G RolDorsia? Nobody goes there anymore...Nell'sRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Video games are no more artistic than the Go Bots I had when I was a kid (yeah, fuck Transformers). Sure, plenty of artistry went into the creation of my Go Bots; but they were ultimately toys. Video games are big, pretty, sometimes highly involving toys.
Blood on the Sand already made sense of the Iraq conflict anyway btw: it's bloody, senseless, and all about money. Sorry Six Days in Fallujah, you got beat to the punch.
(the audacity of this motherfucker to claim that he'll "make sense of the most complex issue of our day" with a third person shooter is revolting)
I think you need to back up and re-read what the current topic of discussion is. We're talking specifically about narratives at this point, so the sims is NOT a good example to be throwing a round.
Anyway, it DOES have a narrative. It just doesn't fit it into your narrow definition of following a writers narrative. It happens on the fly and depends on your actions and the random nature of the CPU controlled Sims. Its the perfect gaming equivalent of a romcom.
Its a valid example.
You don't need to lecture me on what a narrative is, I've argued that same point numerous times on this very board.
However, it's not pertinent to the topic of discussion at this point. Its pretty obvious the type of narrative he's referring to, and pointing out how your technically correct doesn't change his opinion.
I don't see where you're getting that.
And yet it's still about war.
Where are the games depicting the life of working-class families in 19th-century yorkshire, or similar? For that matter, where's the games equivalent of, say, a romcom (including accessibility to the general population)?
Depicting the life of a family? Accessibility to the general population? How is The Sims not a perfect example? It tells a story by utilizing gameplay and makes it personal in a way no other medium can match.
The problem with games is that no-one's even trying to tell stories with them that amount to much beyond "kill eveything you see". "Stunted adolescents" is worryingly accurate, at least as far as the writers of plots go.
Video games are no more artistic than the Go Bots I had when I was a kid (yeah, fuck Transformers). Sure, plenty of artistry went into the creation of my Go Bots; but they were ultimately toys. Video games are big, pretty, sometimes highly involving toys.
Blood on the Sand already made sense of the Iraq conflict anyway btw: it's bloody, senseless, and all about money. Sorry Six Days in Fallujah, you got beat to the punch.
(the audacity of this motherfucker to claim that he'll "make sense of the most complex issue of our day" with a third person shooter is revolting)
I think you need to back up and re-read what the current topic of discussion is. We're talking specifically about narratives at this point, so the sims is NOT a good example to be throwing a round.
Anyway, it DOES have a narrative. It just doesn't fit it into your narrow definition of following a writers narrative. It happens on the fly and depends on your actions and the random nature of the CPU controlled Sims. Its the perfect gaming equivalent of a romcom.
Its a valid example.
You don't need to lecture me on what a narrative is, I've argued that same point numerous times on this very board.
However, it's not pertinent to the topic of discussion at this point. Its pretty obvious the type of narrative he's referring to, and pointing out how your technically correct doesn't change his opinion.
I don't see where you're getting that.
And yet it's still about war.
Where are the games depicting the life of working-class families in 19th-century yorkshire, or similar? For that matter, where's the games equivalent of, say, a romcom (including accessibility to the general population)?
Depicting the life of a family? Accessibility to the general population? How is The Sims not a perfect example? It tells a story by utilizing gameplay and makes it personal in a way no other medium can match.
The problem with games is that no-one's even trying to tell stories with them that amount to much beyond "kill eveything you see". "Stunted adolescents" is worryingly accurate, at least as far as the writers of plots go.
See that? thats the part we're discussing.
Really? We're ONLY discussing one sentence from the all the posts made? Who made that decision?
No, I think thats the part you're discussing, and ignoring everything else.
I think there's a switch in some people's heads that occasionally induces them to freak out and create a straw man to persecute them for playing videos games so they can wrassle it down and declare their hobby to be art or culture or a useful job tool or whatever the flavor of the month is.
Oh, was that not the question?
Then Pac Man is your Citizen Kane. Household name. Has songs written about him. Dated Madonna probably.
Video games are no more artistic than the Go Bots I had when I was a kid (yeah, fuck Transformers). Sure, plenty of artistry went into the creation of my Go Bots; but they were ultimately toys. Video games are big, pretty, sometimes highly involving toys.
