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/lit/ - Literature

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7248869 No.7248869[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

What good is reading over other media, such as video games and television?

Does it actually make you "smarter" than indulging in either of those?

>> No.7248872

There is none. If you think reading fiction makes you "smarter" than any other form of consumption, you're a spooked gimp.

>> No.7248889

>>7248869
literature is a far older form of expression than video games or television, and as such there are more profound works of literature than there are shows or games

>> No.7248919

>>7248889

this pretty much

Books also don't require the same large budgets to produce as television shows or video games. All it takes is one person and time. This lets more books, from a wider array of authors, in a wider variety of styles and genres, be published every year than video games or shows. Imagine if 100 shows of the same quality (or lack of quality) as Breaking Bad came out every month.

recreational reading correlates strongly with academic success but it is my uninformed guess that intelligence is fixed at birth and can only go down from bad environments, nutrition, etc etc.

>> No.7248951

>>7248869
just go fucking read something more than fucking shit posts and idiotic web content

>> No.7248984

>>7248869
literature stays with you far longer and has a more profound impact on your way of living imo

>> No.7249002

>>7248872
Video games are stimulation and response. Reading requires thought.

>> No.7249005

I don't think literature is inherently more intellectual than those other mediums. I think that literary fiction though does try to grapple with slightly more profound material than say Call of Duty.

I think it has a lot do with approach. When you go to write literary fictions it's often with a desire to explore something like nationhood, identity, morality etc. even if it does not manifest itself that obviously. If you want to write literary fiction about war you are trying to explore those topics.

If you make a video game about war you don't necessarily want to do those things. Though I feel when games get better at this they will surpass novels. Something like Spec Ops the Line is deeply flawed but when you accidentally killed those civilians, it hurt and it made me re-examine my relationship with those kind of games. Imagine if Vonnegut was writing videogames and he didn't have to make one with lots of commercial appeal? It would be fantastic.

One thing I am very dubious of is "difficult literature", people that write in modernist or 'experimental' traditions. Sometimes it is pulled off beautifully but a lot of the time I feel it's a bit of an emperor's new clothes situation and it's just as shallow as any airport thriller.

>> No.7249018

>>7248919
>all it takes is one person and time
Fucking, this.
When you look at a video game, you can't afford an artistic vision, because you have 2 million on the line.
Not only that, but you also have to co-ordinate a tonne of people on a limited time frame.
You don't have time for artistic vision.

>> No.7249030

>>7249018
You're describing movies

>> No.7249032

>he thinks some media are superior to others

everyone else in this thread is a fucking moron and you should end your lives immediately

>> No.7249129

Literature: entertain, educate or experiment with new styles
Video games: entertain (possibly some degree of artistry and education but they take a back seat)
Television: entertain, occasionally educate but even then documentaries are still just trying to get viewers

Literature is not competitive in the same sense as TV also so it gives more room for experimentation

I think video games will realize new potential soon but at the moment they are pretty plebby

>> No.7249135

>>7249005
>Spec Ops the Line
that game had a surprisingly good plot, main character development and a profound ending at least compared to other games of the same genre
would recommend over other shooter games

>> No.7249137

>>7248919
>intelligence is fixed
>neuroplasticity

>> No.7250884

No, just reading doesn't make you any smarter.

You might pick up a few new words out of necessity (Congratulations on knowing words nobody ever uses in contemporary speech), but I've known enough "well read" retards and "plebeian" smartypants.

Even in terms of vocabulary, some people that don't read many literary works might have a much more sophisticated understanding of the same words due to having actually studied specialized subject matter. "knowing" a word and actually understanding what it fully means in it's original context are different things.

>> No.7250907

>>7249005
>surpass novels
>uses the decent video game adaptation of an excellent movie adaptation of a phenomenal book as an example
Ok, kid.

>> No.7251155

>>7248869
Reading requires more of your mind than video games or television.

A good reading practice can help a person dramatically with their ability to focus and articulate their own thoughts.

>> No.7251188

>>7249002
>Reading requires thought.
No it doesn't. It's safe to say that 70% of everybody who reads casually utterly fails at thinking about what they're reading at any deeper level than "lol, what a fag" in fact, most people actively defy it. When was the last time you heard anybody get excited about writing a book report, even if they get to choose the book? Movies are just as good as books if you're looking for something to get you thinking and video games are catching up fucking quick.

>> No.7251331

>>7251188
Are you kidding me? Of course reading requires thought. It requires more thought to visualize an environment than just to look at it on a screen.

>> No.7251601

>>7251188
>Movies are just as good as books if you're looking for something to get you thinking and video games are catching up fucking quick.
See the rest of responses. Movies and video games have much more potential than books, but they'll never achieve it because of the amount of work, time, and coordination, that it takes to make them. You only need one person and time to write a novel, so you can spend all of your effort into making it as close to artistic perfection as possible. Whereas in the other mediums you have a lot to worry about, such as deadlines, budget, and you have to rely on other people to bring your idea to life (i.e. it won't turn out exactly as you wanted).

>When was the last time you heard anybody get excited about writing a book report, even if they get to choose the book?
I don't see people excited about writing movie or game reports either. Also, I don't see how this relates to the discussion.

>> No.7251650

>>7249002
Like books, video games and other mediums have their own variety. Its not a monolithic blob so assigning attribute needlessly creates a distortion rather than reveal the truth about the medium.

Video games can be thoughtful, artful, mindless, stimulating, etc JUST LIKE books. Video games are the new medium of story telling for most modern children. Its also a new mode to carry out information just like book is. Fact that its popular amongst younger crowds bothers most older/traditionalists.

