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poverty goat posted:even though there is a presumption of free will in the film's world the characters are all stuck making preordained choices just like some rear end in a top hat in a videogame with a false illusion of choice But photography didn't try to imitate painting, it was a totally new medium with its own rules from the start, and recognized as such. With so many games made over half a century you'd think there's be some monumental work somewhere changing people's lives and perceptions but I struggle to think of one. Games are more like sports or cooking or something, ephemeral activities rather than objects.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:40
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I wonder if that's more to do with games coming about in the era of art as commercial product. Still, I've seen people say stuff like Fallout 3 is a transcendental experience that mattered a lot to them or whatever
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Aug 24, 2018 15:42
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CDPR made a funny tweet and now a bunch of people that weren't going to buy Cyberpunk complained about Cyberpunk because how can a bunch of cyborgs 60 years in the future represent me now and that's unfair 
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Aug 24, 2018 15:44
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How do you know they weren't going to buy it?
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Aug 24, 2018 15:48
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SpazmasterX posted:CDPR made a funny tweet and now a bunch of people that weren't going to buy Cyberpunk complained about Cyberpunk because how can a bunch of cyborgs 60 years in the future represent me now and that's unfair A less asinine version: CDPR's Twitter monkey made a dumb, lazy joke about trans people and correctly deleted it, and now all the Anime Nazis are mad at them for "giving in to the cucks" or whatever.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:57
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2house2fly posted:How do you know they weren't going to buy it? game will suck tbh
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Aug 24, 2018 16:00
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2house2fly posted:How do you know they weren't going to buy it? I'm generalizing, but usually the ones that cry "boycott because (social issue)" are the vocal Twitter minority and no one really cares besides journalists and bloggers that have nothing to wrote about besides how they can't figure out why DMC5 has so little music in fights. Consider Star Wars Battlefront 2. Massive pushback because of EA's typical poo poo. Calls for boycotts, don't preorder, etc. EA even changes stuff around to appear to be less about taking your money for DLC. People still not pleased, blah blah blah it still sold nine million copies. The point is, boycotts don't work. People will still buy it because they want to because the general population doesn't give a poo poo about your problems. So make your games good instead of pandering to six blue checkmarks on twitter and you'll still sell copies.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:01
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Or the boycott call of duty meme that showed how literally every single person who made a steam community post about boycotting COD bought it
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Aug 24, 2018 16:16
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JebanyPedal posted:I love the MGS games but I think they're art in the sense that a lot of stupid overwrought dumb poo poo is art. They might be the most artistic games ever really, which is not a compliment. Like sure they have "themes" in the sense the game is constantly being interjected by whatever totally fascinating trivia Kojima learned the past year, but the only thing that's honestly weaved into the story is some laughable bushido soldier code nonsense. Which would be fine if he'd stuck to being a honest hack copycat artist making video game equivalent of B-movies, but his work has just become more and more of a dour and self-serious over time. EDIT: Peace Walker and Revengeance were the only good newer Metal Gear games because one was mostly just a goofy mercenary base management game and the other was actually self-aware (something fans will argue to death all MG games are which is a huge lie, they just have a lot of bad jokes in them and no sense of tonal consistency). BioMe fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 16:34
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The first COD was the only good one.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:36
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lol @ citing Battlefront 2 as evidence that popular pushbacks don't work. Yes the game that significantly undershot internal projections, made every company in the industry re-think loot boxes as a business model, got actually IRL politicians drafting laws against a video game business practice, imperiled EA's exclusive license for Star Wars games, and may have permanently damaged DICE's reputation (Battlefield V is currently tracking 85% behind COD in pre-order numbers) is definitely the game that proves that consumers can never push back against business practices and games companies can do whatever they want. What's so absurd about it is that are many games that you can cite as evidence that nothing matters and consumers are mindless idiots who will accept anything. But Battlefront 2 is not one of them. I would suggest EA Sports games because just lol the flagrant abuse that goes on there.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:38
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Shibawanko posted:But photography didn't try to imitate painting, it was a totally new medium with its own rules from the start, and recognized as such. With so many games made over half a century you'd think there's be some monumental work somewhere changing people's lives and perceptions but I struggle to think of one. Games are more like sports or cooking or something, ephemeral activities rather than objects. Games have been around for like 35 years, and were extremely limited in what they could do for the majority of that time. It's only recently that a world of possibilities have opened up. The medium is still in it's infancy. Movies have been around for 100 years and they mostly sucked until the 70's. I have no doubt in another 20-30 years games will be looked at in the same way books and film are. I think we are in an awkward stage where games have gotten really good but they are still held back by their legacy of being childish toys.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:39
