/lit/ - Literature

>>20032785
Why do you keep making this thread faggot? Go jerk off to chinese cartoons

>>20032789
?? This is the first time I've made this thread and I hate anime

I'm glad i still have no idea who the fuck is george r martins and why is he famous

>>20032798
He wrote War and Peace

>>20032796
I can search the archive for hundreds of posts like this and they never contribute anything. Even if it's the first time you did it, you copied this retarded thread prompt.
>I hate anime
Sure you do, faggot

>>20032846
sounds like a you problem

>>20032785
Elden Ring is utter shit.

>sounds like a you problem

>>20032785
I would like to see people make games as good as they can, any medium, whether it be film or anime.

But it wont ever reach the level of literature.

>>20032785
Absolutely not. In terms of fiction writing quality:
Literature > Poetry > TV shows > Movies > Graphic novels > Manga/Comics > Anime/Cartoons > Video games > everything else

Video games fail to tell proper stories because they can't properly factor in the player not adhering strictly to the rules they set through the telling of their story. You either have a strictly linear game without any deviation and you have no room to tell a good story, or you have a linear story told in an open game that feels weird if the player doesn't play to a certain style. Game devs have tried to solve the latter by making games in which actions have story consequences, but they still jam those games full of expository follow missions. GTA imo is the only game that manages to tell a coherent story factoring in properly any deviant actions of the player, but I would be wrong to say it's stories could be considered anything but a fun journey.

OP is gay, elden ring is gay, fuck jannies.

dubs and video games will never be real art

>>20032798
He wrote a game of thrones

>>20032785
This fucker is really finding any excuse he can to not finish his books.

>>20032785
There are several problems with video games as literature. For one, there's next to no money in it, so nobody tries it in the first place. There's also the problem of movie games being the most popular way to make a popular game, even though they're cutscenes with meaningless gameplay in between at best, or a completely meaningless game that could have been a tv show at worst. There's also the fact that the ability to write a good story is near non-existent, and to have it be 'literary' i.e attempting to write something with meaning and purpose behind it is even more scarce. And then there's the problem of the medium itself, where it is not a creator conveying a message through their chosen medium, as in books, theatre, film, etc. but rather a creator making an experience for you, the player, where your input is the most important thing about the medium. Video games are completely unlike anything that has come before, and it is extremely difficult to craft one that would arguably reach the standards of art, or even literature.

>>20032785
>Yes, video game writing is the future! Who wants to read what dead racist white men wrote anyway? Did they even have trans people back then? Um I don’t think so sweaty

>>20032785
Genuinely? I don't think so.
I do remember playing one game (pic related) that got kind of close for me, but it's a bit difficult to explain why it worked, so I'm going to try.
The story is about a kid called Louis (the cat in the pic) who is crying by a lake, you, the ghost giant, guide him through life and everyday menial things. After playing a part of the way through, you realise home life is a little difficult and you start getting concerned. Once you get invited inside his house, you see his mother who is in bed and suffering from severe depression.
I don't want to spoil anything, but in order for a game to reach the heights of traditional literature, it has to tie you into its characters and make you a direct part of the story, or, get over itself with branching paths, consider gameplay to be a way of telling a story (rather than a vehicle towards different set-pieces where people either talk, or do another action bit).
Ghost Giant was schmaltzy, but I did enjoy it. It's not for everyone though and the story was worked on by Sara Bergmark Elfgren, whose books I have not read.

>>20033484
Actually trans people existed all throughout history sweetie :)

>>20032807
He wrote Elden Ring

>>20032785
Video game have already surpassed literature. I would honestly rather play a mediocre game than read a good book, that’s how much better video games are.
It’s good other people are seeing how amazing games are, look at Robert Kurvitz for example, a novelist who basically ditched the medium entirely to make Disco Elysium, expressing his dissatisfaction with literature in some interviews.
Or Nikolai Dybowsky, a man well versed in theatre, poetry, and philosophy, started writing a script for a play but then decided to turn it into a video game once he realised how amazing the medium is for storytelling.
Literature is cool, but it’s old and stuffy at this point. Games are an incredible new art form, and the fact they’re not being respected as such is a shame, and is also holding games back, not allowing truly artistic games to be made, or even if they do get made then they aren’t shown respect or get any recognition. This shows how dogma can strangle art and artists alike. Video games are the apex of art and entertainment, it’s actually delusional and dogmatic to think otherwise.

If you remain unconvinced of how incredible video games are, I’ll recommend to you what I consider to be the greatest artistic achievement in video games. The Void. Released in 2008 by studio Ice Pick Lodge. If you can’t appreciate what makes that game a masterpiece, then you don’t understand video games as an art form.

when is Pynchon going to write a video game?