>> No.7251653

>>7251331
>It requires more thought to visualize an environment
more brainpower maybe, but not thought. Unless the writing is awkward or confusing, visualization is an involuntary reaction to reading.

>> No.7251883

The best books, the best movies, and the best games all require a lot of thought to really enjoy. I don't really think any one medium is more intelligent than another, and it's probably best to have some variety in the sort of stuff you consume because they all have their strengths and weaknesses.

Games are great because they can make a statement about you, the player, as much as the characters you are playing, using the interaction with the player to strengthen the story and the themes. Undertale is a great example, and it just came out maybe a month ago. Games have a couple of problems which might keep them down for decades still: interactive story-telling (mostly) sucks, and the gameplay rarely complements anything else that the game is trying to do.

Movies are great because they can force instant emotional responses. The spectacle makes the immediate emotional impact of a good movie stronger than that of books or games, in my opinion.

Books are great because they leave a lot of stuff up to the reader. Whenever the author omits a detail, the reader has to infer it. This can be with respect to something simple like a description, or something more interesting like an unreliable narrator (which is hard to do well in other mediums). On top of that, a reader spends a long time with a book. When you spend so much time "collaboratively" building a world and considering the ideas of the author, a book can have a much greater long-term impact than any other medium. Books can really get into your head more than anything else.

>> No.7251937

A guy that only read high school textbooks for his entire life is smarter than a guy that only read the great literature classics for his entire life. Prove me wrong.

Protip: You can't.

>> No.7251968

>>7251937
>accumulatory knowledge vs perpetuatory intelligence

>> No.7252018

>>7251883
>can make a statement about you, the player
I think this is something that's key to games. They can present an idea to you, and then force you to make a decision about said idea.
I remember playing Shin Megami Tensei IV, and there's a side quest where you have to choose between euthanising a dying girl, or giving her a painful treatment that has a tiny chance of working.
The scenario could have been written much better. We don't know anything about the girl, so we don't actually have much attachment to her.
But what's important is the fact that I was forced to make a choice, and that choice had consequences. This forced me to think hard about euthanasia and its moral implications, because the outcome of the story was my responsibility.

I think Visual Novels have a lot of potential in them for this sort of story telling.

>> No.7252027

>>7251650
As a fan of video games I can confirm that not a single one I've played has a narrative that even comes close to the best novels I've read. As entertainment (i.e. easy pleasure) they're unsurpassed and are great fun, but as art they're almost all complete shit, and the few I think that are a cut above there rest in this regard are so few and far between that they hardly even make a difference.

>> No.7252063
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7252063

>>7249137

I don't know anything about science.

>> No.7252081

>>7251653
Thanks for admitting that literature requires more intelligence than video games.

There's a reason you can't take 400 level upper-division courses analyzing the themes of Super Mario Bros., as opposed to Joycean and Shakespearean scholarship.

>> No.7252116

>>7252081
I know that you're just shitposting, but I just want to point out that by the time video games are even a hundred years old there'll be some real masterpieces out there. Even now I could put together a list of games big enough to teach a class off of.

>> No.7252137

>>7252116
Not shitposting. Name me a few games with deep enough themes to merit scholarship and high-level critical analysis.

>> No.7252138

>>7252063
yeah, well science doesn't know anything about you

>> No.7252144

>>7252137
Planescape Torment.

And that's about it.

>> No.7252174

Icycalm described the limitation of video games in story telling perfectly: the fact that you control the characters actions creates an "uncanny valley" of immersion. It's stuck between being a viewer and being the a participant. In terms immersion though games can surprass all other art forms simply because they combine all the other art forms: visual, music, movie, etc.

In terms of self-improvement "Philosophical books are the ultimate kind of self-help books, but philosophy is not for the kind of people who read self-help books."

inb4 >shill

>> No.7252182

>>7252137
Well, if I was going to teach a class, it would be on how gameplay can be used to reinforce, and sometimes communicate solely, various themes and characters. These are games like Shadow of the Colossus, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Undertale, maybe Psychonauts, maybe SpecOps: The Line.

I'm not sure if any games right now deserve the complete analysis that films and books get, but even if you weren't teaching a class "about" games, there'd still be enough discussion in any one of those games to assign a paper on it.

>> No.7252195

Games require more intelligence than books because puzzles.

>> No.7252198

>>7248869
>Does it actually make you "smarter" than indulging in either of those?
Any form of media can make you smarter in a few specific ways. The real issue is the whole of your intelligence and how responsive it is when dealing with the unknown. In a way, they all kind of complement each other (along with film, music and all forms of art in general -no matter how base-).

Watching documentaries and trivia shows, or even some niche reality shows, will deepen your understanding of the natural and human world, while providing "general culture" sets of data.
Playing games on a semi competitive level can maximize your reaction time as well as other multitasking capabilities, all these related skills are practical so they could work if you had some form of physical labor.
But reading, and philosophy especially, will help you with pretty much anything. You can feel that after reading some of the greeks.

I still read most of the time which replaced most other media forms (passive in nature) after I grew out of my teen years. The practice has clarified much of my mental process (when I was in my mid 20s I used to have this constant 'noise' when arguing or thinking about sth which was detrimental to my piece of mind) and refined the way I can express a thought (certainly not so much in English -not my native language, sorry).

I've also tried to learn some maths through programming. Throughout the years, I've become better at deconstructing stuff and recognizing patterns. Does any of this means reading dead white male authors has made me smarter? I don't know. It feels like it...?

