Games and stupidity

[Calax]

http://kotaku.com/5535475/i-3-stupid-games

 

Do games really need to be overly complicated art flicks like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus where there are themes and heavy narrative, just in order to become critical darlings? I mean, I personally love dynasty warriors because it's a hack and slash game that lets me slaughter people, and it's really well done. Tight controls and a fairly deep but shallow combat system. And yet, every time a game like it comes out, it gets at best, an average score because it's not "deep". As the guy points out in the article, there were puzzles in Uncharted two that served to break up the gameplay and ultimately were boring. And if you got stuck on em why were you even playing the game in the first place?

 

I suppose this all goes back to my views on "art" in general. Art is a boring pretentious world where boring is considered great, while entertainment is considered to be vapid and stupid. I mean if I wanted to look for depth, extreme character development, long winded discussions on politics and ethics, and start symbolism, I'd Watch a pretenious and boring movie or read it in one of my books. I play games to escape the dull boring world, not get social commentary on how it works or get blasted with messages about good, evil, and my morality.

 

Anyway, discuss.

[Mamoulian War]

If i wanted to play stupid and easy game i would be playing Farmville for free... Not gonna play 50 bucks for a game with difficulty which can beaten even by retarded walrus baby... But yes no depth != easy game, i know a lot of games with no story and no depth, but with godly gameplay and difficulty... The more complicated the game, the more of an achievement it is for me to beat it, and nothing else can match this feeling!!!

[Calax]

If i wanted to play stupid and easy game i would be playing Farmville for free... Not gonna play 50 bucks for a game with difficulty which can beaten even by retarded walrus baby... But yes no depth != easy game, i know a lot of games with no story and no depth, but with godly gameplay and difficulty... The more complicated the game, the more of an achievement it is for me to beat it, and nothing else can match this feeling!!!

Well, I personally haven't played Ico, or Shadow of the colossus, but a lot of the games that get high reviews are either MASSIVE titles like Halo, GTA or Street Fighter, while games with less visibility and follow a fairly typical formula that people find fun (if a bit shallow) get relegated to average/below average scores because they "don't add anything new" to the media. My co-workers at gamestop grumbled until the sky fell that GameInformer gave White knight chronicles a 7/10 when it was obviously a good game, just because it was "standard JRPG stuff".

 

Because of this phenomena, devs seem to throw in one useless, boring, or grindy mechanic into their games simply to say "LOOK WE TRIED SOMETHING NEW!" because EVERYTHING has to move the genre foreward. You see the same thing in movies where Things like the first Iron Man, while a good movie, was given ok reviews because "its' just a popcorn flick".

[Thorton_AP]

If i wanted to play stupid and easy game i would be playing Farmville for free... Not gonna play 50 bucks for a game with difficulty which can beaten even by retarded walrus baby... But yes no depth != easy game, i know a lot of games with no story and no depth, but with godly gameplay and difficulty... The more complicated the game, the more of an achievement it is for me to beat it, and nothing else can match this feeling!!!

 

Does a "stupid" game have to be an easy game?

 

Double Dragon is pretty straight forward, but I remember thinking it was damn hard when I was growing up. I bet I still find it hard today.

[213374U]

Do games really need to be overly complicated art flicks like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus where there are themes and heavy narrative, just in order to become critical darlings?

No, just to become "cult" titles. I suppose there's no general rule though, as for instance Bloodlines or DX are probably considered cult titles but aren't overdone in that respect, with the "artistic" qualities overtaking the game itself.

 

On the other hand, you have Fallout 3, and other than the usual suspects, you'll find that the game got pretty good ratings across the board. Lots of indie games go unnoticed every year, too. People pay way too much attention to the opinions of "experts" in a field where such a thing is meaningless... whatever works for you, just does.

 

Overly complicated mechanics just tend to make games more a chore than a pastime, which in my book is a bad thing. There's fans for everything, however...

 

 

I suppose this all goes back to my views on "art" in general. Art is a boring pretentious world where boring is considered great, while entertainment is considered to be vapid and stupid. I mean if I wanted to look for depth, extreme character development, long winded discussions on politics and ethics, and start symbolism, I'd Watch a pretenious and boring movie or read it in one of my books. I play games to escape the dull boring world, not get social commentary on how it works or get blasted with messages about good, evil, and my morality.

