/lit/ - Literature

one day
but not this day

>>5429043
They probably started gaming after 2007, don't listen to their opininon.

I wonder what life would be like if men stopped playing video games after 18.

>>5429043
What videogames do they consider to be the best works of art?

>>5429043
dev here

Video games by their nature can be the most powerful method by which to communicate a point via the use of procedural rhetoric, this is something wholly exclusive to games with the best example of this is generally considered to be silent hill 2.

The problem is while they can be this they rarely are, for a few reasons, the industry is still young with a lot of young people in it and the creative vision is often diffused through 20-30 people which muddy the message and subdue the level of authorship.

tl;dr
They can be on par but very rarely are.

>>5429078
>They can be on par but very rarely are.
Please name a game that even approaches war & peace

>>5429078
>to communicate a point via the use of procedural rhetoric

yeah, that's not art you fucking dork.

>>5429087
I think he meant the best video games may be on par with some of the worst books.

>>5429078
You sound like Ian Bogost.

>>5429090
Putting a player in the role of your character and communicating a point via the mechanics rather then outright stating is not art?

Red dead redemption did a pretty damn good job showing the death of a species of man.

>>5429098
Indeed.

>>5429078
>Video games by their nature can be the most powerful method by which to communicate a point via the use of procedural rhetoric
So they're great for propaganda and indoctrination. That doesn't make them mature or good for your head, if anything they train you for instant gratification and they create the illusion of actually achievement when actually you did nothing.
Books are similar in that second regard, but there actually exists a market and public for works that explore human capacities for interpretation and communication. Videogames, because of their production requirements and costs, rarely can give themselves the chance to be demanding.

>>5429062
Of course it could be.
You can do mature stuff in the medium, but if almost every game has the same target that YA books or Dan Brown tier books...
Videogames can mature, but overall they're not very mature nowadays.

>>5429064
Some people started in the 90's as kids. Just like me.

>>5429078
Silent Hill 2 was a good example of how games could mature and exploit new hardware in order to tell a story properly with the own 'tools' of the medium, but it's still far away from best literature.

>>5429043

It's very simple:

People never want to feel stupid. Even if they're doing things that are lacking in intellectual merit.

So they'll tell themselves whatever bastardized reasoning and denial they can to avoid ever coming to terms with that fact.

Whenever this comes up try to be tactful and diplomatic enough to sidestep it entirely, because you're never going to win. Their very sense of self is invested in it - you won't ever be able to outpace that level of denial.

Also, in general terms, narration is rarely art. If your point is using tools to create feelings and ideas then you are an artisan, like someone who makes plates isn't the same as a music composer.

>>5429124
This is probably the most mature post in page 1 right now.

>>5429073
A lot less beta, that's for sure.

>>5429043
>mfw my friends laugh at me for "spending too much time reading"
>all they do is play video games, talk video games and read (magazines/internet) about video games

>>5429106
>So they're great for propaganda and indoctrination.
The same methods are used in any case where an author wishes to convince the reader of something, dunno how it being used in video games makes it indoctrination.
>if anything they train you for instant gratification and they create the illusion of actually achievement when actually you did nothing.
This was a topic about if video games where art or could be art not if they where of net benefit or not, this has no bearing on the question at hand and yes there is toxic shit like WOW out there which drip feeds rewards and has no value to the player.
>Videogames, because of their production requirements and costs, rarely can give themselves the chance to be demanding.
Can you expand on what you mean by this?

>>5429127
So what does a truly artistic writer do with their works?

>>5429124
I know people use to rationalize their tastes and choices, and most of them are lazy bastards who don't want to put any mental effort when they read, watch a movie or anything.
I haven't been always into books and literature -I read very little in High School-; but I never felt that the videogames I was playing were 'art' or that I was getting 'cultured' by playing them.
Why has people to be so illiterate and then defend that they are not really illiterate because 'well, everything it's a matter of taste' when they disagree with you? You can like what you want but that doesn't give you the right to talk shit.

>"Moby Dick is the worst book ever, you just pretend to like such a boring crap"
>"Hey, don't talk shit about The Fault in Our Stars, I can think is the best book ever cuz it's a matter of taste"
>"Hideo Kojima is truly one of the best japanese 'directors' and writers"

>>5429043
Face it OP, you can't measure art. They waste time playing their games while you waste your time reading books.

>>5429157
>in any case where an author wishes to convince the reader of something

That's generally considered "moralist" writing, which most people dislike.

>>5429201
>inb4 Bertrand Russel quote

>>5429043

Why would you want to establish a hierarchy between the arts?

In my opinion, they do not fall into terms of betterness, worseness, between them and are only equal in their difference.

True, that some sensitivities are better suited for one kind of art or the other.

>>5429062

The kind of games you seem to describe are more like, pic related.

Also, the literary kind could disregard some games due to their lack of narrative, or description. Often, they don't conceive that modeling the worlds in which the games take place, are something very similar to building them with words. With all due distance.

>>5429191

Most people don't want to think of themselves as ever being capable of having bad taste.

Why would they?

If someone who was a scholar, polyglot and fine collection walked into my room and saw my collection of books and then laughed I'd have to just grin and bear it.

Because for me personally I am at a place intellectually now when I can divorce reason from ego enough to concede that there are levels of erudition beyond mine. Now this doesn't negate subjectivity per se - nor the truth of the resonance I've felt when apprehending a work - but it does mean that I can come to terms with the truth that there will always be people out there better versed in artistic topics than I.

These people are immature, they lack this level of perspicacity. Theirs will always be the knee-jerk and emotional reaction of a child.

You need to let it go. Be thankful that you've moved passed that stage and let it go.

Meh, just enjoy both.

Altough very little games interest me anymore.

Demons souls
Dark souls

Probably one of the only games worthwile this generation

vidya gaems are sort of a weird category of art for me, I'm not even sure if they are art at all. They incorporate visual art, drama/storytelling, and music, yet they remain games. Are chess or go or bridge art? Most people would say no. So are vidya games with aspects of the arts attached?

For me they're somewhere in between art and games. IDK I'm too dumb to figure this shit out.

>>5429222

So, in your opinion, there is an absolute, universal, and objective value for what falls into "Good and bad taste"? If so... How can you be sure that your conception of what is bad and good taste is indeed, absolute, universal, and objective?

>>5429245
I personally never really digged in that shit

art is for me what i consider myself art

Some videogames are art but not all are, and that mostly goes for everything, its just taste you know.

OP is just some autistic faggot imo, why would you care about the opinion of plebs

>>5429201

>They waste time

What gives you the impression or certainty that people waste their time doing one thing or the other? How could anything that sharpens your spirit, and your perception of reality be a waste of time?

>>5429221
I didn't mention any hierarchy.
I just said that people consider videogames as good as literature and in my opinion the comparison is not fair because vidya are still very inmature.
This is not a 'ranking' or a 'Top 10 list of what arts are cooler'.

>>5429238
Indeed. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were some of the best games I've played in recent years. I love them. And they don't have a pretentious YA tier story to appeal the players; it's just the way you play, how you explore places by yourself, nice challenges but not unfair, the atmosphere and lore were great...

>>5429255
waste time/past time, whatever. It doesn't matter what you are doing because you are passing time either way. Why is having a sharpening your spirits more important than not?

>>5429249

I deleted the post because I really didn't want to be dragged into a thread about video games of all things (no offense, though).

But that wasn't my point that at all so I feel the need for clarification.

My point was that outside of resonance and subjectivity (which are always right and valid) the average person cannot remove themselves from ego games enough to intellectually concede that erudition is an influential and important factor. Theirs are the petulant stance of children where this issue is concerned.

>>5429256

The taxonomy of the arts, is recurrent in aesthetic theory since a long time ago... I was digging or trying to focus Op's attention that way, because I know he expressed this same point of view in a thread yesterday.

Moreover, I wonder if op won't also be the dude of Conan, and Pink Feminist.

The hierarchy part, is because

>Considering videogames to be on par with literature as an art form

Establishing equality, by the concept under "on par", falls also under what I understand by something "hierarchical".

In this case, an horizontal order, hence why "arts are only equal in their difference".

>>5429073
>Being ashamed of enjoying something due to preconceived notions from people you don't know nor care about
>Forcing yourself to hate something you like just because of age
>Calling THEM beta

>>5429281

>>Being ashamed of
>>Forcing yourself to

Do you always project this hard?
All that anon did was pose a question.

>>5429249
Not the same anon you replied to, but whatever.

Appreciation of the arts are not universal and absolute. Of course. It even depends on the moment one single person contemplates, appreciates or approaches a piece of art; it can also depend on the mood of this person, or on the things he is used to in a concrete period of his/her life...

That's one thing. We cannot debate it.
But a very different thing is that a lot of uncultured and illiterate people really think their opinions and taste are "just as valid as everyone's else" when they don't even have the culture to appreciate anything. You can like or dislike Proust, for instance. But if you have only read Harry Potter and The Alchemist, how can you expect to be considered a person with good taste?

In fact, if I remember correctly, Proust himself talks about this very issue in one of the ISoLT books.

>>5429269
Because teleology, because being able to grasp and understand more and more things of reality, and also, why not, because knowledge procures some sort of pleasure.

