/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14787562]

/lit/ video games that validate the art form?

[Anonymous No.14787573]

>>14787562
Patapon, Okami, and Elite Beat Agents.

[Anonymous No.14787576]

>>14787562
Outer Wilds

[Anonymous No.14787613]

>>14787562
Anyone played Talos Principle? It’s an enjoyable game where, between puzzles, you’re asked some philosophical questions that the game will question/ critique you on.
I’d hesitate to say it validates games as an art-form though since the puzzle and philosophy sections never really interact with one another and the philosophy only has a limited amount of answers you can provide.

[Anonymous No.14787658]

>>14787562
I'd have to say Fallout: New Vegas in terms of genre fiction, I guess. Some of the companion quests and their stories are great stories of tradegy (mainly Raul and Boone's). Vault 19 is probably the only successful and interesting bit of "walking sim" i've seen as a short science fiction story, even if it takes from "The Lottery". And then the Survivalist's Story. It can't compete with most of the big forms of literature, but it's a step in the right direction at least... though the main plot's not tight...

[Anonymous No.14787706]

>>14787562
>video games
>art
keep telling yourself that, brainlets
anything to justify your unhealthy habit of wasting time on that shit, right?

[Anonymous No.14787727]

>>14787706
I can see if you mean multiplayer games or typical AAA garbo, but video games are definitely a new dimension of interaction. ((Art)) in a sense. Of course, just as one could consider a painting made from streaks of human shit can be considered art, i guess you decide what's "good" and "bad" art. I consider it art.

>>14787613
Played this. Thought it was great. Some of the puzzles were fucking devilish. A very nice, uplifting existentialist story.

[Anonymous No.14787737]

Problem to me is
video game has 2 parts: narrative and gameplay

Only a small number of games, I feel, have such a strong narrative / such cohesive, fitting game rules that an effect similar to literature is created.
Portal is one such game. Everything you do is related to GladOS’ voice, which is the narrative side. And even if it is mostly delivered in a pretty funny way, having to destroy the companion cube caused a very real emotional reaction in me.

Planescape: Torment may also qualify, but mostly because I was mostly confused by the combat and my companions tended to just beat it anyways. So what remained were visits to a lot of memorable places, and a sort of visual novel with a very unique Science Fiction story.

Deus Ex is another game with very good dialogue and scenery, but I think that the gameplay, although good, is already a distraction from what feels like 'art' about this game.
But if you try to play really stealthy, of course, it is quite fitting and you will listen to lots of idle guards dialogue etc. just because you’re sitting and hiding, waiting for an opportunity to slip by. In this regard it was designed quite brilliantly.


Finally, there are those games where simply the gameplay feels like a work of art, in the same vein that Chess itself could be said to be a piece of art: Such elegant, yet simple rules, which have given rise to many memorable matches which in turn are hailed as 'art' by people, too.
So this would be classics like Quake or StarCraft: Brood War.
Or recently I played something called 'Mindustry' and was awed by the simple rules which made for so many fun mental discoveries in the vein of: Oh, I can do it like this!
But honestly in this territory everyone has their favorite bunch of games they really love playing and feel are just so much fun.
But this is not comparable to literature, because there are no emotions evoked or thoughts provoked regarding your own life.
The best relation you may be able to draw is how a game such as Go is often regarded as a 'philosophical' game – perhaps there is such philosophical video game play too.

[Anonymous No.14787745]

>>14787706
>he said complaining about bad habits while indulging on his own bad habits shitposting on a waste of time
Glass houses

[Anonymous No.14787763]

>>14787658
Too bad about the awful gameplay

[Anonymous No.14787793]

>>14787763
Eh mediocre or serviceable is a better term for it. The glitches and buggy state/stuttering though are completely fucking unacceptable though

[Anonymous No.14787797]

>>14787763
Yeah that too. It's moddable to hell and back, and it's a lot better than FO3, but goddamn, you can only shine a turd so much...

>>14787737
Also this. Some of it comes down to the design, and how the games use their elements. This is why most walking sims are ass. They have nothing to offer in terms of an interactive experience on top of crap writing. But yeah, a lot of things with video games come down to design and the tech...

[Anonymous No.14787829]

>>14787745
At least here I learn about new books and philosophers. You don't learn shit when you're playing video games.

[Anonymous No.14787858]

>>14787562
>>14787562
Certainly not high art, it's basically a pastiche of the film genre with too much "comic" relief, but it puts you in the story in a way film or literature really can't.