Blood on the Sand already made sense of the Iraq conflict anyway btw: it's bloody, senseless, and all about money. Sorry Six Days in Fallujah, you got beat to the punch.
(the audacity of this motherfucker to claim that he'll "make sense of the most complex issue of our day" with a third person shooter is revolting)
the ignorance of this post is outstanding.
I think it was sarcasm...I hope it was sarcasm.
Please do not let this thread devolve into a debate on the Iraq War.
I think you need to back up and re-read what the current topic of discussion is. We're talking specifically about narratives at this point, so the sims is NOT a good example to be throwing a round.
Anyway, it DOES have a narrative. It just doesn't fit it into your narrow definition of following a writers narrative. It happens on the fly and depends on your actions and the random nature of the CPU controlled Sims. Its the perfect gaming equivalent of a romcom.
Its a valid example.
You don't need to lecture me on what a narrative is, I've argued that same point numerous times on this very board.
However, it's not pertinent to the topic of discussion at this point. Its pretty obvious the type of narrative he's referring to, and pointing out how your technically correct doesn't change his opinion.
I don't see where you're getting that.
And yet it's still about war.
Where are the games depicting the life of working-class families in 19th-century yorkshire, or similar? For that matter, where's the games equivalent of, say, a romcom (including accessibility to the general population)?
Depicting the life of a family? Accessibility to the general population? How is The Sims not a perfect example? It tells a story by utilizing gameplay and makes it personal in a way no other medium can match.
The problem with games is that no-one's even trying to tell stories with them that amount to much beyond "kill eveything you see". "Stunted adolescents" is worryingly accurate, at least as far as the writers of plots go.
See that? thats the part we're discussing.
Really? We're ONLY discussing one sentence from the all the posts made? Who made that decision?
No, I think thats the part you're discussing, and ignoring everything else.
That one sentence is a summation of his entire post. Notice the continued references to story, plot, and narration in his post?
I think there's a switch in some people's heads that occasionally induces them to freak out and create a straw man to persecute them for playing videos games so they can wrassle it down and declare their hobby to be art or culture or a useful job tool or whatever the flavor of the month is.
Oh, was that not the question?
Then Pac Man is your Citizen Kane. Household name. Has songs written about him. Dated Madonna probably.
What the hell is this post even about? Who do you see freaking out in this topic? Where is the persecution complex? Further more, how can you reduce a passion down to "a flavor of the month" over such a broad spectrum of people?
TheSonicRetard on
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
Video games are no more artistic than the Go Bots I had when I was a kid (yeah, fuck Transformers). Sure, plenty of artistry went into the creation of my Go Bots; but they were ultimately toys. Video games are big, pretty, sometimes highly involving toys.
Blood on the Sand already made sense of the Iraq conflict anyway btw: it's bloody, senseless, and all about money. Sorry Six Days in Fallujah, you got beat to the punch.
(the audacity of this motherfucker to claim that he'll "make sense of the most complex issue of our day" with a third person shooter is revolting)
It's all degrees of escapism, there's the moments of fear, joy, sadness, surprise and revelation associated with various scenes in famous movies. How can similar feelings be so easily dismissed as fleeting if they are associated with video games. Can one feel more sad or more empathetic over Bambi's mother's death than say, Aeris?* If the two scenes swapped their mediums would Aeris' death have a larger impact then? Just because the observation and participation are different?
*No, I am not championing FF7 as writing gold, I am merely pulling a widely regarded emotional moment from a game.
Really? We're ONLY discussing one sentence from the all the posts made? Who made that decision?
No, I think thats the part you're discussing, and ignoring everything else.
That one sentence is a summation of his entire post. Notice the continued references to story, plot, and narration in his post?
Yes.
As I mentioned, the Sims has a narrative. It has a story. One that is affected by you. And affected by random factors. The only thing that precludes it from being a narrative, according to you, is that the stories aren't written by someone else, they're built by the player.
Really? We're ONLY discussing one sentence from the all the posts made? Who made that decision?
No, I think thats the part you're discussing, and ignoring everything else.
That one sentence is a summation of his entire post. Notice the continued references to story, plot, and narration in his post?
Yes.
As I mentioned, the Sims has a narrative. It has a story. One that is affected by you. And affected by random factors. The only thing that precludes it from being a narrative, according to you, is that the stories aren't written by someone else, they're built by the player.
ugh, I'm not going in circles anymore. Continue missing the point of his post, then.
