What Makes A Game Truly Pretentious

[TallanKhan]

I don't know that I can give you a formula for a pretentious game but I can certainly point to some of the warning signs:

1. When a games takes control away from you to show off. Yes, I can understand that if you have poured your heart and soul into creating a panoramic vista that the player can gaze over into the distance, the idea some gamers will walk past without even a glance must be upsetting. However, that does not justify yanking control away from the player and directing the camera towards whatever it is you think is so important it must be appreciated at all costs. This breaks immersion and only serves to provide spectical at the expense of gameplay.

2. In much the same vein, unneccesary cutscenes. We all know the ones, a fight or a stunt that happens in a cut scene, often with no dialogue or plot progression. The cutscene is just there to show off how good the game can look. There is often no reason these sequences couldn't be playable other than the fact you probably wouldn't do it with as much style as the cinematic.

3. Self referencing. This one usually pops up in long running series, and newer game will make a reference to a memorable moment from a prior title in the series, either by puting you in a familier situation or facing a familier puzzle, or adversary from a previous title. Usually these are dummed down and are just included as a "hey remember this? wasnt this awesome?" bit in a cynical attempt to win some nostalgia points. This should not be confused with a wink to the audience or even a little well done self parody which can really enhance a game.

Its late and I'm tired so I think I will leave it as those three. For now...

 

[ffs-dontcare]

I would find a game to be pretentious if, while trying to be deep, it basically hit you over the head with it instead of being subtle about it.

Hopefully that makes sense. I'm not sure how else to put it.

 

[triggrhappy94]

The creator complaining about good reviews "not getting it."
Especially when the game isn't all that special.

When a game tries to make a big deal about an elementary school level theme.

 

[Warachia]

I'd say it's trying to have a pay off with no setup, look at Bientot Léte, it tries to be all artsy and stylised, but in the practical sense, you don't know why you are there or what you are doing, the only way that you can have this make any sense and actually be artsy is if you make up a backstory yourself.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

It doesn't. Because games can't be pretentious.

Game creators can be pretentious by claiming all critics just "don't get it", but their games can't be pretentious.

 

[Megahedron]

Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious.

And now the word is meaningless. Oh well.

Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum. Gum.

 

[Gennadios]

None of the OP games seemed particularly bad to me, although I havn't played Machine for Pigs. I mean there's no replay value, but I like brooding WTF games and I have plenty of sandboxes to keep me occupied, so if I like the aesthetic and stumbling around in the dark for a few hours I'm generally happy.

Games I'd call "pretentious" would be the "parody" games, games like Grotesque Tactics and the Deadpool game. Yes, they poke fun at rehashing the same tired tropes and mechanics of similar games in their 4th wall breaking style. But all it really says to me is that the developers didn't really have the creativity to cope/modify the mechanics.

It's more infuriating to hear the main character poke fun at the battle maps being reused as you're re-running the same tired mission than if it was just played straight. At least BioWare tried to hide it by rotating maps and setting new starting positions.

 

[Warachia]

It doesn't. Because games can't be pretentious.

Game creators can be pretentious by claiming all critics just "don't get it", but their games can't be pretentious.

I disagree, take a look at Bientot Léte, that game is the definition of pretentious.
Incidentally, why do you think that games can't be pretentious?

 

[ThatQuietGuy]

Art and the meanings one can find in artwork is very subjective, as a result I'd assume people's use of the word pretentious to be very subjective as well, so I try not to give too much weight to the word. Much the same way I gloss over the use of the term "overrated" these days. It just doesn't seem like the type of thing any one person can objectively put to a piece of media.

 

[Filiecs]

I say that game becomes pretentious if it doesn't have enough self-effacing humor AND tries to shove its story in your face. The designers needs to accept that some people just aren't going to care too much about a serious story or a "2deep4me" meaning and design around it. By adding some self-referential or ridiculousness to the game you can entertain those that don't care as much about the story or even convince those that would see your game as pretentious that you are night trying to shove some moral into their head. Done right, a game doesn't even necessarily need to sacrifice its underlining seriousness to implement said self-effacing humor.

The best comparison I can think of would be The Binding of Isaac vs. Braid. Both are incredibly deep and serious when you look into them and both have put a lot of effort into making mechanics into metaphors. However, where Braid is serious, has confusing narrative, and little humor, The Binding of Isaac stocks itself full of hilarious references and makes its serious undertone have a silly coating. As a result, Braid is often regarded as pretentious while The Binding of Isaac is often seen as hilarious AND is often praised for it's mysterious and deep meaning.

