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Can Cutscenes be Art?

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Unread postby raphael » 05 Mar 2008 11:18

icycalm wrote:
Dale wrote:But I don't see how games are an undefinable term


From Wikipedia:

Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the first academic philosopher to address the definition of the word game. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein demonstrated that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are.

Oh, I think, that's again one more reason for me to begin reading this Ludwig, definitly will.

To answer Dale:

Just try and come up with a definition worthy for the games you like and know pretty well, then try to adapt it to other game genres, and finally go on a random picked forum about videogames ... and try to confront you definition with others. I guaranty you'll discover your definition is totally wrong for some players. It will certainly be an occasion for a flame war.

And after experiencing and thinking about it, you'll maybe understand that most flame wars on videogame forums are based on the misenderstanding that none of the participants think of the same thing when refering to 'videogames'.

Try it for yourself, its the best way to understand it.
Any time during the process you'll realize videogames (as well as games) escape definition ... for a reason I don't fully understand yet.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 14:39

Crawl wrote:I guess I'd like for you to clarify what you meant. My reading of the essay is, "'Can games be art?' is a meaningless question because neither 'games' nor 'art' can be rigorously defined."


You got it wrong. First off, you need to remove the 'rigorously'. There is only one kind of definition, and it is always rigorous. Then you need to rewrite the proposition as:

"Can games be art?" is a nonsensical question because we have so far failed to define the word 'game' and failed to agree to a definition for the word 'art'.

Wittgenstein wrote:6.54 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science -- i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person -- he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy -- this method would be the only strictly correct one.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 14:49

raphael wrote:EDIT: Well I should add this is (was) a definition used among artsellers and artgalleries, it is used to help define what's valuable and what's not.


I am sorry again raphael, but I have to call bullshit on this. If you really think that artsellers and galleries use this "definition" to help define what's valuable and not, I really don't think you should be posting in this thread.

I hope you can excuse me for being so harsh, but this thread is about a serious matter. There are plenty other threads for lols.
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Unread postby Crawl » 05 Mar 2008 16:07

But difficulty in defining terms does not make statements meaningless. Orwell said this himself in the essay you quoted:

Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this


"Life" is a word that has no strict definition, it is much harder to define than "game", but that does not keep people from talking about it. If someone I knew died, it would not be appropriate to say to me, "'Life' cannot be defined, neither can death, so to say your friend died is meaningless."

If someone asked me if I ever played a videogame, I would not say, "I cannot answer that question, because 'videogame' is impossible to define."

I also dispute that you can have a rigorous definition for "chair" any more than for anything else. Most art museums, particularly modern art museums, have chairs that stretch the definition of the word, and which might not, on first glance, be identifiable as a chair.

People use pragmatic, common-sense definitions for words all the time. People can and will continue to use the word game, and when they use it, other people will understand what they mean. It is not an improper use of language to use a word that has been a part of language for thousands of years.

You have more of a point with "art", since that is a much more nebulous concept. It is entirely possible that two different people would use the word in two different ways. I would say that rather than that implying we should never talk about art, we should clarify what we mean by it in that context. This is not an unusual approach at all. When Bertrand Russell defined "number", he had to use the word "class", and the way he used that word was not how a normal person (who is not a philosopher or a mathematician) would use the word.



To take a different approach:
If anything, ambiguity in the meaning of "games" and "art" makes "Can games be art?" even easier to answer. One way of looking at the question is to focus on "games" and "art", which is what we have been doing. Another way is to focus on the word "Can". Is there any way that statement can be true? If there is any way the statement can be true, then it is true. If, say, there are 50 valid definitions for "game", and 50 valid definitions for "art", then that sentence could mean 2500 possible things. If ANY ONE combination of meanings for those words makes games as art possible, the answer to the question is YES! If there were a MILLION valid definitions for "games", and likewise for "art", then there would be a trillion possible ways that sentence could be interpreted, and if any one of them could be answered "yes", then again, the answer to the question is YES.


