The Japs do everything better

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I find the "can games be art?" debate the most tedious. I mean, what would actually change depending on the answer? It reminds me of a bunch of American negros rummaging through Egyptian history to find some tenuous link to themselves. "Shiiiit, we be Michaelangelo now! We be Mozart!"

If we only we could lay the debate the rest. The problem is the distortion this produces in the perception of games. On one hand you have striver journalist types who believes games should be "artistic", which to them means something you could find in a museum. In their minds, "art" is something paralyzing, intellectual, while fun is something you have through "entertainment". That speaks only to the fact they only find fun in lowbrow things, while everything else they consider work. Playing "artistic" games is something like going to school, something you do for grades. Their grade, in this case, is how high status they are seen as by their peers of journalist strivers.

Then you also have the "gameplay" people, which I actually prefer since they at least take games seriously. But they feel they need to compartmentalize their enjoyment, to separate the "art" from the "game", as if the game pulled some kind of charm, tried to seduce you away from the "real game". Let the game seduce me, trick me, fool me, I say. I consider that an achievement. Why should you assume that I'm tricked by the same things as you? That may "superficiality" is the same as yours?

 

[GamerCat_]

I find the "can games be art?" debate the most tedious. I mean, what would actually change depending on the answer? It reminds me of a bunch of American negros rummaging through Egyptian history to find some tenuous link to themselves. "Shiiiit, we be Michaelangelo now! We be Mozart!"

If we only we could lay the debate the rest. The problem is the distortion this produces in the perception of games. On one hand you have striver journalist types who believes games should be "artistic", which to them means something you could find in a museum. In their minds, "art" is something paralyzing, intellectual, while fun is something you have through "entertainment". That speaks only to the fact they only find fun in lowbrow things, while everything else they consider work. Playing "artistic" games is something like going to school, something you do for grades. Their grade, in this case, is how high status they are seen as by their peers of journalist strivers.

Icycalm knew this...

Then you also have the "gameplay" people, which I actually prefer since they at least take games seriously. But they feel they need to compartmentalize their enjoyment, to separate the "art" from the "game", as if the game pulled some kind of charm, tried to seduce you away from the "real game". Let the game seduce me, trick me, fool me, I say. I consider that an achievement. Why should you assume that I'm tricked by the same things as you? That may "superficiality" is the same as yours?

These people are stupid assholes. There's obviously a correct answer here, which we aren't fully embracing because it aggravates certain kinds of retards who are too dumb to see the answer (and so cannot be convinced. But they also want to talk. Meaning we are held up indefinitely).

 

[janior]

The games themselves are not art but they can have art in them, that's all there is to it.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

It's a problem in certain contexts. Or we could also say it leads to certain problems. One example being, when you're making a computer program to realise an idea, you build until it is realised, and then you stop. While a computer program which is a fascination of its programmer can just grow like cancer forever. Leading to the decade of early access, the game which is just kind of torn from its programmers and forced it with what they have as a mauled and incomplete piece of an impossible ideal whole, etc.

That can be a problem, sure. Like the novelist débutant who spends 40 years writing his masterwork only to die of a stroke and have his manuscripts thrown into the fire. It's a problem of the modern indy scene, in particular, due to... reasons.

You mentioned Project Zomboid before, a game I really enjoy. It's a game with a strong core vision, yet is trapped in a sort of stasis because the developers want to make it their lives' masterwork. Mostly, they aren't pressured to publish it. My prediction is that initial vision, at least as far as I saw it, which was to enable the player to play The Sims how they always wanted, is going to get progressively cheapened through updates that turn into a more generic colony sim type game. Something similar happened to Mount & Blade, which was a fun mercenary raiding game in Beta, but gradually turned into empire management sim that tried to eat away at your real life later on. I'm not sure it's really the programmers' fault, anymore than the fans(who constantly demand the addition of derivative elements from other games), or the current distribution model.

Sure, but then we can go into what a game is, whether certain ideas of games are perhaps more valuable or interesting than others to us, etc. I like "video games", but I have rather little interest in actual games as contrived challenges. I like multimedia art. It's kind of a problem that these ideas are so conceptually bound together in such poor language.

Well, I love "contrived challenges". I go out of my way to get them through mods, and sometimes I tweak the games myself (mind you, I'm only a script kiddie at best). I don't see "multimedia art" as detracting from the gaming experience that makes me sweat my palms, on the contrary.

Have you played Fallout recently? And did you see the state of the wiki 12 years ago?

