers to be a tight and controlled scheme, someone else might think is too loose. So even mechanics will have subjectivity to a certain degree.

But what's the problem with subjectivity? This isn't science. These aren't facts. This is entertainment. This is about our enjoyment, our free time. What entertains us is so highly laced with our biases that trying to ignore them is pointless, so why even bother?

If Randy thinks the game is pretentious, don't discard his opinion just because of subjectivity. Ask him why he considers the game to be pretentious. Listen to his arguments. Discuss it with him. If you disagree with him, it's not because you're standing on some mythical objective pillar that doesn't exist, but rather because you're on the other end of the subjective spectrum. The best you can do for both Randy and yourself if this really is an issue is to debate it. Both of your opinions are valid. Both of you probably have reasons to support these valid opinions. List these opinions and listen to these opinions. Support your argument for why you think the game isn't pretentious and pick apart his argument for why it is, but understand that you're just as subjective as he is in this.

One of these days, I'm going to make a thread about how objectivity is overrated and I think you're caring about semantics too much.

 

[bluepotatosack]

I'm 99% certain most people who use the word have no idea what it actually means. Which is amusing, because in those cases it can be argued that what they're doing is using a word they don't fully understand to appear sophisticated. Full circle.

As an example of it's abuse, I was called pretentious once because I said I wasn't a fan of Robot Chicken.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

The self-defeating part comes in where people use the word to downgrade a game and appear intellectual themselves without even understanding the full definition. I once saw a board calling Bioshock: Infinite and anyone who praises it "pretentious" or "pseudo-intellectual". In it, there was an established guideline showing how "intelligent" gamers "objectively" viewed it. Irony can be pretty blunt, sometimes.

As said before, games that shoot for some meaning beyond your typical action game/RPG storyline will have a guaranteed criticism of being pretentious, so it's best to take those criticisms lightly. I haven't found many titles I would consider pretentious, myself.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Why is it useless? I use it whenever I think something isn't as big or impressive as it pretends to be.

 

[sanquin]

I define "pretentious" as something/someone acting like they're something they're not. Doesn't have have to be because they want to make themselves look better. I could be wrong i guess, but ah well. As long as others understand what they mean.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I love discussing this word.

I look for the (not so) hidden word in there, "pretend". What makes it fun is that there's so many contexts in which a piece of art, if we are to call video games "art" (which is a separate discussion entirely) could be "pretending" to do something even though what it has accomplished is right in front of the player/viewer. The missing element is often the intelligence or intent of the creator(s), and comparing whether or not the work met or exceeded the level of "depth" or intelligence that the creator is supposedly capable of.

There's also the matter of whether anyone would knowingly and purposely pretend to do something like this. I'm sure there's very few video game creators who start off with "okay, we aren't very philosophical or intelligent, but let's do everything we can to pretend that we are and create a work that makes it seem that we in fact are those things". I generally find something often labelled "pretentious" as one of two things...either the artist went for broke and tried to reach for the stars trying something different and fell short, or the accusers themselves simply didn't enjoy it or appreciate the direction of the attempt and call it "pretentious" because the work isn't broken or necessarily "bad".

One of the very few games I would call pretentious is Dear Esther, a popular candidate. But it's only pretentious in my eyes, making it an opinion no more valid than "good" or "bad". I'm sure there's people who understood exactly what it was going for and gelled with the creator and went on an amazing journey, while I just held the W key and wished the narrator would shut the fuck up because he quit making any kind of sense 5 minutes ago.

It also means different things to different people. An anecdote having nothing to do with video games:

My family and I went to a very authentic Japanese restaurant here in America. I never get to practice Japanese with a real person, so I asked the waiter (in Japanese) "I don't mean to offend you, but I never get to speak Japanese in a real social setting and I was wondering if it was okay if I spoke Japanese with you". The waiter was fine with it, and we carried on for a minute and I ordered my meal in Japanese. My parents went on about how impressed they were, my brother said "that was awkward", and my sister said "you don't have to be so pretentious". I didn't argue it too much, and I felt that I had in fact done a faux pas and felt awkward, but I wasn't pretending to know Japanese. According to my sister, someone is pretentious (or being pretentious) when they do something that they know other people can't do in order to boost their ego and/or rub the other people's faces in it. I would call that behavior something like "smug" (a word often paired with "pretentious" in descriptions of things deemed pretentious), if my intentions were to actually show off my knowledge of the language rather than out of a real desire to be able to get real-world practice.