If the question was "ARE games art?", the question would be less meaningful, and I would say the answer would be, "It depends on what games you're referring to." I'd say a videogame like R-Type, with a beginning, middle, end, and which is designed by a creator, is art, while hide-and-go-seek is not.
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Unread postby raphael » 05 Mar 2008 17:12

icycalm wrote:
raphael wrote:EDIT: Well I should add this is (was) a definition used among artsellers and artgalleries, it is used to help define what's valuable and what's not.


I am sorry again raphael, but I have to call bullshit on this. If you really think that artsellers and galleries use this "definition" to help define what's valuable and not, I really don't think you should be posting in this thread.


I doubt we understand each other on this matter. At least, I'm not sure what you mean, and what you think I meant. My bad, for writing in English on maybe too technical matters.

I hope you can excuse me for being so harsh, but this thread is about a serious matter. There are plenty other threads for lols.


I don't have much more to say on that anyway. So I'll pass.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 17:18

Crawl, you are completely missing the point of the article. I will try to explain it here to you one more time.

Crawl wrote:But difficulty in defining terms does not make statements meaningless.


Strictly speaking, it does. For everyday purposes, it depends on the statement. Some statements are rendered meaningless even for everyday purposes if the terms contained in them cannot be defined, whereas others are not. The statement that is the subject of my article is among the former (which is why those who don't understand how logic and language work have so much trouble with it).

So, for example, I use the word 'game' all the time in my reviews even though I can't define it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the whole point of the issue under examination here is the definitions! I can see clearly from your posts that you have no idea how logic and language work. Without this knowledge you will never be able to understand why the question "Can games be art?" is nonsensical -- you will never be able to understand what I am saying in the article. Not in a million years. And there's nothing I nor anyone else can do to help you. Your only option is to read the Tractatus and try to understand it. I will post here a few more excerpts from it in an effort to give you an idea of you how far outside your depth you are:


6.125 It is possible -- indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic -- to give in advance a description of all 'true' logical propositions.

6.1251 Hence there can never be surprises in logic.

6.126 One can calculate whether a proposition belongs to logic, by calculating the logical properties of the symbol.

And this is what we do when we 'prove' a logical proposition. For, without bothering about sense or meaning, we construct the logical proposition out of others using only rules that deal with signs.

The proof of logical propositions consists in the following process: we produce them out of other logical propositions by successively applying certain operations that always generate further tautologies out of the initial ones. (And in fact only tautologies follow from a tautology.)

Of course this way of showing that the propositions of logic are tautologies is not at all essential to logic, if only because the propositions from which the proof starts must show without any proof that they are tautologies.

6.1261 In logic process and result are equivalent. (Hence the absence of surprise).

6.1262 Proof in logic is merely a mechanical expedient to facilitate the recognition of tautologies in complicated cases.


...

6.13 Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world.

Logic is transcendental.


...

6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists -- and if it did exist, it would have no value.

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.

6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.

Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

Ethics is transcendental.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)


...

7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.



The last four lines are the answer to the riddle, a riddle that does not exist. Unfortunately, you are ill-equipped to understand them.
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Unread postby Crawl » 05 Mar 2008 17:38

None of those quotes say anything explicit on the subject, and you have no idea about my grasp of logic or language. I suspect it is you who have difficulty, by seeing the muddled essay you wrote on the subject. You begin by quoting an essay that does not agree with you, you cite as an example of another nonsense sentence "Can the sky be happy?", when in that case the nonsense does not arise as a result of definitions at all. You are unable to relate the quotes you are quoting to your argument, other than by quoting them.

Look, here's a quote from Wikipedia on Wittgenstein:

The essential point of this exercise is often missed. Wittgenstein's point is not that it is impossible to define "game", but that we don't have a definition, and we don't need one, because even without the definition, we use the word successfully.


Perhaps you need to work harder to understand it.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 17:40

Crawl, you are hopeless.

