Developer Intent

[Anonymous No.6831958]

Why do people care so much about playing "the way the developers intended"?
Why does this concept generally only apply to graphics (filters, screen modifications, etc.) and not to the wider "intended" experience? (which for a game made in the 1980s, certainly wasn't emulating it on your ridiculously powerful gaming 3-screen'd gaming desktop using a retrobit repro gamepad with extra buttons and the best CRT filter you could find.)
Why is the focus always on emulating the "Intended" experience, instead of the experience most contemporary players would've had with a game?

How did this obsession with "intentions" develop?

[Anonymous No.6832010]

>>6831958
>Why is the focus always on emulating the "Intended" experience, instead of the experience most contemporary players would've had with a game?
>How did this obsession with "intentions" develop?
The experience contemporary players would have had with a game is often incidental, a circumstance brought about because of business choices or different technology. Any work of art is created by the artist with intent, whether it's a video game or film. When a filmmaker shoots a film on 35mm widescreen, they intend on it being seen in widescreen in a movie theatre and they created the work with this medium in mind. It's not that it's inherently "better", but when I want to see a film, it goes without saying that I want to see what the artist wants to communicate, not what a businessman wants to communicate or whatever. If a business sells me that movie on VHS pan and scan, that is an approximation of the work that made best business sense. It's better than nothing, but I should seek out closer approximations to the artist's vision like an HD widescreen Blu-Ray transfer of the 35mm film. It's not identical, but it's still closer to the artist's vision instead of business interests or incidental technological circumstances (eg there was just no way to get widescreen 35mm-level quality in the 80s, so VHS had to do). The same with games really. They made these games with certain tech in mind and I'm interested in playing what they wanted to put out in the world because I value the artist's choice more than non-artist-decided choices like what made most business sense to re-release a game as, it's as simple as that.

[Anonymous No.6832024]

>>6831958
So, what, this a stealth OJ Simpson thread or something

[Anonymous No.6832030]

>>6832010
fpbp

[Anonymous No.6832035]

>>6832024

[Anonymous No.6832120]

>>6832010
>When a filmmaker shoots a film on 35mm widescreen, they intend on it being seen in widescreen in a movie theatre and they created the work with this medium in mind. It's not that it's inherently "better", but when I want to see a film, it goes without saying that I want to see what the artist wants to communicate, not what a businessman wants to communicate or whatever
Is this always true though? The cliche example would be Star Wars, where the author's intent has been more fully realized with every subsequent edit, but the audience much prefer the original version as superior to the artist's vision.

[Anonymous No.6832186]

For me, it's unfiltered & integer scaled to the highest factor.

I grew up with CRT TV's and honestly fuck that blurry shit, I don't want to deal with that anymore.

[Anonymous No.6832190]

>>6832024
Lol I’m fucking dead. I didn’t even realize

[Anonymous No.6832197]

>>6831958
>Why do people care so much about playing "the way the developers intended"?
>Why does this concept generally only apply to graphics (filters, screen modifications, etc.) and not to the wider "intended" experience? (which for a game made in the 1980s, certainly wasn't emulating it on your ridiculously powerful gaming 3-screen'd gaming desktop using a retrobit repro gamepad with extra buttons and the best CRT filter you could find.)
>Why is the focus always on emulating the "Intended" experience, instead of the experience most contemporary players would've had with a game?
>How did this obsession with "intentions" develop?

[Anonymous No.6832296]

>>6832010
Weird how nowadays we have the opposite problem with old 4:3 content sometimes being cropped to 16:9 instead of giving it pillarboxing.

[Anonymous No.6832879]

>>6832120
Not him, but that's an extreme example, what anon said applies to almost every case. Although, I personally don't like using filters and etc. I will go out of my way to play it on a controller or at a certain difficulty if the developers say that's the best way to experience the game.