Since it deletes your save every time you start a journey, if you die at any point all the shit you've collected is lost, and it takes several playthroughs to accumulate enough money to build a really formidable weapon. The weapon is the only thing that can be kept between playthroughs and
both stats and unlocked moves stay with it, so if you don't make it to the next checkpoint intact, you really lose something.

In watching samurai films, it's easy to think the hero should take on any fight, no matter the odds, but when a single bad match can kill you and wipe out all your past effort, you have to actually weigh doing the right thing against losing everything. Capturing the need to stay silent, lose face, or run away, or steal is something, or abandon a goal in the middle is something hard to capture.

The setting is as beautiful as the tech of the time would allow it to be, and the soundtrack is quite good. There are even a few poignant moments, depending how you play through it. It's a unique experience.

[Anonymous No.14787869]

>>14787858

[Anonymous No.14787896]

>>14787829
I dunno... The Total War series of strategy games, particularly the historical ones, come with an encyclopedia for help, not to mention most of the time they're made with autistic detail when it comes to accuracy... better than nothing, maybe...

[Anonymous No.14787898]

>>14787829
Nigger you don’t learn shit here either, you hearing from secondary sources most of the time who might teach you wrong as well as the fact /lit/ tends to force your mind to conform to certain molds and either give you positive or negative stimuli to train you like a mere animal rather than any truly intellectual reflection upon the information. In sum, use /lit/ only as a place to find books that you would find obscure then read them for yourself rather than listening to a bunch of retarded memers and think for yourself. Or don’t, my own vanity perhaps may blind me to some knowledge you have discovered here. Just think for yourself no matter what and always think critically about info you learn here and fact check it

[Anonymous No.14787903]

>>14787562
None because a video game is not literature, it's a different medium

[Anonymous No.14787920]

>>14787562
>/lit/ - Literally Anything Other Than Literature

[Anonymous No.14787928]

>>14787920
>he doesn’t know that the best discussion you can have are in off topic threads
How new are you?

[Anonymous No.14787930]

Dear Esther

never played it but the trailer felt pretty /lit/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7VJ4lP-05A

[Anonymous No.14787941]

>>14787930
It’s a walking sim, rather listen to an audiobook than play a game with little to no interactivity

[Anonymous No.14787972]

I don't think the medium of interactivity can really become art until you have AI directors that are sophisticated enough to push you narrative and vision regardless of the players actions.

[Anonymous No.14788002]

>>14787829
>You don't learn shit when you're playing video games
>Educational games are not games
>Experimenting to discover rules and developing strategies to overcome challenges in arbitrary systems is not learning
>practicing timing and coordination is less productive than pissing away time on shit websites to learn what you could already learn by googling "philosophers"

[Anonymous No.14788043]

>>14787562
It has a lot of stupid memes going around but Undertale’s “branching path” system demonstrates lots of potential for the medium. The intended route of the average player is to initially play it like a JRPG, attempting to spare outside of cases where it appears impossible (such as Toriel or Undyne), then go for a new playthrough after the “EXP means EXecution Points” reveal. With Pacifist acting as a blatant “correct” ending.

Where it gets interesting is genocide and the place it would have in the game if Undertale wasn’t so big that everyone knows of it through word of mouth. In order for a player to discover genocide, they would need to discover “but nobody came” by grinding even past the point of random encounters becoming extremely sparse. The genocide route can only be discovered by completionists looking to see every ending. And throughout it, it feels as though the game is actively fighting you in a mechanical and narrative sense.

[Anonymous No.14788066]

>>14787658
i actually came here to post this. i think that new vegas specifically almost plays like a weird amalgam of genre fiction and alternative history and if it was put into print, it would be considered a classic of the genre. Some of the stories and worldbuilding are true kino, especially Graham's redemption, the Zion Arc, the entire DLC arc in general, "letting go", groups struggling to uphold tradition in a changing world, etc.

[Anonymous No.14788091]

If video games rely on narrative with all these 'open ended' and nonlinear titles, the most they can aspire to be is a choose your own adventure novel. And as Ebert point out that medium has practically no artistic merit. This is why aestheticism is your only hope.

[Anonymous No.14788134]

My favorite game right now is apex legends

[Anonymous No.14788148]

Disco Elysium
Rain World
LISA
Return of the Obra Dinn
Papers, Please
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Dwarf Fortress
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
La-Mulana
The Shivah (if you can make it past bad voice acting)

[Anonymous No.14788184]

>>14788043
I think that just displays Toby Fox's misunderstanding of the medium. Gaming is a series of abstract tasks which can be concretized somewhat, however completionism will always rely in the abstract. That people forsake what the creators paints the task as is only natural, and the "genocide" part of the genocide route is just Toby Fox holding a mirror to himself. The revelation ought to be that the creator is only fooling himself by putting moral barriers over completionist endings. Instead Toby seems to be think players who do genocide route are evil because...they've abstractified the game.