I will have to ask you to please stop posting in this thread. Thanks.
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Unread postby Flying Omelette » 05 Mar 2008 18:04

For the record, Codie isn't saying that gamers can't call great games art. She's saying that gamers have a tendency to call bad games art, and by calling them "art", they believe it puts those games beyond any and all criticism. Gamers who do that also have a strong tendency to say that ONLY games like those she's described can be art, even though they define why they're art in very vague terms. In my experience with those types, their reasoning can often be undermined when exposed to simple analysis and criticism (even in cases when complete understanding of the game and/or its story is demonstrated), yet they'll continue to defend their argument in vague or broad terms like, "It's art because it's deep".

Great art should stand up to criticism, it's not immune to it. Art also starts with good craftsmanship. The greatest movie directors did not think of themselves as artists and when their work rose to that level, it was usually to their own surprise. Egotistical game developers and professional media saying that a game is art because they say so doesn't make it so. How many art house movies would you seriously say are better than Citizen Kane, or Ben Hur, or 2001, or The Godfather?

I'm not necessarily saying that I want people to stop talking about it, but I do think it's the single most annoying argument in today's game world. If someone says to me that Shadow of the Colossus is the only game that is art, or that games can't be art, or has to ask me if *I* think games can be art, then that person is only at Level 1 and has about 13 years of catching up to do. It makes me feel like a Familiar in Azure Dreams who has ascended 30 levels of the Tower and has an experience level to match while that person is still at Level 0.

And, with that said, that will be the last post I will make in this topic, too.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 18:31

The point which I was trying to explain to Crawl is that according to logic art is transcendental, and therefore cannot be put into words. You CAN use words to talk about art, but if you do that you will be using words improperly, and therefore, strictly speaking, whatever you say will be nonsense.

This is the point where philosophy is currently at. There have been NO new developments on this subject since the Tractatus.*

The point of this thread, therefore, as I explained in the article, is for me to try and help people to see this, or at least point them in the right direction. Everything else is off-topic, regardless if it's valid (as the things that Codie and fo posted about), or nonsensical (as the things that raphael, Dale and Crawl posted about).
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 18:32

*except failed attempts.
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Unread postby Crawl » 05 Mar 2008 18:53

icycalm wrote: art is transcendental, and therefore cannot be put into words.


If that was your point, you should have said it earlier. You did not say it nor support it in your original essay.

I think what you may be trying to say is that if I believe a game is art, and someone else thinks it is not (or even if they think NO game can be art), we will never be able to reconcile that difference through words. I can defend my assertion, for example, by saying the game made me feel "emotional". However, "emotions" refer to something inside of me that the other person cannot empirically access. They have no need to be convinced by that argument, or to even think we mean the same thing by "emotion".
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 19:12

Crawl wrote:
icycalm wrote: art is transcendental, and therefore cannot be put into words.


If that was your point, you should have said it earlier. You did not say it nor support it in your original essay.


First off, go fuck yourself, moron. I do not need writing advice from random retards who stumble in here from whatever stinking corner of the internet they happened to come from.

Second, the point was perfectly well explained, first in the article itself, and then in my responses to you in this thread. Wittgenstein says it as clear as day in the last four lines of the Tractatus excerpts I posted. It's not my fault that you are too dumb to understand them, or lack the sense to realize when you are outside your depth and need to go back and do your homework.

Third, you're now banned from this forum. I specifically asked you to stop posting in this thread and you ignored me. Good-bye.
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Unread postby raphael » 05 Mar 2008 19:40

icycalm wrote:The point of this thread, therefore, as I explained in the article, is for me to try and help people to see this, or at least point them in the right direction. Everything else is off-topic


You won't succeed in that I think. The forum doesn't seem to be the right place to do it (for you anyway... see, you already lost your calm). I suppose you'd have more luck with writing another article, a longer one (I think you know what kind). Not sure you're willing to do it though. Good luck on either of the solutions you keep.