Some could say making a post this long about a single word and getting caught in a web of semantics is pretentious. Some might say it's pretentious to consider yourself a critic of the arts and regularly call things pretentious. The word is by no means useless, but it is certainly overused and has more definitions than what the dictionary states. But it is no more valid a critique or argument than "bad", "shitty" or "awesome". Though there must be a reason why, in games, there's a list of games that are very regularly called out as pretentious. My personal guess is that there's a lot of people who aren't ready or willing to try games that are attempting to do something that's never been done before, and "pretentious" is a way to say that the work failed at its goal rather than to say that one didn't personally enjoy it.

Well that was fun.

 

[DementedSheep]

I don't like people using that word. There seems to be this assumption that if a game is 'artsy', uses symbolism, political themes or just tries non standard gameplay then the developers must be arrogant, think there games is better than regular games that the masses can't understand it. A lot of time it is unfounded and just gets applied regardless of anything the developers have said about it or if they have talked it up (which every developer dose anyway) and just makes the person calling it pretentious look like an arrogant toss or insecure to me. You can not like it or get the appeal without it being pretentious.

 

[spartan231490]

That's only if you are trying to assert objectively that someone is pretentious. However, pretentious is almost exclusively used in opinion pieces, nullifying your assertion that it is meaningless.

 

[TaboriHK]

The pretense, or pretentiousness, applies to what they are trying to sell and how they've presented the product. Making a product and selling/advertising it is saying "you should buy this thing, it is good in this way." When things are bad, or they try to give you something that you deem generally undesirable, it can be viewed as pretentious depending on how it has sold itself.

For me, the way the Xbone was marketed was pretentious, just as the PS3 was a generation before. Microsoft said, "you want this, you'll buy this, and you'll put up with this" followed by a list of things many people by and large were NOT going to accept: a required Kinect (and the $100 extra), how on-disc content and used games would work, etc. They told me, the consumer, with confidence, "this is reflects your desires and what you will tolerate," when ultimately, I would not, and they really had no reason to think the consumer would.

It gets used a lot for "artsy" games, because a general concept is what they're selling. But it's the same basic idea. If someone tries to sell you a game that is just rhythmic cat farts, and they talk it up or present it like, "Rhythmic Cat Farts is the next Braid," you'll probably find that to be pretentious.

 

[Oly J]

I don't exactly know how I would define the word, I always took it to mean, if your only motivation for doing or saying something is to appear deep or thoughtful, and anyone who makes a concious effort to appear deep (this word goes almost hand-in-hand with pretentious in my head), cultured or thoughtful could be called pretentious, basically if you have to try and let people know how deep you are, you're probably not, I'm not sure what actions or thoughts I would characterise as "deep" but naming your child "Moses" is not one of them

 

[Fox12]

I think that that's my biggest issue. The word seems to come up too often and many things I've read when it comes to calling certain games "pretentious" make me wonder if the writer even knows what the word means and how it should be used.

I guess it depends on circumstance, but it certainly can be applied to certain games. Anything applied to David Cage, for instance. Why? Because his games are narrative based, and yet they are filled with plot holes, a criticism tat is not subjective, because it deals with a lack of consistency within a story. In other words, it doesn't obey it's own in-universe rules. There are also many badly written section within his games. That doesn't make the work pretentious, though. It's this, coupled with the creators high opinion of himself. He seriously sees himself as a pioneer of video game story telling, even though his talent is... non existent. Meanwhile most of us just snicker in the background and nod whenever he asks us if he's doing a good job.

Basically, when a mediocre story teller or artist thinks he's better than everyone else, I register him as pretentious. Meanwhile, most real story tellers don't care, because they're preoccupied making real art.