People don't kill to kill, Toby, they'll do anything to get anything, the killing part was just you.

Spec Ops: The Line did this much better by having a far more specific cultural example of critique, and a better understanding of player mentality. To this day people are still butthurt and confused they didn't get to be the hero despite the shooty gameplay. Just look at how upset people are that the "bad moment" didn't have a moral choice to do good. Spec Ops is so effective that players genuinely can't abstractify it.

[Anonymous No.14788230]

>>14787562
The only truly artistic video game is Silent Hill 2
Not for simply the aesthetics or music but for the story and themes. I am not one of those “video games are art!” People, nor do I even enjoy video games to any great extent, or play them frequently.
Silent Hill 2 is an amazing thing that is actually scary, unlike most horror lit which while is awesome, I don’t find to be genuinely scary.
The monsters, the music, the design of everything, the dialogue, it is really the best. Video games are a medium that uses art to create a game. Chess uses art (the pieces and the board) to create a playable, interactive experience. You could hardly argue that the game itself is ‘art’ but that does not invalidate chess as an amazing game

[Anonymous No.14788254]

>>14788184
>here’s a moral choice
i choose the nice option
>sorry sunshine... this here ain’t the sandbox on the playground. on the battlefield, no one’s there to give you a gold star and a hug when you play nice. this is war. it isn’t pretty. you’re not a human, you’re a killing instrument deployed to act and obey, the only time you should be thinking for yourself is when you’re figuring out to how carry out your orders. pull the fucking trigger soldier, put a fat one right between that sobbing emerati bitch’s eyes, cmon
okay, I’ll do something bad
>wow don’t you feel awful? isn’t this emotional for you? isn’t this game making you think?

[Anonymous No.14788275]

>>14788184
Genocide is literally a story about the avatar of a player viewing video game characters as nothing more than that committing genocide, that the player is given the choice to act out. It’s provided to give weight to choosing not to commit it.

[Anonymous No.14788350]

>>14788254
This is a good post. The best comedy speaks to true things and you hit the nail on the head. I know a lot of ‘irony’ is on this site but I am not being ironic

[Anonymous No.14788367]

>>14787562
Soma, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus
>>14787706
Video games are the highest form of art, booklet.

[Anonymous No.14788385]

>>14788367
How can you have this opinion and still have trash taste in video games?

[Anonymous No.14788420]

>>14788385
I don't expect plebs to understand my love of slow comfycore games, only for them to submit to my objective opinion.

[Anonymous No.14788489]

>>14787941
why? is there something wrong with museums? why not listen to an audiobook that has a semi-interactive visual component where you get to walk around a virtual space and examine the details at your own pace?

it's so fashionable for video game people to complain about games not being "pure" enough but video games at their purest are shit, all the "game design theory" that pertains to them is either hopelessly retarded or ruthlessly manipulative, and the further a game gets from being a gamey game for gamey gamers the better it is. the problem with something like pst isn't that it has too much writing and not enough "gameplay" but that the writing is unnecessarily glued to a crappy dnd simulator where you have to spend hours on busywork like moving potions between inventories and clicking on little sprite monsters. deus ex would be vastly improved if you spent the whole game wandering through offices trying to piece together a conspiracy from people's emails instead of having to go click on some mj12 guys in a sewer to make them fall over. bless everyone who's trying to make games less like games because performing repeated button presses so that a software toy gives you a gold star is just another form of compulsive masturbation.

[Anonymous No.14788517]

>>14788002
games teach you games, nothing else. for example, people who play these historical strategy games know less about history than the average person because a normie simply doesn't know anything about the subject whereas the gamer has been actively filling his head with complete nonsense that he thinks is knowledge.

[Anonymous No.14788559]

>>14788517
Why do games need to teach you something? Play is an important part of the human experience, not everything has to mean some knowledge ticking exercise.

