Video games can never be art.

Will someone please link me to the save game glitch music EKT thread?

realize that art only exists on the receiver, not on the maker (which is always a viewer anyway) and things will clear up to you.

lol encey, no one realizes how seriously he needs to hear that shit.

I've been recently playing GTA San Andreas. I've only been playing in "freekill mode" and haven't played the story mode yet so i'm not gonna toalk about it. Anyway, i find this game is fairly limited. I'm not comparing GTA to other games, i'm comparing it to itself : ok, you can drive around, and kill people, the map is pretty big but that's pretty much about it. You know what ? I'd love to be able to follow people, watch them living their life, harass them for months and finally strangle them in their car on a cold rainy night : i'd love to be able to communicate with the characters. But this not possible.

I've also been playing a few IFs - interactive fictions - text-based games. They are all made by amateurs, the games are relatively short but they are still very enjoyable. Yet, they only rely on words to convey a feeling of immersion into the game. And they're as limited as regular video games.

But now, what if you gather 400 hundreds people for 4 years to make a text-based video game ? It'd probably looks like something as boring as a book, but i guess the game'd be much more complete than GTA. Of course there would be less "action" but on the other hand there would be more to think about, the game would be more psychological.

Anyone played facade ? This is a kind of 3D real-time interactive fiction. Graphics + an input line. Basically, you're invited to dine at your friend's flat, and he's arguing with his wife. You can prevent them from splitting up or walk out with the woman. Contrary to regular IFs there is no predefined commands.

Instead the game just guess what you want to tell to the other characters. It works pretty well although the covered topics are limited and focused on the plot.

I can imagine now that this is the future of video-games. I tend to think video-games are just at the cross-road of various mediums: -graphic arts, narrative arts, music. Graphically, video-games are well advanced, there are plenty of independent games that look awesome and truly original. Very few, however, have a strong and interesting story. Look at RPGs. What are they ? Mainly a succession of turn-based monster killings until the next item or next part of the story.

Story has a strength that most of video-games haven't really yet. I bet games are going to grow on the bed of textual technology, and one day maybe, we'll be allowed to played author games.

  On 4/21/2010 at 10:54 AM, Babar said:

I've been recently playing GTA San Andreas. I've only been playing in "freekill mode" and haven't played the story mode yet so i'm not gonna toalk about it. Anyway, i find this game is fairly limited. I'm not comparing GTA to other games, i'm comparing it to itself : ok, you can drive around, and kill people, the map is pretty big but that's pretty much about it. You know what ? I'd love to be able to follow people, watch them living their life, harass them for months and finally strangle them in their car on a cold rainy night : i'd love to be able to communicate with the characters. But this not possible.

 

I've also been playing a few IFs - interactive fictions - text-based games. They are all made by amateurs, the games are relatively short but they are still very enjoyable. Yet, they only rely on words to convey a feeling of immersion into the game. And they're as limited as regular video games.

But now, what if you gather 400 hundreds people for 4 years to make a text-based video game ? It'd probably looks like something as boring as a book, but i guess the game'd be much more complete than GTA. Of course there would be less "action" but on the other hand there would be more to think about, the game would be more psychological.

 

Anyone played facade ? This is a kind of 3D real-time interactive fiction. Graphics + an input line. Basically, you're invited to dine at your friend's flat, and he's arguing with his wife. You can prevent them from splitting up or walk out with the woman. Contrary to regular IFs there is no predefined commands.

Instead the game just guess what you want to tell to the other characters. It works pretty well although the covered topics are limited and focused on the plot.

I can imagine now that this is the future of video-games. I tend to think video-games are just at the cross-road of various mediums: -graphic arts, narrative arts, music. Graphically, video-games are well advanced, there are plenty of independent games that look awesome and truly original. Very few, however, have a strong and interesting story. Look at RPGs. What are they ? Mainly a succession of turn-based monster killings until the next item or next part of the story.

Story has a strength that most of video-games haven't really yet. I bet games are going to grow on the bed of textual technology, and one day maybe, we'll be allowed to played author games.

