/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9050381]

>War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles fought by mercenaries and machines. War - and its consumption of life - has become a well-oiled machine. War has changed. ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities. Genetic control. Information control. Emotion control. Battlefiled control. Everything is monitored and kept under control. War has changed. The age of deterrence has become the age of control...All in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction. And he who controls the battlefield...controls history. War has changed. When the battlefield is under total control...War becomes routine

Is this literary?
If not, will literature ever match it?

[Anonymous No.9050420]

metal gear solid 4 was kino
meatal gear solid 2 was truly literary

[Anonymous No.9050533]

>And he who controls the battlefield...controls history.

holy.....i want more...

Metal Gear Solid isn't literary, it's a sophisticated video game though, which is not due to Hideo but to that one friend of his, that was very muh involved in carving out the MGS-universe.

Literature can not match it, as games like MGS allow the player to interact and engage with a virtual reality in ways that no other medium can. This creates it unique way of mediating certain ideas, some consciously, some subconsciously, to the player, and i guess one could argue that literature may be the superior medium for the mediation of ideas, though if that were true, one would have to admit that vidya is in the infancy-stage. The larger the medium grows, the more people it pulls in, the better i expect it to become. Though there are some large barriers that prevent the medium to really utilize it's potential, for example the great financial stress and insecurity, which turns every game into a sort of struggle of survival. This halts vidya's possibility to develop as an artform. Whether it's an small independent studio, that depends on making a hit on Steam, or a contract-specialized studio (Platinum) that is very much limited in it's freedom most of the time, or AAA-studios for whom any sort of artistic striving is impossible, as they are giant, multi-national molochs, fabricating a game that has amazing production quality, but offers basically nothing outside of conventional, infantile storys and uninspired gameplay.

Even Kojima, which had the privilege to somehow be turned into a brand himself, suffered from this with Metal Gear Solid. We can't estimate how much Konami interfered with his work, but looking at that new Zombie-game, it seems likely that they did so a lot. Generally the japanese industry (that we talk of industry reveals enough) has a much more innovative approach, that is restrained by extreme financial pressure (See the constant efforts of publishers to westernize the franchises)

So the question is not whether literature can match MGS, but whether MGS can match the potential of it's own medium? And here i would say: no. The exciting, political bits have become less and less prominent with every single game, the game understood that it's main audience were the mainstream-anime people, and thus adapted. The Influence of Manga and Anime was already there in MGS1, but there was equilibrium with american elements of political thrillers. This shift reached it's lowest point with MGS4 and Peace Walker. The central stage became occupied by terribly melodramatic and anime-esque (and i'm talking of bad anime here) sequences and narrative threads, that didn't work out whatsoever. The satire and political commentary of MGS4 is as good as ever, but it was much less prominent, overshadowed by the general narrative of the story, that is more akin to a military soap opera than a cold and brutal political thriller. I'm distracting myself from studying.

[Anonymous No.9050549]

>>9050533
I meant that vidya is the superior medium to mediate ideas. Though in retrospect this statement is way too general and reductive. What could be is that vidya has the greatest amount of tools as to mediate an idea. An idea can be mediated through "virtual metaphysics" (see f. e. Survival-games or This War of Mine), through text, audio, image. Through interaction between characters, through narrative, "pseudo-physical" manifestations of it and so on. To really do this justice though you need a lot of money or an ingenius mind. Even a game like Bioshock 1, which was very advanced in said mediation of ideas, was restricted to very primitive, cave-people like "A or B" to mediate it's central moral dilemma. This shows just how infantile and undeveloped the medium is still, and yet a game like Bioshock, shows in what direction games could go. (And one should not forget that the game had to succesfully balance Levine's ambition with the demand to create a succesful, mainstream-compatible AAA console shooter, sometimes increasing the amount of money is a more regulating, than liberating force, as can be seen with the disastrous B: Infinite)

[Anonymous No.9050698]

>>9050549
Bioschock was trash and ayn shit is just pure cancer

[Anonymous No.9050801]

>>9050698
It's a criticism of Rand, dofus. Besides, whether it succeeded or not in it's ambition, does not deny that it was relatively advanced in how it worked in and mediated ideas and concepts.