 

[cleric of the order]

I, up into this point refer to the pretentious as an element of dishonesty, without any real concern or understanting as of the subject in question. There's an underlining bitter cruelty to it and a judgmental quality that perhaps I might be imagining.
Now before I go any further I must make these two things clear

1. That you can Feel free to ignore any of the more academic and ponderous statements i have on the subject, i am more or less crystallized and poorly controlled emotion seeded and bounded with enough intelligence (or simply arrogance) to pass for reasonable and for that reason allow I doubt what I can weigh in on the matter is even handed
2. Now please don't take this next one wrong, I am drawing from my own experience and debated putting this in at the risk of offense, please don't get mad but when i read this:
(screw this can't mla)

So there's this favorite indie game of mine that was released many years back; I just got around to replaying it and I was looking some stuff up about it online when I discovered that a huge swath of "the internet" that decries the game as "pretentious." After seeing this, I realized that I wasn't even sure what the word "pretentious" actually meant, so I looked it up:

I fear this might be a misplaced response, i myself might have attached my ire toward the word but it seems that the true discomfort is coming from the statement itself rather then the statement granted i may be WRONG. It is still something to remember and check before moving forward, and i am sorry if I caused you offense but it would be better if it is the case to understand and internalize it, rather then holding into the trap (hope this is the right one )Amour-propre. in essence i can spout a crap about loving something and not letting others opinions get to you but it takes a truly strong person to do that and very few people are capable now a days (not that you aren't I'm just a cynic and assumed the latter). But it remains that you can easily fall within the goading egoic waves at the back of the mind and get sucked away by a current you can banish through acknowledgement as the mind tries to latch onto permanence. now with that out of the way lets move forward.

I agree in some sense, most people using the word are themselves precociously pretentious uplifting themselves in Kater Murrs philosophers (I'm boarding on it now, Kater Murr, I haven't even read the book it's from, just the Davvian use of it.). Its somewhere between the bat used to wipe the smug faces of the false souls that try to (myself included) post-modern their way to some complex, mystical legend without ever having the soul for it and a hammer for oppressing the truly great romantic souls of this world.

I love discussing this word.

I look for the (not so) hidden word in there, "pretend". What makes it fun is that there's so many contexts in which a piece of art, if we are to call video games "art" (which is a separate discussion entirely) could be "pretending" to do something even though what it has accomplished is right in front of the player/viewer. The missing element is often the intelligence or intent of the creator(s), and comparing whether or not the work met or exceeded the level of "depth" or intelligence that the creator is supposedly capable of.

There's also the matter of whether anyone would knowingly and purposely pretend to do something like this. I'm sure there's very few video game creators who start off with "okay, we aren't very philosophical or intelligent, but let's do everything we can to pretend that we are and create a work that makes it seem that we in fact are those things". I generally find something often labelled "pretentious" as one of two things...either the artist went for broke and tried to reach for the stars trying something different and fell short, or the accusers themselves simply didn't enjoy it or appreciate the direction of the attempt and call it "pretentious" because the work isn't broken or necessarily "bad".

One of the very few games I would call pretentious is Dear Esther, a popular candidate. But it's only pretentious in my eyes, making it an opinion no more valid than "good" or "bad". I'm sure there's people who understood exactly what it was going for and gelled with the creator and went on an amazing journey, while I just held the W key and wished the narrator would shut the fuck up because he quit making any kind of sense 5 minutes ago.

It also means different things to different people. An anecdote having nothing to do with video games:

My family and I went to a very authentic Japanese restaurant here in America. I never get to practice Japanese with a real person, so I asked the waiter (in Japanese) "I don't mean to offend you, but I never get to speak Japanese in a real social setting and I was wondering if it was okay if I spoke Japanese with you". The waiter was fine with it, and we carried on for a minute and I ordered my meal in Japanese. My parents went on about how impressed they were, my brother said "that was awkward", and my sister said "you don't have to be so pretentious". I didn't argue it too much, and I felt that I had in fact done a faux pas and felt awkward, but I wasn't pretending to know Japanese. According to my sister, someone is pretentious (or being pretentious) when they do something that they know other people can't do in order to boost their ego and/or rub the other people's faces in it. I would call that behavior something like "smug" (a word often paired with "pretentious" in descriptions of things deemed pretentious), if my intentions were to actually show off my knowledge of the language rather than out of a real desire to be able to get real-world practice.

