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Are video games disposable culture?
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Gaming brings in a lot of revenue but there are a LOT of companies losing money these days. Nintntendo is making a fuckton of money but outside them I would wonder if the game industry is even profitable as a whole this gen, can everyone else make up for the billions that MS, Sony and EA, Eidos, etc. have lost?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
It's like orchestras that only play old music -- good luck finding quality composers to rise through the ranks if there isn't anywhere for them to make money or gain exposure.
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The world economy tanking then teetering on the edge of collapse certainly didn't help their fortunes. MS and EA put all their money into tentpole games just like the movie industry, and only colossal blockbusters make them money anymore. MS is in the 'red' from all the money they sunk into producing the 360 (and all the duds they've had to replace).
Games have been consistently producing more revenue than Hollywood for years now. As far as whether they're as profitable this generation, I don't have the numbers.
There's plenty of reasons as to why game companies are losing money, other than the poor economy. Piracy is still a big problem. However, I think the biggest problem this generation is shitty hardware and software (as with previous gens). Microsoft replacing failing hardware because they rushed the market with poor hardware composition is their own damn fault. Also, companies that continuously push out shovelware and cash-in sequels should have expected consumer apathy to set in eventually.
The companies listed above really have themselves to blame for most of their money related woes.
I think that we'll be worried about much bigger problems long before the gaming industry collapses, like where our next meal is going to come from.
Books, movies, plays, etc. are all very different forms of entertainment. Most actiony-games are better compared to sports or action movies. Sometimes they can be very very entertaining and have pathos, but they're not going to be complex character studies.
The "artsiest" games we can think of function more like performance art, sculpture or other design/aesthetics-oriented artistic experiences, rather than narrative experiences. Flower, for instance, would be right at home as a video installation or interactive exhibit in a gallery. Likewise, Geometry Wars is a quick, easily consumable experience with aesthetic merit. Neither of those games have a pretense to being book/movie-like in structure or goal.
Gamers shouldn't try to claim that anything we'll produce has the complexity and characterization of a Shakespeare play - the format is inimical to it. A game, say Half Life 2 can be "as good a game" as Othello or Citizen Kane were plays or movies, but trying to say Half Life 2 has the same insight into the human condition as those other two works is silly. Half Life 2 can be fun and worthwhile without us having to stake out extreme claims.
This doesn't sound at all like Citizen Kane, but it doesn't need to. Because games are games. I'm not going to pretend and say that I've played a narrative as well-constructed as Dune's in a videogame. But I have played some harrowing matches. The right footwork before unleashing the Shoryuken that wins you the match, the fake base that diverts the enemy attention from your Ling/Ultra beatdown, the Burst move that gives you that much extra time to pull off that super, the AWP shot that nails the guy who's been holding back your teammates from a bomb site, the perfectly conducted ballet of base building and resource management. There is none of that in any book, movie, play, or musical piece that I've experienced, and THAT is what ultimately earns video games their immortality in my eyes. All of the games I mentioned (again, excepting SupComn), and more that I did not mention, have all been here long enough, and garnered enough of a dedicated community to be proof of that. And trust me when I say that they will be around long after Bioshock has been reduced to a bleak, cold memory in people's minds.
I would have more to say about historically based strategy games, which is a bit in line with my first point, but that is for another post.
SoTC for instance. I don't think anyone finished SoTC without any conflicting emotions about what they're doing.
Hell look at the end of PoP. A lot of people didn't like it because of the Prince's actions, and they forced the prince to do it. In that case, the Character and the Players emotions and actions didn't need to completely line up... you had no choice because the Prince decided what he was doing.
One to be born from a dragon
Hoisting the light and the dark
Arises high up in the sky to the still land.
Veiling the moon with the light of eternity
It brings another promise to Mother Earth
With a bounty and mercy.
Obviously, I don't even need to tell you what game this is from.
to say that gaming culture is some kind of cultural fad that wont last is ridiculous. It's one of our most evolved forms of creation and it's something that is constantly changing and being innovated upon to much of our brain's delight.
case closed. It's art!
I was confused for a second there. You talking the Sands of Time, or the latest, cell shaded PoP? Or even the original 1989 original? Gah, we need a way to differentiate the different generations.
I haven't played the latest one, so I presume you're talking about that one.
The latest one.
Upon further reflection, I think the point of the articles I linked in the OP reflects a certain... lack of understanding about what makes things classics. Ulysses, the Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, Citizen Kane, Platoon, Elvis (or name any other cultural milestone here) are memorable because they provoke emotional reactions across the spectrum. They are classics not because they're old, not because they were definitive in their era (some classics now were definitive, but most weren't), but because they continue to evoke reactions from the audience decades or centuries after their creation. Shakespeare is still relevant because his plays addressed a fundamental aspect of human nature, and in that regard took on a timeless quality.