>>5429157
>The same methods are used in any case where an author wishes to convince the reader of something, dunno how it being used in video games makes it indoctrination.
Games are particularly good in making you part of a pre designed narrative. But being teaching tools is a big thing to make it not art.

>demanding narratives
Games need to apeal to masses to sell a shit ton of units. Art doesn't work like that, you can't make a shit ton of Goya paintings, each is unique and imposible to do again on the same conditions. Putting a ton of work on a work like that charges it with meaning, both intended and accidental, and speaks about that work and many aspects of the person who did it. Meanwhile vidja is made by a big number of people with the mindset of apealing to an unprepared audience, as such they are simplified and devoid of personal imput since the diferent stages of development make sure that the craft only shows in the amount that the collective allows. Collective works very rarely can be considered art, monetary based products can never be art.

>>5429168
Poetry usually. Or there are works of narrative art, but only when the point isn't the emotional manipulation through learned maneuvers.

>>5429281
It has nothing to do with shame, but rather use of time. Why would you spend any of your adult life playing little simulated adventures or sports?

Says the guy on 4chan.

>>5429249
>>5429294
What I meant is that a person who reads little and books for children can't be taken seriously when they say shit like that Proust or Melville or Borges -it doesn't really matter- are "boring".
In this case it wouldn't be just a matter of taste.
I don't know if I explained myself properly; English is not my mother tongue and these topics are not very easy to talk about.

>considering literature to be on par with painting as an art form

>>5429221
LSD dream simulator could posibly be the only true artistic videogame.

>>5429310

>emotional manipulation through learned maneuvers

how does this not describe music?

>>5429294
>In fact, if I remember correctly, Proust himself talks about this very issue in one of the ISoLT books.

I remember that too, there's a passage about people who have read one or two authors and consider themselves 'well versed in French literature'

>>5429294

>But a very different thing is that a lot of uncultured and illiterate people really think their opinions and taste are "just as valid as everyone's else" when they don't even have the culture to appreciate anything.

Trust me in a few years you'll be over all of this and you won't let any of that get to you. I know it seems annoying right now but soon it'll all be just too draining to fret about.

Let them have their say and quietly pass them over. Save your energy for the interesting people you cross paths with.

>>5429315
sports are pretty awesome

>>5429043
>Implying literature is special
>Implying it isn't on the same level as every other creative medium

>>5429315
Because you can't have real adventures or sports

>>5429294
>>5429329
And Pound put it extremely succinctly in ABC of Reading:

>A man who has climbed the Matterhorn may prefer Derbyshire to Switzerland, but he won't think the Peak is the highest mountain in Europe.

>>5429318

>I don't know if I explained myself properly; English is not my mother tongue and these topics are not very easy to talk about.

You've explained yourself just fine, don't worry.

>>5429294

I can understand what you say, and to some extent I agree.

But we can also consider that in virtue of difference, the relative values with which you hold in good esteem a book, or any work of art in general, do no apply between the two typologies of persons you describe.

Therefore, you couldn't really blame em on "having bad taste", you could, however, on "not having read enough, or known enough".

Also, I can't see how the reading of HP, or the Alchemist, can't be as profitable, in it's scope, as reading á la recherche du temps perdu, if we take in consideration "the moment one single person contemplates, appreciates or approaches a piece of art".

>>5429327
Some music is only craft, some music is art.
Some paintings are art but you also have to paint your wall.

maturity =/= art, sorry

>>5429353
This has never been in discussion except for the two guys considering a time when people though games were inferior to real experiences.

It's the same when people said that movies couldn't be art.

And they proved you wrong.

>>5429307
>Games need to apeal to masses to sell a shit ton of units.
Completely wrong, games scale from 48hr game jam projects all the way up to half a billion dollar multiplats, saying this is the same thing as saying only movies as big James Bond exist and nothing smaller.

>>5429318

>a person who reads little and books for children can't be taken seriously

Yes you have explained yourself properly, but unfortunately, I wouldn't know what to say, as I don't take myself seriously neither.

I guesh I is a manchildren, who is able to enjoy, Harry Potter, and the Alchemist, and Proust, and Borges, and Vidya in general.

:)

>>5429351

If you're arguing narration is emotional manipulation through learned maneuvers, then I'd have to argue music is the same thing. Music which doesn't employ 'learned maneuvers' in order to emotionally manipulate the audience exists, but falls far into the realm of extreme or avant garde.

If narration isn't art by your reasoning, then neither is music. In fact I'm not sure what would be

>>5429315
>You should only do this or that

I'll spend my time here doing whatever I want. I do not deem activities I enjoy a waste of time.

>>5429356
maybe it should be in discussion because apart from 'maturity' there's no way in which OP even mentions how literature and video games aren't equal art forms

maybe i expect too much

>>5429353

>maturity =/= art, sorry

No one is saying this. Try reading the thread.

>>5429375
>deem

>>5429307
If you want games that don't try to appeal to the mainstream then don't buy AAA or Mainstream games.

AAA is code for hot garbage. More people here need to realize that before bringing it up in conversation. AAA is the mainstream airport fiction of vidya, it's always shit with few exceptions.

>>5429357
The problem is that the great directors/auteurs have generally had a better artistic education than game developers. You can't make an artistically worthwhile game if your horizons don't extend past nerd culture.

>>5429360
Indie games depend on pre designed stuff made by other people while indie movies can be done without any external input. It's not the same, although I do recognize I did a gross generalization basing myself on the examples that came out in this thread.
There's still a difference in the type and level of knowledge needed for each, this is something that could change in the future but it's still some decades too early.

>>5429380
>The thing is that I also love videogames -you can like Faulkner or Cervantes and enjoy playing Crash Bandicoot or MGS games at the same time, they are not the same thing- but I think that the comparison in these terms is even a bit insulting for literature since I consider videogames to be much less mature.

>mature

>>5429391
this is bullshit /v/ opinions. out

>>5429357

>It's the same when people said that movies couldn't be art.
>And they proved you wrong.

No one is saying that they can't be art. But if we go by your comparison the video game industry is still so unevolved it's at the stage of the Lumière brothers.

It isn't anything right now.

>>5429369
Is it really such a contrived line "learned maneuvers"? I just could think of a way to say it, second language and stuff.
Not all music is art, I don't know why would you say that. Now, some music, like some narrations, manipulate your emotions in unique ways through unique resources. This is in a different category than, to make an easy example, boy bands and drum machines.

>>5429404

It's the same with mainstream literature.

Are you saying that books in general are represented by Paulo Cohelo type of stuff?

>>5429394

I know this might be a bit of a shock to you, but often in threads the topic of conversation moves past the point of the first post.

>>5429393
>Indie games depend on pre designed stuff
Indies often use licensed engines but that's it, same thing as a film maker not building his own cameras or equipment. Its fine to hold the view you have but it sounds like you don't even understand the medium you reject.

>>5429307
>Art doesn't work like that, you can't make a shit ton of Goya paintings, each is unique and imposible to do again on the same conditions.

lmfao goya made a whole bunch of prints for that exact purpose. please don't discuss art any further

>>5429391
Wagner was AAA. It's not a matter of money or position but the though and intention behind the work.
Still, as I answered someone else, I did make a gross generalization. But as long as a videogame can't differentiate itself from a board game with a movie on top it will still be designed as entertainment, and art must be art in the first place. As soon as you want to entertain or make money it no longer can be even close to art.

>>5429404
>I have no idea what I am talking about

It isn't bullshit if you're not stupid. Compare niche titles to the samey bullshit pumped out every year that people are excited for, then suddenly declare a dissapointment post-release, and tell me every word of that isn't true.

There are exceptions, but nothing published by a company like EA or Activision with the majority in mind is going to be anything other than meh at best

>>5429417
the current line of discussion is stupid and i'm going back to the first point that everyone missed since they don't know how to read

>>5429345
>>5429363
I also enjoy videogames -and I've played tons of them- and books that are not 'top tier artsy literature'. The thing is that some people ONLY read Harry Potter and books alike, and then in real life, when I talk with people about things we like I have to listen that some books I like are 'bad and boring' just because they haven't tried to read anything like it seriously. I know, I know. I shouldn't give a fuck about what people think about my taste, but sometimes I just want to have -for instance- a conversation like this thread in real life. Or just talking about books with someone who reads a lot.

>>5429434

>catching feelings

No one cares.

>>5429428
>>>/v/

>>5429392
Nah, this wasn't the case with artistic classic cinema. Although they did have a respect for the previous arts that you rarely see in game developers.

>>5429434
Then you should wait for OP to come back to his first posts if he still wants to.

>>5429420
I wasn't thinking about UDK as much as pre disegned assets like trees and AI.

>>5429421
>a whole bunch of prints
what? how do you make prints of paintings?
you mean many different works? he just made many, it happens.

>>5429333
They are, but only when you're playing them. Fuck watching them (beyond ceremonial games) or playing simulated versions of them, beta bitch boy.

>>5429447

>or playing simulated versions of them, beta bitch boy.

lol this is like literally one of the most alpha normalfaggot recreational activities out. you sure do talk some shit m8.

>>5429444
>Then you should wait for OP to come back to his first posts if he still wants to.

lol what the hell. it's a forum not a verbal discussion

>what? how do you make prints of paintings?

oh my god

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disasters_of_War

do you know how prints work? you ink the plates and make multiple prints. goya was a printmaker as well as a painter

>>5429447
nah they're pretty fun to watch too

>>5429319
This.