I hope so too

Some of the 'pretentious' games I love that I don't see how they can't be classed as art.

Fuck, all of these look interesting, what are the titles/where can I play them?

The above and more available here -

http://tigsource.com/category/unique

http://tigsource.com/category/games-and-art

http://tigsource.com/category/abstract

(some of the above games cross over between those categories)

  On 4/21/2010 at 1:21 PM, mcbpete said:

 

Some of the 'pretentious' games I love that I don't see how they can't be classed as art.

Maybe, maybe, some pretty pictures there. I dunno, will anyone care about these in 100 years? let alone 5 years? I only played one of em and it was pretty bad, but the others look interesting.

I want to play videogames people will still be talking about in 10/20/50 years.

This one imo is pretty close to being art, but calling it a good game is a little bit of a stretch probably

Every Day The Same Dream

Pretty pointless endeavour this thread though - eg I think the Mona Lisa is a bit shit.

Also eBert is pretty thick when it comes to movies - he gave The Happening a good review. That is an objectively bad movie.

  On 4/21/2010 at 4:40 AM, Food said:

save state bending thread

*kisssssssss*

  On 4/21/2010 at 3:35 PM, Food said:

 

 

I want to play videogames people will still be talking about in 10/20/50 years.

 

 

Played pac-man? donkey kong?

Considering that video games have only been around for roughly 50 years and the first really popular game (Pong) is still talked about and played widely, I'd say you won't have long to wait..

  On 4/22/2010 at 10:05 AM, chenGOD said:

  On 4/21/2010 at 3:35 PM, Food said:

 

 

I want to play videogames people will still be talking about in 10/20/50 years.

 

 

 

Played pac-man? donkey kong?

Considering that video games have only been around for roughly 50 years and the first really popular game (Pong) is still talked about and played widely, I'd say you won't have long to wait..

Fair point. I Was not very precise with my wording there:

I want to play NEW videogames people will still be talking about in 10/20/50 years.

To me the bar seems really low at the moment and the target audience is lapping up crap unoriginal games.

I do consider Pac-Man as art, even with my terribly negative attitude and I am not even being self-consistent, because it does not meet my definition of art. I dunno about Donkey Kong though, lacking in the sound department I think, but yeah, pretty damn iconic. Pong I never even considered. Or is it Space War? I dunno, I don't really go back _that_ far. I don't really think either of them qualify as art, too simplistic. By Pac-Man you had characters, sweet sfx, nice pixel art fruit, fairly interesting ai for each ghost(actually the code might be quite nice on that?) which actually interjected some unique personality to each...

If a bunch of expert programmers said, "wow, Pong's code is a thing of beauty, genius, what a visionary!!!!". That would be a fairly good argument for Pong being a work of art as far as I'm concerned... but the level I can experience it at... nahhh

Yeah, alot of the classic games I am down with re: slapping the ol ART label on 'em, eBert would think I'm crazy! Personally I think he probably spends too much time watching movies...

A few that come to mind:

Flow

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Pikmin

Bioshock

Shadow of the Colossus

the first time i really thought of a video game as art in the traditional sense is when i played Out of this world for SNES, i think it's called 'another world' in europe

still to this day an extremely impressive feat considering the abilities of computers and console systems back then (the pc and amiga one came out a few years before the console)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgkf6wooDmw

edit: those games look amazing mcbpete!

i know a lot of people hated the era of videogames where digitized graphics and prerenders were all over BUT i absolutely loved a handful of them mostly because of how good they looked. I think liking a game almost purely on graphics at least for me as a kid was the same as appreciating a beautiful painting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMbDBoniIHc

the way the backgrounds on KI are mostly just rendered movies but they give the illusion of being a 3d background, this blew me away when i was 13

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pYOIJvTwPo&feature=related

when this came out it took the cake for the best graphics i had ever seen, i still can remember the adrenaline rush i used to feel playing this with a crow of sometimes 40+ kids eagerly stacking quarters on either side of the machine waiting for their turn.

Out of This World rocked!!!!!!!!!!!