The downside is that the only way I can process the raw quality of stuff is thanks to drug consumption. When I'm sober, my brain is quicker to judge the complex nature of something, which can quickly turn me into an insufferable cunt or the 'crazy one'.

>> No.7252211

>>7252198
>to my piece of mind
* peace, oops.

>> No.7252231

Book aren't better than anything. Nothing about words on pages between two covers is special or sacred or better. Literature is what's superior.

>> No.7252238

>>7251331
You know what requires even more thought than visualizing an environment that's described to you? Visualizing an environment that isn't described or even suggested. So it turns out that the deepest and most demanding art form, and therefore the best one, is no art at all. Books are for idiots who lack imagination and intelligence and belong in the garbage. I mean, what kind of mongoloid would you have to be to feel a need to be stimulated by words? What, your own brain isn't enough for you, faggot?

TRUE intellectuals and aesthetes sit in an empty room with their eyes closed and make up their own shit in their heads.

>> No.7252256

>>7252238
>TRUE intellectuals and aesthetes sit in an empty room with their eyes closed and make up their own shit in their heads
No, true intellectuals sit in an empty room with their eyes closed and abide in emptiness

>> No.7252257

>>7252238
Can I use drugs to help me imagine shit in the empty room?

>> No.7252260

>>7249002
reading requires stimulation and response

>> No.7252268

>>7252257
Dumb normies need drugs to unlock their creativity while smart people always have it unlocked without the nasty chemical side-effects.

>> No.7252273

>>7252238
I refuse to get in an argument with you on solipsism and the ontology of communication. All I will say is that you will learn a lot more from novels than you ever will from video games.

>> No.7252290

TV pours information into your brain. Sometimes the well written ones will let you come to conclusions about who shot who.

'Videogames' is too broad a term, almost. It can mean everything from digital competition akin to sports or board games, to hundred hour long linear storytelling devices, to creative and lacking narrative (Mario Maker, Source mods, etc.)

In terms of games that are trying to convey deeper meaning, I find that they, in the best of cases, still result in a meta-game where the experienced game player is trying to decipher the intentions of the developer(s). You use all of your knowledge to solve a deeper and more complex puzzle than the one being directly presented to you on Level 4-3. Even something like The Talos Principle or Undertale can do little more than encourage the player to dig deeper and smarter in order to find the nuggets of gold available to them.

Ultimately, you can't connect with videogames any more than the programmer allowed you to when he or she typed the code.

>> No.7252303

>>7252273
If you read novels in order to learn things, you are a fucking idiot.

>> No.7252329

>>7252303
k

>> No.7252435

Writing on phone so sorry for mistakes.

There are evident differences between mediums, but they all try to relate with your human feelings. Those feelings can be prompted by images and sound, interaction and so on, in fact they strongly rely on those feelings. Imagine the feelings a simple game gave you, where graphics only partly resembled real life. Your mind quite easily filled the gaps. The bushes there could take many forms and relate with many brush-esque feelings, as long the polygons and the placement reminded you of them being brushes. Argument could be made that over concreting by graphical development makes brushes increasingly less relatable to actual experience. And see how far games can make you relate with things. With books, it's very sudden, with each word there comes something. Games has many repeated actions and don't progress thoughts much, it often keeps you just enough interested through reactive action, be that explosions or weirdness, to seem it doesn't stagnate.

Hope you see where I am going. Fuck writing from phone.

>> No.7252457

>>7252290
>Ultimately, you can't connect with videogames any more than the programmer allowed you to when he or she typed the code.

But you can connect with novels more than the author allowed you to when he or she typed the words?

>> No.7252666

Life is Strange is literature.

>> No.7253186

>>7249018
>When you look at a video game, you can't afford an artistic vision, because you have 2 million on the line.

Sounds more like you have more resources and more talent to create a much broader and richer "artistic vision", which is actually the case when you look at any masterpiece that has ever been made in the medium.

>> No.7253194

>>7249129

Videogames are far more inherently experimental than any other artform, precisely because there is so much more new territory to cover and so many new means and new technologies to do so.

>> No.7253202

>>7253194

how is cinema any different at that level

>> No.7253263

>>7253202

Videogames are inherently more complex than cinema (which is why they are incapable of not only deriving from it, but outright including it in the form of cutscenes, which can be conceptually extended and seamlessly integrated with interactivity). Since the medium is more complex, there is more potential in it.

The vocabulary of cinema and most any conceivable subversion of it has all been analyzed, perfected, subverted, disseminated, etc.

In videogames it is possible to have a dynamic non-linear narrative that differs for every person, yet the total possibility-space and all permutations are conceived and considered by the creator. In videogames, scenes can play out in all sorts of different ways that affect the player differently.

>> No.7253276

>>7253263

Pretty much everything you just said is either false or extremely problematic

I don't know where to start

>> No.7253285

>>7252027
That's because there's much more to the creation of a videogame than just one guy writing things down.
If you like gaming you should watch a few Extra Credits videos, they are very simple and explain things from a game designer point of view.

>> No.7253287

>>7253263
I'm an avid gamer and I'm always disappointed at the art aspect of games tbh, I can only think of very few games that truly engaged me emotionally or intellectually.
The potential is there, but almost no one managed to really capture it.

>> No.7253289

>>7252027

Your reduction of "art" to "quality of narrative" is the problem.

>> No.7253298

>>7253287
It's worth noting that videogames compose a very new media, so new in fact that it is still strugling to stop trying to imitate cinema, music, literatura etc had thounds of years to develop, still, the current world evolves at such fast pace, it's likely that we will see more and more games that explore it's great diferential from other media, which is interectivety, as means of art.