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BioMe posted:They might be the most artistic games ever really, which is not a compliment. Like sure they have "themes" in the sense the game is constantly being interjected by whatever totally fascinating trivia Kojima learned the past year, but the only thing that's honestly weaved into the story is some laughable bushido soldier code nonsense. Yeah the earlier games with their bizarre mix of self-aware comedy and suddenly intense philosophical and existential spiels remind me a lot of some great South Korean films that meld disparate tones (ie The Host or Memories of Murder). The more serious he got the more the identity of his games started to blend in with the other deadly serious narratives in the medium. That being said, serious or not, Death Stranding looks strange enough for it to stand out.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:39
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Chomp8645 posted:lol @ citing Battlefront 2 as evidence that popular pushbacks don't work. I'm going to get Cristiano Ronaldo in my Dream Team even if I have to sacrifice my first born to do it
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Aug 24, 2018 16:39
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Chomp8645 posted:lol @ citing Battlefront 2 as evidence that popular pushbacks don't work. Maybe the strongest example that the pushback against Battlefront 2 worked is that EA spent so much time reassuring people that there won't be any loot boxes or pay-for-power microtransactions in their upcoming games at E3. Their actions suggest that they think they won't get away with it again outside of FIFA land, or at least not any time soon. veni veni veni posted:Games have been around for like 35 years, and were extremely limited in what they could do for the majority of that time. It's only recently that a world of possibilities have opened up. The medium is still in it's infancy. Movies have been around for 100 years and they mostly sucked until the 70's. I have no doubt in another 20-30 years games will be looked at in the same way books and film are. I think we are in an awkward stage where games have gotten really good but they are still held back by their legacy of being childish toys. Someone's going to be like "uh Citizen Kane and Casablanca came out in the 40s" and loving yeah, part of the reason those movies are so famously good is because they were revolutionary in their time.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:44
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Harrow posted:Maybe the strongest example that the pushback against Battlefront 2 worked is that EA spent so much time reassuring people that there won't be any loot boxes or pay-for-power microtransactions in their upcoming games at E3. Their actions suggest that they think they won't get away with it again outside of FIFA land, or at least not any time soon. Even less revolutionary films back then were stellar, I can think of hundreds of pre-70's films I adore, not to mention how brilliant and timeless a lot of silent cinema is. Older film is also one of the few recourses for people with a love of slapstick comedy or westerns. I don't really agree with this standpoint at all, there's countless profound and entertaining examples of early 20th century film that are just plain not known by most people. Not to mention how intensely informative older film can be about the political and social machinations and mores of the time, ie how older Russian and German films project extremely different anxieties and moral positions, and manage to do so deftly despite not having as many subtextual and contextual techniques as we do now. And although scripts back then might have been more bombastic and prone to melodrama, tons of films from back then have scripts that rival modern output. I'm not sure we've gotten better at writing scripts than we've just shifted to a more realist and naturalistic style. That's probably the biggest reason why people find it hard to adjust to the tenor of older film, we've gotten used to the voice of modern directors.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:56
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the problem with games as art is most people aren't taught to appreciate art. so they reach a lot of dumb conclusions, the same can be said for movies. i think movie criticism is better and the art is usually more relatable than video games characters.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:01
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Tonal consistency is overrated. As is immersion.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:05
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veni veni veni posted:Movies have been around for 100 years and they mostly sucked until the 70's. What.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:06
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The red letter media star wars reviews where at one point he mocks a lack of exposition as "why did the movie stop thinking for me" but then at another point his complaint about the tone is "I don't know what I'm supposed to feel" ftw
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Aug 24, 2018 17:16
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JebanyPedal posted:That being said, serious or not, Death Stranding looks strange enough for it to strand out.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:25
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Chomp8645 posted:lol @ citing Battlefront 2 as evidence that popular pushbacks don't work. That 85% decrease is obviously because of the backlash for catering to SJWs
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Aug 24, 2018 17:32
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Designing games specifically for the purpose of esports is a positive design trend
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Aug 24, 2018 17:43
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JebanyPedal posted:Even less revolutionary films back then were stellar, I can think of hundreds of pre-70's films I adore, not to mention how brilliant and timeless a lot of silent cinema is. Older film is also one of the few recourses for people with a love of slapstick comedy or westerns. I think part of it is that, for a long time, film was the rough equivalent of recording a stage play (though you could also have way more drastic set changes, naturally). What I think is more salient isn't that there weren't great movies pre-1940--there absolutely were, many of which hold up very well today--but that the idea of film being treated as its own medium that didn't need to adhere to rules from another medium wasn't something that happened instantaneously. That, I think, is maybe the more relevant point in comparing the development of film and video games. In its early decades, film owed a huge amount to theater, and in some cases was criticized for it (see: essays about film not being "high art" from the time); and in the early decades of "narrative" video games, the form has owed a huge amount to film (though contemporary thinkpieces about it can't seem to agree on whether that's a good or bad thing, but really I think that might be a separate issue about the lack of good video game criticism).