Really? We're ONLY discussing one sentence from the all the posts made? Who made that decision?
No, I think thats the part you're discussing, and ignoring everything else.
That one sentence is a summation of his entire post. Notice the continued references to story, plot, and narration in his post?
Yes.
As I mentioned, the Sims has a narrative. It has a story. One that is affected by you. And affected by random factors. The only thing that precludes it from being a narrative, according to you, is that the stories aren't written by someone else, they're built by the player.
ugh, I'm not going in circles anymore. Continue missing the point of his post, then.
I'll do that while you continue making passive aggressive posts when you can't defend what you're saying.
Sims absolutely has a narrative, it's just not crafted by an external author. It's a great example of how games can attempt storytelling without grabbing stuff from other media. It's built solely on AI, the capabilities of the world and how the player interacts with both. To say it doesn't have a narrative is totally missing the point of what games are actually capable of in the field of storytelling - to do something that's exclusively interactive and strictly personal.
Edit: Oh, 25 posts appeared while I was writing this. Sorry
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
If you are really hard pressed for a narrative that does not center itself on "kill this," might I suggest Braid.
If you are really hard pressed for a narrative that does not center itself on "kill this," might I suggest Braid.
I'm not all that hardpressed, I'm just looking for examples with NO killing as they distinguish themselves rather nicely. Braid DOES involve killing, although as you pointed out it's not the central premise.
But if we're going that route, then there's a ton of great examples out there. Out of this World/Heart of the Alien has a fantastic plot that doesn't revolve around killing enemies, although how much interactivity it has could be disputed.
I smell someone getting butthurt over comments I made without malicious intent who won't shut the fuck up about it.
You know, I made a post and then you responded to it. Then I responded and so on. My posts had content. Yours were just insisting The Sims doesn't have a narrative because.... well you didn't really provide a reason.
"won't shut the fuck up about it" - Applies to you too.
Fine, then I'll sum it up for you. What you are referring to is known in the film as "plot" - the events which make up the film. What he is referring to is "story" - the overt meanings behind said events. He's referring to the directorial control exerted via story, i.e. "the writers" he's referring to.
Both make up a narrative. You have have a storyless plot. It's pretty damn clear he wasn't talking about a storyless plot. Why is this evident? Because he specifically refers to story and writers in his post.
Now then, with that said, I'll note that I have been trying to drop this dumbass argument for a good 3 posts now, yet here you are, butthurt as hell, yapping like a dog about how right you are, a concession I made a whole fucking page ago.
Now drop this and quit shitting up this thread.
EDIT: And I'll clarify and cut you off at the pass: Both CAN make up a narrative. A plot can be a narrative, a story can be a narrative. Neither are necessary, nor are they mutually exclusive.
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
The Sims doesn't have an authored narrative that is recieved similarly among varying audiences that elicits emotions. There's no shared experiences that are impressed on the players universally. Nothing your sim does, or will ever do, impacts masses to the point that 5 years from now someone will utter "Remember when Sim X did Y and Z happened?" and everyone will react the same as moments recalled from games with an actual storyline, such as any of the other ones in this thread.
The Sims doesn't have an authored narrative that is recieved similarly among varying audiences that elicits emotions. There's no shared experiences that are impressed on the players universally. Nothing your sim does, or will ever do, impacts masses to the point that 5 years from now someone will utter "Remember when Sim X did Y and Z happened?" and everyone will react the same as moments recalled from games with an actual storyline, such as any of the other ones in this thread.
THANK YOU for getting what I was trying to say.
I'm assuming you're a film major, because that's practically a textbook definition of Auteur theory.
TheSonicRetard on
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
No, not a film major, but now I'm going to go look that up.
Edit: My major belief is that if a work can convey a feeling common to its audience, it deserves at least the consideration of artistic value. A memory implanted on the viewer coupled with an emotional reaction is good as gold.
It's essentially the basis for Rodger Ebert's argument that games are not art, because he believes that games inherently lack auteurial control because we control our characters. Auteur theory simply states that an Auteur can maintain control over the overall vision for his work - the emotions elicited, the mis-en-scene, the story in addition to the plot (i.e. citizen kane's plot being out of order, but it still maintains a cohesive story). According to Ebert, these are the basis for the medium.