[Anonymous No.14788583]

>>14787562
Unironically MGS3

[Anonymous No.14788602]

>>14788489
It’s because when I want to watch a movie I’ll watch a movie. When I want to play a video game an illusion of control of anything other than my camera and what space I can walk to is frankly rather boring. At least throw in a puzzle of some sort or make the exploration truly compelling. Otherwise, stick to movies or arthouse flicks

[Anonymous No.14788615]

>>14788517
>games teach you games, nothing else.
That's kind of true, but not totally. Virtually any real-world problem can be reduced to a logistics and resource-management problem. Any games that involve strategy practice this. Also, timing and coordination stuff like fighting games and DDR truly build coordination and sense of timing. Simulations aren't the real thing, of course, but that's an unreasonable expectation.
Some strategies are transferrable, some aren't. Playing a variety of games even helps build an intuition for that.
> people who play these historical strategy games know less about history than the average person because a normie simply doesn't know anything about the subject
So having a basic understanding and a number of misconceptions is less knowledge than none at all? That's wrong.

>the gamer has been actively filling his head with complete nonsense that he thinks is knowledge.
So how is that any different from any other kind
of fiction?

[Anonymous No.14788712]

>>14788559
>Play is an important part of the human experience
yes, and why? because play teaches you things.

engaging with video games is called "playing" but video games aren't play. play is creative, stimulating and ever-evolving to match the needs of your development. video games are a method of deriving unwarranted satisfaction from meaningless tasks. that's why ideas like "high scores", "experience points" and "achievements" spread through all games like wildfire until they've become completely fundamental to the concept of "video game" and platform owners will routinely not even allow you to ship a game without them. the purpose of a video game is to establish a false notion of "value" that only makes sense within the game and then hand out "rewards" that only make sense within that game's little pocket world which you have been purposefully confused into thinking has real meaning. and then you click another button and you are "rewarded" again. and again. and again. this isn't "playful", it's masturbatory. it's a black hole that hours and weeks and years of your life disappear into. achievement unlocked!

[Anonymous No.14788792]

>>14788615
>Virtually any real-world problem can be reduced to a logistics and resource-management problem. Any games that involve strategy practice this.

games have taught me well how to manage scarce resources, said the gamer before clicking the button labeled "dota2 - 3643 hours played"

also yes, confidence in a falsehood is worse that conscious ignorance. i would tell you where you can learn more about that but you've heard that advice a thousand times already and ignored it.

[Anonymous No.14788840]

>>14788792
See if you can create a post that actually supports the position you're trying to argue.
This might be a helpful resource for someone at your level.

[Anonymous No.14788872]

>>14787562
Red Dead Redemption 2

[Anonymous No.14788927]

>>14788840
i already did. the idea that games teach resource management is contradicted by basic observations of the resource management abilities of game players. the people who invented speed-running - a way to spend 10000 hours on a single game instead of 10 while simultaneously fetishizing "efficiency" - are not better but worse at resource management than the general public. when you spend all this time with software devices designed explicitly to scramble your understanding of what does and doesn't have value to you - to make you think that fifty real dollars for a hundred imaginary gold coins is a good trade, for example, although all games do this on some level, not just those f2p scams - then it does not matter what trivial amount of "skill" you develop along they way, because one way or another - into the black hole goes your life.

[Anonymous No.14788973]

The only correct option.

[Anonymous No.14789027]

>>14788927
>i already did. The idea that games teach resource management is contradicted...

You truly did not. Look at the conclusions you are trying to get to, and look at how you are going about arguing toward them. It's extremely clear that whatever YOU have been doing, you don't understand how to think critically. Sure, not all games are beneficial. Some are downright detrimental. So what? Compared to what? You aren't proving anything, you're just throwing out trivial examples. Just like I could name a number of cases of bad history, historical fiction, and philosophy as "evidence" that all reading is valueless.

[Anonymous No.14789041]

>>14788350
Unironically thank you for the kind words anon

[Anonymous No.14789053]

Alpha centauri

[Anonymous No.14789078]

>>14787562
the first Deus Ex

[Anonymous No.14789104]

Hylics
Kentucky Route Zero
Paratopic
Pathologic

[Anonymous No.14789130]

>>14787562
Brace yourself for literary magnificence.

[Anonymous No.14789137]

>>14788973
based

[Anonymous No.14789145]

>>14789027
you are not engaging with anything i say and the "but i can think of bad books too" thing is a cherry on top. we cannot have a conversation, really, because i have developed a model of what a gamer's relationship with games is and you have not - despite spending thousands upon thousands of hours of your life on them - so that even if my position was wrong you have nothing to offer in its place. you cannot tell me where i'm wrong because you've never seriously considered this topic that has dominated your life since you were a child and you are struggling to avoid thinking about it even now, deploying instead a flurry of generic cornered nerd deflection tactics - "but what if other things are also bad?! what about those other things, huh?". we're not talking about other things. we're talking about what you're doing to yourself when you play a video game.