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Aug 24, 2018 17:56
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Harrow posted:I think part of it is that, for a long time, film was the rough equivalent of recording a stage play (though you could also have way more drastic set changes, naturally). What I think is more salient isn't that there weren't great movies pre-1940--there absolutely were, many of which hold up very well today--but that the idea of film being treated as its own medium that didn't need to adhere to rules from another medium wasn't something that happened instantaneously. Yeah but videogames have been substantially more garbage at producing things of equal narrative and thematic worth until only recently and even then they tend to pale in comparison to other mediums. Like Sunset Boulevard is as good as any Tennessee Williams or Tom Stoppard play, and silent film was also unlike any other medium in existence. I think the most affirming fact is that people used to poo poo themselves at movies like Nosferatu, even in its nascence film was accomplishing things no other medium could have dreamt of.
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Aug 24, 2018 18:01
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JebanyPedal posted:Yeah but videogames have been substantially more garbage at producing things of equal narrative and thematic worth until only recently and even then they tend to pale in comparison to other mediums. Oh sure, no argument there at all. It helps that film and theater are significantly more similar than film and video games are. A film doesn't need to be a Capital-F Film to be good, and I didn't really meant to say that (even though I ended up saying it  ).I think what I'm trying to get at is that I don't think the difference is inherent in the media. I don't think there's anything immutably true about video games as a medium that prevents them from reaching the heights of other media, just that the people making games haven't yet done what the people making film did in its early years. I don't think that it's impossible.
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Aug 24, 2018 18:21
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Harrow posted:I don't think there's anything immutably true about video games as a medium that prevents them from reaching the heights of other media Are you joking? The very purpose of a game is to win. Books don't stop you from reading the next chapter if you don't understand the previous ones, albums don't lock off the next track if you don't get the themes of the previous tracks, films don't stop if a scene went over your head. Games literally stop at a point if you can't get past the puzzle/platform/shooty segment.
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Aug 24, 2018 18:38
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There are plenty of games where that isn't the case- Gone Home springs immediately to mind. With books and films, understanding the themes or even plot of something sufficiently complicated is its own form of "difficulty" that can absolutely arrest progress. Try autopiloting through Finnegans Wake the way you can autopilot through Portal 2
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Aug 24, 2018 18:53
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Shibawanko posted:But photography didn't try to imitate painting, it was a totally new medium with its own rules from the start, and recognized as such. With so many games made over half a century you'd think there's be some monumental work somewhere changing people's lives and perceptions but I struggle to think of one. Games are more like sports or cooking or something, ephemeral activities rather than objects. well it's still a very new medium that's just started coming into its own. until recently the complete toolset to make a video game was incredibly expensive and technical, and you might have been required to build the whole game/sound/3d engine from scratch or license it at enormous cost, and then you had no budget left for creatives and there were still severe limitations on what the hardware was capable of. it's like we've only just figured out how to mass produce paint and paintbrushes. by the time we're all dead there will be museums full of near-future shovelware that meets all your criteria, probably generated mostly by robots poverty goat fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 18:57
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2house2fly posted:There are plenty of games where that isn't the case- Gone Home springs immediately to mind. With books and films there can be a form of "difficulty" in terms of understanding the themes or even plot of something sufficiently complicated. Try autopiloting through Finnegans Wake the way you can autopilot through Portal 2 That just introduces another issue though, a huge portion of gamers are moronically resistant to anything that doesn't fit the definition of a "game." Gone Home or Dear Esther hold less value in their opinion because unlike other games the objectives are lax and the game more or less only requires you to move forward. The very nature of something being interactive and requiring third party input and adjustment of viewpoint imbues gaming with an incredibly unique layer of depth when it comes to audience involvement, but most gamers would seemingly prefer to keep that endless potential restrained to tried and true gameplay sections between story segments that are shot like a typical film. It's a sad state of affairs when the only diversions on formula these people seem to handily accept are subversive games that still end up doing the same things as what they're apparently trying to subvert, a la Undertale, LISA, or Spec Ops: The Line, all games with great stories but that still fall prey to the foibles of the targets of their dissections. What's extra bizarre to me is how even in 1998 Half-Life proved how even the corniest sci-fi action story can be elevated and imbued with great energy and tension when the player's perspective is never wrested away from him, but games seemed to have dropped that poo poo real fast. Likely because it would have required real innovation on the part of how to properly tell a narrative and suggest character development using that format. Ultimately it was easier to go the cutscene route.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:01