>>20033835
And trans women have never been women all throughout history sweaty

>>20033879
Sup fellow CULT member.

>>20032785
Unlikely. At least not triple AAA games. Too many commerical pressures make devs to reticent to tackle anything too controversial.

>>20032785
Video games are an interactive medium, games are at their best when they are the most fun to interactive with. Literature is not interactive, reading mental and passive activity. They are simply not the same. Video Games aren't art because of their graphics or story, the most artful video games are those that are the most fun to play. Tetris is a better work of art than Elden Ring ever will be.

>>20033956
MGS6

>>20032785
No.
No.
No.

>>20033307
deus ex isnt bad

Elden Ring is definitely art. Anyone who says different is a coping tradfag who dishes out their aesthetic judgements completely arbitrarily.

>>20033307
strictly linear games can tell a good story though. The first Last of Us is a good example, it may make the gameplay itself boring but it makes the story better.

>>20034142
Do you even know what you're talking about? Elden ring is a pure gameplay game, it's certainly more fun to play than tetris

>>20033307
Emergent stories exist.

Cutscenes in video games are no different from movies, while dialogue menus are no different from books. Stories in video games are essentially told through pictures, books and movies, not the gameplay itself, so they will always be limited. Suppose you were reading a novel that asked you to solve a crossword puzzle after each chapter, wouldn't you agree that is unnecessary and would only get in the way of the storytelling? And yet people still argue that video games could rival literature and cinema someday.

There is the argument that video games are just suitable for a different kind of storytelling than passive media, the kind of emergent storytelling that occurs in MMORPGs and games like Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft. With tools like an ingame economy and warring factions, the players themselves would create compelling stories. If that is the case, can't the same be said of pretty much anything? Are banks incredible art forms of emergent storytelling because they allow exciting bank robbery stories to take form? Are airports emotional art forms of emergent storytelling because they provide the means for drug apprehension stories?

Video games are closer to games like chess and jigsaw puzzles than to literature and cinema, and this isn't inherently bad. They are often entertaining, and there are many worse ways to spend an afternoon, but you shouldn't expect great storytelling from them.g0vsg

>>20034420
I don't personally think a story can be good if you're bored while experiencing it. I think I was unfair by saying linear games can't tell a good story though, but it is harder.

>>20034629
Relying on the player to tell the story doesn't make a video game art, but it does make it more enjoyable. I played the shit out of classic wow, and I commend blizzard for putting together a great game, but to call it art because people made their own stories out of it is an absurd proposition.

>>20032785
>Pathologic
>Deus Ex
>Silent Hill
>Metal Gear Solid
>Dark Souls
yeah

>>20033879
you type like an undergrad faggot attempting to perpetuate a rhetoric in a thesis.

>>20035835
>quirky indie game
>muh transhumanism muh globalism
>horrorshit
>tom clancy for weeaboos
>generic dark fantasy
>art

>>20032785
any dark souls world makes sense. When i play these games, i like to think as if it's just the telling of a legend being simulated. People just have random sizes and they're all supposed to be members of the same sociery? 99% of all game areas don't look like a place people can actually live in, but people do live there somehow. Who the fuck is an undead and who is alive in the dark souls games, seriously? And what is the difference between being dead and alive?

>>20035879
any dark souls world makes no* sense

>>20032785
No because they made too much money before they got into their pretentious art phase, now the art phase will be devoid of meaning like anything mainstream

>>20033247
>TV shows above movies

Yeah righto retard

>>20032785
It already has with xenogears

>>20033478
>there's next to no money in it
stopped reading here. I know this is an old post but fucking Christ you've written an entire paragraph on something you have no clue about.

>>20034795
>Stories in video games are essentially told through pictures, books and movies, not the gameplay itself
But thats not true is it? Good games are good because everyone's experience is unique to themselves. You could say the mere participation in a game is a story. The difference between a table top game and a contemporary title would be the distribution of it as a singular defined thing (a video game I torrented and played through)

>>20033247
>Literature > Poetry
You know poetry is a subgenre of lit right?

>>20035850
kek but true

Video game writing will never reach height of lit. Video game gameplay is where it's at, atmosphere is a close second and the writing is a vehicle for the atmosphere and gameplay.

>>20033879
>It’s good other people are seeing how amazing games are, look at Robert Kurvitz for example, a novelist who basically ditched the medium entirely to make Disco Elysium, expressing his dissatisfaction with literature in some interviews.
Even mediocre literary fiction trumps the best of Disco Elysium's writing

>>20036979
Please, post an example of a 'literary' video game that made lots of money.