[Anonymous No.9050811]

>/lit/ talking about the literary potential of video games without being autistic dismissive snobs
never thought I'd see the day

[Anonymous No.9050874]

>>9050381
>>9050533
>>9050420
>>9050549
All this shit is on par with a Larry Bond or Tom Clancy novel. /v/ faggots have such low standards, correct grammar usage tends to impress.

>>9050811
This is a 16 year old who played MGS2 for the first time after reading some existential piece from some nu-male on ign, and ran here to expound upon it's literary merits.

[Anonymous No.9050938]

>>9050874
I don't think anyone claimed that any existing titles qualify as "art". Merely that the medium can take advantage of methods not available to film or literature, and that these possibilities have not been properly explored. There is potential in video games for profound expression, but only a handful of titles have scratched on the possibilities uniquely available to this medium.

[Anonymous No.9050956]

>>9050381
>When the battlefield is under total control...War becomes routine
I'd say its more of an accurate observation than literary

[Anonymous No.9050958]

>>9050381
>It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity.

Pure ideology

[Anonymous No.9050962]

>>9050874
And you apparently didn't grasp my point, which may be my fault or yours. Vidya isn't about good writing, i tried to point out what makes vidya special: The capability to use any medium as it wishes, to create a virtual reality, governed by certain laws, through which the player interacts with it. My "Holy... I want more..." was supposed to point out the cornyness of the writing, i also called it writing akin to advertisement. Can you pls unquote me or atleast delete your self?

[Anonymous No.9050994]

>>9050381
Sounds a lot like 1984 desu

[Anonymous No.9051027]

Video Games Approaching Art:
MGS2
Silent Hill 2
Kentucky Route Zero
Shadow of the Colossus
Final Fantasy VI
Planescape: Torment (though just in theory as I think some of the writing in it is pretty bad.)
Spec Ops: The Line (but only because it was so willing to fuck with player expectations. It's pretty ham fisted.)

There are some others you could include depending on your individual taste but the medium is still young.

The difference between film, literature and video games is important to understand though.

Literature has the ability to put you directly into someone else's experience that you can't get from the other two.

Film is purely observational but allows the artist to construct particular images which themselves can communicate things to the audience.

Video games, sometimes try to be movies with cutscenes but they should really stop. The central aspect that makes games different is their ability to allow the audience agency in a story. It allows the author to force the audience to make difficult choices and live with those consequences. But most of the time, as in Bethesda games and others, the games sort of don't care to challenge the audience and instead fellate the player character who everyone in the world seems to know is important.

We'll see what video games can do in the next century. I think we have yet to see a DW Griffith emerge.

[Anonymous No.9051033]

The categorization of Art is pointless, whether video games are art or not does not bear any insight of how it functions, on what it can do, and what it can't do.

[Anonymous No.9051038]

>>9051027
>Final Fantasy VI
>DW Griffith

good taste bro

[Anonymous No.9051047]

>Decide to play a video game lauded as being close to art
>Its full of overwrought, hamfisted dialogues and monologuing that doesnt mean anything and is made purely to appeal to barely literate "le intellectual" reddit gamers

[Anonymous No.9051053]

>>9051047
The video games that work best as art are often the silent ones that can immerse you in a time and place.

[Anonymous No.9051066]

>>9051027
This post is crap.


>Literature has the ability to put you directly into someone else's experience that you can't get from the other two.
>Film is purely observational but allows the artist to construct particular images which themselves can communicate things to the audience.

You should differentiate your definitions a bit more. I could easily claim that Literature is also just observational, and that "being put directly into someone else's experience" is only applicable to 1st person narratives, if at all, since often the first person narrator tells us a story. We are not put into a narrative but rather told a narrative. (Stream of consciousness being an exception here)

Just as we participate in the thoughts and stories through words, we participate in thoughts and stories through images. The distinction is finer, not this easy to make.

