/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12474903]

What makes this not literature?

[Anonymous No.12474905]

It's a video game.

[Anonymous No.12474910]

It's a video game, dum-dum. You need to install it.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.12474918]

Different narrative medium

[Anonymous No.12474920]

Videogames will never be art

[Anonymous No.12474940]

Writing on the level of slightly above average fantasy.

[Anonymous No.12474948]

interactivity

[Anonymous No.12474953]

>>12474940

[Anonymous No.12475091]

>>12474903
It is literature, but this is a board for books.

[Anonymous No.12476439]

>>12474953
?

Tolkien is a better writer than Avellone, if that's what you're implying.

[Anonymous No.12477010]

nothing

[Anonymous No.12477013]

it’s progressive

[Anonymous No.12477038]

>>12474918
This is the correct answer.

[Anonymous No.12477406]

>>12474903
Planescape: Torment is the Watchman of video games. It's not "serious literature," but it's proof that its medium can be approached on its own merits the same way great literature and great film can.

[Anonymous No.12477420]

>>12474905
>>12474910
>>12474918
>>12474948
>>12477406

Medium specificity was the biggest mistake in art

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.12477465]

>>12477420
Obviously we all would like to hear what the Iliad and Psalms sounded like as songs, but medium distinction was inevitable regardless

[Anonymous No.12477466]

>>12474920
How could anyone interested in art fail to be interested in gaming? In the promise of an art form in which the audience constantly and materially recreates the structure of the "finished" work? The potential is enormous. So, also, the potential for failure. Most of the videogames we see now are the equivalent of the tedious, inept, and often unintentionally farcical film melodramas of the twentieth century's first fifth. They are cinematic gaming, like theatrical film, and they will, mercifully, be forgotten. But we are entering the wonderfully tasty period during which individuals capable of doing so first begin to define the art's essential features.

In games like "Off" we see the crowning of a newborn art form, the first form that materially demands, that can materially demand, intellectual participation from the audience. Film is an "authoritarian medium," but one can still "tune out" from a film while ostensibly "watching" it. The more simplistic, labor-reproducing videogames are still susceptible of this, and even games as well made as "Off" still retain deterministic features like repetitive leveling mechanics. But this game also demonstrates what is properly unique about the art, the glimmerings of which first appeared in the late nineties: agency. "Off" takes this rudimentary premise even further: what if, instead of simply telling the player a story, we can use videogames as an arena of moral experimentation that exists beyond the relative grasp of the law? What if we can demand that the entire intellectuality of the player be brought to bear on the ethical challenge of the game? It is along this path that video games will assuredly develop into the bar none greatest communicative art form. That is, if the art can be kept to this path.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.12477556]

>>12477466
Games are a more limited medium than film precisely because they must limited to what is reasonably controlled by the consumer. Thanks

[Anonymous No.12477573]

>>12477556
That's merely a technical limitation. We're coming closer to surmounting it every day.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.12477621]

>>12477573
Not really. And it's not like other mediums couldn't and haven't incorporated audience participation, but let's not pretend Shakespeare would be as sophisticated if the characters had to be written for audience control.

[Anonymous No.12477629]

>>12477573
You won’t because art house games can’t exist, the lowest level developers who do indie are all soulless desperate halfwits who would rather be working for big studios. its nothing like film and can never approach it, film can’t approach literature, literature poetry and poetry painting, sculpture and dance

[Anonymous No.12477635]

>>12477466
Something that is designed to make money can't be called art.

[Anonymous No.12477649]

>>12477621
VR is a real, contemporary attempt to move past the limitations of the controller. And I think it's fool hardy to try to compare disparate media. "Tone poems" and paintings that "represent" pieces of music are universally terrible. Video games may very well share this fate, and become a vacuous hybrid of musical technicality (the controller-instrument) and cinematic narrative. But virtual reality could result in a situation where the audience can be almost literally immersed in the artist's universe in way that film simply cannot compare to.