I agree on theory, but not in principle. I believe once gaming becomes sandboxy to the point the Sims is, it stops effectively being a medium, because no ideas are being transmitted. Whatever you get out of it is your own fabrication, not an auteur's. However, where I disagree is where Ebert assumes that since the Auteur gives up control of the main character, he also gives up his control of the vision of his work.
Best example of auteurial control in a game that I can think of is during Metal Gear Solid 4.
No, I'm not referring to any of the cutscenes, I'm talking about the return to shadow moses. When you're wandering around the battlefield, as you go to places you remember, Kojima has the game replay voice clips from MGS1, which elicits an obvious, deliberate emotion from you.
I'd love to see more narrative construction like that.
Edit:
My major belief is that if a work can convey a feeling common to its audience, it deserves at least the consideration of artistic value. A memory implanted on the viewer coupled with an emotional reaction is good as gold.
Then we're in 100% complete agreement then. That is exactly how I feel. If you've played MGS4, read my spoiler, as it's exactly what you're talking about.
That it's a culture that's just picked up and tossed away?
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PSN: Antiwhippy
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Then we're in 100% complete agreement then. That is exactly how I feel. If you've played MGS4, read my spoiler, as it's exactly what you're talking about.
Exactly. I guess I always feel confused when people debate their merit when this theory is so blatantly obvious to me, it's such a basic principle.
That it's a culture that's just picked up and tossed away?
Essentially yes. It's non-lasting culture, flash-in-the-pan culture. Stuff that is only relevant at this point in time, at which point it is removed from the collective consciousness. It's used and then disposed of, without anything deeper going on. A paper towel is disposable culture.
It has it's basis in the idea of high art vs low art. Personally, I'm a postmodernist, I draw no distinction between high art and low art, so I'm naturally inclined to disagree.
The Sims doesn't have an authored narrative that is recieved similarly among varying audiences that elicits emotions. There's no shared experiences that are impressed on the players universally.
Woah, hey, I think that's taking it a step too far. Just because the narrative is based on the players' actions and a random number generator doesn't mean there are no shared experiences, it just means that the shared experiences stem from gameplay elements rather than plot points. Nobody is going to say something about what Sim X did to Sim Y or what have you, but people sure might say, "Hey, you remember that Sims game? Did you ever seal someone up in a room and remove the door, "Cask of Amantillado"-style?"
I think the thing you have to remember (and the thing that Ebert tends to miss) is that there is always authorial control, really. Code doesn't generate itself; every possibility must be accounted for by the developers.
The Sims doesn't have an authored narrative that is recieved similarly among varying audiences that elicits emotions. There's no shared experiences that are impressed on the players universally.
Woah, hey, I think that's taking it a step too far. Just because the narrative is based on the players' actions and a random number generator doesn't mean there are no shared experiences, it just means that the shared experiences stem from gameplay elements rather than plot points. Nobody is going to say something about what Sim X did to Sim Y or what have you, but people sure might say, "Hey, you remember that Sims game? Did you ever seal someone up in a room and remove the door, "Cask of Amantillado"-style?"
I think the thing you have to remember (and the thing that Ebert tends to miss) is that there is always authorial control, really. Code doesn't generate itself; every possibility must be accounted for by the developers.
A bigger issue with Ebert's argument, and one that baffles me because he's supposed to be a film critic, is that it assumes film is a passive experience. It's NOT.
Art is NOT passive. Art is active. In contemporary art, the active interaction lies within the transmission of the medium, where the recipient interprets the message sent by the transmitter. An artist paints a picture with some deep meaning behind it, then a person goes and looks at it. He then thinks about it, draws his conclusions about what the author meant, internalizes it, and reacts. That's the interaction. It's a point that most artists, and especially film critics, try to pound home.
It's part of the reason why his criticism of video games makes no sense to me. It undermines his principles on film. Personally, I think Ebert is just a crotchity old man who never plays games, and thinks they're still Combat! and Pong clones, and gets upset when people try to tell him they convey messages.
I sometimes have to wonder if film critics have some sort of unconscious or even conscious bias against games because they end up making terrible movies. If they don't play games themselves, then those movies could be their only insight into the game industry and thus they think each one is as mindless as the films they produce.