Some could say making a post this long about a single word and getting caught in a web of semantics is pretentious. Some might say it's pretentious to consider yourself a critic of the arts and regularly call things pretentious. The word is by no means useless, but it is certainly overused and has more definitions than what the dictionary states. But it is no more valid a critique or argument than "bad", "shitty" or "awesome". Though there must be a reason why, in games, there's a list of games that are very regularly called out as pretentious. My personal guess is that there's a lot of people who aren't ready or willing to try games that are attempting to do something that's never been done before, and "pretentious" is a way to say that the work failed at its goal rather than to say that one didn't personally enjoy it.

Well that was fun.

damn, beat me to the punch, 3 of them in fact god speed you magnificent bastard, i would agree that dispute all things, pretense requires arrogance, almost direct intention and the unwillingness for self effacement, worse of all it isn't even ambitious it's a failure of sorts, a hollow note empty and dead with not more heart then a snickered half lie. and yet it seems to border at hubris at every turn and relies on our interpretations to met out judgement. and this has led me to a madding amount of possibilities. I wouldn't say it is pretentious to disguise this, just mad, that special kind of academic mad that leads to a round about discussion on the internet that might not even go anywhere. The critic thing though drives my blood up i don't like critics but that is a stupid story for another time.

as labeling goes i tend to work off of Scott Mcloud's, chart, that being the animist the iconoclast, and the formalist (i don't know how to embed photos blweh) and as it goes in artist matters i assume it's the best way to balance this. The animist and the iconoclast camps are anathema to pretension, though after adaptation I'm not sure about the latter so much any more. Classicists is fairly likely but they are already attempting to master the physical art as opposed to anything else and that leave most of their work hollow anyway, physically excellent though. the final hand is what i supposed has is the most likely to be refereed to but not actually being in such a subject as they are not driven by pretense as a objective unless woefully over self identifying as it requires thought and inspiration to push art forms beyond their limits. in the end i think that's because those that are pretentious are driven by alternate desires (funny just noticed it has sires in it...hehehehe sires). Rather then the wholehearted love and devotion, glory seems to take precedence over money at the very least because someone with pretense is trying to gain some sort of respect as opposed to simply shelling out crap to gain money. But I'm not sure in all, it's hard to cast anyone right often i just say do i like it or no and that suffices and find its current use to be in line with artificial difficulty which of course must be followed with a L2think nub, 2deep4u but I'm rambling now and think i should wrap this up refer below.

tl:dr; Refer to Descartes cuze pretense is the D, all that bluster and build up for nothing and it wasted my time also yeah it's looking for glory intentionally that drives people to this, i think.

 

[cleric of the order]

holy crap that was a long post, less so when i realize that a lot of it was estru's post but damn.

I, up into this point refer to the pretentious as an element of dishonesty, without any real concern or understanting as of the subject in question. There's an underlining bitter cruelty to it and a judgmental quality that perhaps I might be imagining.
Now before I go any further I must make these two things clear

1. That you can Feel free to ignore any of the more academic and ponderous statements i have on the subject, i am more or less crystallized and poorly controlled emotion seeded and bounded with enough intelligence (or simply arrogance) to pass for reasonable and for that reason allow I doubt what I can weigh in on the matter is even handed
2. Now please don't take this next one wrong, I am drawing from my own experience and debated putting this in at the risk of offense, please don't get mad but when i read this:
(screw this can't mla)

So there's this favorite indie game of mine that was released many years back; I just got around to replaying it and I was looking some stuff up about it online when I discovered that a huge swath of "the internet" that decries the game as "pretentious." After seeing this, I realized that I wasn't even sure what the word "pretentious" actually meant, so I looked it up:

I fear this might be a misplaced response, i myself might have attached my ire toward the word but it seems that the true discomfort is coming from the statement itself rather then the statement granted i may be WRONG. It is still something to remember and check before moving forward, and i am sorry if I caused you offense but it would be better if it is the case to understand and internalize it, rather then holding into the trap (hope this is the right one )Amour-propre. in essence i can spout a crap about loving something and not letting others opinions get to you but it takes a truly strong person to do that and very few people are capable now a days (not that you aren't I'm just a cynic and assumed the latter). But it remains that you can easily fall within the goading egoic waves at the back of the mind and get sucked away by a current you can banish through acknowledgement as the mind tries to latch onto permanence. now with that out of the way lets move forward.