 

[xyrafhoan]

What i wanted to say in my post, was basically someone using the gaming platform for his artsy bullshit, and then going "Look, i made a story driven game and give you a message! Im so clever!" despite the fact hes not actually taking advantage of the whole "game" thing.

And what exactly would you consider "taking advantage of the whole 'game' thing?" Why should that be a requirement? There are whole art movements based around deconstructing the typical definition of what a certain medium is. Look at Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauschenberg#The_White_Paintings.2C_Black_Paintings.2C_and_Red_Paintings]. That's a Wikipedia article on them, and here [http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/singular_forms/images/artworks/image_1a.jpg] is one of the paintings in this series at the Guggenheim museum. That's all it is--a bunch of blank, white panels. Rauschenberg even gave instructions to those who put his works on display, saying if they got dirty somehow to get white paint and recover them themselves. He describes the white paintings as "a landing pad for shadows." Essentially, the goal of the painting was to not get you to observe what was going on with the painting, but to attune you to what was going on around you. To observe how you interact with the piece, and how the piece interacts with the space. While it's not really a "painting" as we know it, and certainly not taking advantage of what is typically marveled in paintings such as color, depth, form, detail, and texture, it's still an experiment which is at least in part derived from the medium.

And again, his pieces are in some of the most renowned museums in the world. I'm not saying Dear Esther is or should be as famous as the works of Rauschenberg, but I am saying it's rather pointless to begrudge a game for not following the parameters of what you consider to be a "game." Dear Esther never purported to be a "game" as we know it, it's just a different kind of experience that happens to use the same tools and medium that we typically consider are good for games. Personally I also think it could have benefited from a bit more interaction, but I can also appreciate how brave it was of them to so completely detach themselves from the elements which would have been so tempting to slip in there, like an inventory or using tools and such to solve puzzles and discover more things.

I wish I could empathize with your stance and comparison, but the reason why I can't is because a piece of art in the physical sense of a painting is very, very different from a video game. We're talking here about a commercial product put into mass production and distribution for the purpose of making a profit. Maybe it's just me and my old school train of thought, but when I sit down to play a game I want to be entertained, challenged and have fun. Maybe there's a market for these quasi-abstract interpretations, but to lump them into the same category of traditional games then is a disservice to both them and the games they would be compared to that have a little more substance and validity. I guess what I'm saying is that this "new thinking" being brought forth in gaming is not gaming at all. If it's a game it's a game, if it's artistic expression it's artistic expression. I can't even call a game "art", because it's not art...it's design. So every game that tries to purport itself as something deep and expressive is pretentious in my eyes. It's trying to be something it's not (art) while failing to be what it's supposed to be (a game). That's just my opinion.

I saw this line and I can't help but think most of the games that are thought of as pretentious aren't really out there to make money. A large chunk of indie games get the pretentious label but at the same time I doubt those creators went out of their way to think about profit, otherwise they wouldn't make a product that requires a certain amount of abstract thought to enjoy. Most of those games are also made by small teams with small budgets and have a lot of technical limitation as to how they can present their story. It's coming from a very different place than AAA gaming. Those games don't even promise to be very game-like at times, and generally the creators are just doing their thing to fill a particular niche they were genuinely interested in exploring.

On the other hand, David Cage is someone who I would label pretentious. He does want to make games that make a lot of money and make an interactive movie experience with the shiniest graphics and with mo-cap and all sorts of technology that doesn't necessarily make *any* aspect of the game improve. After all, realism doesn't always trump good aesthetic. He's not really thinking in the abstract but he thinks his games are the best thing since sliced bread and polygons=emotions and we've never felt real emotions from games of past generations. He has a niche too, but he kind of disparages the work of others. Phil Fish is another person who I find is pretentious in a different way, since he doesn't really appreciate the design choices other people make either, but I do find it harder to find fault with the design of Fez compared to the design of say, Heavy Rain or Indigo Prophecy. If I'm going to play a story-heavy game, I'd rather tackle one that isn't pretending to be a big Hollywood movie.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

It's been said before, but I don't think that pushing narrative boundaries is pretentious. I tend to believe that pretension is in the eye of the beholder, in that not everyone reacts to pointed mechanics or subject matters in the same way. Some people loved Dear Esther's subdued and focused narrative delivery, others felt like they were prevented from jumping up hills or from exploring the island at their leisure. Some people loved Braid's role reversal, others thought the whole thing was navel-gazing tripe. Some people think FEZ is truly innovative, others see a gimmicky platformer made by an asshole.

I just don't think it's possible to point at something and for everyone to spontaneously agree that yes that thing, over there, that ONE game, is unilaterally and indubitably pretentious.