... your article seemed understandable to me, but it certainly wouldn't have been the case if these matters weren't clear enough for me beforehand. Relations between thougths and words is not one of the simplest things to understand (let alone accept). Your essays often manage to make their point (even if length is sometimes needed). But I think this one is a miss.

By the way I leave this thread before you ask me to. Sorry if I bothered you. Just wanted to say I read your article (and appreciated it).
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 20:30

raphael wrote:
icycalm wrote:The point of this thread, therefore, as I explained in the article, is for me to try and help people to see this, or at least point them in the right direction. Everything else is off-topic

You won't succeed in that I think.


I have already succeeded. There is no doubt in my mind that at least a handful of people who have read the article are on the right path now because of it. Josh, for example. I am sure there are others. (I have already received a few emails, and the article has only been up a couple of days).

The goal was never to make EVERYONE understand, you see. This is impossible.

raphael wrote:The forum doesn't seem to be the right place to do it (for you anyway... see, you already lost your calm).


It is the right place to do what I wanted to do. As for losing my calm, I can assure you that when I told that guy to fuck off I was perfectly calm. I wrote that with a grin on my face.

raphael wrote:I suppose you'd have more luck with writing another article, a longer one (I think you know what kind).


There is no need for another article. I've already said all I had to say, which wasn't much because this issue has been over with for NEARLY 100 YEARS.

Gamers, however, do not really read books, and much less philosophical ones, hence their ignorance and their unceasing nonsensical babbling.

Welcome to the World.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 20:38

Also,

raphael wrote:Relations between thougths and words is not one of the simplest things to understand (let alone accept). Your essays often manage to make there point (even if length is sometimes needed). But I think this one is a miss.


It is a miss for most people because they lack the necessary background knowledge, this being the Tractatus. I am basing my argument on the Tractatus, so without it my argument cannot be really understood, except by people like Josh, who possess some intuitive feel for matters of logic.

To put it another way, it's as if I was trying to explain second order differential equations to people who don't even know basic algebra. Other than child prodigies, no one else would have a clue what the fuck I am talking about. And the only way I could re-write the article so that it would be possible for someone who doesn't understand the Tractatus to understand it, would be to INCLUDE THE WHOLE TRACTATUS in the beginning. Which would make "my" article about 80 pages long. In which case it would not be an article anymore but a book, and at which point they'd probably stick me in jail for copyright infringement (of the translation, because I think the copyright on the German original has by now expired).
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Unread postby raphael » 05 Mar 2008 21:24

icycalm wrote:I have already succeeded. There is no doubt in my mind that at least a handful of people who have read the article are on the right path now because of it. Josh, for example. I am sure there are others. (I have already received a few emails, and the article has only been up a couple of days).


I thought it was obvious that my remark was related to the quote. Hence it meant "I think you wont succeed in using this thread to help people see your point... if they didn't already understand the article".

Anyway I'm happy that positive feedback is there. See, mankind's case is not that desperate.

The goal was never to make EVERYONE understand, you see. This is impossible.


Well, of course.

raphael wrote:I suppose you'd have more luck with writing another article, a longer one (I think you know what kind).


There is no need for another article. I've already said all I had to say,


I know.

icycalm wrote:which wasn't much because this issue has been over with for NEARLY 100 YEARS.


No surprise. Concerning intellectual matters most people (if not everyone) seems to be stuck in the 19th century.
Gamers, however, do not really read books, and much less philosophical ones, hence their ignorance and their unceasing nonsensical babbling.

I don't see any difference with non gamers.
And ... by the way i know some people both interested in philosophy and videogames. They certainly don't crowd videogame forums, but they always pop up here and there (on french reading boards anyway).

Sorry, that part was useless to the thread, I guess.
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Unread postby raphael » 05 Mar 2008 21:27

icycalm wrote:Also,

raphael wrote:Relations between thougths and words is not one of the simplest things to understand (let alone accept).
Your essays often manage to make there point (even if length is sometimes needed). But I think this one is a miss.