>> No.7253302

>>7253287
>the art aspect of games

There is no "art aspect" of anything. Art is not an "aspect". Art is not a particular component of a work you point at and say "oh, the part where I cried, yeah, that's art".

>I can only think of very few games that truly engaged me emotionally

Then you have a problem and should probably stop playing videogames, since they don't give you anything. Alternatively, play other / better videogames that enable you to feel something, which is sorta the whole point of playing any videogame or reading any book or watching any movie or whatever.

There are countless games that have engaged me emotionally and intellectually. The most recent one I've been playing is The Talos Principle, which incidentally does have terrific writing and anyone who wants to know what partying on the web might be like just before the apocalypse should check it out. It's also a neat Biblical allegory.

>> No.7253308

>>7248869
Reading doesn’t make you smarter, it just prevents you from getting dumber.

>> No.7253322

>>7248872
Literature doesn't make you smarter but the nature of fiction/narrative is far more persuasive than other mediums so your own thoughts and worldview can be influenced by them in a way that is mostly impossible for video games, tv, and movies.

>> No.7253333

>>7253322
>the nature of fiction/narrative is far more persuasive than other mediums

"You have been wounded. You are dying."

Call of Duty 4 conveys this exact idea more "persuasively" than any other medium ever has or ever could.

The crucial aspect is "you", which only videogames can deal with effectively. First-person movies and second-person novels are trash concepts.

>> No.7253351
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7253351

Honest question /lit/:
What's with these "literature>other media" threads, especially about videogames, is this a common thing here?
I just find weird that people think every media form should be judged by the same standards and rules, i mean, they don't even have the same proposition, unless you simplify it to the point of "it's purpose is entertainment", in which case we might as well be wondering which one is better, books, soccer or Aerobatics.

>> No.7253362

>>7253333

what a waste of quads

worst post of the night

>> No.7253367

>>7253351

>is this a common thing here?

It's common on all media boards.

Anon know that it's foolish to try and rank media objectively, as with most things on 4chan they just do it out of boredom.

>> No.7253375

>>7253351
It's kind of common here and on the other boards as well. It's to help the plebs who can't into aesthetics without a pissing match.

>> No.7253380

>>7253302
Of course there are art and non-art aspects to games.
"Game theory" focuses on how to maximize dopamine release with gameplay, I don't consider that artistic in the same way I wouldn't consider a traditional sport like football artistic for example.
Pretty much any game company that wants money will use and abuse game theory which I dislike since you can engage players in so many other ways.

I think the game Thief is one the few that managed to do this, it uses some very clever game mechanics to surprise and engage the player in interesting ways.
For example, in every level you have a list of goals in a notebook you have to do but it's written in the main character's perspective, so as you progress through the level you may find that your goals are not like you imagined they would be, and the main character will mirror this by rewriting the goals and commenting on this.
This shit blew my mind because it abuses the player's expectation that game objectives are omniscient and immutable, I really felt like I was the main character trying to make sense of the situation.

>> No.7253381

>>7253351
people come from outside to make these, we are of course already convinced of the superiority of the medium

>> No.7253423

>>7253380
>Of course there are art and non-art aspects to games

If there is an artform, everything within it are definitively artworks.

If there is an artwork, it is fucking meaningless to claim that part of an artwork is "not art".

What part of this car is not a car? What part of this book is not a book? What part of your reasoning is not retarded?

>"Game theory" focuses on how to maximize dopamine release with gameplay,

Because an essential chemical in the human body is evil and ought be shunned and we should deny ourselves such shameful and immoral abuses of pleasure. That chemical is definitely Not Art and we ought to distance ourselves from it in all critical and semantic processes.

>> No.7253429

>>7253423
You are a fucking idiot, I don't know what I expected from a tripfag.

>> No.7253434

>>7253333
You can't be serious.

>> No.7253435

consider the most brain dead game according to /lit/ and reddit: call of duty. call of duty is based in science because it implements a physics engine. now consider a fiction novel that /lit/ would praise. it is written in a pompous style because literary types value style over substance. fiction is only useful for exploring philosophical questions, so this /lit/ approved fiction novel is at best just a philosophical text. realize that philosophy is a dying field. science and physics replaced philosophy as our way of understanding the world several decades ago. questions that were once thought to be strictly in the domain of religion and philosophy are now scientific questions. for example: sam harris on morality and richard dawkins on the existence of god.

>> No.7253460

>>7253423
Art is creative expression.
Game theory is not creative expression, it's a mathematical model.
You could say that the game as a whole is an artwork, but saying that every single aspect of it is art is retarded.
You obviously don't know much about game design tbh.

>> No.7253468

>>7253434

Please show me a textual / literary account of you (the reader) dying, in the present and immediate sense, that is anywhere as compelling or significant as the Aftermath scene in CoD4.

>> No.7253480

>>7252457
Yes. This is a hard comparison to write, so bear with me.

Barring the player's intentions, the reality of a video game is closed. Everything from the colors in a room down to the actions you can make are all dictated by a programmer. If it's not presented to you in the game some way, it's not a factor in that reality.

The meaning behind words is entirely subject to the reader's experience with them. Because "creating" every visual in every room would be tedious reading, it's on the audience to create much of the space. It's also up to the audience to ascribe meaning to every word in the book. There may be 100 different words describing 100 kinds of anger, but ultimately you're the one who's simulating the emotion in a character. By the end of a book, you've created or colored every aspect of every character's personality and the environment that they're in.