I replayed Fallout quite obsessively for a few weeks last year, with some 8-10 characters. Fallout 2 has been longer since I've played it. I wouldn't trade them for anything, despite the many flaws which become increasingly obvious with replays. As for the Wikis, not sure, but I was reading the NMA forum 20 years ago, and read a lot of the "Fallout Bible" around the same time, so chances are yes, I did.

To be clear, I don't really care if you like the game or not. I don't think you have "bad taste" for not liking some game I do. But the mindset of someone who'd rather read the wiki is a mystery to me, I'm pretty sure we're coming from completely different places.

 

[Odoryuk]

Art is a broad term and doesn't mean anything. For a lot of people it's a property of something sophisticated, something high culture, which, I guess, creates all these debates about videogames being art or not.
Not sure about art, but videogames surely a unique medium, it's not just a combination of visual art, literature, music, videogames are their own thing and for this medium to be improved, games should not only strive to borrow from other way older mediums.

 

[GamerCat_]

It's a problem in certain contexts. Or we could also say it leads to certain problems. One example being, when you're making a computer program to realise an idea, you build until it is realised, and then you stop. While a computer program which is a fascination of its programmer can just grow like cancer forever. Leading to the decade of early access, the game which is just kind of torn from its programmers and forced it with what they have as a mauled and incomplete piece of an impossible ideal whole, etc.

That can be a problem, sure. Like the novelist débutant who spends 40 years writing his masterwork only to die of a stroke and have his manuscripts thrown into the fire. It's a problem of the modern indy scene, in particular, due to... reasons.

You mentioned Project Zomboid before, a game I really enjoy. It's a game with a strong core vision, yet is trapped in a sort of stasis because the developers want to make it their lives' masterwork. Mostly, they aren't pressured to publish it. My prediction is that initial vision, at least as far as I saw it, which was to enable the player to play The Sims how they always wanted, is going to get progressively cheapened through updates that turn into a more generic colony sim type game. Something similar happened to Mount & Blade, which was a fun mercenary raiding game in Beta, but gradually turned into empire management sim that tried to eat away at your real life later on. I'm not sure it's really the programmers' fault, anymore than the fans(who constantly demand the addition of derivative elements from other games), or the current distribution model.

I'm glad you saw where I was going with that. Wasn't sure if the type of game I had in mind was clear.

Sure, but then we can go into what a game is, whether certain ideas of games are perhaps more valuable or interesting than others to us, etc. I like "video games", but I have rather little interest in actual games as contrived challenges. I like multimedia art. It's kind of a problem that these ideas are so conceptually bound together in such poor language.

Well, I love "contrived challenges". I go out of my way to get them through mods, and sometimes I tweak the games myself (mind you, I'm only a script kiddie at best). I don't see "multimedia art" as detracting from the gaming experience that makes me sweat my palms, on the contrary.

I like certain contrived challenges, to a certain extent. And there are many "Video Games" which integrate the game part quite well. The multimedia and the game aren't inherently at odds with each other.

Have you played Fallout recently? And did you see the state of the wiki 12 years ago?

I replayed Fallout quite obsessively for a few weeks last year, with some 8-10 characters. Fallout 2 has been longer since I've played it. I wouldn't trade them for anything, despite the many flaws which become increasingly obvious with replays. As for the Wikis, not sure, but I was reading the NMA forum 20 years ago, and read a lot of the "Fallout Bible" around the same time, so chances are yes, I did.

To be clear, I don't really care if you like the game or not. I don't think you have "bad taste" for not liking some game I do. But the mindset of someone who'd rather read the wiki is a mystery to me, I'm pretty sure we're coming from completely different places.

There are games where I have fun with the wiki, or had fun. And ones where I don't and won't.

In Fallout I get that the idea is discovering possibilities by messing around and seeing what they thought of. But in practice I find the limitations of the crpg obtuse and not very fun or interesting to fiddle with. Too much adventure game. Too much having to get into the mind of the creator. Ultimately I don't believe they lend themselves well to being played and they also aren't that much fun to get lost in. Also I was of course a lot younger when I was reading the Fallout wiki. I would also have been less capable of finding the extent of these games naturally.

I don't believe that crpgs lend themselves that well to being played with, natural unfolding.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Icycalm knew this...

Yes, he made that point first. Credit where it's due.

Then you also have the "gameplay" people, which I actually prefer since they at least take games seriously. But they feel they need to compartmentalize their enjoyment, to separate the "art" from the "game", as if the game pulled some kind of charm, tried to seduce you away from the "real game". Let the game seduce me, trick me, fool me, I say. I consider that an achievement. Why should you assume that I'm tricked by the same things as you? That may "superficiality" is the same as yours?