It is a miss for most people because they lack the necessary background knowledge, this being the Tractatus. I am basing my argument on the Tractatus, so without it my argument cannot be really understood, except by people like Josh, who possess some intuitive feel for matters of logic.

I think it's explainable and understandable anyway. You just don't seem to know how to explain it differently because of the strong impact this book had on you.
I think you know it.

Too bad. I like when you try to explain things with your experiences.
You have some writing talent.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Mar 2008 21:43

raphael wrote:I thought it was obvious that my remark was related to the quote. Hence it ment "I think you wont succeed in using this thread to help people see your point ... if they didn't already understand the article".


That's not true. The clarifications and additional Tractatus quotes will doubtless be helpful to many, despite the fact that they are not really necessary in order for the article to make sense. I can already see that they have helped you, for instance.

raphael wrote:No surprise. Concerning intellectual matters most people (if not everyone) seems to be stuck in the 19th century.


raphael wrote:See, mankind's case is not that desperate.


Mankind's case, as a whole, is indeed desperate, and always will be. Only a few individuals at a time can be enlightened in this universe. (Nietzsche more or less said this, and this is indeed 19th century philosophy, and no one seems to have heard of that either. So I'd say most people live in the DARK AGES in regards to philosophy.)

raphael wrote:I think it's explainable and understandable anyway. You just don't seem to know how to explain it differently because of the strong impact this book had on you.


Of course the book had a strong impact on me. It had such a strong impact on philosophers of the time, that some of them went around calling Wittgenstein 'God'. And if you think that I will attempt to rewrite what God wrote in order to make it more understandable to the feebleminded, you are surely overestimating me. He expressed these ideas as clearly as he could. I doubt another human being could hope to do better, even though he himself mentions in his preface:

If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are expressed -- the more the nail has been hit on the head -- the greater will be its value. -- Here I am conscious of having fallen a long way short of what is possible. Simply because my powers are too slight for the accomplishment of the task. -- May others come and do it better.
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Unread postby GnaM » 06 Mar 2008 06:20

I'm glad to see someone come out and say this, since coming from an art school angle and having to deal with all this "what is art" bullshit first hand through 5 years of class, I never have the energy to even bother with all the "r game art!?" threads and such popping up across the net in recent years. I must say that the Orwell quotes were particularly well chosen.

I do find it telling to, for the sake of argument and practicality, simply give in and temporarily interpret "art" in the manner which it is often used in the entertainment media these days; as a superlative for "good" music, movies, etc. A good deal of the people drum-beating on websites demanding that games be considered art are the same sorts of people who would tell you that titles like V For Vendetta and 300 are good movies. Make of that what you will.
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Re: "Can games be art?" and other childish nonsens

Unread postby Topdrunkee » 06 Mar 2008 12:04

It defines it in the dictionary that way, I don't know any better source to try to understand a concept.

Check up the word Etymology in order to understand why dictionary definitions can't always be relied on.
http://www.etymonline.com/
Most of todays words don't have the same meaning that they originally had a decade or two ago.
The finest examples are Terrorism & democracy as was pointed out in the article.

In some case terrorists merely refers to "freedom fighters".
We label them as terrorists in order to dehumanize the opponent.
Democracy is basically a word that people use when they want to invade a country.
"Let's liberate them & enlighten them with democracy."

Ah man. I started posting at Insomnia in order to get away from the "Can games be art" bs.
Before I go on, I too must commend the article for the George Orwell quotes.
I quote him all the damn time in my website. Orwell's work contained many themes that correlate with the themes of the games that my website covers.

I get into one of these "are game's art" arguments at least once every three months. Considering that Killer 7 happens to be the main subject matter for my website.
I lost one of my top posters last month, because we couldn't come to terms with the whole "are games art" argument.
He labeled moi as a conformist, because I felt that games should strive to be games first rather than "art".