>>20032785
I don't know why people think the two should be compared because they both use words. In literature the primary medium is the written word but it is only supplementary in video games. The way that literature achieves its heights with the written word is far from how video games would achieve artistic maturity.

>>20033307
>muh plot

>>20037200
>Bioshock

>>20034316
All video games are art, just not necessarily good art.

>>20034795
What the hell is "telling a story" anyway. Plot points? Haha

>>20035787
That's because the aesthetic mechanism in literature and video games aren't "telling stories". I'm not writing literature if I'm recounting how drunk I got in the weekend over messenger

>>20037156
Coding is primary

i predict games will get better with the generation raised on them

>>20035850
You can trivialise every piece of art that way, you pedantic faggot

>>20033879
Disco Elysium is the closest a video game has ever got to literature, but obviously the novel trumps it. That game was better written than most middling/average novels and even some pretty good ones, but not an excellent novel. And the fact that the game was 90% text (unlike the vast majority of games) should tell you that video games aren't the best medium for literary aspirations.
>>20032785
>Will video game writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?
No
>Is it the art form of the future?
Sorta, but only because more people are trying to write good stories through the medium and there's still a lot more innovations to be made.
>Should more writers be investing more in video games?
Probably but only because the medium can do neat things wrt self reference and reader agency that traditional literature struggles with. Any serious, talented author should stick with the novel. A writer who wants to experiment with form should move in that direction instead.

>>20035879
>>20035883
it is all explained in the lore, you have to dig deeper. There has never been a more solidly constructed game lore-wise than the first dark souls game. It has no plot-holes, not a single one.

>>20032785
>Will video game writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?
There's no universal law saying it can't happen, but it probably won't. No one can know for sure, but there's no reason to think so. Shit thread

>>20037966
It already did

I was positively surprised by the storytelling in From Soft games and the way it uses game mechanics to tell a story instead of doing movie-like expositions. The important parts are sometimes revealed through an item you find somewhere, a moveset or a weapon of the enemy, or some visual clue in a design of a location. It makes you feel like you're a part of something, instead of just watching things unfold. It's can be pulled of only in an interactive medium, and this is what I expect from vidya in terms of artistry, not showing me Joyce-level writing in boxes on the screen.

All the boss and big lore names in the game start with G, R or M and I honestly think this is the entire extent of his involvement in the lore. The game doesn't have any indication that it wasn't entirely conceived by Miyazaki.

>>20032785
No
/thread

>Will video game writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?
no
>Is it the art form of the future?
yes

vidya is an art form, but not for the entry-level baby environmental storytelling reasons. From's games are good because of pretty much everything else

No

>>20034316
eugh gtfo freak

>>20033247
This is the most retarded thing I’ve read all day

>>20034316
>Anyone who says different is a coping tradfag
Elden Ring is a very traditional game in terms of game design.

EYE Divine Cybermancy mogs all other games' writing.

>>20033247
>literature > poetry
lmfao

VtMB is 10/10 in the character writing department and atmosphere and how they complement each other. No game has done them the same since.

>>20032785
>Will video game writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?
No.
>Is it the art form of the future?
It's not even art.
>Should more writers be investing more in video games?
Money? Sure, games make money because they're very popular digital toys.

>>20038346
>japanese anything
>art

>>20032785
Well I'd argue that Dark Souls (the first at least) has a mythopoetic quality which makes it admirable as a work of art. Silent Hill 2 is great as well. Beyond those games though I don't know really, probably very few if any reach the level of literature. Video game writing peaked in the late 90s-early 2000s anyways.

>>20032785
>Will video game writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?
no
>Is it the art form of the future?
do videogames qualify as art?
>Should more writers be investing more in video games?
you got it backwards, videogames should invest more into their writing.

Video games are an interactive medium, imitating literature or movies is just pseud shit.

>>20032785
Interactive art is different to literature. I’d argue it can imitate movies, like how cutscenes or even some dramatic parts of a game (like in Uncharted) can be cinematic with angles, mise en scene, and music/sfx. But it’s way too hard to institute the feeling you get from slowly realising a plot point or character arc in a book because nearly everything in a game is not entirely subtle. My favourite games are CRPGs and grand strategy because they are so different from their progenitors, board games and TTRPGs. You can’t really even emulate those in a video game as much. There’s a different feel to actually rolling dice and coming up with plans on the spot. Just take it as a high point of interactive art that they are a different experience to anything you can do in real life.

>>20037966
rain world is the only genuine work of art level videogame i'm played.

>>20039819
Whole heatedly agree with this man. Really not many other games can stand side by side with those two. Fumito Uedo with Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Arguably some of the old crpgs like BG2 and Planescape.
Rez for sure.