>The central aspect that makes games different is their ability to allow the audience agency in a story.

Very narrow definition, that seems, based on the games you've chosen, apply to yourself. A video game doesn't need a story, and also it doesn't need agency within a narrative. It can offer this, but there are also books that offer this.

> I think we have yet to see a DW Griffith emerge.

This shows a misunderstanding of why Griffith was so important, and also of what is the most fundamental capability of video games. Film's fundamental capability is to show movement. A Video Games fundamental capability is to allow you to interact within virtual reality, however it is defined or functions, which very often is very, very different from our reality (See for example a game like Defcon, Pong etc.). If we could not interact with it, it would be anything but a game. It gets a bit more complicated, what differentiates a video game from a general computer program is the second aspect, one that is very advanced and complex: It is a game. Now what a game is, what playing is, is an incredibly complex topic, and one i can not easily answer now. But i think you get the idea when i ascribe to vidya the fundamental capability that the player can interact with what is computed.

I find it nuts that people refuse video games the status of art. Look at pottery of the mycanean age, and good luck telling anyone that this isn't art. Now play something like Ico or SotC. What is created there is without precedent. Of course this doesn't mean that all vidya is art, but the distinction is almost impossible. Bethesda's games could be easily critisized for having low-effort story, quests, mechanics, visuals and so on. The world design, anything but handcrafted, filled with constantly repetetive 3d objects is lazy and sterile. At the same time they offer an unrivaveld interactivity, you can interact with almost any object, can manipulate them, you can steal, kill, travel, explore, fight and so on. Same goes for a game like Mountain Blade. That's unique, new and exciting, and offers a glimpse at things to come.

[Anonymous No.9051117]

>>9051066
I wrote the post to which you responded.

Are you okay, anon? You seem upset with me.

>A video game doesn't need a story, and also it doesn't need agency within a narrative. It can offer this, but there are also books that offer this.
Personally, I don't consider Gradius or a purely Aesthetic experience art. In fact I rather dislike the term video "games" but any replacement term is likely to be mocked.

Without a narrative, or something that contextualizes play for the player, I don't think there's much interesting going on. And personally, I've never read a book that offers reader agency. Most books are set paths through an existing universe and story. By agency, I don't just mean the ability to interpret, I mean that actions the player will take impact the outcome of many different parts of the story. Planscape: Torment did this. There are thousands of possibilities as to how the story will turn out due to the amount of side stories that the player can impact. There were something like 800,000 words written for it to have decision trees. That simply not something literature has done except the the choose your own adventure realm and those are universally shit.

>This shows a misunderstanding of why Griffith was so important
I know precisely why Griffith was important. I meant the phrase in an analogous way, not in that we would see someone come along and do literally the things Griffith did but for games.

Video Games have yet to see a generational talent, and I don't know if they will die to the capital intensive process of making a game.

I don't think Kojima is it, though he's the closest and no one else has the budgets he does.


How did you feel about New Vegas?

[Anonymous No.9051130]

>>9050381
>Is this literary?
yes
>If not, will literature ever match it?
gravitys rainbow

[Anonymous No.9051172]

>>9051117
>Without a narrative, or something that contextualizes play for the player, I don't think there's much interesting going on

Depending on what contextualizes play for the player, i would agree. Though i believe you meant it differently. Why for example isn't there a lot going on with the original Mount and Blade, or a /gsg/ game like Crusader Kings 2, or a minimalistic Jump and Run like 140? In the latter you are not given a task, there is no narrative, not anything. Same for one of my favourites: Football Manager (the sega one). You start a career, pick a team, and then play. Many games are interesting without any narrative neccessity, neccesity mostly emerges from the desire of the player to engage with the virtual world (I want to beat the 3 levels, i want to win the Champiuons league, i want to recreate the roman empire, i want to rule my own kingdom, etc). I think that a narrative contextualization is one of many tools by developers to make the player feel engaged with the game, it is also not a fundamental neccesity.

>By agency, I don't just mean the ability to interpret, I mean that actions the player will take impact the outcome of many different parts of the story.

