How do we/should we talk about video games?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > How do we/should we talk about video games?

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

To continue what Tuxedo Catfish is talking about, there's a microgenre of games we might call "didactic games" where the explicit purpose is to teach a lesson to the player. Hidden Agenda, Stalin's Dilemma, King of Dragon Pass...

The first two are meant to be replayed frequently, so they're relatively short games. Stalin's Dilemma, in particular, can be played through to completion in less than five minutes if you're slow. Both of them are also unwinnable games. The solution you must find in Stalin's Dilemma is to minimize deaths, reach a certain level of industrial output, and be able to fight off the Nazis. And you can't. You can kill fewer than Stalin, but you won't have enough workers freed up or industrial production or armaments. You can't even free up enough workers to achieve the industrialization goal period, no matter what you do.

It's easy to conclude that this is apologetics for Stalinism, but the message is undeniable without it explicitly saying the message.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 23:24

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 04:48

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Coolwhoami posted:

Movies as a term is broad; It is applied to any non-interactive video media that is of sufficient length. The concept video game has rules for use which walking sims do not satisfy particularly well. Interactivity is one aspect, but not the only one. These things become games for lack of a better term to discriminate them from both movies and games, in part because they exist in the border area between both. Interestingly, we tend not to call simulators used for training pilots games, because they are not used for leisure, despite being both interactive and challenging. Art films do not have this problem, because the reasons for watching a movie are not part of what makes them one, nor the structure or content.

My problem with this crossover is the tendency to point to walking simulator type things as strong examples of the artistic merit of the medium. If we need to look to examples for in kind with other media forms in order to legitimize the use of the term art for the medium, we fail to identify the qualities that make video games unique as an artistic medium.

SimCity is less of a game than any given walking simulator is, though, so this distinction leads to conclusions that are fairly absurd.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 19:03

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Coolwhoami posted:

How so? People play it for leisure, theres challenge, and it is obviously interactive. How is it less of a game?

SimCity, specifically speaking, is a toy. There's no condition for victory, no goal you are attempting to achieve. To contrast, all walking simulators have a goal you are attempting to achieve, and a victory condition. Your definition basically says that the defining difference between a videogame and a book is that the book is not "interactive", and if we pick the right book, say, Mad Libs, it's now a videogame.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 19:09

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

qnqnx posted:

If it is not enjoyable then it is not worth playing the game, and games are all about being fun. Artsy fartsy walking sims belong in the trash.

Here's another dumbass that talks poo poo about games he never played, and would probably incur in massive debt in SimCity if he tried.

I'm not denigrating SimCity. You might as well come around to shrieking about how this forum is full of pedophiles like your buddy does, though, you're not very good at concealing your intent.

Coolwhoami posted:

There are no explicit victory or failure states, but having a city that fills the map, or one in which no one lives and you are massively in debt, are certainly valences of victory or defeat. However, there is no issue here with pointing out that it too doesn't fit the criteria well (to the point that you even have an alternative term to describe it). Walking simulator was a term created in ire to describe those things fitting it, and doesn't cover all possibilities that fall into the grey area here (e.g. Mountain).

I didn't include the whole "video based medium" part because I assumed people would understand, by the nature of the topic, that it was they to which I referred, and not other sorts of games (of which Mad Libs is a word game). I'll ensure to be more pedantic about it in future, as apparently that was not clear.

Wrong from the start. You can lose in SimCity. Thanks for playing.

Now, you're stubbornly resisting the conclusion that "game" isn't some easily-defined category where you can cleanly separate out the bad from the good. I could go on and point out that the Zero Escape games are functionally almost identical to walking simulators in that they're visual novels with a little bit of gameplay attached, but I don't want to see how you'd treat those games.

Brainiac Five fucked around with this message at 19:31 on May 31, 2016

# ¿ May 31, 2016 19:29

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

qnqnx posted:

You really like to pretend you play games by talking a lot about them, don't you

Yes, that's right, I'm a fake gamer. I'm infiltrating gamer society to destroy all gamers and gaming, with yarmulkes, Hanukkah, and gefilte fish, as fake gamers are known to do. You need to resist the poison of the fake gamer and eliminate them from the noble gamer folk.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 19:39

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Coolwhoami posted:

Only the most recent iteration (as far as I know, I have not played them all), and only after a substantial time in which this was not the case. Not sure why that warrants hostility, nor how one example of this not being the case somehow nullifies the remainder of the example.

You can lose every single iteration of SimCity.

quote:

I would absolutely agree that it isn't easy to define, because words are words and they are used in many different contexts. However, we can certainly discuss the ways the term is used and examine the extent to which a given usage is sensible or not. Otherwise, we might very well begin to do as you previously mentioned, describing a mad libs book as a video game.