These people are stupid assholes. There's obviously a correct answer here, which we aren't fully embracing because it aggravates certain kinds of retards who are too dumb to see the answer (and so cannot be convinced. But they also want to talk. Meaning we are held up indefinitely).

Young people tend to be more assertive and combative, I'm OK with that. I'm mostly here to learn. I play very few games (and didn't play them at all for more than a decade) and enjoy learning from those who know more than me, of which there are many on this forum. If you zoomers want to make a difference, remember that time is running out for you too. Most of you will be 30 soon. Proving your superiority on the internet is not enough.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Let the game seduce me, trick me, fool me, I say.

The problem is it doesn't fool a large portion of players anymore. Even ones who cultivate high "openess" and try to allow themselves to be willing participants, inside the illusion, hypnotically accepting the game's conceits on their own terms (essentially to be in a different state of altered, less critical, more acquiescent or tracktable consciousness). Say that a RPG keeps you playing mediocre gameplay, to see what is over the next hill, in terms of story. Play a few of them, and you eventually realise that there is never anything worthwhile over the next hill; you spent 120 hours playing a story that wouldn't even work if extracted and presented as a novella. You can keep attempting to allow yourself to get willingly fooled, but many people just grow fatigued by this.

You are putting yourself through mediocre gameplay, or management of stats, to be drip-fed snippets of a C-grade fantasy novel, where each chapter is locked behind 10 hours of unsatisfying labour, in most cases. It's stringing you along, through sub-par gameplay, with the promise the story will amount to something at any moment, and keeping you doing busywork you may not even enjoy, in order to magnify the game's self-importance. Games do require the audience to suspend one's disbelief and be willing to entertain that they might reveal something at any moment, in order to work. Ever question that they might not, and the illusion is broken. Many people are not willing to give them something like 80 hours of their life, on that very shaky premise.

I mean look at this statement:

"Wait, what do you even get out of RPGs then? 99% of them use their 'gameplay' as flavor and to give the sense of time passing to aid the meat of the game (cool stuff happening). Do you just like watching an xp bar go up or optimizing spreadsheets?"

This is exactly why this, the premiere RPG site on the internet, has reached the conclusion 99% of RPGs are shit. So essentially the gameplay part is complete wank, unneccecary in any way. As the statement says "to give a sense of time passing" and make the story feel important. If you removed said story, and presented it as a three hour movie, would it work? Or send you to sleep?

 

[Reinhardt]

games should be fun - that's all.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Let the game seduce me, trick me, fool me, I say.

The problem is it doesn't fool a large portion of players anymore. Even ones who cultivate high "openess" and try to allow themselves to be willing participants, inside the illusion, hypnotically accepting the game's conceits on their own terms (essentially to be in a different state of altered, less critical, more acquiescent or tracktable consciousness). Say that a RPG keeps you playing mediocre gameplay, to see what is over the next hill, in terms of story. Play a few of them, and you eventually realise that there is never anything worthwhile over the next hill; you spent 120 hours playing a story that wouldn't even work if extracted and presented as a novella. You can keep attempting to allow yourself to get willingly fooled, but many people just grow fatigued by this.

I have a problem with this. It's an argument from exhaustion, which wasn't implied at all in my post. I'm not an unemployed loser reaching for the bottle, I'm a smart guy(let's assume) who wants to have fun. I like when a charming girl lead me on, I liked to get pranked by a friend, I like being surprised by a plot twist in a movie. That people think in terms of "gameplay" vs. "story" is a problem brought about by journalist mind rot. A good game is not a chore you do to get at the "good parts". Are people so jaded by mainstream AAA crap that they must assume that's what it's meant by being "seduced"?

I don't want to use Fallout again as an example. Kenshi is rather popular here, but you can swap it for Morrowind, which is quite similar in ways. The gameplay in Kenshi is only OK, it controls like an RTS but there's no real strategy to speak of. A lot of "tactics" is just cheap tricks you use to fool the AI. But what the game does very well is pull you in into a different world where you are always lead to be believe there's more out there than meets the eye. There's a thousand little details that combine to make it work, and while it does you're just in another world. Eventually you realize that, say, Beak Things aren't really that dangerous, that their attack animation is very exploitable and that previously deadly situations are now quite manageable even with the lowest level character. Sure, that's not ideal, I'm not apologizing for it; but I'm also not going to dismiss a brilliant game because it doesn't fit some arbitrary standard.