I agree in some sense, most people using the word are themselves precociously pretentious uplifting themselves in Kater Murrs philosophers (I'm boarding on it now, Kater Murr, I haven't even read the book it's from, just the Davvian use of it.). Its somewhere between the bat used to wipe the smug faces of the false souls that try to (myself included) post-modern their way to some complex, mystical legend without ever having the soul for it and a hammer for oppressing the truly great romantic souls of this world.

I love discussing this word.

I look for the (not so) hidden word in there, "pretend". What makes it fun is that there's so many contexts in which a piece of art, if we are to call video games "art" (which is a separate discussion entirely) could be "pretending" to do something even though what it has accomplished is right in front of the player/viewer. The missing element is often the intelligence or intent of the creator(s), and comparing whether or not the work met or exceeded the level of "depth" or intelligence that the creator is supposedly capable of.

There's also the matter of whether anyone would knowingly and purposely pretend to do something like this. I'm sure there's very few video game creators who start off with "okay, we aren't very philosophical or intelligent, but let's do everything we can to pretend that we are and create a work that makes it seem that we in fact are those things". I generally find something often labelled "pretentious" as one of two things...either the artist went for broke and tried to reach for the stars trying something different and fell short, or the accusers themselves simply didn't enjoy it or appreciate the direction of the attempt and call it "pretentious" because the work isn't broken or necessarily "bad".

One of the very few games I would call pretentious is Dear Esther, a popular candidate. But it's only pretentious in my eyes, making it an opinion no more valid than "good" or "bad". I'm sure there's people who understood exactly what it was going for and gelled with the creator and went on an amazing journey, while I just held the W key and wished the narrator would shut the fuck up because he quit making any kind of sense 5 minutes ago.

It also means different things to different people. An anecdote having nothing to do with video games:

My family and I went to a very authentic Japanese restaurant here in America. I never get to practice Japanese with a real person, so I asked the waiter (in Japanese) "I don't mean to offend you, but I never get to speak Japanese in a real social setting and I was wondering if it was okay if I spoke Japanese with you". The waiter was fine with it, and we carried on for a minute and I ordered my meal in Japanese. My parents went on about how impressed they were, my brother said "that was awkward", and my sister said "you don't have to be so pretentious". I didn't argue it too much, and I felt that I had in fact done a faux pas and felt awkward, but I wasn't pretending to know Japanese. According to my sister, someone is pretentious (or being pretentious) when they do something that they know other people can't do in order to boost their ego and/or rub the other people's faces in it. I would call that behavior something like "smug" (a word often paired with "pretentious" in descriptions of things deemed pretentious), if my intentions were to actually show off my knowledge of the language rather than out of a real desire to be able to get real-world practice.

Some could say making a post this long about a single word and getting caught in a web of semantics is pretentious. Some might say it's pretentious to consider yourself a critic of the arts and regularly call things pretentious. The word is by no means useless, but it is certainly overused and has more definitions than what the dictionary states. But it is no more valid a critique or argument than "bad", "shitty" or "awesome". Though there must be a reason why, in games, there's a list of games that are very regularly called out as pretentious. My personal guess is that there's a lot of people who aren't ready or willing to try games that are attempting to do something that's never been done before, and "pretentious" is a way to say that the work failed at its goal rather than to say that one didn't personally enjoy it.