(While you have indicated you do not want this, I will ignore this for lack of care for your unnecessary hostility) I have not played a Zero Escape game, but they seem to share a great deal of qualities with point and click adventure games, so I do not see how they would be an issue here.

Actually, we can't, because that requires both parties to be knowledgeable.

You're also missing the picture. As Wittgenstein pointed out to illustrate his concept of family resemblances, games are not a set, a category where all members share something in common. This was understood before electronic computers, let alone the first videogame. To this extent, toys rather than strict games like SimCity or Dwarf Fortress are still within the broader family of games, alongside Gone Home, Virtue's Last Reward, etc. but expelling any of these leads us to needing to establish sets which end up being descriptively useless.

Attempts to exclude walking simulators are fundamentally political ones, built around the "wrong people" liking them.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 19:56

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Coolwhoami posted:

I'll take your word for it then, as it isn't very relevant in the end, but I cannot ever recall seeing it, nor does a cursory search provide any examples of it (hence my confidence with respect to it).

Ah, well that explains the hostility, you think that in making this argument that I also share a number of ideas and qualities with others (those who shall not be named on this here forums). I have no problem with people liking them, nor them being consider good things. I agree that they share the family resemblance; What I take issue with is when they are then used to be representative, both when they are used to demonstrate how video games can be art and when they are held up as exemplars of what games are/should be. Similarly, to learn the use of the term in the first place, they do not make a suitable starting point, for they rely heavily on the existing family to make sense. A great deal of modern art does the same; it establishes itself on the basis of existing work. Walking simulators do something similar, but to the term video game, in that they share some resemblance, but often could be described in other terms without loss of meaning (interactive visual novel, for example). That there exists a political bent to this (in that some want them excluded because they also frequently embody narrative elements to which they take issue, or represent a shift in focus audience) does not mean we cannot discuss the matter for other reasons.

But they are representative. As much as any other game is representative. And they are a good example of how games can be art, because they deal with the kinds of topics understood as artistic ones in a way that isn't extremely facile in the way that, say Spec Ops: The Line or Braid are. And because they are relatively accessible compared to something like Mother 3 or King of Dragon Pass, they are also good examples for people to potentially pick up and play.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 20:37

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Wales Grey posted:

Depending on the availability and impact of player choice, along with the inclusion of non-narrative mechanics, Visual Novels warble between "game in all ways that matter" and "choose which ending you're going to get". Kinetic Novels, on the other hand, are just books where you read one or two lines of text while looking at pretty pictures.

But if by "choice game" you mean "game consisting entirely of a dialog box where you occasionally chose an action to take and progress down the game's flowchart", then I'll argue that such a game is only a game by the most stringent and technical of definitions: a process that has a beginning and and end, within which a "player" makes decisions and observes the consequences of those decisions.

Story and narrative really don't matter to games. They're great as a framing tool, or as a helpful guide to nudge players in the direction they need to go to complete the game. Something like Megaman or Street Fighter would be completely the same if it were stripped of its narrative (and we might be better off without them spawning their 90's cartoons). Even artgames like Braid or Torien survive as games when you divest them of all story or narrative elements, although Braid certainly comes out of this acid bath a lot better than Torien. What's left if you rip the story and narrative from a Visual Novel? Just a bunch of idle art assets, floating in virtual space.

That's not to say that story and narrative are useless to games, or that their artifice cannot help gameplay. If you ripped the story from The Last of Us, all you'd be left with is the empty shell of its gameplay because the story and narrative are essential to the experience of the game (I shudder to think of what would be left if you tried to remove all narrative elements from something like The Stanley Parable). Braid is more interesting with its story, and even the throw-away plot of Super Mario Bros. provides necessary context to the player's actions in the game. But what about games like Planescape: Torment, where you can go through the entire game doing nothing but talking to people? It's still a game, because to go through the game by only talking with people, you still need to interact with it as a game to finish it.

And I'm only talking about video games here. Even TTRPGs like Nobilis or Chuubo's Magical Wish-Granting Engine or Microscope, all of which are very nearly "pure" storygames, have greater mechanical complexity and player interactivity than Visual Novels and most CYOA games.

This only works if we define "narrative" in an extremely narrow way, one which is fairly antithetical to how it's used in general. Because in Street Fighter, you have a narrative from the process of the individual matches and of the context of the different opponents in singleplayer, which remains even without any art assets beyond the bare minimum to distinguish T. Hawk from Sagat. This is an inevitable consequence of the game providing a sequence of events and a framework in which to contextualize them, and it is itself distinct from plot and story.

# ¿ May 31, 2016 21:58

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Incoherence posted:

On one hand, "it's always been this way" is not a sufficient justification for "it should continue to be this way": we as a society occasionally decide that something that used to be acceptable is no longer acceptable. On the other hand, the burden is to prove that these things are actually harmful (that is, a world where they exist is worse than a world where they do not exist). On the third hand, you're falling into the "a game that is not overtly trying to be political cannot have a political viewpoint" trap, which is the only point those tweets seem to be making.