One of my favorite games, the RPG I grew up with, Ultima VII, has very mediocre gameplay by most standards(which, of course, ignore the unique things you can do with it). It has one of the worst combat systems ever devised. But I'm still in awe of it and usually replay it every year. Once it works its charm on you, it'll never leave. Mind you, I never played it the "normal" way; it took decades for me to actually find the drive to complete it. It's just too lackadaisical and adventure gamey. But I can still play it for a few hours and have a blast every time.

You are putting yourself through mediocre gameplay, or management of stats, to be drip-fed snippets of a C-grade fantasy novel, where each chapter is locked behind 10 hours of unsatisfying labour, in most cases. It's stringing you along, through sub-par gameplay, with the promise the story will amount to something at any moment, and keeping you doing busywork you may not even enjoy, in order to magnify the game's self-importance. Games do require the audience to suspend one's disbelief and be willing to entertain that they might reveal something at any moment, in order to work. Ever question that they might not, and the illusion is broken. Many people are not willing to give them something like 80 hours of their life, on that very shaky premise.

Stop torturing yourself, who's making you? Break away from the Infinitron news cycle. Go play an arcade racer or something.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Stop torturing yourself, who's making you?

I never said I was? Your advice is solid, and could help some other gamers though I think.

games should be fun - that's all.

Exactly. If the moment to moment actual playing of the game isn't fun, what is the point?

There was a drama a while back when a games jouno type said that he felt Dark Souls should have an easy mode. In the days of coin-op arcade games, people accepted that they might never finish a game. The act of playing, was the reward in itself. Soon as you add something outside of the game, like make the story into the object, you are then making the gameplay just a potentially annoying barrier. You get situations like this, where the player ends up feeling they are cheated by not seeing the ending, when they should be enjoying the game in itself, with the moment being the reward.

That's why many experienced gamers tend to gravitate toward gameplay. Either they will be self selected for having discovered it's more sustainable than expecting too much out of the medium, or become jaded on story promises after some time. When you look at the Codex's favourite RPGs, or things like 'immersive sims', many of them are ones where the gameplay is reward enough in itself, i.e. Deus Ex being a favorite here.

 

[Lyric Suite]

And what is cinema? One day you really ought to make a statement that rests on something.

Even if we stick to Japan itself, Kurosawa > every anime ever made. No exceptions.

 

[Tehdagah]

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Soon as you add something outside of the game, like make the story into the object, you are then making the gameplay just a potentially annoying barrier. You get situations like this, where the player ends up feeling they are cheated by not seeing the ending, when they should be enjoying the game in itself, with the moment being the reward.

Again, this is just confusing categories. I don't understand what this "outside the game" is. I can recall games where the "story", as in the moments in the game where you're just reading stuff and pressing a key to continue, detract from the game. This can happen for several reasons. AAA games do everything wrong in this regard. Bad gameplay, bad story, bad taste in visuals and sound. It's not like they're great games where you have to stop what you're doing to watch something happen against your will. People accused Metal Gear games of that, but we seem to be talking of something else. We seem to be talking about games that are pointless and stupid because that's all they can be.

Would you really feel cheated by not seeing the ending in a game that you don't enjoy playing? I find it hard to imagine.

 

[Lyric Suite]

All the other stuff, the story, art or music, are just extras that have been grafted onto the medium but are not really part of it.

Because you can enjoy them individually?
But, and if you mean that, isn't that valid for movies aswell, since you can enjoy the soundtrack alone?
It won't be the same because a track can have more meaning if it is associated with a certain scene, but the same is true for a videogame.

No i'm not saying that games are not art because it compounds different art forms. Like you pointed out, cinema does too, and so does opera etc.

I'm saying the gameplay part isn't art. Music is art, writing is art, a painting is art and even acting is art. Blending all those elements toghether is still art even when they don't really fit because they are all alike in kind.

But gameplay in itself is on a different category in my opinion. Gameplay can involve craft, but a lot of things that aren't art involve craft as well so that's neither here nor there.

Basically, in order for something to be considered art it has to be able to express something, and i'm not so sure what is being expressed while you are bouncing a ball up and down in pong.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

All the other stuff, the story, art or music, are just extras that have been grafted onto the medium but are not really part of it.

Because you can enjoy them individually?
But, and if you mean that, isn't that valid for movies aswell, since you can enjoy the soundtrack alone?
It won't be the same because a track can have more meaning if it is associated with a certain scene, but the same is true for a videogame.

No i'm not saying that games are not art because it compounds different art forms. Like you pointed out, cinema does too, and so does opera etc.

I'm saying the gameplay part isn't art. Music is art, writing is art, a painting is art and even acting is art. Blending all those elements toghether is still art even when they don't really fit because they are all alike in kind.

But gameplay in itself is on a different category in my opinion. Gameplay can involve craft, but a lot of things that aren't art involve craft as well so that's neither here nor there.