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JebanyPedal posted:Gone Home or Dear Esther hold less value in their opinion because unlike other games the objectives are lax and the game more or less only requires you to move forward. It's because they are boring. "More or less only requires you to move forward" sounds pretty boring. The fact that someone is narrating an audio book to you at the same time doesn't make it exciting.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:06
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A game with no puzzles or gates to bar your progress is, in fact, not a game at all.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:17
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Chomp8645 posted:It's because they are boring. I didn't find them boring, to me the atmosphere and curiosity of exploring them was more than interesting enough.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:17
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2house2fly posted:There are plenty of games where that isn't the case- Gone Home springs immediately to mind. With books and films, understanding the themes or even plot of something sufficiently complicated is its own form of "difficulty" that can absolutely arrest progress. Try autopiloting through Finnegans Wake the way you can autopilot through Portal 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIiUsbOO24&t=101s IDK what exactly is it about the interactiveness that devalues a medium's artistry though. Is there something fundamentally different about it to every other art form's unique features and limitations I'm not seeing? Like I've read a lot of definitions of art but "you can watch but cannot touch" has only come up for strip clubs so far
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Aug 24, 2018 19:18
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JebanyPedal posted:I didn't find them boring, to me the atmosphere and curiosity of exploring them was more than interesting enough. That's fine. It's also fine that, for most people, a little bit of atmosphere and curiosity isn't enough to make a complete interesting experience. And that's why it's a niche product.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:25
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JebanyPedal posted:That just introduces another issue though, a huge portion of gamers are moronically resistant to anything that doesn't fit the definition of a "game." Gone Home or Dear Esther hold less value in their opinion because unlike other games the objectives are lax and the game more or less only requires you to move forward. Cos they aren't games. I'm perfectly fine with a division between interactive fiction and actual games with goals and scores. This entire post is you lowkey making GBS threads on classic games because they're not lofty enough. JebanyPedal posted:....Spec Ops: The Line, great stories... YagotmeIdidit fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 19:33
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YagotmeIdidit posted:Spec Ops: The Line is one of the most generic cover shooters of this decade apart from the setting. Mediocre gameplay and a dumb story that doesn't make sense upon closer inspection Let's do another SpecOps: The Line ludonarrative dissonance derail
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Aug 24, 2018 19:37
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TheScott2K posted:Let's do another SpecOps: The Line ludonarrative dissonance derail The only way to win is not to play 
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Aug 24, 2018 19:41
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YagotmeIdidit posted:Cos they aren't games. I'm perfectly fine with a division between interactive fiction and actual games with goals and scores. This entire post is you lowkey making GBS threads on classic games because they're not lofty enough. For one thing; that's another issue, I give zero shits if anything fits under the umbrella of a "game." I already suffer from ennui induced shits when people argue whether or not this game or that game is an RPG or a shooter with RPG elements, it's a tedious superficial discussion, maybe it isn't a game, then call it something else, but they're both in an interactive medium and both have enough crossover in terms of similarity that they warrant being compared. And secondly, that was exactly my point, whether or you or I personally agree about the quality or effectiveness of Spec Ops' execution, I explicitly used it as an example of a game that uses the same exact methods as the games it's trying to subvert.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:49
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The term "video game" is a meaningless holdover at this point. The only thing a game like Gone Home has in common with some E Sports game is that the same hardware can be used to experience it, and both are perfectly valid things to enjoy. You don't see anyone lumping Rampage in with Phantom Thread because they are both movies, but for some reason gamers think they get to be the ones to dictate what a game can and can't be, which is probably one of the biggest things that holds video games back as a medium. Luckily as independent development becomes more commonplace I think that is going to change/is changing.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:51
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