Audience participation never caught on in the past because it wasn't hard-coded into any media. Nothing about music, theater, or film necessitates audience participation; it isn't an essential characteristic of any of these media.

[Anonymous No.12477685]

>>12477465
distinction sure specificity no

[Anonymous No.12477688]

>>12477466
>define the art's essential features.
dropped

[Anonymous No.12477694]

>>12477635
says who

[Anonymous No.12477695]

>>12477635
that's silly

[Anonymous No.12477701]

>>12477649
video games don't necessitate audience participation either. the actual visual aspects of video games don't matter since it's all there in the code. that is technically where the 'art' lies, in the balls

[Anonymous No.12477708]

>>12477701
That's like saying film making is nothing but editing.

[Anonymous No.12477712]

>>12477708
you wouldn't be wrong

[Anonymous No.12477737]

>>12477629
You're saying dance is the ultimate form of art?

[Anonymous No.12477742]

>>12477712
I would be wrong. Editing can only bring out what's already inherent in the footage. It's incredibly important, perhaps even the primary feature of film-making, but it isn't only editing. If the director, cinematographer, composer (these being the major three producing raw material for editing) can't work together well and keep strictly to the idea of the film, there will be very little worth editing.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.12477768]

>>12477635
For most of the day history artists were professionals who did work mainly on commission. The Greek playwrights were not normal

[Anonymous No.12477863]

>>12477742
you've misunderstood my point. i'm talking about where the actual 'art' lies not whether there are other aspects to the final form of the thing. the systems involved in mimesis are the 'art' and what matters most to the art-ness. there is painting, then there is art, e.g. and usually in painting this had to do with the use of line

[Anonymous No.12477883]

>>12477420
What are you talking about? it's important to describe mediums when discussing art. Literature involves books, graphic novels involves comics, films involve movies, and video games are video game. Not everything has to be intellectually stimulating, in fact most games fail commercially for doing that.

[Anonymous No.12477892]

Stop trying to make videogames into art you fucking asshole. I just want to play cool vidya that tries to stimulate me via gameplay.

[Anonymous No.12477912]

Are there any video game rpgs with a better or similar level of writing or even an equal narrative?

The issue i have with rpgs is that gameplay is generally so lacking these not even serviceable narratives aren't enough for me to make it through.

[Anonymous No.12477919]

>>12477912
>playing games for narratives

that's like reading for plot, just off yourself

[Anonymous No.12477950]

>>12477919
4/10 you get a (You)

[Anonymous No.12477952]

>>12477863
Even if you define technique along the strictest lines, an editor cannot make a film alone in the same way that a painter can paint alone. Likewise with videogames.

[Anonymous No.12477966]

>>12477950
street fighter 2 had no plot it's still one of the greatest games of the 90s if not all time, face it you're just a low skill midwit looking for interactive tv

[Anonymous No.12477969]

>>12477883
i'm talking about medium specificity. look it up if you have to

[Anonymous No.12477971]

>>12477966
i mean i can't really relate because i hate fighting game so arguing with me is just going to be an uphill battle. lets agree to disagree.

[Anonymous No.12477973]

>>12477420
So you'd look at a statue and say "fantastic book!" and the fault is culture?

[Anonymous No.12477975]

>>12477952
a single person can certainly make a film single-handedly. prior to the 19th century often multiple people worked on a single painting in workshops even if it is finished or signed by the master, so single-creator theory is not useful in discussing art

[Anonymous No.12477977]

>>12477919
I don't? it's simply hard to ignore a truly shitty plot without great gameplay and design.

[Anonymous No.12477982]

>>12477973
please do some rudimentary googling

[Anonymous No.12477987]

>>12477969
yes i get that, but its important to have terms for certain mediums. literature is deeply connected to books, so if someone talking about literature you don't need to second guess what medium a person is talking about.