Well that was fun.

damn, beat me to the punch, 3 of them in fact god speed you magnificent bastard, i would agree that dispute all things, pretense requires arrogance, almost direct intention and the unwillingness for self effacement, worse of all it isn't even ambitious it's a failure of sorts, a hollow note empty and dead with not more heart then a snickered half lie. and yet it seems to border at hubris at every turn and relies on our interpretations to met out judgement. and this has led me to a madding amount of possibilities. I wouldn't say it is pretentious to disguise this, just mad, that special kind of academic mad that leads to a round about discussion on the internet that might not even go anywhere. The critic thing though drives my blood up i don't like critics but that is a stupid story for another time.

as labeling goes i tend to work off of Scott Mcloud's, chart, that being the animist the iconoclast, and the formalist (i don't know how to embed photos blweh) and as it goes in artist matters i assume it's the best way to balance this. The animist and the iconoclast camps are anathema to pretension, though after adaptation I'm not sure about the latter so much any more. Classicists is fairly likely but they are already attempting to master the physical art as opposed to anything else and that leave most of their work hollow anyway, physically excellent though. the final hand is what i supposed has is the most likely to be refereed to but not actually being in such a subject as they are not driven by pretense as a objective unless woefully over self identifying as it requires thought and inspiration to push art forms beyond their limits. in the end i think that's because those that are pretentious are driven by alternate desires (funny just noticed it has sires in it...hehehehe sires). Rather then the wholehearted love and devotion, glory seems to take precedence over money at the very least because someone with pretense is trying to gain some sort of respect as opposed to simply shelling out crap to gain money. But I'm not sure in all, it's hard to cast anyone right often i just say do i like it or no and that suffices and find its current use to be in line with artificial difficulty which of course must be followed with a L2think nub, 2deep4u but I'm rambling now and think i should wrap this up refer below.

tl:dr; Refer to Descartes cuze pretense is the D, all that bluster and build up for nothing and it wasted my time also yeah it's looking for glory intentionally that drives people to this, i think.

 

[Shiftygiant]

Pretentious has become pretentious. We've struck the pretentious black hole of pretentiousness. My god, it's full of indie.

I don't see much of an issue with the word Pretentious. It just means that somethings trying to be deeper or have a greater meaning then what it actually is.

That said, it is used now to refer to anything that try's to be deep, so you do have a point. It's become the new 'Irony'.

 

[Lieju]

I think it's too often used to describe anything 'artsy'.

When I use the word (which is not often) I use it to describe things that think they're much deeper than they are.
Anything made by David Cage somes to mind.

The plots of many AAA-games too. If they try to pretend they have a message or something and are bad at getting it across, then yes.
I haven't fully played the story of COD Ghosts but from what I saw it seemed pretty pretentious and like it took itself way too seriously.

 

[K12]

Speaking as someone with a Philosophy degree it isn't that difficult to identify pretentiousness. Many people (artists especially) give the impression that they think they've stumbled onto some great philosophical truth when in actual fact they have a poorly thought out version of an idea which was old hat 200 years ago.

It's not the exploring of the idea that is bad, unless this done very badly I nearly always finds that this enriches an experience for me, it is the presumption that they are pushing the envelope when their just doing something that other people have done much better already.

I think it's pretty much any game/book/film etc. where the person who made it cares more about making themselves look clever than in crafty an enjoyable experience.

My prime example of pretentiousness is "Life of Pi" which is a really great film except it tries to use the story to argue that "You should believe in God because it feels nice". A childishly stupid argument but the film seems to present it as some kind of amazing revelation that the author/ narrator has come to.

The decided factor for me is the relative focus on the idea or the brilliance of the person who came up with the idea. The former is deep, the latter pretentious. Generally speaking entertainment is a terrible way to argue for a point but a great way to explore an idea.

You can largely escape the "pretentious" label by just being entertaining on a shallow as well. "The Matrix" and "A Clockwork Orange" are rarely described as pretentious because you can miss their explorations of Cartesian Dualism and Behaviourist views of freedom respectively and still enjoy yourself.

Too many people use the term "pretentious" to mean "you're making me feel stupid" but this is usually quite transparent.

 

[Vegosiux]

I tend to use "pretentious" when I mean "trying so damn hard to take itself more seriously, and make me take it more seriously, than merited" which I think is actually pretty much what "pretentious" would mean in this context anyway. Note that when I say a game is "pretentious" I do not necessarily mean it's bad, but it is a strike against it.