Shit, I'll just quote one of his most ignorant ass posts that he wrote.
BTW what makes the game AAA

MUSIC, GFX, SOUND, cutscenes, VA full of budget, no stones left unturned(wich you can see form trailers).

The above quote is a fine example of why the "games are art" movement has been dulling the quality of recent games.
Game developers pour way too much dough on irrelevant nonsense such as VA.

Icy basically said all that needs to be said when he wrote
The next question of course would have to be, "So which kinds of games are art then?", and the answer to that question should by now be obviously, "The good ones." So Deus Ex is art, Elite is art, and Ketsui is art. Wing Commander and Pikmin and Master of Magic are art, et cetera, et cetera.


I'd like to elaborate more on that. As I have seen many uses for the word "art".
Some of the most common uses I've seen are
games with
A. highly involved narratives. (Metal Gear Solid)
B. games that make them feel emotional. (Metal Gear Solid)
C. Game that contain beautiful compositions & set pieces. (ICO/ Shadow of Colossus)
D. Games that pretend to be movies. (MGS)

I will say that there have been several games that I would consider as artistic, but they fall into either two sides of the spectrum.

1.They either fall into the Suda 51 category.
These titles are games in name only.
Typically the "game" portion of his titles are used merely as vehicles in order to parlay or transmit the thoughts & ideas that he is trying to get across.
In other words these type of games could've easily been made into a graphic novel or animated feature, because they contain a sparse amount of "game".
These games are typically easy, and require almost no challenge or effort at all.
Which is probably the main reason why hobbyists eat these titles up.
The actual game is just a mere after thought.

2. Or they fall into the Ogre Battle/ Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne category
These are games that embody many expressions of thought. They mostly parlay to the gamer abstract ideas, philosophies, & themes as a reward.
In other words these titles can live without the artistic nonsense & still function as games, because the core game play mechanics are sound.
However these type of "artistic" titles aren't as attractive to most modern day gamers, because of their high difficulty curves.

The only artistic game that I can think of that defies categorization is the original Deus Ex.
DX is not a Suda style game, nor is it too hard for novice gamers to play through.
EDIT: Deus Ex is more philosophical than it is artistic. When I think about it. I am mistakingly labeling philosophical games as "art"

Killer7 was borderline insulting, both being retardedly easy and the ending.

You probably didn't understand what the game was going for.
Killer 7 isn't really a story. Killer 7 is more of an expression of conflicting/contrasting/abstract , ideas, thought patterns & emotions that all join together as one to create a particular vibe.

In other words Killer 7 transmitted ideas. Covering many problems in our modern society, and left it up to people to merely discuss it and provoke thought about said issues.

Killer 7's ending was basically signaling to the player that the geopolitical conflict could've been easily avoided had
1. The US remained faithful to the U.S./Japan peace treaty.
2. Article 9 been revoked.
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Unread postby Topdrunkee » 06 Mar 2008 12:05

I've played five games that get hyped as "art": Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Okami, Killer7, and Rez. The only one of those I would even give a thumbs up to Okami, and even then it's only a mild one.

I mostly agree with Codie. Those game did suck ass.
The part that I differ in is that I believe that Killer 7 could be labeled as art.
If only because Killer 7 is the only game out of the five that has an actual message.

This is what I thought about those games.
I haven't played Rez, but I guess it's considered art, because it looks like one bigass acid trip.
I never understood why Ico is considered art.
What was Ico's statement? That all women are defenseless whores who need to be held & led by the hand of a man.
Without that said man they would just be lost, confused & kidnapped without the super vision of that man?
The play mechanics of ICO doesn't lie. That's exactly what you do in ICO.
(You walk some weak ass bitch by the hand.)
IMO from what I know of ICO, it's just a typical feel good tale of you helping out some chick. You feel good, because you're the only reason she's still safe. It doesn't seem to have much meaning though.
Which is why I don't consider ICO art.