[Anonymous No.12478022]

>>12477975
Can I ask you what you mean by "actual art" then? The aspects necessary for a "finished" product, the things which must be incorporated for the work to be recognized in a particular medium, seem just as necessary to me as the most rudimentary aspects of the art. A painting that's nothing but lines is a sketch; a video game that's nothing but code is an exercise in computer science.

[Anonymous No.12478065]

>>12477987
that doesn't matter. the OP prompt is how is it not literature, even if it has a deep connection to books. it has that connection because of its history, but literature refers to the written word which video games generally have

[Anonymous No.12478082]

>>12477420
Non-overlapping magisteria is a mistake.

[Anonymous No.12478160]

>>12478022
necessary as in has properties of some given category, sure, but that category (to me) is separate from the one of 'art', as in having the property of 'art-ness' that can be shared between different media. else you risk introducing into the discussion of film-as-art people's holiday video which is (probably) not art. a painting that is lines is a sketch sure but it does not prevent it from being art if it is not complete, 'finished', etc., see pic e.g.

the art-ness is, basically, mimesis, but that which requires or is allowed by an understanding of metaphysics. in present day this has a lot to do with systems, esp. the 'human system', e.g. in a 'natural system', cybernetics, environmental preservation, preservation of (indigenous) cultures, contract theory, the subconscious or organic algorithm, analytics (including sports), the 'open' western system...

beauty and expression are an old game, and are exhausted. beauty is primarily the drive of consumerism rather than art. it used to be a shortcut to describe the ideal, which is a metaphysical idea. expression is a strange one that came out of modern ideas of the human subject (in a modern liberal economy) and still owes to metaphysical ideas of genius, spirit, inspiration, etc. of a rich inner world, but ignores for whatever reason the systems from which it borrows, the artist as bricoleur. it is hard to say that modernism turned art on its head when the bulk of it still exists as oil on canvas, etc.

bricolage, in film it is the editing of footage. the film itself is an edit of living present, 'life with all the boring bits cut out' or whatever, a mimesis. the point of mimesis though is not a simple re-presentation of nature. a mirror reflection is not art. art is nature filtered through systems of knowledge (people), subject to metaphysics and 'recreated' in ways that are meaningful, to be reappropriated by people, people as nature. that is the economy of art, always.

the problem here is this is interpreted by metaphysics where the ultimate goal is 'pure presence', 'pure being' etc and you can see the result of this in contemporary art, where the art simply just is what it is and nothing more. supposedly, anyway, because the vast literature of art tells us this so the result is a false one. we cannot pretend.

coding is art deconstructed, to me this is the avant-garde. this is art 'beyond' its metaphysics, beyond its literature, where itself recreates its own metaphysics, the rules of why things are shown as how they are shown, etc. the 'true reality' beyond the show of the video game or whatever it is coded. it is not metaphysics per se, but an imitation, mimesis of the metaphysical system, making it art of the highest order, the avant-garde. 'philosophy' is the task of language reaching beyond itself, to clarify itself. art is the same in different media, it clarifies itself, the artist an agent of justice against tyrannies in art, representation, institutions, etc. blah blah

[Anonymous No.12478191]

>>12478160
It seems like you also greatly respect the potential of video games as an art form, we're just coming at it from completely different angles. I personally don't have a problem with at least entertaining the idea that people's holiday footage is art. Bad art, but art nonetheless. I also think that it shows an immense amount of skill to direct a commercial well, in a way that really catches the viewers attention, despite the fact that the content of commercials is entirely market related. The holiday footage of most people is boring because "most people" are average. But I don't think I'd mind seeing László Kovács' trip to Mexico (hypothetically).