I understand, you have pointed it out as the fundamental quality of video games, and i said that i believe that you think this way, because it may be your favourite quality. But there are many games which do not allow for this kind of narrative agency, as such it can not be described as the fundamental capability of video games. What makes a film special is that it captures and presents moving images, everything aside of that is "rhetoric", so to say. A film can go without a narrative, it can even utilize still images, it can use text, music and so on. A video game stands even above that in terms of capabilities, because it can also include film, and then potentially allows us to interact with it, under various circumstances (See the utilization of the Nostalghia scene in The Witness). That's why i believe it to be essential to look at the most fundamental capability of games, as to find out what exactly games are, what their merit is, what they can and can not do, and in what way they qualify as art or not. The same debate raged on with films at the early stage, many calling it barbarism and so on, relating it's quality to that of the established art forms. I reject that. Video games merit as an art form is not determined by how it measures up against literature or film, but by what and how it does what it can do. No doubt that we are still in the stone ages of this, our machines are really primitive. Just think about how last-gen consoles had less than 1gb of ram, and what would potentially be doable if you had say 128gb of ram in your rig. More than any other medium video games are restrained by technology.

[Anonymous No.9051174]

>>9051172
And yet i believe that the Griffith comparison is pointless. Many amazing games came out in the wild 80's and 90's, and even now, on Steam, there are very innovative games being produced that push forward the boundaries, though these are again limited by lack of funds and technological capability, and in the higher budget area game development is too costly to do art. The amount of working hours and creative manpower that go into an Assassins Creed game, make the effort that went into a griffith film look like nothing. An

My opinion on New Vegas is that it's combines in great quality both general agency as a player within the game, and narrative agency. What is really great about this game are it's multi-layered quests, that have been thoroughly thought through, the capability to individualize the skills of your character as to create very different ways of interacting with the VR, and some fun and engaging world building.

[Anonymous No.9051264]

>>9051172
>Why for example isn't there a lot going on with the original Mount and Blade, or a /gsg/ game like Crusader Kings 2
There's a lot going on but I don't think playing those is the same impulse as reading a work of literature, or viewing and appreciating art.

I love strategy games but most only have a ruleset and a start point. I don't think they affectively contextualize play in the way I'm speaking. You don't really learn anything from a playthrough of Crusader Kings but how to better master the game systems. It's completely insular. It exercises your strategic ability and sometimes interesting scenarios can emerge but it's not like reading war and peace or even Thucydides.

>or a minimalistic Jump and Run like 140?
I love 140 but it's a completely aesthetic experience. It's pleasurable to be in but I don't think it really does anything that I find interesting from an artistic standpoint.

>See the utilization of the Nostalghia scene in The Witness
Oh boy. We can talk about the witness if you want but I was thoroughly enjoying that game until I unlocked the first of those stupid fucking videos. Way to absolutely ruin an experience. Johnathan Blow is all STEM and I think has real problems with not handholding his audience out of fear they'll be lost in ambiguity. The STEM mindset isn't bad, it just needs to be tempered sometimes so it doesn't try to dictate every idea you get from something. A work of art is not a mathematical proof, you don't need to explicate every idea you had when making it.

>>9051174
We don't actually disagree on much here. We just have different definitions.

I see value in the kinds of experiences you are talking about but when I think of the art that I consider the greatest, it does a lot more than simply entertain. I have never played through a game of Europa Universalis and come a way with a better understanding of the human condition.

Personally that's why I experience art. I want to connect with other humans, to gain access to other ways of thinking and to see the world from a different light. I don't think narrative is a necessity but I also don't think there's ever going to be a replacement for it. Even in the witness there's a narrative.

[Anonymous No.9051313]

>>9050381

Somebody asked what the literature equivalent of MGS is the other day. Thread's dead now but the answer is definitely Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

MGS places much more emphasis on war but both synthesise history, politics and conventions action-movies into a comic book plot.

[Anonymous No.9051325]

>>9051264
>It's completely insular. It exercises your strategic ability and sometimes interesting scenarios can emerge but it's not like reading war and peace or even Thucydides.