Also, a big reason why games in general don't have particularly good writing compared to other media is because they don't need to as much, because gameplay elements themselves provide a means to convey emotion in the same way that music or graphical assets or dialogue or whatever other factors do.
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
Also, a big reason why games in general don't have particularly good writing compared to other media is because they don't need to as much, because gameplay elements themselves provide a means to convey emotion in the same way that music or graphical assets or dialogue or whatever other factors do.
Also, the majority of games are at least 8 hours of involvement, wherein a movie averages 90 minutes.
Also, a big reason why games in general don't have particularly good writing compared to other media is because they don't need to as much, because gameplay elements themselves provide a means to convey emotion in the same way that music or graphical assets or dialogue or whatever other factors do.
At the same time, I do believe there is a lot of experimentation that can go on to blend story telling into gameplay elements. It's basic at this point, but stuff like the interactions between Kane and Lynch (assuming anyone played it BEYOND the whole gamestop-gate deal), or the story-telling methods in Bioshock show untapped potential. When I played resident evil 5, I noticed how completely silent the two characters were during downtime. Those downtime segments in RE5 are deliberate pauses in the action to give the player time to calm down (both literally and in game, as thats when you do all your item management and go and collect herbs). But, during these down times, there isn't anything going on between the two players.
Now, I'd considered that capcom kept these areas silent so players could communicate via headsets to make item management easier. But I don't think that's really the case... I think, more likely, they just never considered using these moments for any significant plot progression. And by plot progression, I mean something as simple as letting us get attached to a character.
In RE5, you can press the B button at certain points and talk back to the other character. This should have been expanded upon during these down times... imagine if, anytime there's no enemies on screen, you can talk to your partner mass-effect style. It would have done wonders for character progression.
It's not so much groundbreaking in that specific instance, but it utilizes storytelling techniques that are inherently compatible with gaming without breaking gameflow. Environmental interaction, visual cues, passive audio logs, etc.
Its effect is kind of dissipated since System Shock 2 did the exact same things 8 years prior, and you could go even further back than that if you wanted, but it's a good example of how to properly utilize the potential of an interactive medium as a storytelling device, without remaining reliant on techniques from other media, e.g. "here's a cutscene".
Edit: RAAASKGH
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
Video games are no more artistic than the Go Bots I had when I was a kid (yeah, fuck Transformers). Sure, plenty of artistry went into the creation of my Go Bots; but they were ultimately toys. Video games are big, pretty, sometimes highly involving toys.
Blood on the Sand already made sense of the Iraq conflict anyway btw: it's bloody, senseless, and all about money. Sorry Six Days in Fallujah, you got beat to the punch.
(the audacity of this motherfucker to claim that he'll "make sense of the most complex issue of our day" with a third person shooter is revolting)
the ignorance of this post is outstanding.
Sorry bro, that's a pretty accurate distillation of Operation Iraqi Freedom. G-Unit are the most forward thinking political minds of this generation; which they've proven time and again.
My Go Bot/videogame/art analysis is both accurate, awesome, and completely logical.
Back in the renaissance, there was this huge inferiority complex going on where master artists and philosophers went crazy stacking their works of modern art, science, and philosophy against those of classical antiquity, like it was the end-all of culture.
If you ask me, that attitude did nothing but hold them back.
Back in the renaissance, there was this huge inferiority complex going on where master artists and philosophers went crazy stacking their works of modern art, science, and philosophy against those of classical antiquity, like it was the end-all of culture.
If you ask me, that attitude did nothing but hold them back.
Both notions - games being incapable of achieving the artistic heights of film/literature, or being unable to evolve beyond pure entertainment (essentially toys) - are fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. Earlier in the thread the infancy of videogaming was brought up, and I do think the case can be made that we haven't even scratched the surface of what interactivity can accomplish.
Games are theoretically free of any type of established structure and limitation. This is a medium in which film, visual art, music and literature can be incorporated and interacted with. The creation of virtual worlds is only dependent on the technology we use to build them. Books are confined to textual narration, and film is confined to an audiovisual experience.
Videogames are not confined to anything other than current hardware. Of course, this isn't necessarily a positive thing, just as the limitations of literature and cinema aren't negatives, but when we have the opportunity to go beyond established convention, the idea that we should keep mimicking other media is stunting the potential of interactivity. However, that doesn't mean we can't learn from the histories of other media and apply those techniques in new ways. The danger lies in clinging too rigidly to Citizen Kane or Shakespeare, when that isn't really what we should be aiming for.