  On 4/21/2010 at 1:19 PM, gaarg said:

  On 4/21/2010 at 10:54 AM, Babar said:

I've been recently playing GTA San Andreas. I've only been playing in "freekill mode" and haven't played the story mode yet so i'm not gonna toalk about it. Anyway, i find this game is fairly limited. I'm not comparing GTA to other games, i'm comparing it to itself : ok, you can drive around, and kill people, the map is pretty big but that's pretty much about it. You know what ? I'd love to be able to follow people, watch them living their life, harass them for months and finally strangle them in their car on a cold rainy night : i'd love to be able to communicate with the characters. But this not possible.

 

I've also been playing a few IFs - interactive fictions - text-based games. They are all made by amateurs, the games are relatively short but they are still very enjoyable. Yet, they only rely on words to convey a feeling of immersion into the game. And they're as limited as regular video games.

But now, what if you gather 400 hundreds people for 4 years to make a text-based video game ? It'd probably looks like something as boring as a book, but i guess the game'd be much more complete than GTA. Of course there would be less "action" but on the other hand there would be more to think about, the game would be more psychological.

 

Anyone played facade ? This is a kind of 3D real-time interactive fiction. Graphics + an input line. Basically, you're invited to dine at your friend's flat, and he's arguing with his wife. You can prevent them from splitting up or walk out with the woman. Contrary to regular IFs there is no predefined commands.

Instead the game just guess what you want to tell to the other characters. It works pretty well although the covered topics are limited and focused on the plot.

I can imagine now that this is the future of video-games. I tend to think video-games are just at the cross-road of various mediums: -graphic arts, narrative arts, music. Graphically, video-games are well advanced, there are plenty of independent games that look awesome and truly original. Very few, however, have a strong and interesting story. Look at RPGs. What are they ? Mainly a succession of turn-based monster killings until the next item or next part of the story.

Story has a strength that most of video-games haven't really yet. I bet games are going to grow on the bed of textual technology, and one day maybe, we'll be allowed to played author games.

 

I hope so too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kytpvcf0eKA

lol

  On 4/22/2010 at 11:53 AM, Awepittance said:

the first time i really thought of a video game as art in the traditional sense is when i played Out of this world for SNES, i think it's called 'another world' in europe

still to this day an extremely impressive feat considering the abilities of computers and console systems back then (the pc and amiga one came out a few years before the console)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgkf6wooDmw

 

edit: those games look amazing mcbpete!

Same, then again that game was made by a single person and the way it plays it's quite different from the garbage that are most modern video-games, Another World is like an old 70's interactive fantasy graphic-novel.

machinarium pretty much fucks this idea in the ass

Yes, but another world had more inventiveness. As far as I'm concerned inventiveness and exploitation of uniqueness of each art medium is the key to producing high art. In this way I love games like one button bob, tetris and another world much better than Risen, Half life or Starcraft. The same reason I hate Avatar, because its so fucking lame...

I don't understand.. if anything its very similar to the film industry.. you got your hollywood blockbuster videogames made for mass marketing (and can still be very entertaining no doubt) and then more independent games that really show a passion of the medium. either one could be considered "art," but then that gets into a realm of taste, purposive intention, aesthetic value. blahblah (there or theories lol)

i should probably read the article but the statement itself just sounds like bullshit

  On 4/22/2010 at 12:47 PM, vasio said:

  On 4/22/2010 at 11:53 AM, Awepittance said:

the first time i really thought of a video game as art in the traditional sense is when i played Out of this world for SNES, i think it's called 'another world' in europe

still to this day an extremely impressive feat considering the abilities of computers and console systems back then (the pc and amiga one came out a few years before the console)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgkf6wooDmw

 

edit: those games look amazing mcbpete!

 

 

Same, then again that game was made by a single person and the way it plays it's quite different from the garbage that are most modern video-games, Another World is like an old 70's interactive fantasy graphic-novel.

and then there was flash back

[youtubehd]EauQflxrZH0&[/youtubehd]

lovely times

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives an overview of different definitions of art that philosophers of aesthetics have proposed, if anyone is interested in thinking further about the question of what art is.