[Anonymous No.14789214]

>>14789145
Christ, you're stupid. Read what we both wrote.
To paraphrase
>You can't learn anything from video games
Yes you can, here are some examples
>Those examples are never true because they're not always true.
You are bad at logic
>I am not bad at logic, Here are two more examples of people not learning a particular thing from video games.
You are bad at logic. Look how your flawed reasoning would identically support an outcome I'm sure we both disagree with
>AHA! Look at you deflecting! You're deflecting because I'm so smart and you're a hopeless addict!

You are bad at logic. You have made it clear it is a waste of time exchanging posts with you.

[Anonymous No.14789285]

Pathologic, I think, is a pretty awesome example of a game that presents itself, quite effectively, as art.

It's such high art that I quit playing it because I had no fucking goddamn idea what in the goddamn fuck was going on.

[Anonymous No.14789492]

>>14787562
Disco Elysium comes to mind.

[Anonymous No.14789495]

>>14789214
nope, that's not an accurate summary at all. my point is that the specific relationship one has with video games but not other fiction, what you pay for when you buy a video game, the experience of being made to feel strong when you are not strong, brave when you are not brave, smart when you are not smart - that can only happen through active deception, a scrambling of values, making the worthless appear valuable. this basic tactic is found everywhere, across the entire landscape of games and game culture, and it renders "education" fundamentally impossible - because you learn by experiencing success and failure and adjusting to it and you cannot trust the experience of success to propel you towards the truth when you are within a virtual landscape designed specifically to LIE TO YOU ABOUT WHAT SUCCESS IS IN ORDER TO INDUCE PLEASURE. what you call "bad logic" is absolutely correct here - if it's not always true, it's never true, any hypothetical "good" knowledge delivered through video games is made unusable by the bad - because you cannot tell them apart, because you will never know whether you are successful in a video game because you have learned something real or because it's designed to make you successful regardless. the lessons of the lie world cannot be applied outside of the lie world. games teach you games.

this reasoning does not apply to books etc because books are not constructed to induce false impressions of your own ability and success and games overwhelmingly are. anyway i have to go to sleep now, you are a shit conversation partner but i still worked out some half-developed thoughts in the process so thanks.

[Anonymous No.14789602]

>>14789495
>that's not an accurate summary at all. my point is [thing I never said even once before now]
>false, masturbatory assertion
>false, masturbatory assertion
>A strictly logically false proposition is good logic in this case and good and bad logic are a matter of opinion
>false, masturbatory assertion
>this reasoning does not apply to books etc because books are not constructed to induce false impressions of your own ability and success and games overwhelmingly are.
>what is self-help?
>what is 9/10ths of philosophy?
>what is 9/10ths of fiction?
>what is non-peer-reviewed science and history?
>what are bestsellers?
>Because there is at least one extra layer of abstraction, these are totally different!
>I can tell true from false and you can't, notice how I have used logic throughout my concise, coherent posts
based idiot.

[Anonymous No.14789616]

The plot is only ok, but the storytelling, atmosphere, music, and visuals are top-notch. It's very pithy in places.

[Anonymous No.14789663]

>>14787562
Can you Redditors FUCK OFF already? Stupid fat autistic manchildren.

[Anonymous No.14789673]

>>14787658
>>14788066
Please go back and play New Vegas for real this time. 90% of it is stupid bullshit like helping ghouls fly into outer space while a quirky scientist man thinks he's actually a bacon zombie monster person.

[Anonymous No.14789695]

>>14788872
Read Blood Meridian instead, if you somehow think sterile hollywood-tier garbage like RDR2 is "/lit/"

[Anonymous No.14789785]

>>14789695
The writing style is off-putting

[Anonymous No.14789845]

Video games have given me immersion in the story like no other medium has. Gatekeeping is retarded.

[Anonymous No.14789871]

>>14787928
>>he doesn’t know that the best discussion you can have are in off topic threads
Circlejerking over the same exact /v/core games every single time is not discussion.

[Anonymous No.14789882]

>>14787706
I spent a lot of time playing videogames, I've been doing it all my life, so I know what I'm talking about when I say that videogames aren't art. They definitely aren't.

[Anonymous No.14789954]

>>14789495
Anon, give it a fucking rest-- you are a dumbass. I thought you had finally learned your lesson after >>14789214, but I guess you are legitimately too stupid to know when to accept that you are wrong.

[Anonymous No.14789959]

>>14789663
What a thoughtful post, +5 gold to you my kind sir!