There are certainly timeless video games, I think, but not in the realm of narrative. I'm a competitive gamer much like darksteel, and I can't imagine people not playing DOOM or StarCraft or Unreal or Street Fighter. The games that promote interaction between other people are the ones that stand the test of time. In these most timeless of games, the player isn't really interacting with a story but is instead interacting with another person through the avenue of the game. These interactions are singular and powerful events, testing one person's skill against another, and the outcome of these interactions evoke powerful emotions. The agony of defeat is oft written of and, in the world of video games, experienced millions of times a day across dozens of different games.
The stories and art that video games evoke are now disposable, I think. Even the biggest blockbusters can't seem to stay int he public consciousness longer than a few months, and fewer still make any sort of lingering impact. However, through interactivity, games can and will obtain a different sort of timelessness.
Indeed, the strength of the video game is in the game aspect. You forgot Tetris in there, too. It need not even be against another player.
I find it remarkable that such an...ecosystem has been created in a videogame, and it's something that could stand to get some more recognition for good or ill.
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FF4 is a great game and has artistic merit but it is emphatically not art.
I say that even the best albums are probably terrible examples of paintings, and the Mona Lisa is a terrible movie. I say that the Empire State building is an absolutely abysmal song, and that Seven is a terrible book. All of the best examples of any media fail when judged by the standards of another. The purpose of art is to entertain, inform, and to share some experience with the observer from the creator. Even if that experience is just Mario Kart, it doesn't stop it being valid. Games are absolutely Art, we have had numerous classics.
I suppose a problem we do have is that games are effectively always being 'translated'. Crime and Punishment for example is a grueling read when translated into English, so is 'War and Peace'. The message is still there and amazing, but in its original language its a perfect experience of language and story, in English its simply an epic story. Games have this problem month to month. Civilization 2 used to be an epic achievement both graphically and in terms of gameplay, 'translated' to modern eyes all that remains is the gameplay.
However this woman is fundamentally wrong, her point is totally invalid, and its simply an example of her 'not getting it'. Hell, she has bikini assasin force as her example of a game. A game the game industry agrees is shit!
Including the viewer as part of the art happens in other mediums. Every year in Toronto we have a night called Nuit Blanche. The goal is to create living art. All the best pieces involve the public there to watch the show in some way.
http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/
I don't really understand how you could say that video games will never be good narrative art. That almost seems like a fallacy. A screenplay or movie script is on average 100-125 pages. A video game averages 600 pages. Any video game that wants to have a strong narrative has more dialogue than a movie. A video game holds far more potential for a strong narrative than a movie. It's simply not realized the majority of the time.
Nonsense, when I played Civ 2 I said, WOW, look it's the whole planet right there on screen looking cool!
Also, it seems like the more "artistic" a game gets the less it seems like a game. SoTC has been mentioned many times; think of how radically different that game is. No items you don't start out with, no inventory, no fighting moves, very little dialogue, very little exposition. It seems more like an experience than a game to me.
Also, it's possible that someday we'll have games as well-made and well-written as a Shakespearean play. However, you'd have to have a writer as good as Shakespeare writing it, and a similarly gifted team of developers who were able to convey that experience into a game form somehow. Shakespeare is more difficult to pull off than, say, even great prose, since you need the director and the actors and set designers/costumers/etc. all on the same board to make it work. A video game would be even more difficult. Could it be done? Maybe. Will it be done? I'm not holding my breath. True creative genius is very rare.
vs.
and laugh...
But when you realize the progress..
1957:
2008:
Thats... 51 years. That is really pretty incredible progress.
Early painting was incredibly linear, depicting hunt scenes with little to no deeper meaning. It took thousands of years for it develop into what we now consider fine art.
Maybe thats a valid point...
heh
statue donger
Also, some games that people might not think have deep themes or storylines actually do. Gears of War and Gears of War 2 dealt with extinction and war and Gears of War 2 dealt with longing for a loved one. The Halo series, in a way, dealt with religious extremism and had a pretty good backstory. Plus, when some games try to have deep storylines, they may end up being too over-the-top.
People should also keep in mind that what some people call "art" may not necessarily be art to someone else. For example, some people say those statues of naked young men the Greeks made were art but to me, they were just statues of guys who forgot to put on some pants. People talk about putting "Shakespearean" writing in games and making games more like Citizen Kane but I personally do not like Shakespeare and wouldn't even bother watching Citizen Kane when I could watch a good action movie instead. I actually see the action movie Rambo (the latest one) as art and it dealt with themes like genocide while someone who is into Shakespeare would probably call it garbage.