[Anonymous No.12478266]

>>12478191
one could argue that holiday footage is art but something that counts against it is people are being their genuine expressive selves (or acting because there's a camera around) and despite this it is still unremarkable because people act in pretty similar ways without thinking about it, value the same images, etc. there is a good degree of training in art, technical or otherwise e.g. the 'rich inner life' i alluded to earlier is a kind of training even if expressive art is to most viewers not technically proficient as academic training; the self testing and developing the self, system against system and the rest. even though it is kind of a joke, calling other people NPCs does ring a little true. most don't think about how they think, and this is the case with a lot of people who would call others NPCs as well

i forget who but someone exhibited a work that was a massive amount of sunset photos taken from flickr. photography when it is 'deadpan' to me is art photography rather than composition, etc

i think anything with coding, a system, etc. is the avant-garde of art, and thus the best presently to illustrate art-ness. i like a lot of visual art from the 60s and 70s when system-based practices became a thing, institutional critique, etc. just nothing has really continued that trajectory in a way that is satisfactory to this project. again comes into play the idea of people testing themselves. it is easy to shit on a gallery floor and say you are critiquing the institution, but as you can probably tell from reading everyone else's criticisms of contemporary art by their own 'examples' of something that is 'legitimate' by the rules as currently viewed that we've all thought of it before. NPCs.

so when it comes to video games we think of them in certain ways, ways that are 'legitimate' in the same way, judging narrative, art, music, mechanics, etc. but not taking the rules of legitimacy to their greatest extent, forgetting the code except when it produces bugs or there is good/bad AI. currently i think the best games are those where people are competing with each other. for single player speedrunning is where the 'art' comes in, a deconstruction of a deconstruction, which i mean in a derridean way not tv tropes

oh tropes are a good example of people not thinking. a tyranny of representational strategies. in post-modern society the meaning of a work is the artist's personal connection between images whether those connections are philosophically 'true' or consistent or whatever. too much trust in 'personal expression' or personal response, etc, too much trust in the sovereignty of the self

[Anonymous No.12478415]

>>12478266
>photography when it is 'deadpan' to me is art photography rather than composition, etc
I think I get you now. Taking up the traditional techniques naively, as though they were fresh off the rack, is insipid. The "art" is in the system implied by the work, which video games lay bare in the form of code. The code deconstructs art in general, its systemic aspect, speed running deconstructs the code.

The idea that a personal connection to a creative act is all that is needed to legitimize it as worthy art is absolutely false, and I detest this aspect of contemporary art theory. Form is paramount, and system is form. I like what Tarkovsky said about it: "An artist has a duty to be calm. All excitement felt about a subject must be sublimated into the Olympian calm of form." Even art that deconstructs formalist aspects in art takes on that artistic form.

[Anonymous No.12478461]

>>12474920
Because it's better than literature.

[Anonymous No.12478606]

>>12478415
the code desconstructs art as an exercise in philosophy. it is a language without a present speaking subject. it is not a signifier, it is simply read as it is, while also not being 'present' in and of itself -because- it is a language without a present speaking subject, without a dialectic or logos. it is read repetitively and endlessly. i say speedrunning is a further deconstruction because of the double reading... obviously the coder has an intended meaning (the game) and however the player has the game read the code it must be legitimate because it is allowed by the code. but often with sequence breaks, literally writing code with the game itself, exploiting overflows or underflows, memory, etc. the human narrative intention or metaphysical intention or presuppositions can be ignored, exploited, etc. one has to think in a completely different way to write a code that runs; there can be no shortcuts in the thinking because machines do not share our metaphysics. it is democratised. same with multiplayer games, where it is played so often and frequently by so many players that metas are produced. it is overwhelming the rate that code is read by a machine, and overwhelming again still that so many machines can be doing this with the goal of the player to find any means to beat other players, which again involves different ways of thinking. modern art could try to naively escape metaphysics by ignoring the genre of history painting but it still is subject to the same metaphysics of presence, the same onto-theology. code is thus the avant-garde of the avant-garde, where it has picked up from where it left off. coincidently the systems-based art of the 60s and 70s intervenes when modern art (and with it, painting and ab ex formalism) is on the way out, when photography/sculpture take over as the primary media.