>>5429319

/thread

>>5429427
I think it is a bit more than that. These corporations are doing it intentionally because they know they have a large group of people that will buy whatever they're told to buy.

I think it's disgusting. There is so much good and it's being actively covered up to promote shit and it's infuriating. Journalists getting paid off, false advertisement and what not.

I might be a weeb who only plays JPRGs and action games from Platinum and the like but christ. The western industry is just bullshit. Plenty good granted, but nothing much from the past five years.

>>5429427
>As soon as you want to entertain or make money it no longer can be even close to art.

it's like you know nothing of the history of art

>>5429438

My advice in that case is to adapt your conversation to the knowledge level of the listener, either by not talking about those works, or by introducing to them the main themes, in a suitable manner.

Pretty much like this place works... You get to speak of pretty deep stuff, while enveloping it with funny meems and stuff, and with this nice masks on, which makes you appreciate ideas, not the person saying them.

:)

>>5429458
Oh, we have a diferent word in spanish.
Those are at the same time a limited series with each work being slightly different from the other for the characteristics of the mechanical means of reproduction, and propaganda, which under most aesthetics authors would make them not art.

>>5429444
>Although they did have a respect for the previous arts that you rarely see in game developers.

Yes, I agree.

>>5429480
Consider also, this is what the arts in general have been doing since a long time ago.

>>5429467
>>5429470
>>5429319

>he conflates artistic mediums when appraising merit because he isn't a very bright person

>>5429478
It's like you know nothing of aesthetics.

>>5429458
>mfw in one of the Underground stations next to my house there are Goya prints recreations in the walls for people to watch

>>5429487
you mean like OP?

>>5429494

Yes.

>>5429491
You can go to any museum and buy a reproduction, I don't see your point.

>>5429319
>considering painting to be on par with mosaic church decoration as an art form

>>5429500
see
>>5429487

>>5429500
>decoration
>art form
chose one

>>5429478
But historically people have been reluctant to give works motivated solely by profit the status of 'art.'

What makes video games a higher form of art is the fact that you can tell a story to one person, and tell a different story to another, simply by the way they choose to play the game. You can't do that with literature, the most you can do is leave something vague and open to interpretation.

>>5429499
That I see Goya prints almost every day.
There wasn't any point.

>>5429491

Well that's pretty cool of your underground network.

>>5429507
That sounds pretty nice, then.
Please tell me kids don't paint their names and relationship status over them.

>>5429503
>words
>art form
chose one

It's 2014. This debate is now irrelevant. The art form with the greatest literary value is vlogs on youtube by people with no or almost no followers. None of these other falsities will ever provide as good a glimpse into the human heart and all its despair.

>>5429504
>solely

lol so you're claiming to be able to tell others' "sole motivations"?

>>5429506

1/10

I refuse to believe that you are this much of a philistine. I wouldn't be so cruel as to damn you to a fate like that.

>>5429524
I'm just playing devils advocate tbh, but that doesn't undermine the truths of the post

>>5429513
No, they don't paint anything over them.
The city is full of graffiti and shit but it's like they respect Goya as an ancient graffiti master or anything like that.

>>5429506
-Not all games tell stories
-Not all books tell stories
-Not all books tell just one story

>>5429529

It does because you aren't taking into account the inherently commoditized nature of the video game industry. You cannot compare notions of auteurship at all with literature.

Actually why am I even bothering you're clearly a dunce.

>>5429558
no shit, not ever X does Y, good job. the point is video games can do things that literature cant just like guns can do things that a bow and arrows cant

>>5429564
Guess what, literature isn't somehow free of the taint of the commodity form. Plus there are video games made by one or two people and released for free, outside the 'video game industry.'

>>5429575
Video games 'can' provide an experience comparable to the greatest works of literature but they aren't yet at that level.

>>5429594

>Guess what, literature isn't somehow free of the taint of the commodity form.

No, but the disparity is so great as to render comparison between the two laughable.

>>5429594
>Video games 'can' provide an experience comparable to the greatest works of literature but they aren't yet at that level.
the question was only what is a higher form of art, and if something possesses the ability to do something that another form of medium cannot, it can be considered a higher form of art

>>5429605
And that potentiality is useless until actualized.

>>5429605

>and if something possesses the ability to do something that another form of medium cannot, it can be considered a higher form of art

You surely understand just how much more literature can do and has achieved over videos games at this point in history, right?

You're only strengthening arguments against your position you hopeless dullard.

>>5429605
>A higher form of art
>Without higher works of art
>ISHYGDDT.jpg

>>5429615
>You surely understand just how much more literature can do
what can literature do that video games cant
>and has acieved
well no shit its only been around for thousands of years, and video games only a few decades
>>5429621
you're too stupid to legitimately respond to

>literature began with the Epic of Gilgamesh
>video games began with Spacewar

Checkmate gamers.

>>5429411

What in your opinion is a unique manipulation via a unique resource? The musical theory that makes "good" music sound good is the same that make boy bands sound good. Yes it can be argued that there is more "depth" to the former but that is a matter of taste.

Every genre has a set of tricks they use to curate a certain sound or emotion but most of these can easily be traced back to the same underlying concepts in music theory. Music can be described as the creative employment of culturally learned sonic aesthetic ideals. Music by definition is emotional manipulation by learned maneuvers. By your definition this means it isn't art.

Extreme music and avant garde subverts "culturally learned sonic aesthetic ideals", meaning it does qualify as art under your definition. However it's up to the listener to decide whether or not they want to describe something like Merzbow as "music".

>>5429628

>what can literature do that video games cant

It has evolved a systematic and traditionalised form of referential metaphor known as "language" that has been the basis for all progress and shared discovery throughout the entirety of human history.

But apart from that nothing at all.

Well this has been fun and I do hope you /v/ tourists enjoy your brief stay here but this thread has gotten far too pleb to keep posting in so I'm out.

>>5429647
>language came from literature
no. you people really aren't that bright you know. you're like the opposite of the "scientism" fags on /sci/

>>5429650

You have no understanding of philology at all you need to fuck off back to your manchild board asap.

You're a joke.

>>5429655
do you have a mental disability? you sound horribly insecure and sad, not to mention stupid as fuck

>>5429674

Just hide thread.

We both know you have nothing.

>>5429674

you're an idiot. you're not fooling anybody

>>5429684
>>5429688
>muh literature
bunch of NEET faggots that worship books like virgins worship women's feet

>>5429694

There's no need to get mad now.

Just hide thread.

>>5429696
>mfw talking to a literal autist

>>5429706

Do you always try to save face after getting this BTFO?

>>5429710
>getting this BTFO
lel, you didnt provide a single plausible counter example to any point i made. you're like a child

I gave up on video games back in 2000 when I realized they were interfering with me getting my Master's thesis done. No regrets. So I have no idea what today's games are like, but I don't see any reason why an interactive game couldn't potentially be on par with any other art form. There's nothing inherently limiting about, or no more so than any other medium (and less than most). I'm sure most games aren't complex or profound art, just as most novels or plays or comics aren't, but surely someone must be doing something interesting with those tools. Obviously Prince of Persia isn't Joyce, but neither is Twilight.

>>5429075
Spec Ops the Line would be one of the few examples of video game art.
It makes use of it's medium in a way that it wouldn't have worked with any other medium.

>>5429732
>I'm sure most games aren't complex or profound art, just as most novels or plays or comics aren't, but surely someone must be doing something interesting with those tools. Obviously Prince of Persia isn't Joyce, but neither is Twilight.
this, which is apparently too hard of a concept for dickhead one >>5429621 and dickhead two >>5429615 to understand

>>5429722

>still trying to save face

>>5429738
It doesn't effectively use its medium because it's essentially a movie.

>>5429694
>not liking feet

Get a load of this guy

>>5429738

everyone constantly uses this as an example, as if "omg maybe we're the bad guys" is a novel or interesting idea

>>5429739
"Something interesting" isn't exactly the same that "higher form of art", you know. It's a bit different.
Also, things like Twilight wouldn't be considered exactly as "art" but more like just an attemp to get money from 15 year old girls.

It's possible to do interesting things in the videogame medium, sure. Few people here disagree. What we're talking about is that these more interesting things, the "step beyond" in the medium and the maturity it demands have not been reached yet, and by the state of the videogame industry nowadays is not very likely to happen very soon unless a very abrupt change emerges.

>>5429791
Fair enough, but that's not the medium's fault, as you say: it's still young.

>>5429791
the thread started just with the idea of whether video games are on par with literature in terms of an artistic medium. it's not whether or not the works created by video games are of more artistic merit than literature of vice versa, but simply whether video games are capable of producing art of comparable merit to that of literature, which it certainly is

>>5429788
>killing civilians in war is bad, m'kay?
>also I've read Joseph Conrad :^)

>>5429815
>whether video games are capable of producing art of comparable merit to that of literature, which it certainly is

[evidence needed]

>>5429837
name something inherently wrong with the medium itself that would prevent it from doing so

>>5429837
actually you don't need evidence since it's self evident.