Of course, we might never evolve beyond where we are now, but a little ambition and confidence won't hurt anyone. It all depends on people after all.
Edit: Or robots
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
Also, a big reason why games in general don't have particularly good writing compared to other media is because they don't need to as much, because gameplay elements themselves provide a means to convey emotion in the same way that music or graphical assets or dialogue or whatever other factors do.
At the same time, I do believe there is a lot of experimentation that can go on to blend story telling into gameplay elements. It's basic at this point, but stuff like the interactions between Kane and Lynch (assuming anyone played it BEYOND the whole gamestop-gate deal), or the story-telling methods in Bioshock show untapped potential. When I played resident evil 5, I noticed how completely silent the two characters were during downtime. Those downtime segments in RE5 are deliberate pauses in the action to give the player time to calm down (both literally and in game, as thats when you do all your item management and go and collect herbs). But, during these down times, there isn't anything going on between the two players.
Now, I'd considered that capcom kept these areas silent so players could communicate via headsets to make item management easier. But I don't think that's really the case... I think, more likely, they just never considered using these moments for any significant plot progression. And by plot progression, I mean something as simple as letting us get attached to a character.
In RE5, you can press the B button at certain points and talk back to the other character. This should have been expanded upon during these down times... imagine if, anytime there's no enemies on screen, you can talk to your partner mass-effect style. It would have done wonders for character progression.
This touches upon something that I think is missing from a lot of games, which is natural dialogue.
Why must the party, or characters, stop and take a break from the "game" to have a conversation? In RPGs, there are plenty of opportunities where in "real life", normal people would talk to pass the time. Including this sort of natural dialogue or small talk, without removing you from the game, would really help breath life into the characters.
That said, people thought games were just a fad in the 80's and would fade away. Now they're the most profitable form on entertainment in the world. Far from a fad.
I don't think that video games are part of disposable culture. Unless there's some sort of revolution in society where everyone simultaneously decides that being productive in all activities should be the new way of life.
Games are already art, some good examples have been posted here (I'll give a nod Shadow of the Colossus again). However, most pieces of art that are considered timeless were not recognized as such until the artist who created it had died. It's really sad that many of our best artists were peniless while laying on their deathbeds.
I guarantee that when Shigeru Miyamoto dies, he will be hailed as one of the greatest digital artists of 20th and 21st century.
Posts
Blood on the Sand already made sense of the Iraq conflict anyway btw: it's bloody, senseless, and all about money. Sorry Six Days in Fallujah, you got beat to the punch.
(the audacity of this motherfucker to claim that he'll "make sense of the most complex issue of our day" with a third person shooter is revolting)
See that? thats the part we're discussing.
the ignorance of this post is outstanding.
Really? We're ONLY discussing one sentence from the all the posts made? Who made that decision?
No, I think thats the part you're discussing, and ignoring everything else.
Oh, was that not the question?
Then Pac Man is your Citizen Kane. Household name. Has songs written about him. Dated Madonna probably.
Please do not let this thread devolve into a debate on the Iraq War.
That one sentence is a summation of his entire post. Notice the continued references to story, plot, and narration in his post?
What the hell is this post even about? Who do you see freaking out in this topic? Where is the persecution complex? Further more, how can you reduce a passion down to "a flavor of the month" over such a broad spectrum of people?
It's all degrees of escapism, there's the moments of fear, joy, sadness, surprise and revelation associated with various scenes in famous movies. How can similar feelings be so easily dismissed as fleeting if they are associated with video games. Can one feel more sad or more empathetic over Bambi's mother's death than say, Aeris?* If the two scenes swapped their mediums would Aeris' death have a larger impact then? Just because the observation and participation are different?
*No, I am not championing FF7 as writing gold, I am merely pulling a widely regarded emotional moment from a game.
Yes.
As I mentioned, the Sims has a narrative. It has a story. One that is affected by you. And affected by random factors. The only thing that precludes it from being a narrative, according to you, is that the stories aren't written by someone else, they're built by the player.
ugh, I'm not going in circles anymore. Continue missing the point of his post, then.