Art is abused by the intellectually insolvent in an attempt to draw a qualitative distinction between themselves and those over whom they believe to stand. This doesn't mean there's no difference in quality between artists, though... just a lot of mediocre but very forceful fine art "connaisseurs".

[Orogun01]

If i wanted to play stupid and easy game i would be playing Farmville for free... Not gonna play 50 bucks for a game with difficulty which can beaten even by retarded walrus baby... But yes no depth != easy game, i know a lot of games with no story and no depth, but with godly gameplay and difficulty... The more complicated the game, the more of an achievement it is for me to beat it, and nothing else can match this feeling!!!

Well, I personally haven't played Ico, or Shadow of the colossus, but a lot of the games that get high reviews are either MASSIVE titles like Halo, GTA or Street Fighter, while games with less visibility and follow a fairly typical formula that people find fun (if a bit shallow) get relegated to average/below average scores because they "don't add anything new" to the media. My co-workers at gamestop grumbled until the sky fell that GameInformer gave White knight chronicles a 7/10 when it was obviously a good game, just because it was "standard JRPG stuff".

 

Because of this phenomena, devs seem to throw in one useless, boring, or grindy mechanic into their games simply to say "LOOK WE TRIED SOMETHING NEW!" because EVERYTHING has to move the genre foreward. You see the same thing in movies where Things like the first Iron Man, while a good movie, was given ok reviews because "its' just a popcorn flick".

Usually the reviews are made with the target audience in mind and JRPGs are kind of an exclusive club for people that kind of game. They mostly give that score to games that are well done but have little universal appeal.

 

As for the article.

 

That dude sure loves to hear himself talk. He criticizes Uncharted for attempts at sophistication but ask for more realism. Whatever happened to "it's just a game"?

Is not just that devs try to do games that they would like to see or try at being "sophisticated". Most gamers now ask for a certain level of storytelling on their games, as he says with his Doom example. I certainly think that a level creativity is required with something like experimental games rather than commercial ones. Games that focus solely on trying new things. The problem is that games are made for commercial purposes and have very limited space to work since no ones wants to alienate consumers.

[RPGmasterBoo]

I suppose this all goes back to my views on "art" in general. Art is a boring pretentious world where boring is considered great, while entertainment is considered to be vapid and stupid. I mean if I wanted to look for depth, extreme character development, long winded discussions on politics and ethics, and start symbolism, I'd Watch a pretenious and boring movie or read it in one of my books. I play games to escape the dull boring world, not get social commentary on how it works or get blasted with messages about good, evil, and my morality.

 

Anyway, discuss.

 

This is possibly the worst thing I've ever read.

 

As for games, after some thought I realized where the people who say they'll never be art are coming from. I'm more or less throwing my lot in with them, but I still hold that everything I played in the last ten years, barring a handful of games - was a waste of time. It might not have been, if I had developed any parallel hobbies... but I let them consume too much of my time.

 

There are many conflicting definitions of art, but a simple one that springs to mind is "something whose aim is beyond mere entertainment". Put that way, no games qualify. Still I can't deny I was affected strongly by titles such as Homeworld, Baldur's Gate II, Alpha Centauri, Planescape Torment and Shadow of the Colossus. Very few though.

 

As for your question: nothing has to be art. Its not like you can force its creation. Games have a priority issue because they aim only to entertain. Also they suffer from repetition that is meaningless in an artistic sense. Overall the question is not bad if you rephrase it: should a game aim to do more than entertain?

 

If it does, its no longer a "game". If it doesn't, it can't be art. So you could argue, that games, by their very nature/definition can't be art.

[HoonDing]

I agree with OP.

[Tigranes]

*shrug* I got over this a while ago. Basically, Calax, why do you insist on thinking of dichotomies? Your argument, deliberately or inadvertently, adopts the very worst of the artificial categories and arguments that have developed over time. Art or No Art, Art or Fun, Smart or Stupid, you're putting all these dichotomies into the mix and it's no wonder your conclusion is what it is - I mean, in a battle of pretentious jerkoffs and fun-loving realists who are you gonna pick?

 

It just polarises the argument until a resolution is impossible. Games are a medium which are capable of a wide range of things. So by all means we should view with encouragement and optimism any effort to take a particular vision of games, and then develop it to perfection, as long as that effort doesn't kill others. The kind of arguments you employ simply create a judgmental and fractious landscape where you can't defend your position, you just get pigeonholed into pretentious wank or a buttonmashing moron.

 

That's not an attack, since they are very prevalent arguments in the field... just making the point.