As for why there aren't any really artsy video games/hollywood movies:
MONEY


Writing a book costs literally nothing, developing a video game/making a hollywood movie are fucking expensive, and the only way you can afford to do it is if the thing you're producing is aimed at making MORE MONEY.

Everything is art. Thus video games are art. They just so happen to be shit art.

You people are like the nig nogs who complain that Lil Wayne or whatever isn't "hip hop". Of course it is, dipshit, it's just not particularly good hip hop. Just because you don't subjectively like something doesn't make it not what it is. That's the definition of pretentious.

>>5429854
>Everything is art
lel

>>5429064

You do realize that the Wikipedia page for "art game" goes back to the 1980s?

>>5429075

I consider The Last Express, Deus Ex Machina, Cosmology of Kyoto, and Slouching Towards Bedlam, and Planescape: Torment to be fine examples of "video games art" in the way people usually mean it.

But since video games are a unique medium, Populous and Civilization II, which have no story, have to be ranked alongside Planescape: Torment as an important game.

>>5429854

Unlike pornography, video games have the potential (and because I'm a plebeian moron, I think they already have) to rise above shit art.

>>5429859
>not everything can be art

I remember when I was 15 and thought I had immaculate taste for pretending like pop chart music wasn't art just because I thought it was shit. Don't worry, you'll grow out of it.

>>5429845
There isn't one, just like there's theoretically nothing stopping someone from making a giant work of literature that you read as you walk on it. But we can't properly evaluate it until it's actually made.

>>5429043
It's capitalist ideology manifested through careerism. You are evaluated based on the prestige or pay of your work. Anything that isn't your career is discretionary, is a hobby, an 'interest,' for fun, etc. Religion is viewed as archaic, suspicious, quaint. Art is viewed as pretense or impractical. Because they don't serve the social system, and even challenge the values and behavior required for its function. Capitalism doesn't want you to be an integrated human being. (It's even starting to cause people not to have families because they interfere with your career.) Video games, the makers and the critics and the players and the products, don't aspire to the condition of a total passion yet, and they are uniquely suited formally to be distractions, opiates, so they are becoming widespread.

>>5429806
It's still young and we believe it could be capable of it. Right.
But it has some very serious issues to deal with:

-The target for most videogames are children and manchildren. This could change, but won't be easy.
-The development of a videogame is very very linked to a giant company that holds the system in which the game is supposed to be played. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo can be really whimsy. I prefer how Valve works, but it still depends a lot on Microsoft since PC games are supposed to be played in... PCs.
-Under actual capitalism rules, technology -as a consume product- becomes outdated very fast, and videogames are very connected to the game system.
-Developing a game that exploits the capabilities of the game system is very expensive, and this is not exactly a good environment to allow innovative ideas to show up. If companies invest a large amount of money they will appeal to a larger audience to have any profit.

So in my opinion videogames will evolve slowly than cinema back in time.
And of course they can't be compared to literature. At least right now.

>>5429865
>Populous and Civilization II, which have no story

They have an implicit teleological narrative, not dissimilar to Whig history.

>>5429865
>Unlike pornography, video games have the potential (and because I'm a plebeian moron, I think they already have) to rise above shit art.

Depends on your definition of pornography. There are a lot of films that many would consider to be great works of art that contain what others might call pornographic visuals. The same with paintings, or writing, or anything else really. Would you call pic related "shit art" because the people depicted are naked and participating in sex?

Also I'd have to disagree with you about vidya games having a lot of potential to become great art. At least not anytime soon.

Like I said, technically it's art, but what is stopping it from being great art is built into the very framework of that particular genre of art itself. I won't deny that there are fantastic games out there with lofty ambitions, but it's primarily a manchild art.

Nostalgia tells me that the 90s were the closest we ever got to "art" in video games - games like Myst, Planescape: Torment, Grim Fandango (hell the majority of LucasArts point & click adventures) were innovative and had stories that weren't great, but at least not derivative.

The current surge of "art" in indie games such as Gone Home is terrible, the writing never goes beyond fan-fiction level, the symbolism is so in-your-face and ham-fisted that you think the author of the story has never read a book past high school; drunk on their own power of story creation without the restraint.

>>5429043
Video games is ALL about the posibilities. You can make entire narrative universes there, full of posibilities of visual and interactive wonder. Literature looks one sided when you look at it that way.

The thing is that this is a utopist view. Videogames like that don't really exist, but are an utopic warm dream that would take millions of dollars and tons of time. When you do that expense, you have to aim to the lowest common denominator, which means being unfaithful to your means in the very beginning. This is pretty much what's happening.

Videogames CAN be but it will take a long ass time. Also, there are very little people worth a shit working on them right now, that's what matters.

>>5429905
Indie games are mostly crap because most of indie developers are hipsters whose parents couldn't afford to pay them film school.

>>5429905
Did you know Cyan are working on a spiritual successor to the Myst series?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D_ivzOvzw4

I'm excited because I consider Riven to be one of the most brilliant games ever made.

>>5429883
these aren't flaws with the medium but flaws with its audience and its producers. if people would begin producing more artistic works using video games as a medium then people would see the potential but as of now they are seen as mindless entertainment, which is why some people ITT can't understand that video games are fully capable of producing artistic works on par with and surpassing those of literature

>>5429928
Even if they aren't flaws with the medium they're a hard obstacle for more mature products and projects to be released.

>>5429917
>my generic inherited opinion

>>5429927
:OOOO awesome

>>5429917
story time
>be lonely at new uni
>join the book club
>it's full of 20 year old girls, all name-dropping the classics, but in reality immediately just discussing YA like Green and Hunger Games
>I quote: "did you know me and X are writing a book? We're so far in!"
>never hear of the book again
>it's been three years
>check up on one of them
>she majored in some movie crap, but is now in the indie gaming scene, organizes events etc.
>works at some generic mobile gaming money cashgrab factory
>hasn't made a single "proper" game where you didn't have to pay a dollar for a life

The gaming industry is a slave shop, full of idealistic but naive people being exploited by MBA assholes without morals.

>>5429854
>Lil Wayne or whatever isn't "hip hop". Of course it is, dipshit, it's just not particularly good hip hop.
Lil Wayne is good hip hop, at least his early albums

>>5429043
video games are good when they are that. VIDEO GAMES.
a good game is Half Life 2. The storytelling it all through the enviroment. it's clever and unique to games, not trying to compete with movies or films.
otherwise games suck when they try to have a story

>>5429043
You, and probably them as well, don't understand the power of immersion in terms of art. Today video games are nearly without any merit at all, but the ability to be placed into the work itself shows a massive amount of potential. Some games do this correctly, like Pathologic. Most don't do anything with it at all. In the future though, who knows. It will take a real artist to turn around the current trend of shallow, consumerist crap and make something noteworthy with the medium. With its growing popularity and ubiquitous nature in childhood, as well as continuing technological leaps like the Oculus (video games are very dependent on technology in order to bring greater immersion) I think one will emerge.

>>5429519
There are like a hundred comments, but I chose to answer you because it's right.

You can't say that because it's X year some argument is invalid. Everything the humans care for is as valid to be discussed now as it was at any other time. The worst kind of teleology is the one that assumes that thinking about something is invalid because YEAR.
If anything, people should use a part of all the free time the system creates for them to think about themselves and their actions. People have never been so open to call themselves egoists without actually giving themselves time, but using each second to consume someone's other ideas and products. The whole point in winning free time through progress is to improve life, and that includes taking the time only the high class could take to think about whatever the fuck you chose.

If I can't live in my metadiscoursive utopia where everyone is happy, at the very least we should try to take advantage if whatever we can get in this imperfect real situation.

>>5430000
There was a story in Half-Life 2?
Both HL 1 and 2 don't really have stories, but for some reason people have been telling for years they're at the peak of story telling in computer games.

HL1:
>be mute scientist
>aliens invade because of your experiment
>soldiers run around and kill them and try to kill you
>shoot shoot shoot shoot push some boxes around shoot shoot shoot
>Weirdo in a blue suit recruits you

HL2:
>weirdo puts you into city 17, generic dystopian future
>join some kind of underground resistance
>shoot shoot shoot walk walk shoot shoot
>get gravity gun at Black Mesa
>cool robot
>shoot shoot shoot shoot
>suddenly, for no reason, zombie city
>drive a car around
>be stuck in a transporter
>fight the bad guys at their tower
>win

I don't see where there's anything original or interesting in either game. They have tricked you into believing these are good stories.

>>5430089
the idea that the earth is flat is both irrelevant and invalid in the year 2014

>>5430090
>I don't see where there's anything original or interesting
>therefore they have tricked you into believing these are good stories.

>>5429043
People thought this about literally every artistic medium to come after the written word.
Movies, photography, basically every artistic movement, all 4plebs in the eyes of the snobs at the time.
Video games, can be art. Spec Ops: The Line is fucking masterpiece of deconstruction, video games allow you a level of immersion and interaction with the protagonist simply not possible in other mediums.
But of course most of the time it isn't. I think Ray Bradbury said something like this in Farenheit 451 when he was talking about TV and comic books, they can be art, but they usually are just shallow and brainless. This applies to video games as well. Also with literature being around for however many hundreds of thousands of years humans have gotten a lot more practice writing books artistically than video games.

tl;dr
Video games can be art, but in the current age are usually not treated as such.