[Anonymous No.6833112]

>>6832120
>The cliche example would be Star Wars, where the author's intent has been more fully realized with every subsequent edit, but the audience much prefer the original version as superior to the artist's vision.
I would argue that the current release of Star Wars is true to present day George Lucas' vision, which is a distinct thing from past George Lucas' vision. What a person wants to communicate can change over time but that doesn't mean it's necessarily superior or inferior, simply different. It's perfectly reasonable to seek out 1970s Lucas' vision of Star Wars just as it is valid to watch present day Lucas' remastered editions, but what's less desirable to me is if we had to hypothetically watch some modified version made by a studio or company that had to conform to some other thing (e.g VHS' hard limitations which weren't a factor for either Lucas' 1970s or his 1990s cinematic intent, it is inherently a perversion because he didn't make either version with VHS in mind).

[Anonymous No.6833204]

>>6832186
lel about to post similar. People emulating the flaws of CRT are completely retarded.

[Anonymous No.6833692]

>>6833112
That's fair, but I think there's a case for embracing limitations as well. Not that one approach is superior to the other, but one receives much more attention.
Especially for stuff that's a big cultural event - take the Pokemon anime for example. If you want the artist's intent, you should really watch the Japanese version (with subtitles if necessary), but for going back over the Pokemania period it would make much more sense for most people to watch the English dubbed version, even if it's inferior and differs from the artists intent. With something like Pokemon I'd go so far as to say that the massive commercial aspect of it is almost as important as the artistic vision.
I'd apply similar logic to some of the translated versions of JRPGs from the 90s: If you want the artist's vision, there are usually good retranslation patches out there. But there's a case for playing the inferior, hacked up western translations given those are what most people actually had available at the time. That's what's in the collective cultural consciousness of western players. It's not a question of either/or, obviously you can play the same game twice with a different translation each time, but you'd think that there'd be a small number of people who ask "which version of this game sold best?" instead of "which romhack brings this game closest to the developer's intentions?"

Even with movies, I'd say there's probably a case for watching old VHS versions if you can. Maybe not as your primary way of experiencing them, or as your first-time viewing, but if you've already seen a film ten times, why not watch the pan-and-scan VHS version and see how that changes things up? Especially if you're dealing with something that was a box office bomb followed by becoming a major VHS hit. Considering that most games, movies, etc, are commodities as well as being works of art, why not also try to enjoy the parts where the accountants or the technology forced an ugly compromise?

[Anonymous No.6834202]

>>6832296
Underrated post.

[Anonymous No.6834240]

For me it's not about developer intent, I genuinely think, for example, NES games straight look better through composite. They look more textured and it rounds out the spirtework

However 16 bit and up I generally prefer RGB, but I do like the soft glow and smooth motion clarity of a CRT. Unfiltered raw pixels just look too stark

[Anonymous No.6834451]

I'd say it's because it's interesting.

[Anonymous No.6834608]

Because they are cucks with no real tastes of their own, so they seek out intellectual shortcuts to validate their preference or playstyle and creator's intent is the low hanging fruit.

Beyond that, art is communication and involves some degree of trust. For instance, developers softly funnel the player's into the desired playstyle while allowing some wiggle to deviate so it doesn't feel artificial. The players in turn have to be obedient, discern the intent and trust that whatever it is they are being funneled into is actually fun. It's an unspoken contract that takes place unconsciously. This kind of attempt to discern what the creator wants can become a point of obsession however. This combined with the fact that a. you will never know someone's intent b. as humans we tend to imagine intent where there is none to make sense of chaos can make for some absolutely retarded arguments you often see in dev intent threads.

[Anonymous No.6834654]

Because developers did usually produce the games with extremely high-fidelity (for the time) hardware, even if they were aware of the usual end consumers' much lower-quality rigs, and there are graphical effects and console hardware manipulation that can only be recreated with appropriate hardware or software emulation.

[Anonymous No.6834692]

>>6831958
>developers intended
The developers intended to get paid. Everything else is /vr/ grown bullshit.