The difference between gaming and reading is like the difference between looking at an image and hearing the description of an image and painting it yourself.

>> No.7253493

>>7253480
You can employ the same kind of tricks in games having a mute protagonist to serve as a self-insert or leaving the story partially unwritten (Dark Souls does this very well) for example.

>> No.7253494

>>7253460

Every good dev making any good game makes creative usage of game design.

There is "film theory" as well, which is targeted at maximizing audience arousal using specific, highly-refined techniques. No part of this is not art.

You can make trashy, crass, manipulative, trite, mass-market art... and it is still art. You can make art that sells and it is still art.

There is not a single videogame that has ever been created which can be said to not embody any form of "creative expression". It is inherent in the process and impossible to isolate or negate. This includes all shovelware, as well as all blockbuster AAA murder simulators which you find trendy to disregard. They do not speak to you because you have stopped listening.

It is degrading to the concept of art to artificially elevate it to some intrinsically exclusive, bourgeoisie fanclub that is above the understanding of presumed pleb people (none of whom you understand, at any rate).

>> No.7253497

>>7253468
>must be literature
>must be second-person
>must feature dying
>has to take place in the present
>must be immediate
>has to be compelling [subjective term, btw]
>must be "significant" [also subjective]

wew lad, I don't know, there's so many books and so little time

>> No.7253500

>>7253493
Sure, but you could describe any monster in Dark Souls with either 10 words or 10 pages. Looking at it on the screen isn't anywhere near as subjective.

>> No.7253501

>>7253480

There are non-linear narratives in gaming, descriptive games, ambiguous games. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a recent and excellent example of a complex event (the end of the world) affecting numerous characters, none of which are explicitly shown. You must imagine their appearances, and you are led to imagine (and assisted in such) what life was like in the days before they all died.

>> No.7253502

>>7253276
>I don't play video games and I don't like them so you are wrong end of story

Come down off your high-horse and realize you are posting on website host to the biggest fucking losers and whose name draws connotations of child-porn and mass shootings among the general public in real life.

>> No.7253504

>>7253497

I am asking you if there are any textual / literary accounts of you (the reader) dying that are as compelling or significant TO YOU as the Aftermath scene in CoD4, assuming that you played that (which you probably haven't).

The original point of this is that videogames convey narratives involving YOU far more effectively than literature can, which is why the vast majority of authors don't bother with second-person and the concept of interactivity is relegated to a children's series (Choose Your Own Adventure).

>> No.7253506

There also happen to be strictly textual videogames, which none of you have played.

>> No.7253511

>>7249005
>when games get better at this they will surpass novels
keep dreaming buddy
video games will always be the shallowest form of entertainment, and nothing you do will change that

>> No.7253512

>>7253500
The point is that in Dark Souls you have all these plot points and details scattered around but never explicitly explained, it leaves a lot to the player's imagination which is a form of open-endedness and you could argue that games are even more open-ended when it comes to emotional responses because you can leave it entirely to the player on how he should respond instead of writing "protagonist was sad".
Of course you can't be visually open-ended with a game since it's a visual artform to begin with, but it has more possibilities in other aspects.

>> No.7253517

>>7253512
>you can't be visually open-ended with a game since it's a visual artform

You can easily have images substitute for other imagined images or feelings, which is already the case with all literature, where words themselves are images substituting for other imagined images or feelings.

>> No.7253520

>>7253480
>you've created or colored every aspect of every character's personality and the environment that they're in.

In a way, by experiencing the video game in your own way, you've colored the experience of the game. Sure, most things are much more solidified than in a book, specifically visuals, but the experience is still varied for everyone and special in its own way.

Anyway, I really like a lot of what you're saying. I agree with you in sentiment, especially with the thing you said about meta-gaming the dev, but I feel like your arguments could all be generalized to other mediums too. Maybe it's just that games suffer more from these problems than books.

>> No.7253524
File: 986 KB, 2500x1406, original.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7253524

>>7253501
I've never seen or played this, I just looked up some thumbnails to get some kind of impression here.

The difference comes down to creating the entire reality in your head versus imagining parts of it. You're given an image of the world, you're given the lighting, you're given the atmosphere. I don't know what else you're given, but I'm sure there is way more than those three examples. If it were a book, -everything- about the experience would be coming directly out of your own reading, life, visual experience.

>> No.7253528

>>7253504
Reading takes place in the mind, the highest form of YOU there is. Video games are external and take part through physical stimulation and response.

You might as well go outside and do something else if you want to Choose Your Own Adventure.

>> No.7253533

>>7253524
This game is shit btw, a terrible case of disregarding the "show, don't tell" rule.
It's simply a static world in which you walk around in first person and listen to scripted sequences.

>> No.7253534

>>7253504
I've never played CoD4, but here's a poem in the first person perspective where somebody's dying in a bed surrounded by family while a fly's buzzing around:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174972

I first read this ten years ago and I still think about it somewhat regularly, what the experience of death is like after you've had a long life, what being surrounded by family would mean to me, what the bed would feel like, and of course, the bit of annoyance I'd feel to have a fly in the room while I'm on my way out.

>> No.7253539

>>7253528
>Reading takes place in the mind, the highest form of YOU there is.


What occurs there is still externally projected; you are imagining other people. Nothing in the novel happens to you.

Videogames involve you, videogames have things happen to you which can affect you, and you can affect them. None of this is the case with literature.

>Video games are external and take part through physical stimulation and response.

Playing a videogame is no less physical and no more "external" than the process of reading a book.