I think this is a terminology question: it's probably useful to have separate terms for "the ingame plot as put there by the creator" and "the emergent narrative of you playing the game", even if we haven't agreed on exactly what those terms are.

I mean, you just said it. "Plot".

# ¿ May 31, 2016 22:46

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Coolwhoami posted:

Cargo cult art criticism. Part of what is seen as "being a critic of high art" is looking down on other works as lesser or unrefined.

Oh man, sure hope those cargo cultists don't have the dunning-kruger effect or else I'd feel schadenfreude.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 00:48

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Internaut! posted:

A. everything is relative

B. criticism is a worthwhile endeavour

Pick one.

Well, pal, your problem here is that you assume "relative" and "subjective" are synonyms.

Also, I don't see what Einsteinian physics has to do with art theory???

# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 02:04

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Criticism is inherently good. As the Talmud says, we were put on this Earth to think. Those that complain about thinking are raging futilely against the LORD their god.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 22:18

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

rkajdi posted:

I was trying to give him some credit. 300 is a lot less his baby than Miller's. I'm also trying to give 300 the benefit of the doubt, since the stuff Miller's done since then sours me on him, somewhat like Alan Moore in that regard.

But even then, we're arguing about 1 film in a sea of poor stuff. He might be a self-aware nerd, but it doesn't translate into anything other than confusing blockbusters with very ornate special effects shots.

Actually, his movies are really good by most standards people apply for artistic quality.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 23:59

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

rkajdi posted:

Really? I didn't hear many people saying good things about any of the movies I listed (Watchmen was the best liked, but still not very loved) and honestly I didn't enjoy any of them that I saw. You get to have whatever opinion on films you want, but I'm going to tell you as far as I've seen he's just another blockbuster director.

Blockbusters are usually popular, though?

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 00:46

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

rkajdi posted:

Yes, but also of generally low quality in the critical community. Unless we're at the point where it's "a bunch of idiots like it, so it can't be bad", in which case might as well just toss culture down the drain.

Hell, I've seen good blockbusters (examples: Empire Strikes Back, Fury Road) and neither of these two directors get anywhere near that level. They're both Uwe Boll with better special effects.

What? You're saying they're unpopular but also popular trash, and now you're saying Snyder's movies are so incompetently shot and directed they're on par with deliberate bungling.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 01:00

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

rkajdi posted:

No, I'm saying they aren't critically acclaimed, despite being popular with the "explosions, hell yeah" crowd. I'm not a populist in the slightest, so I don't see quality as coupled to mainstream popularity at all.

And I'd rather watch an incompetently shot Boll film (if only to laugh at, or trying to figure out exactly why Jürgen Prochnow bothered with House of the Dead) to the disgusting male gaze-a-thon that Sucker Punch was.

Mainstream critics are also notoriously incompetent at handling genres like horror.

A movie where the basic plot is about the exploitation of women and their attempts to escape that exploitation surely is totally thoughtless and inane on gender and sexuality.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 01:11

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Panzeh posted:

Would you call Triumph of the Will parody?

I'm about 99% sure a bunch of people today would call it satire if they didn't know how it was produced.

I don't think so, Tim.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 02:14

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

That ending just preserves the idea that violence is cool, and Travis is just too emasculated, too much of a woman/gay, to really perform it. Making the commission of violence itself part of being pathetic and contemptible is far more in line with what No More Heroes is presenting.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 15:31

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Paolomania posted:

You are using "literacy" here as a stand-in for "agreement with a certain critical framework". To assert that such is necessary is to beg any critical question - i.e. It presumes that any analysis must necessarily agree with the assumptions and baggage of that framework.

To put it another way, baldly presenting some idea, in any medium, and expecting someone to take it as ironic criticism because to you it just seems so apparently wrong on its face presumes that they not only see the same face from their subjective vantage point, but also that they will necessarily conclude that the idea is bad. As SS Troopers / FC3 point out, this is easily not the case.

A person deprived of any artistic content is finally presented with a PS1 and Dino Crisis. They understand it as the pinnacle of art. We could treat this opinion as unassailable, or we could recognize it as a result of a limited perspective.

Or, to put it another way, people are capable of distinguishing Blake's poem about chimneysweeps from Libertarian paeans to child labor, without needing indoctrination. But they do need to be familiar with the world and culture on at least a limited level first.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 16:01

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 04:48

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

A broad issue with video game criticism is the length of time required. Final Fantasy 8 is a game that only really makes sense on a second playthrough, but the 30-40 hours needed to do this are fairly daunting. Where it's quite possible to read faster, and movies take up 1.5-3 hours generally, without speedrunning there's not much to speed up playing a game though multiple times unless a means of doing so is explicitly incorporated in the game.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 16:19

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