[Gorth]

Art is abused by the intellectually insolvent in an attempt to draw a qualitative distinction between themselves and those over whom they believe to stand. This doesn't mean there's no difference in quality between artists, though... just a lot of mediocre but very forceful fine art "connaisseurs".

Uh huh...

 

So by all means we should view with encouragement and optimism any effort to take a particular vision of games, and then develop it to perfection, as long as that effort doesn't kill others.

That is why all we have left are bad shooters and RTS's

 

Bastards, you've murdered all the good games.

[Calax]

I wasn't necessairly trying to make a dichotomy, but most of the time when you play or watch something that's considered "a work of art" it usually... how do I put this... moves at a sloths pace across the ground and the chosen few connoisseurs of art point to how the camera angles and characters are all symbolic of X Y and Z. I look at it and wonder "Why is this art?"

 

One of my teachers once said that Pop Culture was created by the mixture of Art (of the high class) and entertainment (of the low class). I don't think this is true, anymore at least. The thing is that some games loose sight of the purpose of gaming (To escape and have fun) in favor of trying to be artistic and over the top. Some accuse Heavy Rain of this, other Too Human, and in all honesty I'm betting both have at least some of this going on.

 

I think that's the point of the guys article that I posted. Devs are constantly trying different things to add "variety" and "depth" to their game to garner more critical acclaim, and end up creating points that are really slow and boring. The question, if you're stuck in one of those points, is why are you even doing this if it's more work to play than it is to work. The puzzle he mentions in Uncharted does nothing except slow the game down as you flip through the journal thing and figure out what to do. Which makes you wonder why the devs even put it in there. I mean the two core mechanics of gameplay (in Uncharted) are shooting and platforming, puzzle solving is a nice break from those, but if you have to keep skipping between the game and a menu for 10 minutes, it breaks flow, and ultimately will ruin the experience for most people.

 

Can a game be "art" and fun? Yes, but usually I've found that if something is considered a "work of art" by it's critics then it usually turns up pretty boring for me. I may be a vapid, live in the moment, person who likes shallow things, but it's who I am.

[213374U]

It just polarises the argument until a resolution is impossible.

Um, you can't really polarise what is essentially a yes/no question. Once you pick a camp, you're supposed to defend your position, or resort to nonsense along the lines of "Is this art? Maybe to someone with just the right personality disorder. Sometimes, I happen to have just the right personality disorder to consider that art."

 

Art is a category... only no two people can seem to agree on precisely what it encompasses.

 

 

Art is abused by the intellectually insolvent in an attempt to draw a qualitative distinction between themselves and those over whom they believe to stand. This doesn't mean there's no difference in quality between artists, though... just a lot of mediocre but very forceful fine art "connaisseurs".

Uh huh...

That seems to have caused the intended effect

 

No, I'm not an art expert by any means, so don't take that as me implying that "I have the refined tastes to better appreciate art than you plebs". I know what snobbism is, though. And no matter how many times I've read it, The Emperor's New Suit never fails to bring a smile to my face, either...

[Slowtrain]

Oblivion is art.

[Orogun01]

No, I'm not an art expert by any means, so don't take that as me implying that "I have the refined tastes to better appreciate art than you plebs". I know what snobbism is, though. And no matter how many times I've read it, The Emperor's New Suit never fails to bring a smile to my face, either...

I am something of an art connoisseur (A.K.A snob ) I gotta say that the definition of art is completely blurred, basically anything that appeals to emotions is art.

This doesn't means that games are art, since they lack the characteristics that define art.

[Tigranes]

The thing is that some games loose sight of the purpose of gaming (To escape and have fun) in favor of trying to be artistic and over the top.

 

You're making value judgments and artifical dichotomies already, though. You're already defining 'fun' in a way that excludes complex narratives or symbolic flaff, punitive difficulty or even extreme realism. I don't want to buy and play Modern Warfare 2 because it's not going to be fun for me, not because it's "stupid". If I don't buy a game because it's too easy, hand-holdy, simple or repetitive, it wouldn't be because of those elements in and of themselves, it'll be because those things make the game not fun.

 

Essentially you're already setting up the rules of the game - art is not fun, simple fast explodey stuff is fun - then constructing a strawman of the art-loving fun-hating connoisseur elite snob, then presenting your argument. This isn't me attacking you or calling you bigoted or something, but again, it's no surprise that you reach the conclusion you do, you're esentially not giving any other conclusion a chance.