It's not like War and Peace or "even Thucydides". But that doesn't make it insular. One insight, in relation to vidya, that i gained from reading Adorno's Dialectics of Enlightement, is that games like Crusader Kings 2 or Football Manager, are in essence a full-blown objectification of reality, as such they teach skills that are very important, especially in our third-sector driven economy, they teach how to abstract and how to control and use things with maximum efficiency. If Crusader Kings teaches you how to interact with it's game systems in the most profitable and efficient way, then this is not an insular skill, but one that also reflects in reality. This goes really deep though, since the fact that a person plays these kind of games, is already a significant factor (Just how many people from the finance sector play Eve Online). How exactly you learn or what is taught you, or mediated to you, is hard to pin down. In case of /gsg/ or other management games the mediated idea may be that people's are objects which are still somewhat driven by invisible but calculable motives that you can utilize for your own sake etc. But that's too speculative to bring us any further. And besides: Aside from information, which i can definitely confirm both FM (i know so many football players and their qualities, that i'm embarrassed about it) and /gsg/ have taught me a lot of information, aside from that, what can we definitely pick out does War and Peace or Thucydides teach us? I think their value goes beyond something that can easily be pinned down. So i deny that a narrative is a requirement, though certainly what a narrative creates is Meaning, Sense. But here i would argue that one of the truly unique qualities of vidya is that it can do so in a generative way. A game like FM or HoI indirectly gives me the data to create a narrative of my own. I, the player myself, create in my head a narrative when i play HoI3. So it's complicated.

>I love 140 but it's a completely aesthetic experience.

First it's weird that a completely aesthetic experience for a video game does nothing that interests you from an artistic point of view. Secondly i disagree completely on it just being an aesthetic experience. What i love about 140, and also about Limbo and Inside, is how Sound educates the player. If you want to be good at 140, all you need to do is let your movements be informed by the rhythm of the movement. That creates a strange flow, in which your movement, interaction and puzzle solving is guided by mimicking music, that's for me extremely interesting and innovative (though of course this has been done since the emergence of vidya, communicating with the player via audio, in this case it is reduced to it's purest form though, doesn't that have creative, and as such, artistic merit?)

[Anonymous No.9051350]

>>9051264
>Oh boy. We can talk about the witness if you want but I was thoroughly enjoying that game until I unlocked the first of those stupid fucking videos. Way to absolutely ruin an experience. Johnathan Blow is all STEM and I think has real problems with not handholding his audience out of fear they'll be lost in ambiguity. The STEM mindset isn't bad, it just needs to be tempered sometimes so it doesn't try to dictate every idea you get from something. A work of art is not a mathematical proof, you don't need to explicate every idea you had when making it.

I wasn't amazed by The Witness in any way, just an example of how uniquely video games can utilize various art forms as to mediate an idea. Braid was much more effective and artistically interesting. The Witness could have lasted 5 hours while creating the same level of insight that 20 hours do. He constantly pointed out how minimal he wanted everything to be, and didn't utilize that whatsoever in the quantity of puzzles.

>I see value in the kinds of experiences you are talking about but when I think of the art that I consider the greatest, it does a lot more than simply entertain. I have never played through a game of Europa Universalis and come a way with a better understanding of the human condition.

A better understanding of the human condition is more of a topic related to philosophy, though of course, it has been argued, and i agree, that a narrative can teach or mediate one much better and effective than a non-fiction text. I wouldn't agree that this is what constitutes something to be art or not. And yet i think that Europa Universalis does educate on the human condition, though explaining why would lead to abstract and complicated explanations, that for some reason, despite wasting my studying time writing this, i'm too lazy for to deliver.

>I don't think narrative is a necessity but I also don't think there's ever going to be a replacement for it.