 

[Zeldias]

I would describe pretension as a state in which a person aspires towards certain aesthetic statements that the actual quality of the work doesn't support. So you, as a creator, find yourself saying "This work vexes the dialectic of bananas and organisms in Rare's Donkey Kong Country!" And everyone else is like "No, you just replaced the bananas with tampons."

To add to that definition, I'd also like to add a certain layer of abstractness. If we're not just dealing with dense folks who refuse to engage with something that could be interesting and elevating and so use the word, I've always found pretentious works to be things that I felt didn't interact with any meaningful reality. For example, I knew a person who earned a doctorate in Literature; her area of expertise was basically 17th century gynecology texts. Why? Who will that serve? I also know a guy who does homophonic translations as his area of expertise; that means you say a word, let's use paper. He divides that word into other words, so paper > pay, per > pay, pure, and so on. Again, why? For who?

Now I'm not going to denigrate studying weird/artsy/whatever. It can be valuable, but when shit spins off into a certain point in the abstraction stratosphere, it's pretentious.

For games, my go-to example is going to be Eternal Sonata. "Moves change if you're in shadow or light!" Why? What the fuck does that have to do with Chopin? Why is there a war or rebellion or whatever happening? Why the fuck is Chopin a background character in a game meant to celebrate his life's works and contemplate the nature of death? Why the hell is a woman who was stabbed THROUGH THE CHEST soliloquizing on her death for like ten minutes? Shit like that is a failure of the quality of the work to reach the vision, and just smacks of bullshittery and pretension.

On the other hand, there's Bastion, which has this interesting commentary on history and narrative in the New Game+ repetition and has this very Biblical quest to restore the land cast in this oddly gritty, Western/fantasy setting. Bastion has points to make, and makes them succinctly, and the points are not extremely academic in nature (or can at the least be moving).

So I guess for me fundamentally pretension is a question of abstraction vs impact, and purpose vs execution. The best of the best can take the abstract and make it strike like a hammer, with clarity of purpose and skillful execution (Ishmael Reed, Affinity Konar, Jennifer Knox, Bastion team). The worst produce Too Human (which was shit), Twilight (which is dangerous shit), and 50 Shades of Grey (which is dangerous, slanderous (in that it implies that people interested in BDSM have been abused) shit).

 

[Ninjat_126]

Tl;dr: Artificial substance that's expected to be taken as genuine substance.

That's pretty much it for me.

So this would include action games trying to be known as horror games, and the Metal Gear Solid series if the creator(s) are actually taking it seriously.

For films, potentially Sucker Punch. As I've said before it had a bunch of interesting subversive ideas... so buried in the noise that they may as well have been absent.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Today I learned: very few people seem to understand what 'pretentious' actually means.

I guess it has become one of those words that has become almost like slang, with a meaning that differs from person to person. The way people are using it here, its meaning seems to be roughly equivalent to saying "that game is gay."

 

[GoaThief]

The only game I have ever played that I can flat out call pretentious is Anna. I have never been able to get into the saw mill and I have no desire to do so if they make it so bizarrely abstract just to open a goddamn door

Just a heads up as I felt similarly to you, I noticed that Anna now has a free Director's Cut update that changes a few puzzles (including the stupid sawmill introduction) and a handful of other things. I tried it and was able to enter it in a much more logical manner, you should give it another whirl.

 

[Mikkel421427]

My understanding of the word "Pretentious" is something pretending to be one thing and then being another thing... And then failing to be that thing. Let's bring out the old chestnut Spec Ops: The Line. Spec Ops: The Line is technically pretentious, since it pretends to be a mediocre shooter, but it actually turns out to be a well-placed roundhouse kick straight to the player's teeth. Is that pretentious? Technically, yes... Would I call it pretentious? No. Since it manages to kick so straight and so hard and so well-placed in my teeth, that if it was physical, I would currently be on a diet consisting largely of smoothies and soup. Thus, I mark it in my box of "Lovely games" and appreciate it that much more for duping me into this false sense of "Eh... Boring" and then smacking me around the head for thinking exactly that. I believe that that let's it ascend the mark of "pretentious" since it manages to deliver well on what it actually is.