I think Cave Story is an admirable auteur work being made by one man over years and distributed for free.

A lot of old snes and genesis stuff is kind of up there. Mario and Sonic, Ecco and some of the weird rpgs like Illusion of Gaia. These feel like the early DW Griffith silents of video gaming. Early masterpieces that in some ways did everything the medium ever would but yet aren't really there yet.
In general I feel like video games have gone through the same general evolution as films. Right now we're in the 50s/60s era of big stupid dominance and thus primarily absolute shit that doesn't reflect on life at all. With a few stand outs.

The 90s/00s was like the 30s-40s, studios were still small and experimental. There was a lot of trash but a lot of real artistic experiments too.

>>20032785
Absolutely not, no. Video games are almost exclusively skinner box fantasies for teenage boys. Even stuff that's more "serious" is still puerile as hell

>>20039819
>>20040148
>>20039620

Telltale's The Walking Dead > Elden Ring

>>20033247
>Literature > Poetry

Darklands
Planescape: Torment
Arcanum (with content restoration)
KOTOR1 and KOTOR2 (especially the latter with content restoration)
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (with unofficial patch)
Mask of the Betrayer (with or without playing NWN2 first, which is mediocre; NWN is worse although its expansions are sort of alright)
Deus Ex
King of Dragon Pass
Star Control 2 (Ur Quan Masters edition is free online)
Freespace / Frespace 2 (can be modded to look better than modern games)
Thief / Thief 2
Homeworld / Homeworld: Cataclysm (and maybe HW2)
Dwarf Fortress
XCOM
Daggerfall (mechanically much more ambitious than any other TES game)
Morrowind (modded)
System Shock 1 and 2
Ultima games (various)
Might and Magic games (various)
Gothic series
Jagged Alliance 2 (1.13 patch, and google "Drassen counterattack")
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (only play expansion after playing base game)
Masters of Orion 2
Sword of the Stars
Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas (heavily modded and with the understanding that Gamebryo isn't a real game engine so you have to focus on roleplay/writing and tolerate the mechanics)

>>20032785
Never, nope and no.

>>20032785
games need gameplay and the need for gameplay instantly invalidates good writing. the writing in a game will always be subordinate to the gameplay. therefore it will never be as good as a medium whose highest priority is the medium itself. on the other hand if a videogame decides to go all in on writing, it will necessarily have to sacrifice gameplay and it will become some kind of interactive movie or some other form of shitty videogame. The best videogames are fun to play before everything else.

>>20033307
this is a copout answer. nothing about videogames inherently is bad for storytelling, its just all but 2 of the writers are retarded. occasionally games have genuinely poetic game mechanics but theres very few that pull it off.

video games haven't even been invented yet. what we have now is more akin to a zoetrope, a primitive iteration that explores the form but isn't quite sure how to turn it into art.

>>20040691
this is complete bullshit, a good story will be a good story regardless of medium or how much gameplay there is

>if a videogame decides to go all in on writing, it will necessarily have to sacrifice gameplay
This isn't inherently a bad thing, gameplay isn't everything in a video game, otherwise they would still be about squares and rectangles interacting.
>The best videogames are fun to play before everything else.
Objectively wrong, some people prefers story-heavy games with little gameplay.

>no one mentioning the legacy of kain
What are you even doing.

>>20034142
Finally someone gets it

>>20037954
What is the difference between being undead and being alive in the Dark Souls universe?

>>20032798
He wrote Bloody Meridian

>>20034282
Pynchon reminds me more of Suda 51 than Kojima desu.

>>20032796
>I hate anime

>>20032796
>I hate anime
time for you to leave this site, go watch animé until you like it, then you are welcome back

>>20032789
what if I came here after jerking off to chinese cartoons?

>>20041136
>The best videogames are fun to play before everything else.
>Objectively wrong, some people prefers story-heavy games with little gameplay
your logic and reasoning are flawed and you're not addressing what could make best games == most fun argument against which could be that games don't have to be fun to be good, which would require that we ascertain what fun is, which would be subjective, which would entail that declaring objectivity would be wrong.

>>20043062
it is objective that a fair number of people's favorite games aren't heavy on gameplay or that they love those games because of their story.
>you're not addressing what could make best games
What make best games is what people prefers.

>>20032785
>Will video game writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?

There are numerous videogames already on par with classic literature and just as deserving of respect.

>>20032785
ZORK is a literary masterpiece on par with Chaucer, Dante, and Bill, and as monstrous as Gargantua and Pantagruel.