I think that narrativity is also essential, it is so damn effective and also has such a unique quality to it, that it would be silly to not see this as something video games should get better at. Why i dismiss though, is the idea that we have to look at narratives from the point of view of cinema or literature, as the AAA-industry and most people do in general. A narrative in video games means many things, and functions in many ways differently. Which is why the cinematic approach seems so cheap and dishonest. As a tool, among others yes, but as the central element of narration it is relatively ineffective. Though of course effective enough for the masses.

>>9051313
The literary equivalent would maybe then be the manga by the guy who advised Kojima on story and setting?

[Anonymous No.9051357]

>>9051325
*by the rhythm of the music

[Anonymous No.9051360]

>>9051350

>The literary equivalent would maybe then be the manga by the guy who advised Kojima on story and setting?

Yeah maybe but I obviously haven't read that weeb shit so I couldn't possibly comment.

[Anonymous No.9051383]

>>9051264

>Oh boy. We can talk about the witness if you want but I was thoroughly enjoying that game until I unlocked the first of those stupid fucking videos. Way to absolutely ruin an experience. Johnathan Blow is all STEM and I think has real problems with not handholding his audience out of fear they'll be lost in ambiguity. The STEM mindset isn't bad, it just needs to be tempered sometimes so it doesn't try to dictate every idea you get from something. A work of art is not a mathematical proof, you don't need to explicate every idea you had when making it.

That seems like a fair comment from everything I've read and seen about The Witness. It sounds like the entire project was predicated on the idea of Blow pushing the point that critical thinking is important. Fair point really but I question his reasoning to base an entire game around it - from the puzzles themselves to all those hidden videos/texts. I'd say a game like The Talos Principle does the same thing but utilises the concept through story and puzzles in a way that's more literary/philosophical and a lot less STEM.

[Anonymous No.9051387]

>>9051383
Though that's not the whole point, see the title and it's mathematical equivalent. I found that to be very clever, but yeah: a couple of good ideas and concept that could have been explored in much less time.

[Anonymous No.9051398]

>>9051387

>see the title and it's mathematical equivalent.

Right, that's something I'm not familiar with.

Do you know of an article that explains it in more depth? Feel free to write your own response if you prefer.

[Anonymous No.9051406]

>This is for all of you out there who have taken a class on complexity theory. I do like my puzzles and I often find myself thinking about what complexity class specific puzzles belong to. For example, Sudoku is in P [edit: no it isn't]: it is guaranteed to have a polynomial time solution. Conversely, I believe a pentomino placement puzzle (example) is in NP

>but not in P: there is no known algorithm that will let you build a solution without essentially brute forcing it. I use this thought to justify my hatred of pentomino puzzles.

>This game's 'snake' puzzles are clearly in NP (and many, if not all are eventually in P as well) given you know their rules. The interesting part is that in this game the actual puzzle in most cases isn't the puzzle solution itself, but figuring out how to evaluate whether a puzzle solution is right or wrong.

>A definition of a problem being in NP is that given a candidate solution, there exists a way to verify that the solution is correct in polynomial time. This game often is about the discovery of such a verifier itself moreso than the specific solution. In mathematical terms, such a verifier is usually called a Witness
.>This game involves you, the player, searching for the Witness to various puzzles.


got pasted various times on /v/, after release

[Anonymous No.9051422]

>>9050381
Or you could read 1984, which I'm fairly certain came out well before MGS and said that almost verbatim.

[Anonymous No.9051558]

>>9051117
I'm making a big mod for Skyrim that takes place in a city about 7 times the size of whiterun. The main gameplay is kind of what you described with planetscape, you have to make a lot of important choices that affects how the story turns out. For example, if you choose to back a particular family over the others, you are going to have to choose which of the family members to push for government office, you must figure out who would be the best fit based on the dialogue, personality, and quests you do for each one. If you choose the wrong one, which happens a lot it's really not forgiving, the city and family will suffer. There's also a lawyers guild that has you investigating crimes and making accusations that you need to get right. You'll also be forced to make some moral dilemmas. I want to make the main gameplay about the story and dialogue instead of just dungeon crawling and drauge stabbing

[Anonymous No.9051604]

even fucking pewdiepie pointed out the corniness of that monologue
it's atrocious writing