Now a pretentious game? Hmm... I'll have to go with... Dear Esther. Now, now, I know some of you already said that you don't view Dear Esther as pretentious, but don't tune out just yet. I find it pretentious, due to the fact that the gameplay and the story are completely seperated. Normally, this wouldn't break the deal for me, look at Gunpoint, I'm a huge fan of that game, I find it a great laugh, jumping about, pouncing people and then punching them in the face, sometimes even launching them through windows. However, the reason I don't find that game to be pretentious, even though it should be, is actually due to the fact that it's a laugh. It shows that it was supposed to be a great game and that the title (and also the story, in partial. It even has an achievement for acknowledging it) doesn't really fit with the gameplay. But it's a game, it's a lark, where Dear Esther isn't. Dear Esther sets out to tell a story about a man who has... Something... I'm not really sure... But that's besides the point. It sets out to tell a story, while trying to be thoughtprovoking, while trying to be something that it isn't originally. It isn't thoughtprovoking. The only thoughts it provoked with me was "the fuck is this?" when looking around the island. The equations, the words on the cliffs, all that stuff has NOTHING to do with the story (or maybe it just flew completely over my head). I would honestly much rather read Dear Esther as a story, written in a book, possibly illustrated. I might even be able to stretch myself to watch it as an ever-so-slightly artsy movie, in style of Moon. But not as a game. It's brilliant as an experiment, but nothing else. And therefore it comes off as pretentious.

But before I end this, I would like to point out that everyone interprets stuff differently. I once wrote a small short story, with the only intention being to write a good story, but it has been interpreted as "Society criticism" to "Fanfiction for The Hunger Games" (The title was 'A day in District 12'. A sci-fi story about a dystopian police state), while all I interpreted it as was "A good story".

 

[Broderick]

Spoiler

My understanding of the word "Pretentious" is something pretending to be one thing and then being another thing... And then failing to be that thing. Let's bring out the old chestnut Spec Ops: The Line. Spec Ops: The Line is technically pretentious, since it pretends to be a mediocre shooter, but it actually turns out to be a well-placed roundhouse kick straight to the player's teeth. Is that pretentious? Technically, yes... Would I call it pretentious? No. Since it manages to kick so straight and so hard and so well-placed in my teeth, that if it was physical, I would currently be on a diet consisting largely of smoothies and soup. Thus, I mark it in my box of "Lovely games" and appreciate it that much more for duping me into this false sense of "Eh... Boring" and then smacking me around the head for thinking exactly that. I believe that that let's it ascend the mark of "pretentious" since it manages to deliver well on what it actually is.

Now a pretentious game? Hmm... I'll have to go with... Dear Esther. Now, now, I know some of you already said that you don't view Dear Esther as pretentious, but don't tune out just yet. I find it pretentious, due to the fact that the gameplay and the story are completely seperated. Normally, this wouldn't break the deal for me, look at Gunpoint, I'm a huge fan of that game, I find it a great laugh, jumping about, pouncing people and then punching them in the face, sometimes even launching them through windows. However, the reason I don't find that game to be pretentious, even though it should be, is actually due to the fact that it's a laugh. It shows that it was supposed to be a great game and that the title (and also the story, in partial. It even has an achievement for acknowledging it) doesn't really fit with the gameplay. But it's a game, it's a lark, where Dear Esther isn't. Dear Esther sets out to tell a story about a man who has... Something... I'm not really sure... But that's besides the point. It sets out to tell a story, while trying to be thoughtprovoking, while trying to be something that it isn't originally. It isn't thoughtprovoking. The only thoughts it provoked with me was "the fuck is this?" when looking around the island. The equations, the words on the cliffs, all that stuff has NOTHING to do with the story (or maybe it just flew completely over my head). I would honestly much rather read Dear Esther as a story, written in a book, possibly illustrated. I might even be able to stretch myself to watch it as an ever-so-slightly artsy movie, in style of Moon. But not as a game. It's brilliant as an experiment, but nothing else. And therefore it comes off as pretentious.

But before I end this, I would like to point out that everyone interprets stuff differently. I once wrote a small short story, with the only intention being to write a good story, but it has been interpreted as "Society criticism" to "Fanfiction for The Hunger Games" (The title was 'A day in District 12'. A sci-fi story about a dystopian police state), while all I interpreted it as was "A good story".

You are almost right, unfortunately your definition of the word isn't quite there though; under your definition, a spy would be pretentious heh. One definition states "Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified". Basically, it is acting or presenting something to somebody with the illusion of intelligence or merit, when none exists. Say someone is trying to impress some guests that are coming over to his house, so he buys a couple paintings and hangs them up on the wall so he looks more sophisticated than he actually is. He would be the textbook definition of a person who is pretentious.

I say a game is pretentious when it says it's view about a specific topic is "the right view". Basically, if a game is telling you what to think, rather than to just think in general, I believe it is pretentious. Of course, this example of the word only works for games that are trying to send a message to the audience. Edit: Also unneeded complication in game stories usually reek of pretension.