[Anonymous No.14789960]

>>14789882
They literally are, and admitting that categorical fact in no way cheapens media like literature or lends unwarranted validity to vidya as an artform. Even slam poetry is an art, and it's one of the most soulless voids of creative talent or understanding of the sublime the human race has ever managed to produce

[Anonymous No.14790041]

>>14789959
>/lit/ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE US PLEEEASE VIDEO GAMES ARE ART PLEEEEASE
Go the fuck back, this board was never about your infantile hobby.

[Anonymous No.14790049]

>>14789954
Where did that anon prove him wrong? All he did was simplify and strawman his entire argument.

[Anonymous No.14790065]

>>14789960
>They literally are
According to modernist definitions where shitting on a canvas constitutes as art, yes.

[Anonymous No.14790080]

I would honestly argue that older arcade style games with their simple gameplay are more artful than any modern day storytellings that are attempted. I think man could learn a great deal about the world and his place in it from something like Donkey Kong or DigDug.

[Anonymous No.14790085]

>>14788254
I’m the guy who posted Undertale but I feel like that misinterprets White Phosphorus. The point of White Phosphorus is that Walker was in a catch-22 between death and war crimes, and he failed to realize that the second option was war crimes in the heat of battle. You could argue that catch-22s are inherently unsatisfying game design, but the developers made that trade-off in order to put the player in Walker’s shoes. Though it is a bit hypocritical for that anon to criticize Undertale for asking it’s players not to 100% while holding up a game that can very easily be read as “never finishing the game is the most moral choice”

[Anonymous No.14790102]

>>14789960
Look, art.

[Anonymous No.14790112]

>>14790065
Explain to me the point you think you were making in this reply
How many more years are you midwits going to keep dragging this tired argument out for? Just how traumatized are you by the modern art movement, one which has had almost no cultural significance or popular acceptance in fucking decades, that you're going to keep acting shocked and offended by artists whose sole gimmick was causing shock and offense?
"something being bad can still be art? what about something REALLY bad, huh? what about that?"
Yeah you really got me there dude

>constituted as
Fucking pseuds I swear to god

[Anonymous No.14790118]

>>14790102
Kindly refer to >>14790112

[Anonymous No.14790165]

>>14790112
>Explain to me the point you think you were making in this reply
Claiming everything is art and/or has artistic merit undermines the very word itself, thus giving it no meaning. Please don't type like a flustered /v/edditor by the way, it's embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.14790187]

>>14788230
Horror sucks.

[Anonymous No.14790248]

>>14790165
>Claiming everything is art
A claim I have not made
>or has artistic merit
Another claim I have not made
>thus giving it no meaning
Letting it encompass that which you find disagreeable is not rendering the word meaningless you self-centered dolt
>don't type like a flustered /v/edditor by the way
Might be difficult to avoid since that is a board I haven't even visited since 2012 and know very little about

Art:
An instance (or the creation thereof) of physical form and/or a temporal series of events deliberately crafted to illicit an (at least in part) emotional reaction in a viewer

[Anonymous No.14790398]

>>14789871
>reply to a four hour old post
But why though

[Anonymous No.14790423]

>>14790248
>An instance (or the creation thereof) of physical form and/or a temporal series of events deliberately crafted to illicit an (at least in part) emotional reaction in a viewer
I absolutely despise this definition of art. It's based on a narrowminded assumption that all art is intended to have a "viewer", and that manipulative propaganda and high budget mass-produced movies based on extensive market research to illicit predicted reactions from their consumers (i.e. Avengers) somehow constitutes as "art".

[Anonymous No.14790543]

>>14790423
Jesus christ dude settle down and think this through calmly
Art is a cultural, social phenomenon. It is a form of communication
The creation of art is necessarily a dialogue between the creator and some abstracted notion of a viewer, regardless of if the finished work is intended to be locked away and never shown to another living soul. Art does not spontaneously emerge in children raised in total isolation for the same reason language doesn't; a totally closed social system has no reason to externalize, there isn't even a concept of an externality to interface with.
This does not mean art can't be made for purely personal gain
This does not mean art must be as broadly accessible as possible
This does not mean art must be commercially viable
This does not mean art must be viewed to be as such
This definition applies to all forms of art throughout the entirety of human history and even arguably extends to art-like behavior in other species like the bowerbird, if we feel comfortable equating a female bird's sexual excitement with an emotion

[Anonymous No.14790547]

>>14790543
>This does not mean art must be viewed to be as such
whoops, not sure what my plans were with this sentence

[Anonymous No.14790693]

>people listing single-player games as the highest of the genre

You misunderstand.