I'll do that while you continue making passive aggressive posts when you can't defend what you're saying.
Edit: Oh, 25 posts appeared while I was writing this. Sorry
I'm not all that hardpressed, I'm just looking for examples with NO killing as they distinguish themselves rather nicely. Braid DOES involve killing, although as you pointed out it's not the central premise.
But if we're going that route, then there's a ton of great examples out there. Out of this World/Heart of the Alien has a fantastic plot that doesn't revolve around killing enemies, although how much interactivity it has could be disputed.
You know, I made a post and then you responded to it. Then I responded and so on. My posts had content. Yours were just insisting The Sims doesn't have a narrative because.... well you didn't really provide a reason.
"won't shut the fuck up about it" - Applies to you too.
Both make up a narrative. You have have a storyless plot. It's pretty damn clear he wasn't talking about a storyless plot. Why is this evident? Because he specifically refers to story and writers in his post.
Now then, with that said, I'll note that I have been trying to drop this dumbass argument for a good 3 posts now, yet here you are, butthurt as hell, yapping like a dog about how right you are, a concession I made a whole fucking page ago.
Now drop this and quit shitting up this thread.
EDIT: And I'll clarify and cut you off at the pass: Both CAN make up a narrative. A plot can be a narrative, a story can be a narrative. Neither are necessary, nor are they mutually exclusive.
THANK YOU for getting what I was trying to say.
I'm assuming you're a film major, because that's practically a textbook definition of Auteur theory.
Edit: My major belief is that if a work can convey a feeling common to its audience, it deserves at least the consideration of artistic value. A memory implanted on the viewer coupled with an emotional reaction is good as gold.
It's essentially the basis for Rodger Ebert's argument that games are not art, because he believes that games inherently lack auteurial control because we control our characters. Auteur theory simply states that an Auteur can maintain control over the overall vision for his work - the emotions elicited, the mis-en-scene, the story in addition to the plot (i.e. citizen kane's plot being out of order, but it still maintains a cohesive story). According to Ebert, these are the basis for the medium.
I agree on theory, but not in principle. I believe once gaming becomes sandboxy to the point the Sims is, it stops effectively being a medium, because no ideas are being transmitted. Whatever you get out of it is your own fabrication, not an auteur's. However, where I disagree is where Ebert assumes that since the Auteur gives up control of the main character, he also gives up his control of the vision of his work.
Best example of auteurial control in a game that I can think of is during Metal Gear Solid 4.
I'd love to see more narrative construction like that.
Edit:
Then we're in 100% complete agreement then. That is exactly how I feel. If you've played MGS4, read my spoiler, as it's exactly what you're talking about.
That it's a culture that's just picked up and tossed away?
Exactly. I guess I always feel confused when people debate their merit when this theory is so blatantly obvious to me, it's such a basic principle.
It's the latest accusation from the curmudgeons thrown at the popular thing they don't care to understand. See: Rock n' Roll is the Devil, etc.
Essentially yes. It's non-lasting culture, flash-in-the-pan culture. Stuff that is only relevant at this point in time, at which point it is removed from the collective consciousness. It's used and then disposed of, without anything deeper going on. A paper towel is disposable culture.
It has it's basis in the idea of high art vs low art. Personally, I'm a postmodernist, I draw no distinction between high art and low art, so I'm naturally inclined to disagree.
Woah, hey, I think that's taking it a step too far. Just because the narrative is based on the players' actions and a random number generator doesn't mean there are no shared experiences, it just means that the shared experiences stem from gameplay elements rather than plot points. Nobody is going to say something about what Sim X did to Sim Y or what have you, but people sure might say, "Hey, you remember that Sims game? Did you ever seal someone up in a room and remove the door, "Cask of Amantillado"-style?"
I think the thing you have to remember (and the thing that Ebert tends to miss) is that there is always authorial control, really. Code doesn't generate itself; every possibility must be accounted for by the developers.
A bigger issue with Ebert's argument, and one that baffles me because he's supposed to be a film critic, is that it assumes film is a passive experience. It's NOT.
Art is NOT passive. Art is active. In contemporary art, the active interaction lies within the transmission of the medium, where the recipient interprets the message sent by the transmitter. An artist paints a picture with some deep meaning behind it, then a person goes and looks at it. He then thinks about it, draws his conclusions about what the author meant, internalizes it, and reacts. That's the interaction. It's a point that most artists, and especially film critics, try to pound home.