>>20033247
Literature (includes poetry) > Anime/cartoons > movies > Manga/Comics (includes graphic novels) > Tv shows > vidya

>>20037118
I don't know about that. When playing A Link to the past everyone has to get the sword and go into the forest and complete all the dungeons in the same order.

>>20032785
Elden ring is the shitty fourth remake of dark souls

>>20036979
Not that anon but the only video games I remember that got any close to being art were the ones in the "Ico trilogy", though I haven't played The Last Guardian yet.
I think what worked so well about the first two at least was how hands off the game was and yet how well if fit with both the narrative and what the player did.
In Shadow of the Colossus, if you fucked around and wasted time there wasn't much of a consequence, which is consistent with a variety of narrative elements that are running in simultaneous. When you spend literal hours genociding the valley's lizard population, it might be that you are trying to get you mind off what you're about to do to save your girl or you got hungry or you are trying to get stronger for the next colossus. You are only goaded to go kill the colossi if you fuck around inside the temple but that's because the demon guy's influence is at its strongest there. When you sacrifice your horse to get to the last colossus, whether you are thinking "fuck it" or you are driven to complete the game, it's consistent with what Wander wants in the story.
In Ico, fucking around is also very consistent with the story because your character is a child and he wants to play with the ghost girl he saved/is currently saving, or maybe he's just indecisive or is confused about what to do next. You're guided a couple of times, and by higher forces that want you to succeed in your journey for their own purposes.

I agree with that anon in that there's not much money in making this sort of game. A lot of people are stuck in the type of literary/for tv/for comics character design, even the players, that demands you to create every character to the same standard where everyone needs to be this unique fleshed out three dimensional person; but that's not good for making video games because the one character you'll put into the driving seat can't be one specific kind of person unless you force the player to conform to it somehow.
Some games patch this by putting every incentive possible to have the player willingly conform to what it wants of them, like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta where being as excessive in your playstyle as the protagonists are in the cutscenes make you better at clearing the game, but some just don't give a shit because a lot of people are asking for a story since they still think good writing is what elevate video games.

I mean, does Team Ico even exist today?
Meanwhile, the Uncharted series, which are barely games, got another installment this year for some reason.

>>20037230
>Bioshock

How the FUCK do I beat Malenia?

>>20040677
Add pathologic and this is a goat list, would recommend to all litizens.

i really have no idea what grrm added to elden ring, it seems the exact same shit as any other souls game?

Elden Rings lore is pretty fucking cool from what I've glimpsed from the threads so far.
That said its leaning into the lovecraftian space gods secretly controlling humanity from the shadows pretty strongly.

>>20043029
being undead is a curse, meaning you cannot physically die, instead you become hollow. It's all a metaphor for the player giving up on the game, due to its difficulty. It also explains how you respawn when you die.

>>20041136
>gameplay isn't everything in a game
Then why is it called a game you fucking spastic
>some people prefer games with very little gameplay
What a surprise, some people are retards

>>20041136
>some people prefers story-heavy games with little gameplay.

They should stick to movies.

>>20032789
fpbp

>>20045827
>Then why is it called a game you fucking spastic
why does those games have graphic beyond simple geometric shapes? Why do they have music? Why do they even have story to begin with.
You are being dishonest and you know it.

>>20045843
>They should stick to movies.
Movies and video games do not tell their story in the same fashion so why should they?

>>20039566
The funniest part about the souls games success is that people obsess over the difficulty, and environmental storytelling when all the devs did was make an evolution of way older games like wizardry with a new coat of paint. Games have only recently become a snooze fest with the complexity of a strippers pole.

>>20043029
Undeath in dark souls (aka being hollow) is something caused by the fragments of the dark soul that resides in all humans reacting to gwyn’s unnatural extension of the current age. It just means that your soul refuses to die while your body does causing your soul to be weakened as a new body is remade by a substance called estus. You lose memories each time you die, causing your new body to wither, and you mind to degrade.

>>20032785
Video games are a pastime, like chess or backgammon. Those aren’t art, and they certainly aren’t literature.

>>20032785
Hopefully it is not.
I give (0) shits about writing in video games because it's an interactive medium. What matters is the gameplay and imposed story usually gets in the way of that. You can create your own little events and stories in video games, I don't need someone to do it for me.

That fuck Roger Ebert didn't even think that video games could reach the art level of movies, so how could video games writing ever reach the heights of traditional literature?

>>20047504
>art level
art is just conveying meaning through a medium, video games are art.

>>20035891
Wrong. The streamed 'tv show' is more relevant today than
>indieshit film about a bunch of disaffected zoomer cunts
or
>100th new popcorn flick
Fuck movies bro

>>20032807
Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is more akin to it