Video Games...Discuss Them

[D_Davis]

Ugh. Video games do not need to be intellectual works of art.

I'm so sick of this holier than thou attitude of the cult of Jonathan Blow and Phil Fish and the indie crowd. I swear - it's worse than Pitchfork these days.

Yet as harsh as Blow can be toward his industry, he applies even stricter standards to his own work. With The Witness, produced with about $2 million of his own money, he plans to do nothing less than establish the video game as an art form—a medium capable of producing something far richer and more meaningful than the brain-dead digital toys currently on offer.

Jesus Christ - gimme a break.

Braid was an interesting platformer with some time-manipulation elements. In other words, a slightly more complex Blinx the Time Sweeper. The story, as it were, was OK, but completely superfluous to what the player was doing. The game wasn't telling the story, the player was being told the story. It was a good game because it had good game mechanics and game-play.

I don't understand this desire of the video gaming world to be treated as some kind of intellectual art form. Games incorporate artistic elements, and some of them can be brain-burns. That's cool. Just like board games. But you don't see the board game industry complaining about people not treating them the same as movies and literature.

They're games. You use your brain, your hands, and your eyes to perform skills at a certain level to overcome obstacles and goals.

Just make good games. Don't worry about elevating the art form or whatever.

The article is also somewhat insulting - it degrades and belittles video games at every chance it gets. Hey, guess what? Call of Duty is a good video game.

R-Type Delta, an old shmup, is a great video game.

There are thousands of great video games. Blow made one of those. Phil Fish might have with Fez.

Also - Journey already did it, Blow.

[D_Davis]

Goddamnit that article pissed me off.

Thanks a lot, Irish. :P

[D_Davis]

You know what's a great fucking video game - Tetris.

When Jonathan Blow makes something as good as Tetris, I'll listen to his BS.

[D_Davis]

And this creative-genius-art-savior's next game is basically Myst 4.

So he's made Blinx the Time Sweeper 3, and Myst 4.

Thank god he saved the video game industry!

[Winston*]

Braid was an interesting platformer with some time-manipulation elements. In other words, a slightly more complex Blinx the Time Sweeper. The story, as it were, was OK, but completely superfluous to what the player was doing. The game wasn't telling the story, the player was being told the story. It was a good game because it had good game mechanics and game-play.

The narrative integration of Braid was a little bit like:

"He wished he could turn back time"

*20 time-based puzzles to illustrate this*

[D_Davis]

The narrative integration of Braid was a little bit like:

"He wished he could turn back time"

*20 time-based puzzles to illustrate this*

Yep. Brilliant. A new level of storytelling has been reached! Achievement un-fucking-locked, bro!

[D_Davis]

Here's the thing, see:

Video games are already fucking awesome.

I spent 500 hundred hours playing Dark Souls. I've NEVER spent 500 hours reading a single book or watching a single movie. Not even close.

[Sycophant]

I'm not interested in a standard of video games that excludes Super Mario Bros. because of its lack of storytelling sophistication or emotional content or whatever the fuck.

[D_Davis]

I'm not interested in a standard of video games that excludes Super Mario Bros. because of its lack of storytelling sophistication or emotional content or whatever the fuck.

That's because you're a simpleton. Have fun playing your fun games! I'll be over here with my intellectually stimulating works of art.

[D_Davis]

I've never wanted to punch three people more than I do right now:
.

The happiest I ever saw Blow was when we met his friend Marc ten Bosch one night at the Oakland branch of a legendarily artery-obstructing local chain called Zachary’s Chicago Pizza. Ten Bosch is a tall, serious independent developer whose grave reticence provided an entertaining counterpoint to Blow’s philosophical expansiveness. When ten Bosch mentioned that he had worked briefly at Electronic Arts on the team that developed the real-time strategy game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, I asked whether he’d found the project interesting. Ten Bosch reflected on this for a moment with the solemn intensity of a man testifying before a Senate subcommittee.



“There were some cool water effects,” he finally said.



“Ooh!,” Blow chimed in. “That’s the ultimate diss!”



It was when ten Bosch began explaining his current game project to me that Blow seemed most in his element. Actually, I should amend that to attempting toexplain, because in the 20 minutes that ten Bosch spent describing his game, Miegakure, pretty much everything he said slid off my brain like raindrops off Gore-Tex. Miegakure, he said, is a puzzle-based platformer that takes place in four dimensions—four spatial dimensions.
“But there aren’t four spatial dimensions,” I protested.



“Well,” ten Bosch countered, “this is what it would be like if there were.” And that was about the last thing he said that I understood for quite a while, as he and Blow chatted avidly about extruding surfaces and imagining flat planes as tubes. In Miegakure, two spatial dimensions are constant, and the player solves puzzles by swapping between the two others with the press of a button. Even as Blow and ten Bosch grew more animated and their explanations more inventive, their words continued to bounce off my forehead like so many tennis balls. Finally, ten Bosch pulled out his iPhone and loaded a sample video of Miegakure’s game-play, which featured a tiny redheaded character walking over a floating island. At the player’s cue, the fabric of the game-world suddenly warped and shifted so that the landmass seemed to be refabricating itself from the inside out. The effect was spellbinding.