Your link is commentary on the genre expressed as an artistic faux-game; interesting.
Unlike other classical forms of art, lasting games have to be so good as to keep people playing who have utterly no clue about games in general. In this regard, comparing games to classical art is a waste of time. If someone had to explain to you in bullet points why a game is good before you're actually able to enjoy it, well, it's not really a very good game, is it? I think modern critics are naturally prejudiced against perceiving games as art for the simple reason that you don't have to learn a bunch of extra bullshit in order to judge the game as garbage or as something incredible.
Games stand on their own merit or they don't. How much of what is considered "art" by educated critics can make the same claim?
Also, games are still really a very young medium. True, they've been around for decades now, but only in the last 15-20 years has technology allowed for games which could be considered art. Before then, the technology simply didn't exist to make much more than what we would consider a minigame today. On top of the technology issue, we now finally have devs who played video games as kids and want to make great games themselves.
If anything, I feel the modern world of art feels threatened by video games. Even with movies, you can only watch what is happening. War may an overused subject of games, but a couple of the variations of the Omaha beach landings I've played make the same scene in Saving Private Ryan feel pretty weak. There's a whole world of difference between watching people get shot at in a movie and personally having to seek cover from machine gun nests and mortar fire. Paintings can try to capture a scene or moment, but devs can create entire miniature worlds, complete with weather systems and wildlife.
I don't think video games will ever make classical art forms outmoded, games can combine a wide variety of art forms in ways which the old forms have no means of competing with.
I don't think it's the developers themselves necessarily. I think videogames have vast potential for eliciting emotional responses in players. I think that's where the real potential of the medium lies. Blending player interaction with your narrative opens up far more room for involvement and emotional attachment that I don't think literature or film can touch. I'm also an editor by trade, concerned every day of my life with quality writing, and I'm not trying to minimize either medium or what they can and have accomplished.
But I think the mindset of the average mainstream gamer is blind to quality narratives or real emotional attachment and is mostly apathetic about the real power of the interactive experience. I think what we see is what they really do appreciate most of all. Ham-fisted attempts at elliciting emotion from their uncaring audience that's just there for the explosions and the gun fire.
If I make it sound like this is different from film or literature, it's not. Summer blockbuster action movies perform extremely well compared to better films. Shitty pulp novels sell infinitely better than anything with substance. This industry is held back by its stunted adolescent audience. We're speaking of a mindset here, not an age range, and I, at least, am not presuming this to be positive or negative. But this follows in the footsteps of every other industry out there. It will always cater to its most lucrative market.
Many of my favorite video games contain no narrative, and are entirely simulation or gameplay based in nature. Say, Total War. Or Doom.
Narrative storytelling is not something that is required in the video game genre to make it something "serious". There is certainly room for it, as video gaming has a huge scope, and there is certainly room for improvement in that regard, but I am disturbed by the notion that video games have to some how be like literature or film in order to be a valid and mature medium.
Yes, but these older items couldn't be really classified as commodities in the same fashion as video games (or movies, music, and literature, for that matter). Plus, the reason older pieces are valued is because of the arbitrary value placed on them by critics and other artists. Famous paintings can sell for millions of dollars, but without people who dedicate their lives to telling everyone else about the importance of a given piece, is it really worth more than if the same piece was produced today by a no-name artist?
The dead artists certainly don't get to see their paintings get sold for that kind of money, so comparing the modern economics of video games with the old commissioned versus perceived modern values of classical art doesn't really work. Additionally, there's a major difference between objects designed to be art and a product designed to be sold but contains the potential to be something artistic.
Do you have any idea how much skill and knowledge it takes to pick up a gigantic piece of rock, go to work on it with handheld tools and have the end result be a functionally perfect representation of a human being - the proportions exact, the musculature, the appearance of skin, the facial expression, the posture - everything that make statues like David famous?
Not to mention the knowledge of stonework itself that is required - make one wrong move while sculpting that thing, and it will cleave the wrong way and the whole thing is ruined.
This thing is made of stone. That ought to be "art" to anyone.
No. The value of art is in no way proportional to the degree of skill and knowledge required to create it.
This is the wrong argument to make to counter the premise that 'shame' should be a defining factor in determining what is and isn't art.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
Do you use this same argument when, say, a figure skater or a dancer performs a complicated routine?
Do not engage the Watermelons.
Also all those classical buildings and statues were painted bright colors. Maybe games will only become art when played on systems that imperfectly reproduce the original experience.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I was more talking about Renaissance art, but yes, thats a good point. The Greeks painted their statues and art in bright colours we would consider very tacky.