LOL, don't get me started about Shadow of Colossus.
That overrated ass mountain simulator.
Hell, I never understood why Okami was considered art.
Many people go on about how Okami is about Japanese mythology.
The story is just a reinterpretation of the yamato no orochi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orochi
The following are my thoughts about Okami's supposedly deep story.
(I often get into arguments about every single one of these "artistic" games. Simply because of the subject matter of my site. I sometimes wish that I started a website about SNK, old school Koei or Sega instead.)

"Okami is based off of a goddamn japanese fairy tale.
(That was in turn based off of mythology.)
It's not my fault that people act as if Japanese fairy tales are so thought provoking.
Hell people play through Xenogears & Assassin's Creed, & they still come off as deep to the gaming audience.
Simply because of the allusion to god (Alpha & Omega) & some other pretentious bullshit.

Okami was never trying to be deep or mind engaging. That's the part that pisses me off.
It's more or less the fault of the gamer audience who don't know enough about the lore surrounding Okami in the first place."


I don't care if people like these games, but it seems like the only way anyone ever defends Shadow of the Colossus is by calling it "amazing" and leaving it at that, justifying/trivializing the flaws, and with logical fallacies (the favored being thought-terminating cliches like "It's not bad art, it's a style.") Another topic here mentions that 1Up review of Rez that gave it a 10 and basically said "Because it's ART."

What's hilarious is that these are the same exact arguments that people use in order to defend No More Heroes.
I no longer spout my opinion about that game considering that it's bad form for a webmaster to talk shit about the very games that they're supposed to cover.

I will say that it amazes me how people can justify liking god awful games by categorizing them as "art".
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Unread postby icycalm » 06 Mar 2008 15:07

Topdrunkee wrote:I mostly agree with Codie. Those game did suck ass.
The part that I differ in is that I believe that Killer 7 could be labeled as art.
If only because Killer 7 is the only game out of the five that has an actual message.


Message my ass, dude. You want a message? I'll give you a message. Gears of War has a message. What message is that? That killing aliens is your only option if they are trying to kill you first.

If you are still talking about "messages" you have not understood much from the article or this thread.
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Unread postby raphael » 06 Mar 2008 20:34

Topdrunkee >
I wouldn't go as far as judging theese games (or any) without finishing them.

- I didn't go as far as finishing second loop in Ico, only finished first. But from what I know it resists easily to your arguments... art or not. I agree on the "The play mechanics don't lie" but your conlusions are just projections.
- After finishing most of REZ (and playing it for months), i must say it's a good game.
The fact that everybody calls it art is of lesser importance and mainly related to its graphical minimalism.
- I haven't played enough of Okami yet to have a defendable opinion on it. But for now i find it enjoyable... and sure can understand (if not accept) why people call it art. Just like REZ, the graphics are quiet beautiful and different from other videogames. I think that's the only reason they call it art.
- Killer 7 I didn't play.
- Neither Wanda To Kyozou.
- Deus Ex is brilliant.
- I've seen a mention of Elite upper in this thread. Wow, what a game! Great in every aspect... even the code must be praised. If one game is art, then that's the one. I never seen such a code (I only deassembled videogame code, I must confess, but still).
... Elite 2 - Frontier is even more amazing (coding this thing the man clearly was crazy).

Imagine how it was to discover videogames in the early 80s. I sure felt I discovered a new artform. Well, not right from the begining. But discovering Elite in 1985 while 11 years old (and so many other great games + arcade everywhere), you can't blame me for beeing so excited.
No wonder 90s felt so disapointing and uninventive in comparison.
Last edited by raphael on 21 Jun 2010 01:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Unread postby JoshF » 06 Mar 2008 21:51

It's funny how people who think of games as art think the most artful games are the ones that are the least like games. Metal Slug is closer to a "masterpiece" of the medium than some Suda51 game with the conceptual complexity of a shockwave game from 1996.

EDIT: A Game & Watch game instead? Whichever is more insulting.
Last edited by JoshF on 08 Mar 2008 07:51, edited 1 time in total.
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