>>5429078
>Silent Hill 2
>dev
>saying games are art
>shitting on the video game industry
Is that you, Yahtzee?

>>5430131
>i don't have a point so here's a picture

>>5429332
Such a defeatist

>>5429043
>video games
>on par with literature
>as an ART FORM
Video games are far beyond literature in that regard. Just that regard though; it's important to realize this. Literature will forever be the best way to communicate ideas, the most intellectually-free medium with which to work in. But as a form of art, i.e. entertainment, there's no question, video games are so much more engaging and technologically advanced.

>>5429043
I'm actually just visiting /lit/, as I normally spend time on /v/, but I'd hardly call one or the other better. Its very conceivable to consider one to be on par with another. That is not to say that literature isn't ahead of video games as an art form; writing has existed for thousands of years. It has had time to refine itself and bring about many amazing and touching works, whereas video games are a very new medium. Developers are still arguing over how to maximize the effectiveness of a video game and utilize video games to tell stories in the best way they can. Its a subject many still don't know the answers to. This is not to say that there aren't video games out there that could probably compete with some literature giants, but rather that video games as a whole are still in its early stages of development as an art form, partly due to scrutiny towards its value among other things.

>>5430090
im talking about enviromental stoytelling. i couldn't care less about the course of action in the narrative.

>>5430348
And where do the HL games excel in "environmental storytelling"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_u18_BKczg

>>5429043
>you can like Faulkner or Cervantes and enjoy playing Crash Bandicoot or MGS games at the same time

If you really have read Faulkner and liked his works you can't appreciate dumb shit like videogames you fucking mongoloid

>>5430399
>People can't appreciate different art mediums
>dumb shit like videogames
Please stop

>>5430198
>im so dense that I can't detect his obvious point
looks like you belong here

>>5430419
>The point is obvious, you're dense
>doesn't state the point and adds to the general obtuseness of the "games are art" points in this thread

>>5430431
>games are art
>obtuse

>>5430411
>video games
>art medium

>Please stop

Okay

>>5430446
Video games have the capability to tell stories through actions you yourself do, which is something no other medium can do.(Ex. of game that does this: Shadow of the Colossus) Besides that, they do much of what other mediums do in combination, and in many ways are similar to films. Games tell stories through the environment each game places you in. (See Bioshock)They sometimes directly move stories forward and/or tell them in the form of cutscenes, which are usually (but not always) CGI. (Final Fantasy XII) Creating good CG models in itself takes a lot of time and effort, and if you consider the artwork in say, Pixar films to be art, then that in itself is part of the art of video games. How video games look takes effort. Some go for a comic book style look (Darksiders). Some go for a traditional Japanese look (Okami). Some try to look like a cartoon (The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker). Some mimic anime (Kingdom Hearts), and so on. All games have a visual art design to them, and if you consider drawings and animated movies art, then that's a form of art helping to add to the art form that are video games. If you consider music art, you have musicians trying to add to the emotion of certain scenes in video games, both including the cutscenes and lines of written dialogue (which is where some games mimic books) and actual gameplay itself. Music in a game can effectively help set the emotion whatever game in question is trying to give a player at the specific moment a track plays. I mentioned Shadow of the Colossus earlier and its a good example of a game using music to set the mood. While traveling, no music plays and you are greeted to nothing but the sound of beautiful nature. As you near a colossus, music plays that has a feeling of impending danger. While actual fighting colossi, the music that plays sounds extremely dramatic, as if its a battle for survival. I mentioned written text earlier, and written text is something that video games and literature both share. Some games use it more prominently than others in order to tell the story it wants to tell and present information to the player, perhaps about the world or characters of the game (see Solatorobo: Red the Hunter). Video games are a culmination of many different more specific art forms along with a few pieces unique to its own, and just like all other art forms it too can be used to present and tell a story, and while some may wind up poor excuses for a story, others may not and some can even flourish in combination with everything else a game may have to offer.

>>5429732
The video game industry has gotten much worse since 2000

>>5430573
>worse

>>5430669
>Fallout 3

for what purpose

>>5430676
I enjoyed what Fallout 3 did and liked its world and atmosphere more than New Vegas, which doesn't feel like a real wasteland and barely even post apocalyptic. I felt like I was just in the West, which isn't a setting I'm fond of. I also don't like some of the characters as much.

You guys seem to me to be arguing for the sake of arguing.

It is true, there are no games than can even come close to good books or movies. But those disciplines have centuries of tradition and and theoretical background. Games are in their infancy stage. What they essentially are, is a medium with interactivity, and the grounds for extreme interdisciplinarity.

Why are you so completely certain that this kind of a medium can never offer a good work of art? Do you think that art excludes interactivity? That it's by definition a one way street? Why? How?

>>5430573
this
the last good games were sc bw and q3

>>5430682
I liked the more moral ambiguity in New Vegas, there was no "If you sign up with these guys you are Satan/Jesus and that's it". Each faction had there merits and their downfalls and you just had to try and do whatever was best for the world (or you know, fuck bitches get bottle caps). It made the setting a lot deeper. Also I love the west, walking into a town like I'm the Man with No Name and kicking ass and bringing righteous justice is sweet.
Also Independent Vegas master race

>>5429078
take your stupid dapper hat elsewhere yahtzee!

>>5430153
Spec ops the line is a copy cat of Heart of Darkness you fucking idiot

>>5429043
the only video games that have any cred as "art" are those that do things that only can be done in a game, so "choose-your-own-adventure" type shit
planescape (dying a million times, this being integral to the plot), and the stanley parable (choice as construct) are example of this
but those that try to tell a straightforward story are fighting a losing battle. maybe one day a video game will be so immersive that this will no longer be the case, that is, it will somehow be superior to what we imagine what is happening in a book (VR as superior to the mind's creations in real time), but when will this happen? post-singularity, only... and when that happens (if, don't want to be a robofucker) we'll have other shit to concern ourselves with

>>5430669
>FF12
>FO3
>MGS4 of all the MGS games
You're proving his point.

>>5430766
>implying FF12 isn't near perfect

>>5430360
Play HL2 and the episodes w/ dev commentary on next time in case you didn't keep your eyes open the first time.

>>5429124
The same can be said for reading literature/watching movies etc etc

>>5429043
What the fuck does art form even mean? My sex life is an art form. Jesus Christ. I get the feels when I hear some Final Fantasy soundtrack and I get the feels when I am reminded of War and Peace and I get the feels when I hear someone mutter Freude schöner Götterfunken. They all evoke feelings and thoughts. I am Satan born in flesh.

Literature has been around for thousands of years, video games for like, what, 40? Video games have barely even begun to be tapped as a medium.

Videogames are still having their foundations laid, very few attain to the kind of aesthetic perfection and balance of a work of art. Some do though. The Binding of Isaac, pre-expansion, has all of the symmetry and exactness of game mechanics that you might find in the plot elements of a greek play.

It is a mistake to try to tell a story through videogames, things like create-your-own-adventure, VNs, or just games with branching stories fail like gears of war, the alternation alienates the player from the character. Alternation between self determined play and predetermined story, is crude, heavy handed, ugly, bad design. A game like Dwarf Fortress does not tell a story, it merely plays. DF only encroaches on the players freedom through the game mechanics themselves, through their fluxations and tides of difficulty. In DF the player comes away with a story to tell, not having been told a story. That is how narrative differs, properly, in videogames. Narrative is not something to be told through a videogame, but to be uncovered within one.

A thought experiment: The perfect (fun-optimal) videogame? An AI, whose sole purpose is to maximize your entertainment. Your actions are indicative of your future actions, you can be simulated.

A simpler solution: take a rogue-like game, one with procedurally generated level design. Use machine learning techniques to parameterize a bot to approximate your playstyle. Generate 100s of levels, instead of only one, have the bot run through all of them. Select as the level the player gets as the level that the bot had the {hardest, easiest, most fun, quickest} time with.

Listen to the developers commentary to Portal. A game is an education in its game mechanics. Games now can get boring: ive had anomie in a videogame. To take them as art let us ask: What can games reveal to us about? How can a game be part of a higher purpose?

Rewards in human life can come after overcoming something, but some obstacles take much to overcome. Turning of your console or closing your window is the game equivalent to suicide- is their a videogame for the myth of sisyphus? [much the same can be said for books: when to stop reading?]

we ain't seen nothin yet

>>5430823

>trying to reason with guys who are literally manchildren

Why.

>>5430823
>The Binding of Isaac
I don't like that game
>It is a mistake to try to tell a story through videogames
But I play video games for their stories.

Also everything you seemed to describe moreso tell story through gameplay rather than actually not having a focus story.

>>5430836
*rather than not having an actual focus on the story

>>5430827
very drugs
much 4 am
such boredom

>>5430769
>I can't summarize my own points

typical gamer

>>5430841
wow

>>5430836
Maybe think this:

It seems to me that story is not a 'natural kind' to a videogame, like how color isn't to literature. Games merely have portions that are more or less linear, literature is basically entirely linear. Many Modernist tried to escape linearity in language, a project that was pretty much entirely unsuccessful.