It's part of the reason why his criticism of video games makes no sense to me. It undermines his principles on film. Personally, I think Ebert is just a crotchity old man who never plays games, and thinks they're still Combat! and Pong clones, and gets upset when people try to tell him they convey messages.
Also, the majority of games are at least 8 hours of involvement, wherein a movie averages 90 minutes.
At the same time, I do believe there is a lot of experimentation that can go on to blend story telling into gameplay elements. It's basic at this point, but stuff like the interactions between Kane and Lynch (assuming anyone played it BEYOND the whole gamestop-gate deal), or the story-telling methods in Bioshock show untapped potential. When I played resident evil 5, I noticed how completely silent the two characters were during downtime. Those downtime segments in RE5 are deliberate pauses in the action to give the player time to calm down (both literally and in game, as thats when you do all your item management and go and collect herbs). But, during these down times, there isn't anything going on between the two players.
Now, I'd considered that capcom kept these areas silent so players could communicate via headsets to make item management easier. But I don't think that's really the case... I think, more likely, they just never considered using these moments for any significant plot progression. And by plot progression, I mean something as simple as letting us get attached to a character.
In RE5, you can press the B button at certain points and talk back to the other character. This should have been expanded upon during these down times... imagine if, anytime there's no enemies on screen, you can talk to your partner mass-effect style. It would have done wonders for character progression.
untapped in other games. The fact that you're hearing a story WHILE playing the game, without being taken into cutscenes.
Its effect is kind of dissipated since System Shock 2 did the exact same things 8 years prior, and you could go even further back than that if you wanted, but it's a good example of how to properly utilize the potential of an interactive medium as a storytelling device, without remaining reliant on techniques from other media, e.g. "here's a cutscene".
Edit: RAAASKGH
https://medium.com/@alascii
Sorry bro, that's a pretty accurate distillation of Operation Iraqi Freedom. G-Unit are the most forward thinking political minds of this generation; which they've proven time and again.
My Go Bot/videogame/art analysis is both accurate, awesome, and completely logical.
If you ask me, that attitude did nothing but hold them back.
Both notions - games being incapable of achieving the artistic heights of film/literature, or being unable to evolve beyond pure entertainment (essentially toys) - are fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. Earlier in the thread the infancy of videogaming was brought up, and I do think the case can be made that we haven't even scratched the surface of what interactivity can accomplish.
Games are theoretically free of any type of established structure and limitation. This is a medium in which film, visual art, music and literature can be incorporated and interacted with. The creation of virtual worlds is only dependent on the technology we use to build them. Books are confined to textual narration, and film is confined to an audiovisual experience.
Videogames are not confined to anything other than current hardware. Of course, this isn't necessarily a positive thing, just as the limitations of literature and cinema aren't negatives, but when we have the opportunity to go beyond established convention, the idea that we should keep mimicking other media is stunting the potential of interactivity. However, that doesn't mean we can't learn from the histories of other media and apply those techniques in new ways. The danger lies in clinging too rigidly to Citizen Kane or Shakespeare, when that isn't really what we should be aiming for.
Of course, we might never evolve beyond where we are now, but a little ambition and confidence won't hurt anyone. It all depends on people after all.
Edit: Or robots
This touches upon something that I think is missing from a lot of games, which is natural dialogue.
Why must the party, or characters, stop and take a break from the "game" to have a conversation? In RPGs, there are plenty of opportunities where in "real life", normal people would talk to pass the time. Including this sort of natural dialogue or small talk, without removing you from the game, would really help breath life into the characters.
That said, people thought games were just a fad in the 80's and would fade away. Now they're the most profitable form on entertainment in the world. Far from a fad.
I don't think that video games are part of disposable culture. Unless there's some sort of revolution in society where everyone simultaneously decides that being productive in all activities should be the new way of life.
Games are already art, some good examples have been posted here (I'll give a nod Shadow of the Colossus again). However, most pieces of art that are considered timeless were not recognized as such until the artist who created it had died. It's really sad that many of our best artists were peniless while laying on their deathbeds.
I guarantee that when Shigeru Miyamoto dies, he will be hailed as one of the greatest digital artists of 20th and 21st century.