With a videogame, you can have the illusion that you are reading and writing the text at the same time, which requires imagination just as much as active engagement ("why is this like this? how could it be different?") as any novel, and can be just as and even more rewarding.

>>7253524

Given all that stimuli, one is prompted to imagine other scenarios, other realities, all the possible prefaces and outcomes of this present moment.

The images are simply richer and more defined than mere words on a page. There is still plenty to imagine, and even the images themselves are inexact due to the limitations of rendering. Your imagination completes it; your imagination is what makes the world of the game feel real to you.

>>7253533

It shows you plenty and tells you very little. The entire fucking world you walk around in is a case of "showing", if you were paying attention, if you had actually played the game.

>> No.7253559

>>7253539
"Given all that stimuli, one is prompted to imagine other scenarios, other realities, all the possible prefaces and outcomes of this present moment."

My point is this can be done in literature too, and it could be done in one page or it could take a thousand. It would be matter of interpretation for the writer and its meaning would be defined by the reader. Again, "looking at the image vs painting it yourself."

>> No.7253570

>>7253520
You have a legitimate point about personalizing the player's experience. I guess on those terms, games are good for learning about the player? I'd argue that books are better for learning to color and create reality. If you know 100 words for blue when you look at the sky, and each of those words has its own connotations and denoted meaning, then the blue sky is (or can be) that much more meaningful. This is true for expressions, body language, relationships... anything we experience in the real world can be colored by the words we understand and the meaning we attach to those words.

>> No.7253573

>>7253534

I lack the feminine / spiritual / Archaic English sensibility to appreciate this poem. I have no doubt that it is nice for those who have it.

I would give you a textual account of the impact and context of CoD4's Aftermath scene, for comparison, but that would defeat the purpose.

There is actually an excellent sequence in Wolfenstein: The New Order where your vegetative protagonist sits by a window in a hospital for many years played in time-lapse while a nurse attends him. Then the Nazis come in to take patients away for experiments, the doctor won't have it and violence ensues, each strike causing a flash of color in the protagonist's otherwise black&white perception, and your nurse is threatened so he (you) gather your long-dormant traumatized reserves of inner masculine strength to reach out for some scissors and stab the Nazi, grab his pistol, hop out of your wheelchair and go on a fucking rampage and it is so exhilarating I nearly crushed my controller from the impulse to clap at the audacity of the setup and the viscerality of the violence I caused with every trigger pull.

Games at their very best, God bless them, do not desensitize us to violence. They resensitize us. They can make us feel alive again in a wake of properly justified bloodshed.

Please don't disregard entire mediums due to your effete sensibilities.

>> No.7253580

>>7253573
>do not desensitize us to violence. They resensitize us
lol no. they use first person shooters as a way to recruit retards with a fast thumb to be drone operatives and soldiers.

>> No.7253584

>>7253539
I see no greater "involvement" in any artform than the manifestation of imagery via your own imagination. No pictorial representation can possibly match it. When a set of words enters your mind and creates a vision you feel like you're participating in a world that was equal parts you and equal parts the author. Playing a game has you undergoing the same causal physical touch-and-respond motions grounded by the systematic laws of gravity and design that we've been restricted to since the beginning of time.

There is no parallel for the human imagination and for conjuring images of your own.

A book is world-building from the ground up. You are not partaking in an experience but creating an experience. There is no limit or barrier but that of the self.

>> No.7253591

>>7253573
You are too easily swayed by bombastic visuals, I bet you think Michael Bay flicks are the epitome of movies.

>> No.7253605

>>7253580
>they use first person shooters as a way to recruit retards with a fast thumb to be drone operatives and soldiers.

You really don't know anything about videogames.

At all.

The only videogame that is officially endorsed by the US Army is "America's Army", and it sucks and no one plays it.

The Call of Duty series, which you are pretending to talk about, has always been fiercely critical of the US's disposition and even competence in warfare. In the Modern Warfare series, the US constantly fucks up by overextending itself and the British SAS gets the job done. In MW2, the main villain is an insane jingoist US general.

The "drone operative" sequence you pretend to speak of (the AC-130 mission) is famous for being disturbingly accurate to real-world footage of AC-130 strikes, and it is harrowing.

>> No.7253612

>>7253591

I don't care about Michael Bay, although The Rock was great fun and Pain & Gain is the best American comedy in at least the past decade.

Disregarding bombastic visuals is asinine as well. You might as well disregard classical music for being "bombastic". At any rate, Nietzsche did so in the case of Wagner.

>> No.7253622

>>7253573
You don't understand, so you got nothing from it. If you'd read enough to understand, you'd have gotten something from it. Read some fucking books and maybe get some life experience to give yourself a little depth.

Pacing's another point I hadn't really considered. I can see games being more intense than books for most people. Still, imagine what it would take on the part of a writer and a reader to describe something like that and make it as viscerally gripping. That would be badass and both people would be better for it. Desensitizing vs resensitizing depends on your perspective here, doesn't it?

A) I can pretty much guarantee I'm more man than you, especially after "properly justified bloodshed." You sound fucking 14.
B) Who said I don't play games?

>> No.7253624

>>7253612
Liking bombastic visuals is not bad but it's literally the easiest way to get an emotional response from the viewer since it's plays with an automatic adrenal response so it shouldn't be used as an argument for the artistic depth of videogames.

>> No.7253645

>>7253573
>Feminine
>Spiritual
>Archaic English

So, it's feminine why?
Because it was written by a woman despite the content being entirely genderless?