The aesthetic qualities of the binding of isaac as a game mostly are only visible after playing or at least seeing probably upwards of 100+ playthroughs. The structure of the runs (playthroughs) in isaac is such that their are some parts constant across all games, but others that vary across each game, repeated play lets you chart out the possibilites. Maybe you could get something similar from just repeatedly reading finnigans wake but with random pages ommitted each time, but even that wouldnt capture the way game mechanics in issac can enfold on themselves. Long story short: Isaac only gets that aesthetic 'aura' if you play it a shitload so you see how everything fits together.

btw idgaf if im being in consistent, just throwing ideas out there, 'i contain multitudes!' etc

>>5430884
thinking about it more tho i do wonder if vidja can actually be separated so strongly from traditional linearized story telling. Like the big problem is that our consciousness seems to mostly move in time in a linear way. Even if videogames are multiplicitus and have nonlinear possibilities doesn't the actual act of playing them 'reduce' them to linearity (collapse the wave function)? Replay is merely a matter of [difference and repetition]

In order to unconstrain ourselves from this fact we would need to be able to render multiple possible game paths as simultaneous. The visual arts, like painting and film already offer some form of delinearity: looking at a painting, at least to an extent, lets you take in the whole of the painting in a single glance. Videogames are typically visual, but not more so than a movie. An of course this is only a 2, or at best 3, dimensional multiplicity, an uncomfrtably hard limit

I think this might be resolved by looking at what occurs when we make a choice about what action to take in a game. It is choice making that sets games apart form movies after all. To make a strategic choice, like in Isaac, you have to think about the possible ways that the particular session of the game you are playing at the moment might evolve. You make a decision when you simultaneously perceive several possible ways that the gamestate could evolve. It is this simultaneity of theoretical possibility that I think a distinctive characteristic of games as art lives.

When you are playing a game and have to make a choice you might consider 20 possible ways the game could evolve based on your choice, this being based on past experience with the game.Each of those possibilities is a linear possibility of game play. When you have to collapse those 20 possibilities into a single choice, such as {yes,no}
then you are effectively forming 20D perception, far higher than attainable through visual faculties.

Although with like reading a book you have the same capacity to ponder different possible futures, the fact that you dont have to make any choice other than whether you continue reading will probably keep you from formulating them precisely to the degree that all the different possibilities have a distinct affect. And of course after you first read it a book is unlikely to make you think much about the possibilites of its narrative, seeing as you already know what happens.

idk man, videogames are weird and kidna hard to think about. Im not really sure if the stuff about possibility=dimensionality is right but it sorta seems to make sense

I've played a lot of games and I don't consider many of them to be great. The litmus test for me is whether or not I'd feel comfortable informing your average-joe that they exist and what they do that makes them worthwhile to a non-gamer. Most of the games I've played are single-player games so take that as you will; there's still many to discover of course so I haven't played everything.

Gamers (including players and developers) appear to be an insular bunch (parallels can be made with the construction of game-worlds themselves) who have come to consider certain works in their medium as being better than other works and thus achieving some kind of artistic status by virtue of better-hood. Their flaw is that they don't look outside of the medium to see where these games stand up against other creative/artistic mediums. One anon summed it up well by saying that few video-game developers seem to regard other creative modes (ie lit, film, theatre) and this is strikingly different to the manner in which those mediums have developed. The most obvious comparison is film, given its relationship and will to look towards both theatre and film. Do games do this? Whenever they do it seems to be because they are fishing for ideas and not actually interested in achieving the same result. The only similarity I can consider is with a lot of Japanese games from the 90s and 2000's which were influenced by manga.

My opinion about games is usually levelled like this:

Creative? Sure. Artistic? No.

I like games, but I consider very few to have broken outside of the gaming medium. A lot of revered works, for me, are simply better games than other games.

>>5430884

I don't know why video-games can't also be restricted to focused experiences. It's just a manner of the developer decreasing the variables so that you are made to be guided through the experience while being able to interact with it. It's still, as you say, like a world of possibilities rather than a strict line, but the world is made smaller and more focused in line with the purpose of the narrative and the world-creation. That's always been the case in adventure/point-and-click games.

Still, we're from this website and the stigma about these kinds of 'games' is great but I think that they are the best types of games I've played in the past few years (ie Dear Esther, Gone Home, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs)
It's a shame that the quality isn't always high (especially Gone Home) because if games are moving towards a certain direction with their story-telling procedures then this is at least one that tends to think outside of having to give gamers what gamers have come to expect.

>>5429043
It's simple imo.
When a video game becomes as good as The Divine Comedy they will be able to say it is art.

don't worry OP, i love videogames too, and they aren't art. maybe one day

>>5429043
It's not just you, anon

This thread is trash
Video games are trash
Care to argue? I don't

>>5429646

>emotional manipulation by learned maneuvers

By whose definition? If that way of putting things is true, why would you circumscribe the definition only to music? Is that a content of music or the arts in general, or something you're revealing of yourself? Also... What makes you think all humans have the same responses to emotion, and therefore, could equally be "manipulated"?

>>5429156
>18-19 year old friends only talik about the new battlefield DLC and something called "levolution"
>they only discuss AAA games made by EA, and generic murder simulators
>tfw i can't relate to them at all anymore and they're my only friends

>>5431170
You... Don't really know how lucky you are.

>>5431210
It will get better once you get older.

>>5431216
No. It won't. Don't lie to him.

>>5431242
It did for me.

I can't connect to people who don't enjoy video games. They're so fucking boring to me.

>>5431135
I didn't like the divine comedy much, to propagantastic for my tastes.

>>5430823
>Videogames are still having their foundations laid, very few attain to the kind of aesthetic perfection and balance of a work of art. Some do though. The Binding of Isaac,
LOL fucking stopped reading right there. You don't know SHIT about video games if you're praising a fart in the wind like Binding of Isaac.

Oh, and they've already had their foundations laid. We're beyond that. There's now hundreds of amazing, juicy games to pick and choose from, stretching across those 40-some years and going across many different genres. Do some research on game genres and history before you talk about any of this shit.

Since video games are art now, are sports art?

>>5430669
a lot of those are terrible or inferior to their prequels though

The chance for vidya being art or even a serious form of story telling is long gone now.

Of course people nowadays go "b-b-b-but muh The Last of Us... muh Bioshart!"
But that's because they're are shallow bitches.

TLoU isn't an example for "deep" writing.
It's an example for hollywood writing.
And by the way also an example for expensive hollywood production consuming other qualities of the media.

So the best vidya can get is on par with that, given that devs put enough money into it to come up to that "standard".

On the side then, there are all those "artsy" indie hipster fucks, thinking they're the Dostoevsky of video games, who not only write shitty drivel but also produce shit games (Phil Fish and that Gone Homo bullshit to name a few - also Dear Esther but at least that was graphically and musically more sophisticated)


Devs that actually try to get everything out of the genre are really, really fucking rare. Those would be the ones who actually try to raise the bar on writing, artwork, etc. NEXT to actually being good at making entertaining games (i.e. using the media - otherwise: Go write a fucking book if you don't care about gameplay, what the fuck are you doing here if you don't care about the interactivity of the media?).

Maybe Silent Hill 2
Maybe Planescape Torment, even though lots of people get their nipples twisted over the D&D rules
Maybe Ultima 7
Probably Riven
Maybe even Dark Souls if you actually buy into all that lore stuff (I haven't paid too much attention admittedly, however it always kind of reminded me of capturing the legacy of the greek or being the extension of some antique epoch setting for some reason - mostly because of the monster design though)

I think that Riven is probably the closest.
Unsurprisingly it's a fucking niche game that no one played.

>>5431552
Yes. Chess is also art, like jumping rope.

>literature has been around for thousands of years
>video games are a fairly new thing
hurr why aren't videogames as masterfuly crafted as literature

>>5430477
So tl;dr video games appeal to the degenerate player's base emotions

All this "video games are art" discussion has just made me realize that video games shouldn't be art.
All it has done is bring out games with "complex narrative" and "thematic diversity", but ignores the essential parts of a video game - gameplay mechanics, level design, controls.
A story is not an essential part of a video game. My problem with /lit/ talking about video games is that they always praise games like Planescape Torment, Myst or whatever, and while these are interesting, they also fail on a number of things.

Personally, I tend to feel that the most perfect, complete video games are straight-up arcade titles. Take Castlevania on the NES, it presents everything a video game was supposed to be then - carefully designed levels intended to challenge you consistently throughout, great fucking music, movement and controls completely fitting the design.

Or take Doom. I still feel it's probably the best FPS ever made, because it's so tailor-made as a challenge when pistol-started on every level. Levels are imaginative and complex, ammunition preservation is important, missile dodging and strafing are essential skills. And again, the music rocks and the visuals are timeless. Great damn game.

So yeah, story can fill out the experience and make an interesting game, but ultimately is that really what makes a good video game? It's not a medium for watching movies or reading literature, those mediums have their own strenghts.

>>5431793
What is the Gilgamesh of video games?

>>5431816
Pong

>>5431820
there you have it, video games are worthless

>>5431816
Planescape

>>5431810
>Myst or whatever, and while these are interesting, they also fail on a number of things.

Myst was designed as a puzzle game.
It was produced as a puzzle game.
It also had nice writing, music and (back then) pretty good visuals.

What does Myst fail on?

I mean I can see Planescape with it's kind of dodgy combat and everything, but Myst actually works as it's intended and expected to be.