[Anonymous No.14790696]

>>14790543
>It is a form of communication

Filtered. The art is not contained in the sign, it is the sign

[Anonymous No.14790708]

>>14789882
'Coding' is the most advanced metaphysics we have, art is a metaphysical exercise, video games function by the coding, video games function by an advanced metaphysics, video games are art

[Anonymous No.14790714]

>>14787562
Silent Hill
Subarashiki Hibi
Kichikuou Rance
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite
Tekken 3
Doom
KOTOR (KOTOR 2 is shit fuck you)
Morrowind
Demon's Souls
Killer7
Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen
Metal Gear Solid

the list could go on

[Anonymous No.14790726]

>>14790696
>i'm claiming that art is the signified, not the sign
Weird inference my man. Not sure where you got it from
Again, my definition:
>An instance (or the creation thereof) of physical form and/or a temporal series of events deliberately crafted to illicit an (at least in part) emotional reaction in a viewer
If anything that's directly in line with what you're saying, although all of this is just semantics. It's irrelevant if the "art" lies in the sign, signified, form, or content. The important part is that these are all sub-elements of the larger artistic system, a holistic process of intent, substance, form, interpretation, imagination, belief, all mutually influencing each other with no strict hierarchy

[Anonymous No.14790732]

>>14787562
Planescape: Torment

[Anonymous No.14790741]

>>14789285
this is the best example itt

[Anonymous No.14790743]

>>14790726
>Not sure where you got it from
I didn't say that. I said '[art] is the sign'

>emotional reaction

Pointless. Most things illicit an emotional reaction. If it doesn't, has it failed? Kant would argue art works by disinterest.

[Anonymous No.14790753]

>>14790732
the only correct answer

[Anonymous No.14790763]

>>14790714
How the fuck is DOOM art and not entertainment?

[Anonymous No.14790769]

>>14790763
>there's a difference

[Anonymous No.14790776]

>>14790763
Doom is a Homeric gameplay experience and if you do not see the art in binary space partitioning you are not yet autistic enough

[Anonymous No.14790801]

>>14787562
The only video game I've played with anything approaching artistic merit is Pathologic.

I think games like Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls have a certain kind of artistry in the way their gameplay designs inform their narratives but I don't think the narratives themselves are all that profound or impressive.

[Anonymous No.14790803]

>>14790801
>muh gameplay

[Anonymous No.14790806]

>>14790743
>I didn't say that. I said '[art] is the sign'
uh huh, I know
You took my statement that art is a form of communication as an indication that I would disagree with you on that point, which is not the case. You just misunderstood me
>Pointless. Most things illicit an emotional reaction. If it doesn't, has it failed?
Read the whole sentence, not just one word at a time. Again, you are misreading me, not disagreeing with me
If this is because my writing is unclear, please let me know, but to me it seems like I've been pretty careful choosing my words

[Anonymous No.14790818]

>>14787737
what do you think about Pathologic 2 regarding narrative/gameplay cohesion?

[Anonymous No.14790822]

>>14790803
Souls gameplay is brute and has a primitive feeling. Adds on the atmosphere desu, I like it personally
>muh gameplay
Yea why even make games

[Anonymous No.14790837]

>>14790806
'Communication' is the transference of some interior meaning/idea through an exterior and arbitrary sign. Art is not communication in that it is not a transference of an interior meaning through an arbitrary sign because the sign is not arbitrary when it comes to art, as the 'interior' of art also dictates, very carefully (by craft), the rules of the creation of its own sign. Art is the sign.

'Emotion' is a concern only when the individual subject became a concern in art, i.e. much later in art history. It has no bearing on, say, the ordering of the hierarchy of genres, which dominated artistic production in the academies for centuries.

[Anonymous No.14790844]

>>14790822
>games have gameplay thus gameplay is how we define artistry in games

[Anonymous No.14790848]

>>14790806
>>14790837
Also I'm just being a dick for no reason

[Anonymous No.14790898]

>>14787829
I learnt German through video games
now I can read novels

[Anonymous No.14790918]

>>14787562
When I think of modern interpretations of art, I can only think of that fucking banana duct taped to a wall.
I don't know about you, but if that's the future for art, I don't want video games to aspire to be that.