there are some interesting consequences with this, signifer/signified, as i have probably repeated too many times already. photography supposedly represents things 'as they are', sculpture simply is 'as it is'. suddenly there is no need for form or formalism. the only thing required of code is that it can be read by a machine, no beauty or metaphysics. certainly that is a calmness even if the scale is overwhelming.

i forget how bricolage relates now but it too is a calmness even if it can have a critical edge it is dispassionate and distant, cool. deadpan. perhaps that is where it comes in. the moving human subject picks things according to some internal system of values. that is what i am doing with art history in any case, where the history of art is art-ness. 'contemporary art', true to its name, presents itself without a history, or rather ignores it. art history is something to be read and read again until a meta emerges. not a meta-narrative with an origin and telos however.

[Anonymous No.12478621]

>>12476439
It isn't what I was implying.

[Anonymous No.12478632]

What makes this not a videogame?

[Anonymous No.12479757]

>>12474903
Cite some of its strongest writing in the thread for us. Let's see what happens

[Anonymous No.12480265]

Read the book version someone made. It doesn't make a good book at all in that format despite people saying it is one.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.12480288]

>>12478065
Unless you could buy and enjoy the script, it's not literature.

[Anonymous No.12480367]

>>12474903
Video games, especially today, are designed to stimulate the pleasure responses of the brain. Where has a book might teach you something or produce vivid imagery in your mind's eye (bolstering complex linguistic and visual structures in your mind) a video game places you into the limited scope of the game world. Video games ask nothing of the player they simply present them with predefined choices and limited possibilities, they offer the player nothing outside of the game world. Many gamers spend two to eight hours a day playing video games for years on end; if you're one of those people l challenge you to present me with one thing that you've been able to take away from video games that's improved your life, taught you something about yourself, or provided you with meaningful insight into the world around you. Video games are fine for what they are but don't pretend there anything more.

[Anonymous No.12480695]

I get the idea that semiotics are central to telling a narrative in video games in way that doesn't divorce the narrative from the gameplay.

[Anonymous No.12480701]

What makes this not literature?

[Anonymous No.12480969]

>>12474903
Just because a game is well written does not mean it's literature.

If you took the entire Placescape script and layered it out, it would make no sense unless major cuts were made.

see: Planescape Torment novelization

[Anonymous No.12480993]

>>12480288
how's that? because you can't turn the pages? please

[Anonymous No.12481665]

>>12479757

>The sphere wrinkles in your hands, the skin of the sphere peeling away into tears and turning into a rain of bronze that encircles you. Each droplet, each fragment that enters you, you feel a new memory stirring, a lost love, a forgotten pain, an ache of loss - and with it, comes the great pressure of regret, regret of careless actions, the regret of suffering, regret of war, regret of death, and you feel your mind begin buckling from the pressure - so MUCH, all at once, so much damage done to others... so much so an entire FORTRESS may be built from such pain. And suddenly, through the torrent of regrets, you feel the first incarnation again. His hand, invisible and weightless, is upon your shoulder, steadying you. He doesn't speak, but with his touch, you suddenly remember your name... and it is such a simple thing, not at all what you thought it might be, and you feel yourself suddenly comforted. In knowing your name, your true name, you know that you have gained back perhaps the most important part of yourself. In knowing your name, you know yourself, and you know, now, there is very little you cannot do.

[Anonymous No.12482301]

>>12477556
I don't think you really understand how video games work or what can be done with them on a technical level these days. Either that or you just aren't very imaginative.

[Anonymous No.12482582]

>>12477420
>how dare people examine, categorize, and thus form standards towards the works of man!

[Anonymous No.12482591]

>>12480969
Everything can be considered literature as also everything can be considered art. They are purely subjective defenitions. Its up to you if you recognize it as such.
Also it wouldnt surpise if the asmr chick in that pic browsed this place. She is very cute and smart desu.