>>5431822
Shut up faggot, Pong was a great experience back in the day.
Video games started in the 80s and technological advancement severely limited what you could do with them. But despite that people still came out with incredible games that survive the times due to programming wizardry and good ideas.

It's a 30 year old medium. If you have no clue about it then shut up. I have huge respect for what a lot of companies did.

>>5431836
It's basically a slide show, and I think most would agree that the puzzles were needlessly obscure.

>>5431810
Narrative and experience don't make something art. Copying other mediums doesn't make it art. You define an artistic medium for the things only it can do, and videogames are capable of things only they can do. But when someone takes advantage of their uniqueness while doing something that doesn't have an enterteinment motivation and can't be compared with a board game with video, then you'll have one work of art in this medium.
"Video games are/n't art" implies that all music is art and all painting is art, but Britney Spears isn't and paitnting clouds in your wall isn't either. Mediums aren't art by themselves, they are spaces where to do it.
If the conversation kept going in circles around stupid stuff like how good a narration it has, something that has no connection with artistic value at all, is because you keep arguing with people who hasn't read absolutely anything about the subject and yet feel their opinion is important.
This kind of threads are as stupid as it gets.

>>5431816
Prince of Persia, duh

>>5429455
Normalfags aren't alpha, they're fucking idiot beta bitches.

>>5431833
Planescape is the R.A Salvatore of videogames

You guys are all elitist idiots. Games are art, whether you like it or not.

Have games reached the artist highs that literature can? Of course not you fucking faggots. Literature is over 5 000 years old. Videogames have existed since the 70s in massive form. And it wasn't only until the late 80s did they start even entering into the concept of narrative or artistic merit.

So we're comparing an art form that is less 40 years old with one that is thousands of years old. How about we compare how fast a baby crawls to a fully grown adult? Then we can talk about how much of an idiot the baby is for not being able to keep up, right?

Why not just look at the early days of cinema and how shitty it was compared to the greatest works of literature? And yet, we would be hard pressed to actually find someone today who denies that film is an art form.

Either way, you're all faggots.

>>5431846
>You define an artistic medium for the things only it can do, and videogames are capable of things only they can do.

I agree, and that's why narrative and theme doesn't make games art. I feel the true value of video games is the interaction they present and what can be done with mechanics and level design. Immersive worlds like Morrowind make people forget they're playing a computer program for a while and get involved in the world. It's a unique experience.

>>5431856
I think the problem is that a lot of people would say games are just going backwards. We're getting hung up on realism and cinematic storytelling while games from 10 years ago are more fun to play and better designed.
Hopefully it's a temporary trend.

>>5431859
Inmersion isn't either a good criteria. You can get the same feeling from watching a mountain or knitting. An artistic videogame shouldn't be possible to compare with some other experience without taking away its value, you can describe a painting but it loses meaning, you can paint something inspired in music but the music isn't there.

>>5431856
>Why not just look at the early days of cinema and how shitty it was compared to the greatest works of literature?
Your grasp of film history is very poor. Film as art appeared less than a decade from its invention, but if you consider industrial cinema it has never been and will never be art since its a product to sell.

Walter Benjamin would had divided vidja the same way as early film, not as art but equally capable of being used to move the masses. That's as good as it gets for narrations many times, mate.

>>5431879
What would you consider good examples of this, then?

Also, Prince of Persia is fucking great, one of my favorite games. Good taste.

it is retard designing a good game takes as much talent if not more than writing a good novel

>>5431865
It's mostly because company produced games (comparative to studio films or music) are getting too expensive to fuck up with any sort of experimentation, so you get a sort of bland, easy, neutral product made to cater to as many people as possible to guarantee sales.

What would normally fill the void with interesting and experimental advancement (independent authors) don't really have the current resources to experiment with the medium due to the high barrier to entry in current gen consoles. While they tend to flock to tablet gaming, tablet gaming doesn't really lead to any sort of prolonged gaming experiences gamers actually want, so we are left in a relative wasteland of shitty games.

>>5431879
>Industrial cinema is not art because it is a product to sell.

Wot m8? Are you really saying that anything made to sell is not art anymore? You do know you are throwing about 99% of any medium into the trash just because you think that the only artistic ideal is for a person to produce art without any sort of semblance of profit for they produced wares?

What do you consider art then?

>>5431843
>slideshow

Now that's a technical limitation. The pictures where rendered with ray tracing after all. I think the first engine that did a pseudo-version of this in real time was Frostbite (so just a few years ago).
You're not shitting on Doom either, because its engine doesn't support any slopes right?

>and I think most would agree that the puzzles were needlessly obscure.

That's bullshittery-doodle man.
Every single puzzle in Myst can be solved logically if you just follow three steps:

1) Explore/Investigate
2) Write down clues
3) Fix missing variables

If Myst wasn't the way it is it would be too easy.

There are only two bullshit puzzles, which aren't really puzzles but pixel hunting (the commando panel in the beginning, and the secret room in mechanic age). But those are really isolated cases like that fucking pathway in riven hidden behind the opened door on boiler island. That was needlessly obscure.
For all the other stuff you just have to adapt your thinking a bit.

>>5431879
>You can get the same feeling from watching a mountain or knitting. An artistic videogame shouldn't be possible to compare with some other experience without taking away its value, you can describe a painting but it loses meaning, you can paint something inspired in music but the music isn't there.

WTF does this even mean, faggot? The act of describing a video game in words takes away it's value?

>>5431907
I don't feel that Doom suffers from the limitations, I play it often and I feel it's a truly brilliant creation.

I don't know, I never was a guy for puzzle games so this may be my bias. Myst is an interesting game, for sure. But I find it pretty bland.

>>5431887
I was joking about prince of persia, for the setting and stuff.

Good examples of criteria?
Based on Hegel I like:
-The work is autonomous in it's interpretation, it can be read as a closed world with meaning included whitihin itself.
-It was intended as art, not entertainment or product to be sold or decoration or anything that isn't being art.
-It is recognized as worthy of attention by peers and scholars, which might bother people but it just makes easier to bring topics to discussion at a tolerable rate even though it's obviously europe biased.
After it meets those three criteria you can start discussing the particular value of a certain work which is the whole point, so it helps that it's not hard to consider them and reach a conclusion.

Or examples of games as art?
I really like LSD dream simulator and I feel that kind of situational and pointless thing is the easiest to include. I remember a great flash game named Lumin or something like that where a single guy's work was a self contained world with micro narratives but a main focus on feeling.
But if there were a thread to discuss particular works it would be way better than taking time to think in this pointless thing.

>>5431905
>anymore?
It never was.
Like, ever.

>this big a thread on /lit/ about video games and art
>not a single mention of Icycalm
Well now I know that /lit/ doesn't know shit about the topic at hand.

>>5431905
>Are you really saying that anything made to sell is not art anymore?
No, he's saying that anything that is produced via an industrial process cannot be art. This is an obvious truism, once you get managers, deadlines, P/E and EBITDA and human resources and ISO 9001 and all the rest of the industrial process bullshit it stops being art.

>>5431918
O-oh

Well, I think of it as one of the DOS masterpieces. Awesome momentum based controls, simple but challenging sword duels, levels that always bring some new obstacles and puzzles.

>>5431888
Making a home made explosive takes a lot of talent. Kidnapping little girls too.

>>5431915
Those were two different ideas.
Immersion is a pointless point since humans can get immersed in absolutely any work.

You need to define value. Like, always, it's becoming sort of a meme a la greeks but it's one of those words.
Describing something doesn't hurt the original content. You can't translate the main characteristics of a work tied to it's medium, most vidja still isn't autonomous and a lot of devs actually try to make it more like other things. Making it "more like cinema" or "having great music" are the kind of compliments that shows the lack of integration in the work.

>>5431917
>I don't feel that Doom suffers from the limitations,

I suppose you haven't played it with its original controls for a while then.
Because going with the real original that would actually be a better example for technical limitations than the lack slopes.

Remember: No mouse look, and only mouse walk if you were happy enough to have one of those trackball mouses back in '95. And even then it was probably better to play with the keyboard.
Nobody shat on it because of that though... unless you're on /v/.

>>5431926
Maybe everyone knows as much as you but they post as little as you do.
I wouldn't even count a name drop as an argument, so your post doesn't help.

>>5431927
You have a point but no, I really meant what he read.
Mozart didn't make products, he was payed to live and create stuff every now and then, Cervantes made portraits for the king but he painted whatever the fuck he wanted. If you create something with the intention of it being a marketable product, you aren't making art.
But industrial production does create some problems, I try to consider ethereal arts like film on a different criteria to circumvent the Frankfurt discussion of cultural industries but it's a really deep and complex subject.

>>5431928
It's a great game, don't get me wrong.
Chess is also a great game and football joy every day for a life time.

>>5431966
I have played original Doom, and I still do. Zdoom isn't Doom, it changes a lot of shit.

Vertical mouse aiming was included with Doom and the myth that you only played it with keyboards was false. Hell, there are comments from Romero made back when Wolf3D was a thing that you should use the mouse for maximum efficiency. The games were surely made to benefit with a mouse, it's just that freelook wasn't a thing yet.