[Anonymous No.14790942]

>>14790837
>'Communication' is the transference of some interior meaning/idea through an exterior and arbitrary sign.
Interior meaning is not an inherent component of communication, it is a distinct albeit connected process seemingly (at least for the sake of discussion) unique to humans. Communication in general is the intentional transferal (as in, an active function of transmission) of information between systems or subsystems. This includes purely syntactic/"face value" processes like communication between computers or radios. Humans use physical, meaningless processes to convey interior meaning by translating the associated concepts into an isomorphic configuration of syntactical data (written symbols, pictograms, the vibration of the vocal chords against the air, what have you) and passing that data through some means to the recipient, where it is made legible to the recipient's senses and from there semantically interpreted, then emotionally processed.
Art is a subcategory of these physical processes we take advantage of
>'Emotion' is a concern only when the individual subject became a concern in art, i.e. much later in art history.
I don't mean emotion as a subject itself, I mean emotion as a qualitive response in the viewer. Even if we view art as an adapted function with tangibly beneficial evolutionary benefits, we must also acknowledge the fact that we are biologically incentivized and guided via emotional responses to encourage artistic practices
>>14790848
Hey isn't that what we're all here for?

[Anonymous No.14790947]

>>14790918
a few people have mentioned it >>14790112

[Anonymous No.14790948]

>CTRL+F
>No Soul Reaver

Unironically nothing else comes close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkkmm9vqbHQ

[Anonymous No.14790990]

>>14790947
Let me rephrase, then.
I know that people love using it as an argument, but I mean that video games are something that can only be good when actual effort is put into it. Say video games do end up being classified as art one day, I don't want the gold standard of games to be shit like Gone Home or Death Stranding where the creators are so far up their asses that they forget they're making a "game"
And while I do think that game developers should allow to pursue a direction for their game that it can be associated with high art by some, again, they shouldn't lose sight that they're making a game, not sculpting the next thinker or painting the next starry night. Cause above all else, video games are games, and games should be fun
Cause if it's not fun
Why bother?

[Anonymous No.14791063]

>>14790990
These are all unfortunate side effects of three (ostensibly) temporary setbacks
1. the immaturity of the medium
2. the uniquely steep time/funds/talent cost that leads to the commercialization of larger titles to justify the massive investment
3. a true auteur capable of delivering an artistic vision and remaining unconcerned with profit would have to have great technological ability as well as a unique artistic talent and understanding of the medium, a relatively rare set of traits
If you haven't already I highly recommend checking out matthewmatosis. He's a reclusive, perfectionist irish guy who reviews games and as far as I'm concerned he's the future of game critique and should unironically be held as a guiding star of the industry. He's the only reviewer or writer I know of who has truly built his system of critique from the ground up to fully approach games as their own unique medium distinct from film or literature. He's also a genuinely great writer and has none of the forced youtube humor and enthusiasm you'd expect
You don't understand just how little of a shit I had ever given about a game review before I found him, I considered them worthless and still do for the most part. He's a unique specimen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHzqtvcGqXQ

[Anonymous No.14791080]

>>14791063
Those are some very valid arguments, but were you seriously gonna make me sit through a half hour video from this pretentious retard?
What's next, are you gonna recommend me Joseph Anderson's books?

[Anonymous No.14791087]

>>14791080
Joseph Anderson is a p-zombie, a complete non-entity. Do not speak his name, waste of time
You'll be surprised how unpretentious and measured the guy is. I chose that video because it's a collection of mini-reviews without spoilers and thought the variety might keep you hooked. If that's not your thing he's got plenty of other videos ranging from seven minutes to six hours (really)
I don't think you'll regret it my boy

[Anonymous No.14791117]

>>14790065
>shitting on a canvas
did not happen during what we commonly understand to be a modernist period
books on art history, they exist and you should open them sometime

[Anonymous No.14791216]

>>14789285
for me it's the void

[Anonymous No.14791222]

>>14787562

sage

[Anonymous No.14791244]

>>14787562

[Anonymous No.14791251]

>>14787706
In the end we all end up dead in the void. Whether I played my anime dating sims or you spent time reading some old guy's opinions and stroking your own ego doesn't matter. Fuck off back to r/philosophy

[Anonymous No.14791368]

>>14791244
Marathon is the only game my dad ever played. Very nice

[Anonymous No.14791677]

>>14787562
You're mixing up art and cultural products.
Both can serve the same purpose, but of all the intents that can drive the production of cultural products, making money is the one that dominates the others - which is not the case for art.
Hence, when cultural products are mostly tailored by and for the mass, when art is far less compromised, staying as true as possible to a vision no matter its reception.

The distinction is all about intent and honesty.

[Anonymous No.14791683]

rain world

[Anonymous No.14791687]

>>14791677
>Hence, when cultural products are mostly tailored by and for the mass, art is far less compromised, staying as true as possible to a vision no matter its reception.
Fixed typo, phoneposting sucks.

[Anonymous No.14791994]

>>14787562
>/lit/ video games that validate the art form?