Spiritual? On the contrary, the contents regard the material aspects of death solely, - the strange distraction of the fly, the arrangements of one's belongings, and the blindness before death.

And archaic?
The language is entirely coherent to a modern reader with a child's vocabulary.

I didn't even bother with the rest of your post, the demonstration of the utter inadequacy of your analytical skills struck me like a hammerblow.

Begone from my sight.

>> No.7253648

>>7253624

There is still an incredible degree of subtlety and craftsmanship that goes into making effective bombastic visuals; that convey a specific and appropriate affect.

Obviously, a bombastic scene in a videogame is inherently more effective than a bombastic scene of similar content in a novel, for many reasons, not least of which being that the videogame dev has more direct control over the pacing, whereas authors can't expect their readers to read quickly (though they can use cute and jarring devices to convey a sense of immediacy).

>> No.7253664

>>7253645

Archaic referring to the capitalization of nouns, which fucks up my internal rhythm when reading, and is only done in a modern sense for a Deliberately Jarring Effect, which is clearly not what she's intending and was just a contemporary convention.

I have trouble not reading "when the King be witnessed" as a reference to God, or a spiritual personification of Death.

"What portion of me be Assignable" strikes me as a distinctly feminine sentiment. Men do not often speak of giving themselves in portions, but it is practical for a stately woman to.

>> No.7253677

>>7253648
It doesn't matter how hard it is to craft the scene if the response is still simplistic anyway.
Fear of death (and by extension fear of big explosions) is one of the most primal responses, it's strong and fills you with adrenaline but that's pretty much it, it has no depth.

>> No.7253697

>>7253677

Every emotion stems directly from and is consequent of the fear of death.

The only reason we strive to achieve anything is because we remember we will die. And once you forget that, as many have, you're already dead.

>> No.7253703

>>7253697
k
What is your point?

>> No.7253709

>>7253697

downvoting for bravery

>> No.7253717

>>7253703

It should be taken under serious consideration that videogames are the utmost artform for instilling and exploring the fear of death in the player, and that so many works are so prodigious about doing so by any thinkable means.

Look for "fear of death" in movies and books and it's trash for miles unless you go way back to their respective pinnacles, whichever those are for you.

>> No.7253721

>>7253717

shut the fuck up

drop your trip shit

leave

&c

>> No.7253748

>>7253717
No, you can easily evoke the same emotion by sliding down a slide.
You are just making videogames sound worse than they are with your "muh action scenes are so powerful wow" drivel, you sound like a kid whose highest emotional point in life was when Spiderman defeated the Green Goblin in the cinema and think that adrenaline-fueled euphoria is the ultimate emotion.

>> No.7253759

>>7253748
>No, you can easily evoke the same emotion by sliding down a slide.

lol

forget about art everybody, let's all go to the playground

>you sound like a kid whose highest emotional point in life was when Spiderman defeated the Green Goblin in the cinema and think that adrenaline-fueled euphoria is the ultimate emotion.

Actually, I don't care for capeshit movies at all. Try again.

Come back to me when you're willing to respect the medium, at least for the purpose of having acceptable discourse, and not make retarded and reductive comparisons like "lol fuck all the work of master-class contemporary artists; go slide down a slide".

>> No.7253774

>>7253759
I do respect the medium, I love videogames and I think it has great potential.
But you raving on about some action scenes doesn't prove anything and is actually detrimental to the "games can have great artistic depth" point.

>> No.7253783

>>7253759

cool it with your hierarchies, cowboy

read more

>> No.7253803

>>7252063
>implying scientists read literature

>> No.7253808

>>7253664
Everything you talk is a crock of shit.

And not even in a remotely novel way.

>> No.7253824

>>7248869
The only legitimate reason I can think of is that it lengthens your attention span. Movies and games require too much immediacy, books teach you patience.

>> No.7253826

>>7253808

I know you are but what am I

& other childish retorts failing to say anything whatsoever

>> No.7254296

>>7253826
>being a tripfag
Why? Seriously, why?
Anonymity is the hallmark of 4chan.
If you want to be recognised why wouldn't you just use a forum?

>> No.7255350

>>7253803
>implying they don't

>> No.7255668

>>7251650
The current state of videogames is abysmal. Instead of focusing getting the best use out of this new medium we have suits trying to earn the most money by taking below average schlock from the other artistic fields (>muh narrative >muh visuals) and basing their entire products around it. Essentially 90-95% of games are just a quick cash grab.

I feel like other mediums are also turning into too much of a corporate business (film, music, books). But unlike videogames, they also have a strong core that does not care about money or wealth and just wants to produce good art. This is probably due to how old those other mediums are compared to videogames.

>> No.7255762

>>7253826

he's right though

>> No.7255843

>>7248869
reading doesn't spoon feed you everything. you create images based on your own memories. same with sounds, smells etc. good literature uses words as a vehicle to take you beyond words.

video games are a media basically for children or those adults who are scared to grow up.

>tfw when I found my snes and enjoy it but regret every time I cut it on. n-n-n-no I shouldn't have too much fun.

>> No.7257156

>>7255843
>n-n-n-no I shouldn't have too much fun.
Pretty much sums up what this board thinks about video games, seems like people here is scared of having some mindless fun every once in a while.

>> No.7257181

I can't believe people are actually defending videogames. Fucking manchildren get the fuck off my board.

>> No.7257184

>>7255668
Phone apps are killing the video game industry they make so much and cost so little compared to full length games

>> No.7257499
File: 269 KB, 1920x1080, 34-3[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7257499

Since so many of you here are indirectly confessing your dual hobbies of literature and video games, is there anyone here who has had the pleasure to play Killer 7? I feel that it is one of the most successful attempts at video games surrealism and achieves aesthetics which cannot be emulated in any other medium.

