I have no patience for RPGs anymore

Like ice cream, like ice cream~

 

"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory"

 

The moment that happens is the moment I will stop playing those. Cinematic fucking experiences.
Anyway, it's just polishing a turd. We already have those "experiances" - they are called "modern shooters". We also have the excellent "interactive drama graphic adventure video games" like The Walking Dead.
Even better, we used to have those back in the late-80's - early-90's. Remember these?

 

I guess I will join the bandwagon by saying I view video games as art.

In Japan, there are 12 arts. Flower arranging is one.

I would go so far as to say anything which engages the creative portion of the brain is art.

Just look at Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as inspiration.

Codex is a bunch of left-brained literalists, with no eye for holism or beauty. Sad but True.

 

Please tell me how a football manager simulator is a piece of art. Or a MMORPG. Or CoD. Surely they engage the creative portion of the brain a lot. I also totally remember engaging my creative portion of the brain while playing Minesweeper.

Games are entertainment, most and foremost.

The games that could remotely considered an "art", have all been made with the express aim of being "artsy". More often than not, it came at expense of actual playability.

Fucking pretentious arts students.

Something being an "art" is creator's choice, not an intrinsic quality of said thing.

 

Entertainment and art aren't mutually exclusive, paying for something doesn't necessarily make it a soulless consumable product

 

For the same reason marketing music is made by major record labels, but good music still comes from independent artists.

 

Music is art, no? Music is in games. So I consider a game to have some art in it. It also probably has nerdy graphical designs--like the title screen--and stories and other things which resemble art in my mind. So it's a no brainer. Frankly.

Hell the "homegrown" graphical user interfaces are art to me. They set the mood. They make magic. This is true especially in some of the older RPGs. The RPGs with generic OS-like UI's do not have this quality.

And what does my mind do to it? My mind can make a story out of noise on the TV screen, at least when I'm sleeping. But even in a game I can attach meaningfulness (or art?) to random zero's and one's. Ever see nthose works of art where the artist just throws paint on the canvas? That's a bit like what I'm saying here. It's like seeing a familiar face or animal shape in the clouds. All the game has to do is give some freedom to the zero's and one's to express themselves virtually unaided.

A game itself might not be a work of Picasso, but it has some artsy things in it. Whatever.

 

It took decades for film to become accepted as a legitimate art form.

Gaming has...let's say a really long way to go.

A useful distinction that is made in film studies is to divide the history of film (along with analysis and criticism) into "movies," "film," and "cinema."

1. "Movie" - nature of industrial organization, technology, infrastructure of filmmaking; key feature is the commodification of work.
2. "Film" - the politics of film; how it relates to us on a general level (sociopolitical) and on a personal or individual level (psychoanalytic/psychopolitics, though I hate that term). Films seen as products of particular moments in time, with obvious and not so obvious political messages. Just as important to understand what isn't said as what is said.
3. "Cinema" the aesthetics of film. Realism vs expressionism; theatricality versus neorealism; genre vs auteur; editing techniques, blocking, use of color, etc etc.

I think the same sort of categorization can perhaps be applied to video games. For lack of better names, I'll keep it simple.

1. "Industry" - games are made almost entirely by large groups of individuals under a corporate banner which seeks, above all else, to make a profit. There are different forms, but in general the nature of the industry means that quality comes secondary. Technology, like in film, doesn't necessarily make things better or worse.
2. "Political" - generally speaking, games are seen as a form of leisure, mostly for children and young men. This is slowly, inexorably changing, but it will remain that way for a while. On a mass level, it is part of a post-industrial capitalist pop culture, where nostalgia and recognizable icons (re: successful branding) are part of a shared, mass culture controlled by corporations with a stranglehold on their IP.
3. "Interactivity" - video games' sufficient and necessary condition, visual interactivity shapes makes a video game a video game and not something else. Games mostly pit people against one another in a test of reflexes, basic strategy, calculation, memorization, and fairly simplistic problem solving.

So, you have corporations shoving out a product meant mostly for children that has, as of late, been using changes in technology to build on the spectacle rather than the level of interactivity of games.

A somewhat helpful parallel is to see video games as stuck in the "Golden Age of Hollywood" phrase right:
- Technology (3D graphics - widescreen, sound, color) of the art has matured.
- Large developers/studios (EA/Ubisoft/Activision/major Japanese studios - MGM/WarnerBros/Paramount/etc) push out varying shades of garbage, with the occasional gem. Products are big and flashy, and the general public eats it up.
- Aping another art form (theater in the case of film; film in the case of games).
- Money men with the last say.

This isn't a perfect analogy, but I think it generally holds true. Personally, I don't hold out much hope a "New Hollywood" or "New Wave" renaissance. A key difference is that most indie developers are falling into the same sort of trap. They're recycling nostalgia for sprites, recycling game mechanics, and generally trying to recreate older games on a much smaller budget. Those who say they are trying to move the genre "forward" are like those conceptual artists who replaced technique and form with half-baked politics.

If AAA trite, Gone Home, and half-finished early access and greenlight games are what the future will hold, burn it all down.

 

from our superior giga-thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...talist-extremism.90469/page-1512#post-3996060
Akratus nailed it:

About that whole accepted art thing: Accepted by whom?
By the mainstream? Nah, it's old bastards, which didn't accept jazz (nigger music) or tv.
Now the older elites (economy, politics), which never played games themselves, don't accept them to be art.
It's just a matter of time...

But i have to admit music or tv were easier accessible to older people, cause there were not so hard technical barriers for them.
Maybe that's the problem.

 

The problem here is that you assume that art is defined by public opinion or quality. Art is a nebulous concept and has yet to get a meaningful definition. I would say the games as art debate is just a symptom of consumers of new media getting a chip on their shoulder over their hobby being respected. The day the greater public acknowledges vidya as art marks the day that nobody will discuss it again until new media appears. At the end of the day, what speaks to you ,and influences you, and moves you is no greater or lesser in value because of the public opinion. This clip may seem stupid or pretentious or may be meaningful to people who watch it. I've cried literal tears watching it. The only value it holds for me is its impact on me. Fucking art ya'll

 

I don't use forums much so I just fuck all my shit up.

 

pls edit it faggot or else i get cancer

 

don't really know how to turn it into a reply like I intended. Fuckkettt xXX420P05TINDEVILBLOODCOCKSXXx___

 

Just download Cheat Engine and increase the game speed and problem solved.

 

Visually, video games also recreate art.

Freeze any still frame in Alice, and you will see a painting, done is 3D design.

 

Is anyone here familiar with Wagnerian opera and the concept of the gesamtkunstwerk? Video games have the potential to one day embody that.

 

My boner is probably art

 

Did you draw a smiley on it?

 

Are you denying the musicians who got released via major labels the right to be called "good music"?
Are you claming that independent artists are the only source of "good music"?

Nowadays, there's more shitty music released by independent artists than by major labels, simply because every shithead with a wish to make music and a basic equimpment (that can be purely software and downloaded for free) can record music.
Or would you deny those people the right to call their creations "music" purely on the basis that it's obviously uninspired shit?

What is "good music" anyways?
Entertain us with your sagely knowledge.

 

Video games are a commercial product first and foremost and will never, ever make use of the medium to its fullest like Welles, Dreyer, Bergman, Mizoguchi, Lubistch, Kubrick did for film.

 

Then how do you explain all the obscure games that hipsters make for almost no profit. When film got started, it was just plebs fucking with cameras that the bigwigs didn't know what to do with. Eventually it gets more refined, and believe me, in 40 years time the changes in technology and the vidya medium will be worlds apart from what it is now.

 

But cinema as art was at its peak in the silent film period.