Basically, in order for something to be considered art it has to be able to express something, and i'm not so sure what is being expressed while you are bouncing a ball up and down in pong.

This is like saying "movies are art, but sitting down on your sofa to watch them isn't".

 

[Lyric Suite]

This modern definition of art, that doesn't distinguish the concept of craftsmanship from the work of art is meaningless.
We shouldn't be asking if Game X is a art, or a work of art, but if it is good, and where it is good and where it isn't.

Modern art IS expressing something though:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x27d5ku

In this respect i consider the works of John Cage to be the most perfect manifestation of nominalism as explained in the video above:



Now a banana taped on a wall is not art, but it's not entirely accurate to say modern art is actually not saying anything. It is, it just so happens what it wants to express is deranged and outright satanic.

 

[Morenatsu.]

i like this anime:

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wait, is this what you are defending? WTF is this shite lmao.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I don't understand what this "outside the game" is.

To put it better, he is outside the moment, frustrated about a potential future that he hasn't experienced yet, rather than living in the here and now.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Wait, is this what you are defending? WTF is this shite lmao.

I'm gonna knock you on your fat ass.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Why would I list media when you're asking for names? Figuring you mean artists working within those mediums, why would I exclude them? And from there, since Japan is a very multimedia culture, is an artist who has worked in a your high school english teacher approved field like film be excluded if he has ever worked with a video game production?

Is Takeshi Kitano not a real artist because he did voice acting for a Yakuza game? Is he compromised? Unlike an American man of cinema and integrity like say, JJ Abrams?

Are you under the impression that the Japanese don't make anything but manga, anime, or video games? Or that they are weak outside of trash for nerds? This is the internet. Have you not noticed that everyone's favourite serious author on man-stuff is Yukio Mishima? Despite the cultural and translation barriers people find that he speaks to them more than Hemmingway now. But I'm sure you have some pithy sentence with which you can annihilate one of the most enduring writers of the 20th century.

The Japanese are culturally self sufficient. Their film industry didn't even feel a bump during Covid. You might know them mostly via their most popular exports. They produce more great artists we've never heard of (even excluding certain popular fields for no coherent reason) than most countries will at all.

How are we supposed to create a sufficient list of artists for either culture? What an absurd question. What are you hoping to prove here? Like everything you say about art you're so wrong that you can't be succinctly answered. This is layered stupidity. What could you possibly have in mind on the issue currently that asking me to do this made any kind of sense? I like Takeshi Kitano, I like Yukio Mishima, I like Ryuichi Sakamoto, I like Masaki Kobayashi, I like Seijin Suzuki, I like Atsuo, do you see how quickly this is going to get beyond silly? And yes, I could also make a very long list of American artists I'm fond of. Even excluding comics, animation, and video games.

I'm just asking you to put your money where your mouth is.

You made the claim Americans are incapable of making art. I would think the easiest eay to prove this is by making a direct comparison between the two countries.

And right off the bat of course you start to make exscuses. "Well, America just has more art studios". "Yeah well ok America has some artists but they are hated". "Japan is an insular country we don't even know what's in there".

If you weren't prepared to have your claim put to task you should have just shut your fucking mouth in the first place.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I don't even know what great artists from any country would be

 

[Shadowfang]

Now a banana taped on a wall is not art

Why not? And what changes with that classification? Where does that leave me?
Do i have to react to it on a different light with that knowledge?

but it's not entirely accurate to say modern art is actually not saying anything.

I am not saying that. What i am saying is that the distinction of what is art and what isn't, is not a useful distinction and people should not bother with it.
What people should be bothered about, is the many qualities something have and if those qualities should or not be desirable and in what quantities.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Why not?

For the same reason a man with a wig isn't a woman.

There are objective realities in this world. Some of them are invisible and can only be understood inwardly. Those cannot be proven discursively but are not less real or objective because of that.

I know for a fact Beethoven was a greater genius than Justin Bieber, but i cannot prove this to you with words alone. You just have to "get it" on your own.

Have you ever listened to an album that has great songs in it but also derivative songs that are pretty much just filler? Have you ever wondered how did you know what the good songs or the derivative songs were?

Understanding what art is requires the same kind of intellective realization. Modernists take advantage of the fact everybody has been brainwashed into believing something cannot be deemed to be real or true unless it can be "shown" to be real either in a lab or in words and then use the fact some things cannot be shown in that way as a justification for claming there was never any reality there in the first place. That's how we got to modern art as well as shit like this pronouns crap. Why not call someone a they/them? How do you know they aren't?