“That’s the fourth dimension,” ten Bosch said.



Jaw hanging open, I looked over at Blow, who simply grinned at me

Here is the sample video - MIND BLOWING!

[youtube]GhBoY6s-Fhw[/youtube]

[EyesWideOpen]

I don't understand why you get so worked up D about a few people wanting to make "art" games. It's not like they are trying to make every game in the world this way. Why does it have to be either or with you? Why can't there be both types?

[Irish]

Goddamnit that article pissed me off.

Thanks a lot, Irish. :P

If you weren't such a Neanderthal, you might appreciate these things more, D.

(More seriously, I was gone for like an hour or two .. Didn't expect big reaction from the link. Cool surprise to see people discussing it though.

Even if most of you are wrong :P)

[Winston*]

I think as much as he has a reductive view of video games, the writer has a pretty reductive view of art. Art to him seems to be defined solely in terms of its "intellectual depths".

One was the soothing PlayStation 3 game Flower, in which the player takes the role of the wind and swoops across bucolic landscapes pollinating plants and righting environmental wrongs; it’s a wonderful game, but it’s about as artistic as a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Presumably he wouldn't call a Thomas Kinkade painting wonderful. Wank.

[D_Davis]

I don't understand why you get so worked up D about a few people wanting to make "art" games. It's not like they are trying to make every game in the world this way. Why does it have to be either or with you? Why can't there be both types?

They already are.

They already incorporate artistic elements. Idiots like Blow and Fish aren't doing anything knew, but they and their cult of fans think they are.

The main problem is Blow, Fish, and their fans have a very limited, very small idea of what art actually is.

I like all good games. There is no reason to say that some are intellectual art while others aren't. There are good games, and there are bad games. Period. Some good games are more cerebral than others, some aren't. This does not make them better, nor does it validate the industry in any way.

Best game I've played since the Souls games has been Journey. That's pretty artistic, but beyond that it's just a good game.

[D_Davis]

I think as much as he has a reductive view of video games, the writer has a pretty reductive view of art. Art to him seems to be defined solely in terms of its "intellectual depths".

Exactly.

[Winston*]

Anyway I finally started playing Aquaria on the PC. Gorgeous looking game. Love the music also.



This game certainly has a lot of depth! LOL.

[Irish]

They already are.

They already incorporate artistic elements. Idiots like Blow and Fish aren't doing anything knew, but they and their cult of fans think they are.

The main problem is Blow, Fish, and their fans have a very limited, very small idea of what art actually is.

I like all good games. There is no reason to say that some are intellectual art while others aren't. There are good games, and there are bad games. Period. Some good games are more cerebral than others, some aren't. This does not make them better, nor does it validate the industry in any way.

Best game I've played since the Souls games has been Journey. That's pretty artistic, but beyond that it's just a good game.

I'd argue -- as a wild guess -- that, by contrat, your definition is far too wide.

And sorry, but an industry that as a juvenile and degrading view of women, sex, and race is always going to be relegated to the kiddy table.

Aside from that, AAA games have the same problems as major movies: they cost too damn much to produce & the people who make them are only willing to be on sure things. Which means a helluva lot of sequels and retreads and reboots of old, once popular IP.

That doesn't sound healthy to me, much less like "art."

Edit: Shame on you, Winston, for laughing at your own joke. :lol:

[D_Davis]

The only thing that matters is that some game are good, and some are bad. I like the play and champion the ones that I think are good.

Nothing else matters.

[D_Davis]

Aside from that, AAA games have the same problems as major movies: they cost too damn much to produce & the people who make them are only willing to be on sure things. Which means a helluva lot of sequels and retreads and reboots of old, once popular IP.

There are plenty of non AAA games being made and released. The industry is very healthy right now. There is a good balance.

[Our Aurora]

Anyway I finally started playing Aquaria on the PC. Gorgeous looking game. Love the music also.



This game certainly has a lot of depth! LOL.

This photo reminded me of the biggest disappointment of my childhood -- Odell Down Under -- which had no depth.

I remember picking it out of a magazine for my birthday thinking, "Wow I can't wait to swim around and eat other fish."

There was never enough food.

[Ezee E]

That dolphin game was one of my biggest disappointments. I think I was just too young to understand what had to be done.

[Watashi]

I'm really enjoying Mass Effect 2 so far. I'd gather I'm about 25% done.

[Ezee E]

I'm really enjoying Mass Effect 2 so far. I'd gather I'm about 25% done.

Definitely the best of the trilogy. I liked it a ton too.

[D_Davis]

Started another game of Dark Souls tonight. Rolled up a sorcerer - playing as a battle mage with spells and melee. Just rang the second bell, now on my way back up to go to Sen's Fortress. This game just doesn't get old.

[Thirdmango]

Blow is a hipster douchebag. Sure he'll put out cool stuff. I played most of Braid and loved the gameplay and laughed at the obnoxious story. Also that Meigakure idea I'm pretty sure has already been used, where you can move something in another plane and put it back in the regular plane. Pretty much the article painted the picture of Blow as the kind of guy who hates everything and the only thing he actually likes is the fact that he hates everything.