Or at least I think, I've yet to read a surrealist novel which gives me the same atmosphere as Killer 7. I know there is probably something out there so if somebody knows of the book I'd love to hear it.

>> No.7257557

>>7255668
>>7257184
Thats why many people want another crash.
These mobile cash grabs are bad games, they just work as time wasters. Your brain receives stimulation by doing the same repetitive things and scoring higher scores.

Gameplay should be the focus of game design. The way you interact with the game and its parts. Gameplay is what video games should focus on.

>> No.7257652

>>7257181
Whats it gramps? You afraid videogames are considered a superior art form?
Pro Tip: They are

>> No.7257847

bump

>> No.7257884

Intersection of Media Studies and Lit is rife with potential.

>> No.7257964

>>7257181
You are pretentious idiot ridden with spooks of superiority.

Game industry doesn't need to crash, it will just get back to its current state due demand for those games. If anything, it actually pushes forward the ability and quality of games that various indie devs can produce by themselves. Even in literature there will be always the simple fiction mass of people enjoy reading.

I said something here that is more on topic >>7252435 , though it's hard to write from phone you can get the gist of what games often do and what actually people end up doing and proliferate such games.

There are currently are many games that creation of which included undeniable talent from many artists and programmers, and while their stories can't be great due to constraints of medium, they involve plenty of story telling through graphic design and little bits ingenious programmers made the characters and surroundings do. Like there is truly plethora of games that do things well now. CS go, heartstone, dota....repetitive and simple, but exactly because of being simple they center around competition. Think of how simple chess board or GO board is and yet how much it can incorporate. People lose spooks of perceived value of antiqued activities and creep into more stimulating competition. It doesn't mean their ability and skill is undermined by "grace" of games, as if it is less of a feat than in other competitive activities.

Games are progressing well and we do see talent and new ideas. Solely on intellectual stimulation standpoint, books offer many images and ability to quickly progress and give ideas, not to mention the beauty of sentences themselves, but we just as well could be comparing it to reading math formulas in terms of demand.

>> No.7257970

>>7248869
>What good is reading over other media
It's more entertaining for me.

>> No.7257974
File: 151 KB, 500x348, PutinCookie.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7257974

>>7257964

>> No.7258628

>>7248869
no so go read manga and watch anime you neet fuck

>> No.7258905

>>7257964
>spooks

entire post invalidated

>> No.7258928

>>7249002
>A video game that involves playing chess or strategy doesn't require thought
http://www.cnet.com/news/study-40-hours-of-complex-starcraft-is-good-for-the-brain/

>> No.7258947

>>7250884
It's not about words you fuckwit.

>> No.7258954

>>7248869
Everyone here read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and then come back and discuss the merits of books vs. TV/video games.

>> No.7258962
File: 215 KB, 1000x941, Gamers V.S. Readers.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7258962

>> No.7258975

>>7248869
I think the "toy" aspect of video games makes things complicated. I don't think any other medium has this kind of ancestry. So, if video games are not different from toys and board games, what you're actually asking is board games and toys can be better than books and television. The question, then, becomes strange since it is like comparing apples with oranges. You might as well throw programming, studying mathematics and making exercises in this comparison.

If you take out the "game" of video game, then the question becomes more reasonable, but then a video game without the game part is basically a visual novel, a narrative without interaction. Something between a comic and a movie.

They are likely hard to reconcile. Something that goes beyond "solving challenges to access narratives/artsy content, make the latter more interesting". The whole packet is not art, it is art plus a challenge to reach it.

The whole "metaphors through mechanics" is more promising, but then is not truly interactive which is the thing supposed to be special about video games. The mechanic is a concept frozen that cannot be modified by the user making not really interactive, only played with.

>> No.7258989

In my experience most people who play video games are basically incapable of reading intelligent material.

Literally everyone can play video games.

>> No.7259004

>>7249030
It goes for both, if we're talking AAA titles.

>> No.7259039
File: 7 KB, 260x195, Clint's other head.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7259039

>>7257964
Fully agree, glad to know there are rational people here.

>> No.7259046

>>7258989
even quadriplegics?

>> No.7259472

>>7253285
EC is kinda reddit shit. Lots of memes and pitched up voices used to describe some pretty basic ideas. But honestly, video games don't have much depth to them in the first place so there can't be anything but shallow analysis of them.

>> No.7259484
File: 135 KB, 500x309, r_18188492_2013120208340483833400.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7259484

>>7259046
this guy streams and plays shooting games, i think

there's another guy that can literally only move his mouth. he uses a pen and voice commands to play dota or something. all while laying on his stomach on a medical bed

>> No.7259581

>>7253502
non sequitur tbh fam

>> No.7259592

>>7253435
bretty gud

>> No.7259660

>>7253721
I checked the archives and apparently this guy has been here since 2012. Huh.

>> No.7259779

>>7248869
No, some people just enjoy reading more than playing video games or watching television

It's no big deal and nothing complicated really

>> No.7259813

>>7257964
>modern gaming
>quality
kek

>> No.7259828

I like how DJ Orwell argued with me on the value of video games and then when I proved to him why books are better he stopped responding and started ranting about how video games have bombastic visuals and big explosions and that's why they're better.

>> No.7259964

>>7258928
>http://www.cnet.com/news/study-40-hours-of-complex-starcraft-is-good-for-the-brain/
>cnet