Theory

[Bradford]

http://insomnia.ac/essays/transaesthetics/


'Grand,' but No 'Godfather',
by Junot Diaz. The Wall Street Journal, page W3, June 28, 2008

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460385251911957.html

The reason I call this article a tragedy is that it came so close to being right on. The author hits a lot of good points.

With respect to great films, he states, "[n]arrative art of that caliber is distinguished by its ability to re-organize our preconceptions, to shift us into a world that's always been there but that we've been afraid to acknowledge . . . ."

As to art generally:
"Successful art tears away the veil and allows you to see the world with lapidary clarity; successful art pulls you apart and puts you back together again, often against your will, and in the process reminds you in a visceral way of your limitations, your vulnerabilities, makes you in effect more human."

Then he effectively dissects why GTA IV utterly fails to do any of that. That's good, right? Doesn't that mean he gets at least some small part of it?

So where's the tragedy? He apologizes for his conclusions! The entire article is an apology for his opinion that GTA IV fails to be art. He can't spit out two sentences without stopping to reassure everyone that no one should be mad at him for trashing GTA's credentials as a work of art. He can't even really bring himself to say "GTA IV is not art." Here, I can distill the entire article to it's logical form:

1. Please don't hurt me, I promise GTA IV really is art.
2. Art is x.
3. GTA is not even close to x.
4. Therefore, please don't hurt me, I promise GTA IV really is art.

Maybe it is some consolation to see critique of GTAIV of any kind in a mainstream publication...

[icycalm]

Your reading of the article is of course correct, but you are seeing things from a pretty low perspective. Let me show you how it looks from A LOT higher up.

The problem is that the writer does not know a) what art is, and b) how games work. Consider his penultimate paragraph, in which he reveals to us the changes he would have made to GTAIV in order to elevate it to "art" (emphasis is mine):

Rockstar Games could have had a field day with Niko as immigrant, Niko as veteran from a war that was screwed up from the start, with Niko as aspirer to an American Dream that might never have existed in the first place. It wouldn't have taken much to have made some plot alterations, to have had Niko ducking ICE special agents, to have had him actually struggling to get the girlfriend of his dreams, robbing, stealing, killing in order to dress up to local standards, or to end the game with Niko being deported back to Europe. Any one of these narrative additions would have made Niko's journey and his successes all the more poignant, all the more surprising -- would have put a face, a very real, hard face on the American Dream, which for many aspiring Americans, throughout our country's long checkered history, is a nightmare.

Cutscenes, cutscenes, and more cutscenes. His whole argument is that GTAIV is not art because THE CUTSCENES ARE ALL WRONG. Meaning that if someone were to mod GTAIV changing a few cutscenes, IT WOULD SUDDENLY BECOME ART.

Do I really need to go into why such a view is childish? According to this view, even the Sega CD FMV games could have been art if the cutscenes were about the "hard face on the American Dream", or some such vague, artfagottry pretentious bullshit.

Maybe it is some consolation to see critique of GTAIV of any kind in a mainstream publication...

That was not a critique of GTAIV. It was a critique of ITS CUTSCENES. There is a MASSIVE difference.

As for this being a consolation... Only if you are suicidally desperate!

[Bradford]

For what it's worth, I don't think that the author is necessarily referring to cutscenes when he makes the suggestions you quoted. I'm certainly not telling you how you should read it, but in my post I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he was suggesting interactive changes.

Now whether interactive changes of the kind he suggested would elevate the game to art, I make no argument for whatsoever.

[icycalm]

Dude he talks about "narrative additions". The question of mechanics -- i.e. the question of rule changes -- never even enters his thought process. "How could we improve GTAIV by messing with its mechanics?" That's the only question worth answering, in a review, a critique, or whatever the fuck.

The storyline in an electronic game is nothing but window-dressing.

The only time the storyline becomes anything more than window-dressing is when it's interactive: in GTA games this means NEVER.

All the above is Game Theory 101. And yet the dude still spends his whole "critique" talking about plotpoints. Meh.

If you want to read a good, honest, intelligent critique of GTAIV, read this:

http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=353

Anything else is bullshit.