 

Numbers don't make me spell everything out in excruciating detail, I'll reserve that for when I study...

[Calax]

*shrugs* I'm not trying to say that there isn't a place for complex narrative etc, but you can't let it get in the way of gameplay.

[Tigranes]

Sure you can. It's part of the game. It's part of the appeal. It's part of the fun.

 

In general, you want the 'gameplay' (and let's not get into a definition war over that) to come out tops, of course. But it's not a golden rule. There's nothing wrong with having a few games that decide to prioritise other things.

[Orogun01]

Sure you can. It's part of the game. It's part of the appeal. It's part of the fun.

 

In general, you want the 'gameplay' (and let's not get into a definition war over that) to come out tops, of course. But it's not a golden rule. There's nothing wrong with having a few games that decide to prioritise other things.

The two development approaches, gameplay to fit story or story that fits the gameplay. Even though story is a nice plus I gotta agree with Calax, gameplay is vital if it's lacking it doesn't matter how good your story was. Games are not movies where a good story is enough to carry it on.

Maybe I haven't played enough games where the story is central and the gameplay is made to fit it, since most of these attempts go with already tried methods instead of developing new mechanics that may go better with the content.

 

BTW, after playing God Hand for the last few hours I can see why it was such a failure.

[Tigranes]

Geez. Again with the extremes. "Story 'getting in the way' of gameplay" is very different from "All story no game". Really, surely we can have a more nuanced discussion between games enthusiasts.

 

There are games where there is decent gameplay, but it is clearly built to service the story or setting or other artistic elements, or where the gameplay is fairly enjoyable, but really pales in comparison to the striking story/setting. There is absolutely nothing 'wrong' with that. They aren't destroying games, or making other people look stupid, or being pretentious, or not being 'games'. It really only applies to the few games where they went overboard, or there were errors made in production, so that gameplay is shockingly poor or haphazard - Torment or Bloodlines wouldn't even fit in that category, because they both made faithful and significant efforts to construct coherent, entertaining and structured gameplay content.

 

Seriously, it's really simplistic to just say "every game should go for gameplay doesn't matter bout story i play games to have fun stories aren't fun". Things like the later Metal Gear Solids having hours of non-interactive movies with 3 minutes of minimal player input in the middle? Yeah, you can ask how that should be done better. But there's no point drawing up a general scale of 'arty posh' to 'fun trash' and talking about what's what.

[Thorton_AP]

My favourite games tend to be games that I feel have both good gameplay and good stories. Games like Deus Ex and such.

[Walsingham]

*Engage ponce drive*

 

Art is a question of subjective interpretation. Something only ceases to be art when the impact of the object or event is unequivocal. If I hammer a nail into the top of your head that is not art, at least so far as you are concerned.

 

The relevance of this point is that if a game consist of nothing more than see object, track object, hit object, then two things happen. Firstly the degrees of freedom you have to interpret it are absolutely minimal. Secondly that interpretation must necessarily be almost identical to every other game which uses the same task basis. You have not created a new game, you are copying an older game. You are putting mask on grandma.

[RPGmasterBoo]

The relevance of this point is that if a game consist of nothing more than see object, track object, hit object, then two things happen. Firstly the degrees of freedom you have to interpret it are absolutely minimal. Secondly that interpretation must necessarily be almost identical to every other game which uses the same task basis. You have not created a new game, you are copying an older game. You are putting mask on grandma.

 

I don't see that as too relevant. Every other Renaissance painting is a crucifixion - without a wealth of options for interpretation. Yet only a handful of painters are considered the best, while others have faded into obscurity.

[Oner]

This is possibly the worst thing I've ever read.

There's an article about how games can't be interactive movies because they have free camera control (while mentioning Silent Hill 1-2), constant character freedom (=no cutscenes, while mentioning MGS 4), etc.

[HoonDing]

This is possibly the worst thing I've ever read.

There's an article about how games can't be interactive movies because they have free camera control (while mentioning Silent Hill 1-2), constant character freedom (=no cutscenes, while mentioning MGS 4), etc.

Authored by David Cage?

[Oner]

This is possibly the worst thing I've ever read.

There's an article about how games can't be interactive movies because they have free camera control (while mentioning Silent Hill 1-2), constant character freedom (=no cutscenes, while mentioning MGS 4), etc.

Authored by David Cage?

Ian Bogost.