>>5431982
Shit, I meant horizontal*
You can aim left and right which is all you need in the game, in any case.

games like Gears of War and Halo have spawned books. not very good books maybe, but there they are.

lots of role playing games like Elder Scrolls have complex plots that are at least as good as a mid-range fantasy novel. in fact some have books, containing their own mythology, as part of the game (Skyrim for example)

some of the more forward-thinking creative writing courses now have writing for games as an option as well as screenwriting etc.

the media are merging, get over it

>>5429043
>art form
>giving a shit

>>5432007
It's worth giving a shit because it would be pretty great to have academic discussions on video games and classes on it in the future

>>5432013
>in the future
Academia has been dealing with this since the 90's, m8

>>5431982
>>5431985
>horizontal mouse aiming was included with Doom and the myth that you only played it with keyboards was false.

I didn't say it wasn't in.

But it was shit if you didn't have a trackball mouse because you actually moved the character forward by moving the mouse cursor up.

If you had a normal mouse you would always have to lift it up and move it back towards you after moving forward in the game because otherwise you'd eventually throw the mouse behind the desk.

Romeros comment was probably about trackball mouses like pic related.
But those wheren't even that popular back then and died out pretty soon after Win95.
Just like Romeros career

>>5432013
Are you 15? Most videogames are 100% commercial and their sole purpose is entertainment. Just like musicals and unlike literature. There might be some exceptions but they cab easily fit within a broader space ( popular culture).

>>5432029
Does it really matter how bad it was without a proper mouse?
If you fire Doom up in DOSBox today it's perfectly playable, at least it is for me.

>>5432013
>academic discussions on video games and classes on it
>implying the education system isn't already dead

The only games I'd consider art are like..the first two Fallout games, Planescape: Torment and System Shock.

Video games are fun, and while they have the capacity to be - "art" doesn't sell. Shooters do.

>>5432013
>have academic discussions
>on video games and classes on it in the future

dude r u like 14

>>5432048
The amount of text reading a game has doesn't make it artistic, it just makes it closer to literature.
There are plenty of games that take advantage of things exclusive to video games.

>>5432038
Nah I just think - like myst - it suffered from limitations or flaws rooted in technology back then.

Anyway there is the realMyst Masterpiece edition today which is basically a graphically updated version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RFO2Wi0f6M

It still runs like shit

>>5431846
>"Video games are/n't art" implies that all music is art and all painting is art, but Britney Spears isn't and paitnting clouds in your wall isn't either. Mediums aren't art by themselves, they are spaces where to do it.
You'll get shit for saying things like this, but keep standing for what's right and true.

>>5432063
Yeah I know about realMyst, but I tend to be really purist so it bothers me that they change things. The CGIs are the biggest problem.
If you think about it it's like if you took a great movie and remade it with different actors and then go around and recommend people ignore the first one.
I feel the very existence of patches and expansions kinda ruins the "art" in video games, it is primarily a product. It gets expanded, sometimes has new content added in, and so on.

>>5432083
I can just stop answering and wait for a frankfoot thread to hide for a while.

>>5429124

This is the best point I've read here. Example:

My wife loves Harry Potter. It's her favorite series and she has very strong feelings about its literary merit. To be honest it kinda feels like she has a chip on her shoulder about it. She reads other works also, but every time I try to understand why she thinks Harry potter is a valuable literary work, she gets pretty defensive.

I'm not against Harry Potter in any way, but I don't think it's a hallmark of English literature, and the fact that I think that irritates her super bad.

>>5429124
>This is the best point I've read here

Except that he's exactly the same, he just fools himself into thinking other things have "literary merit" (What is that even?)
Most people think that things that they enjoy are valuable. Our whole civilization things greeks are valuable so they're super important. An Asian might disagree with that.

>>5431957
They can also mean the compliments come from someone who cannot accurately describe the experience they receive through words.

You know, the exact point you were trying to make before?

>>5429124
The idea of "merit" is just a social structure meant to enforce hierarchy between the powerful and the powerless, and to subjugate the masses.

>>5432083
>Implying art is defined by whether or not it is good.
>Implying there can't be good art and bad art.

>>5431972
>>5431927
This is a really shitty concept. By this definition, art can only be done by excessively rich people with nothing better to do. Through this logic, art has stopped existing sometime in the middle of the 19th century except for a few small exceptions.

>>5432143
There's a difference between being unable to express your experience, which I would consider pretty usual since it takes a lot of practice for a great writer to transmit feelings and ideas through his writing, and another that you are able to transmit them and they are just limited in the original work. People don't like it but that's sort of the point of having academics and peers as judges of artistic value, you have people specialized in a subject analyzing it.
In some other post, I don't know if related to you or someone else, I said
that there's nothing making it impossible for a game to be an artistic piece. I'm just questioning the criteria when you divide it's components or tie it to another art form, both processes that imply that the content isn't as much in the work as it is in other works tied to it.

Is pro wrestling art? Some performances really stir powerful emotions.

>>5432151
You are mixing merit as status with merit as base value. You can need certain merits to reach something and after that they are all the same, like you need certain merits to acces your public pool, not having contagious deceases and being able to survive in that water level, and after that you are a member just like the rest.

>>5432160
There's no implication of that even though it's a silly value judgment that doesn't even have place.
There are things that aren't art, don't need to be art and wouldn't even care about being art. A product to manipulate your emotions through non physical means isn't art, it's just the same as a chair only that you can't touch it.
Art isn't good nor bad, there is no moral value. It can be more interesting, it can have more content, it can be more or less open to debate.

>>5432182
A lot of people die in poverty doing their art, some people have their expenses payed by the state or rich people. Art can only be done by people who care more about the art than the money they make selling it, you can still sell it or whatever but if your objective is making mad cash then you are an artisan at best.
There's nothing wrong with stuff not being art, neither. Things aren't better if they are art or something, it's about study subjects. You can have an emotional conection with a grapefruit, it isn't art but you could be getting more from it than from a Picasso and no one should tell you that you are wrong.

>>5432191
In some cases I would consider it on the same level as theatre since it pretty much is. But I would call your average high budget Broadway shit a la Cats or Batman on Ice art, and neither would I say that with some wrestling.
I really like it, though.

>>5432182
This
There is nothing preventing a Hollywood production to be art, even though it may be less likely
Some of the best movies are big productions, really most any movie that people know about is going to be produced by an army of people, it's just that kind of medium, what can one guy do with a camera?

>>5431537

u wanna 1v1 me irl fagot ill fuk u up

but for real your comment is kinda mean and doesn't really add anything substantial to the discussion except for the fact that I decided to repy to it. Besides im not saying Isaac is the greatest thing ever, or even really that it is that much fun, just that its game mechanics have the same sort of abstract aesthetic as a greek play.

>they've already had their foundations laid

That is an interesting proposition. It will really only be obvious what was foundational in looking back on how games have developed from far in the future, however I suspect you are wrong for a few reasons.

- In the past 40 years there have been more people living that there were through out most of literatures history, so one might think that because their are so many people videogames would have developed faster than literature. I think this is probably the case but they haven't developed that much faster than literature. Of pretty much any kind of media videogames are the most difficult and costly to develop, and for much of their history (and arguably too today) they have been constrained by very costly and difficult to use hardware that has only recently had the computational resources for most of the major contemporary game genres

- New genres are still being discovered, frequently. If Videogames were a a mature medium then you would not expect this to regularly occur.

- There are regular innovations in the way we control games and play games. Wiimote, Kinect, Leap Motion, touch screens, online multiplayer, Occulus, are all fairly recent innovations in game design. Games have only been making good use of 3D for 20 years. Games on your phone, or that make use of social media have only been around for like 5, and while most such games have been pretty bad I think they have a lot of potential to not be so.

- Their is no substantial 'theory of videogames' or 'videogame criticism' like their is for literature. What makes a game good is not at all clear nor is the way that one should go about interpreting games. In literature their is contention on analogous points, but their the problem is an overabundance of interpretive paradigms, whereas in gaming their are basically none with any sort of intellectual grounding.

I suspect what we look at as the major genres today will not be nearly as significant in the future. What we are calling genres now is pretty much arbitrary. Maybe even what we think of genres of a game now will become merely ways of interrogating a space, or maybe like in a narrative, the active and passive voice, 1st, second or third person. Just because their are a lot of good games already doesn't mean that gaming has had its foundation laid. I think we are very much in the 'only priest know how to write' stage of gamings history. I suspect gaming is going to undergo radical changes in the next few decades, that will at the very least greatly recast our understanding of the present genres of gaming.

Doom and Super Mario Bros 3 are works of art just due to how well mechanically they work, that combined with the level design makes for a piece that is museum level quality

>>5429043
killer7 is deep as fuck. for art, i consider emotional to be of higher importance over intellectual so im more likely to say music is the highest art form. but then again, there is so much shit out there that after you sift through all of it, you kinda have a less of an opinion on the genre.

but yeah, there are some great games. i dont see why we should rank what format is best for art

>>5429043
What do you even mean by on par?

Gaming is pretty young, look at the gamergate thing. The people who play and create video games dont have any structure or precedence to deal with this sort of thing. I mean they have the industries who are trying to sell them their products, the few academics who only very recently started thinking about them, and a population that is usually pretty young are the main consumers.

Give the medium some time before passing judgement.