[JoshF]

"Successful art tears away the veil and allows you to see the world with lapidary clarity; successful art pulls you apart and puts you back together again, often against your will, and in the process reminds you in a visceral way of your limitations, your vulnerabilities, makes you in effect more human."

lol

[icycalm]

Someone should make an "Art Definition Generator", which would work similarly to Maddox's "Tom Clancy Plot Generator":

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net ... tty_movies

(half-way down the page -- it's hilarious)

[Macaw]

Graphics and music in games are art. Direction in a game is an art. That's all I have to say, I'm not one to spend much time with philosophical readings. But there's a lot of bullshit out there.

[icycalm]

Graphics and music in games are art. Direction in a game is an art. That's all I have to say, I'm not one to spend much time with philosophical readings.

That's why you don't have a clue what art is.

But there's a lot of bullshit out there.

It's all due to people shooting their mouths off about things they don't understand, nor care to make an effort to understand. This basically applies to everyone, except... well, except the philosophers.

[somes]

Well, why do the philosophers make such an effort to understand?

[icycalm]

"Understanding" is a game like any other. The only difference is that it's the deepest, most complex and most difficult game there is (and therefore also the most rewarding), and that's why it attracts the strongest, most adventurous and most ambitious people.

For everyone else there's videogames.

[somes]

Also: the most miserable, socially incapable, physically irrelevant people.



(I kid, sort of).

[icycalm]

Again, your comment, taken at face value, just shows that you have no idea what you are talking about. You are just mindlessly repeating a naive stereotype which all uneducated, ignorant people like to repeat in order to feel better about their ignorance and lack of education.

Here's a passage from Baudrillard which pretty much perfectly explains the phenomenon of blogs/forums/the internet (emphasis is mine):

"The compulsion to operationalism gives rise to an operational paradox. It is not just that the order of the day is 'making something worth something': the fact is that it is better, if something is to be invested with value, for it to have no value to begin with; better to know nothing in order to have things known; better to produce nothing in order to have things produced; and better to have nothing to say if one seeks to communicate. All of which is part of the logic of things: as everyone knows, if you want to make people laugh, it is better not to be funny. The implications for communication and information networks are incontestable: in order for content to be conveyed as well and as quickly as possible, that content should come as close as possible to transparency and insignificance."

[icycalm]

Also: the most miserable, socially incapable, physically irrelevant people.

And by the way, here's a photo of me. So not only am I immeasurably more intelligent and well-educated than you, but I could also smash your face in if I felt like it.

Just sayin'!

[somes]

Oh man are you kidding me?

For one thing, you really have no idea how intelligent or well-educated I am. You don't know anything about me, except, perhaps, whatever you can glean from a few Internet posts, which, of course, are the ultimate measure of reality.

Second, you seem to think that "face-smashing" capabilities can be conveyed through a photograph of the physique. As anyone who is actually serious about understanding (oh there it is!) the body could tell you, there is little correlation between the two.

[icycalm]

For one thing, you really have no idea how intelligent or well-educated I am.

Of course I do. When you respond to such a wise, lucid, well-reasoned post like this:

"Understanding" is a game like any other. The only difference is that it's the deepest, most complex and most difficult game there is (and therefore also the most rewarding), and that's why it attracts the strongest, most adventurous and most ambitious people.

For everyone else there's videogames.

(which was, after all, only a response to one of your dumbass questions), with something like this:

Also: the most miserable, socially incapable, physically irrelevant people.

You immediately give yourself away as yet another internet retard.

Second, you seem to think that "face-smashing" capabilities can be conveyed through a photograph of the physique. As anyone who is actually serious about understanding (oh there it is!) the body could tell you, there is little correlation between the two.

Ignorance again. Of course there is a correlation, and it is a very close one! But anyway, the face-smashing comment was meant to illustrate that a person can be extremely intelligent and extremely strong at the same time. (And handsome, if I may say so myself!) It's only stupid, weak creatures like yourself who delude themselves that these qualities are mutually exclusive, in order to be able to feel better about themselves.

So there you go. And you have now been banned because I don't want stupid people in this forum. Ciao.

[taidan]

This article caused a lot of game sites and game blogs to jump up and down, which is another strong sign of why most game discussion is so poor. They saw that a Pulitzer Prize winning author wrote about their favorite hobby, and that was all they needed to see. Unsurprisingly, this is the only site where I have seen where anyone points out that the essay was only about the cutscenes, which only requires you to read it to see.

The Tom Clancy name generator is a good comparison. Throw some game titles, author names and a random quote into a headline and you can generate gamer controversy.