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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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 Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:58 pm |
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I've been mostly avoiding this thread for a variety of obvious reasons, but I want to chime in with this:
a) I really, really, really really wish people would get over the naive assumption that declaring something "art" is to give it an award which immediately elevates it above all other things. There's a lot of art that's just trash, you know! The idea of "art" honestly has less to do with a work's innate qualities and more to do cultural standards of the day. A filmmaker may make a trashy, exploitative trainwreck of a film under the banner of "art" and it may be accepted as such -- even if it's, you know, a terrible film. The underlying anxiety here is more whether or not our medium in question "games" will be taken seriously. And I honestly believe the greater underlying problem there is that games are interactive so they take a great deal more effort to learn and understand them. We actually DO have a growing and pretty healthy roster of "arty" games released in the last decade, and the movement to produce games like that continues to grow. We really just lack any real critical writing about them that actually understands the medium.
b) Read this post here and adjust your posting habits accordingly!!
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 10:04 pm |
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| kthorjensen wrote: |
| Hint: you are the idiot. |
;_;
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 11:21 pm |
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Did you miss this bit right here?
| Mister Toups wrote: |
| b) Read this post here and adjust your posting habits accordingly!! |
Also, most web browsers have a function where when you mouse over a link you can see the URL it points to.
^__^
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 8:28 am |
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Brendan you should get on gmail chat sometime so I can ask you about ESL programs in japan okay.
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 8:45 am |
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Joe, YES :D
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 7:03 pm |
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| Hot Stott Bot wrote: |
| Ben Reed wrote: |
I'd buy that video games are art in the "creative expression" sense but I don't know that I would call them art in the CONVENTIONAL sense, simply by virtue of the experience they impart onto the player is determined by ACTIVE PARTICIPATION -- by actively changing the state of the game in a way that will inevitably unique from someone else's experience -- but at the same time, their aesthetic experience, unlike a physical art form such as dancing or music, is not completely generated by the participant. Even if you're playing a cover song, you're doing it through the agent that is your own instrument, held in your own hands and controlled by you -- even if you pick up Brian May's own Red Special, the music coming from that guitar is ALL YOU unless you are Brian May himself.
Case in point: when two guys look at one of Michaelangelo's frescoes, they don't LITERALLY see completely different naked Greco-Roman people doing the pull-my-finger gag -- it's always God and Adam, and by definition you go from there. When two guys go to see Lord of the Rings at the same theater, one of them doesn't see a musical finale to the crumbling of Sauron's tower, excellently choreographed and with very impressive footwork on the part of Ian Holm as Bilbo. |
Oh?
If I view a movie in the theare, with someone talking loud, sitting on the right side of the second row, I most certainly do get a different sensory experience than someone watching it on DVD, pausing frequently for their friend who has been drinking too much and keeps needing to go to the bathroom.
How is this difference in sensory experience somehow not the same as the different experiences of two people playing the same videogame?
Of course, the degree to which the experiences vary from person to person when watching a movie is controlled by the creator, but isn't the same true of videogames?
This argument doesn't really hold up. |
The difference is that these variations in how you might see a film or a play or whatever else are incidental, where the variations in a game experience are by design.
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 11:21 pm |
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| Hot Stott Bot wrote: |
| Mister Toups wrote: |
| The difference is that these variations in how you might see a film or a play or whatever else are incidental, where the variations in a game experience are by design. |
Most television (and many movies) these days are designed so that they can be paused, rewound, started half-way through, etc., etc. and still be satisfying experiences due to the advent of PVRs and DVDs!
That's not incidental!
What if I were a movie director and designed my movie carefully with the awareness that some people are watching on the left side and some on the right side? Or with the awareness that I am targetting different possible audiences (as most movies are, in fact!)?
Do those movies suddenly lack the potential to be art?
Trying to argue that something is not art because the intentions of the creators vary unilaterally across the medium is probably no good! |
I'm not the one arguing that this doesn't make them art. But it's a significant different between the mediums that shouldn't be dismissed!
To put it another way -- variance between experiences is at the very heart of game design, regardless of genre. This isn't really true of films, which, aside from incidental things (which the filmmaker may or may not accommodate while filming), are generally the same experience for everyone who views them.
There are exceptions, yes, but it doesn't change the rule.
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