Can Cutscenes be Art?

[ray]

Last paragraph of Part XIII:

since it ultimately deceives the deceiver to a far greater extent than the deceived, and thereby, in the long run, contributing to rendering him far more stupid...

I'm looking forward to buying your books.

[icycalm]

I would rather people said they're looking forward to reading my books, not buying them, just as I am looking forward to playing Deux Ex 3 -- not really buying it. The satisfaction is supposed to come from the experience, you see, not from the purchase of the experience. Ideally I'd have preferred to simply post my books online for free, perhaps in pdf format so that they'd be more pleasantly readable. I don't really need the money. On the other hand, subhumans do not really consider a book "a book" if it's not available in hard copy, and they don't really respect anything that they are not forced to pay for -- so in the interests of the subhumans taking my writings a little seriously, and therefore helping (even if involuntary) disseminating them that much faster, I decided to print actual books -- which means I have to charge for them if for no other reason than to avoid having to pay for them out of my own pocket.

It's really a rather tight rope I am walking here: on the one hand some of my writings have to be online, otherwise no one would have a chance of finding out about them. On the other hand they can't all be online, because you then lose face with the morons on whom you partly have to depend to disseminate them. So, all things considered, I think my plan is as close to optimal as I can at present make it.

[ray]

Good point. I'm looking forward to reading your books.

[icycalm]

Moving on, I hope that the concept of reaction is more understandable now? It will become even more so when the next part rolls around. In the meantime compare the following passages:

It is because our society no longer allows space for real violence, historical or class violence, that it generates a virtual, reactive violence.

http://insomnia.ac/essays/hate/

We are always reacting to a work of art. The only one who acts in a work of art is the artist.

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=14563#14563

[icycalm]

To see how lost everyone else is on the issue of art, consider that Paul Virilio, whom people usually mention as second-in-command after Baudrillard as far as "postmodern" French philosophers go, had this to say about it:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/de ... &tid=10617

In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right.

WHAT THE FUCK DOES ANY OF THIS EVEN MEAN? "Accidents are inventions in their own right" -- AND WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ART?

Virilio is basically yet another "gimmick-philosopher", like Derrida, Agamben, Zizek, and the like. Each of these people has a gimmick, on which he expounds and lives off in dozens upon dozens of worthless books throughout his miserable little life: for Virilio it is "speed" and "accidents", for Derrida it was "deconstruction" (i.e. the simple fact that so-called "understanding" is merely interpretation, and a thing can be interpreted in an infinity of ways), for Agamben it is some fucking trivial shit about "states of exception" and penal laws, and for Zizek the pedantic application of obsolete Hegelian and Lacanian ideas to random news trivia. These gimmicks are all these people have. So, naturally, when called on, for example, to give their views on the subject of art, Virilio will babble on about "speed" and "accidents", Derrida about "deconstruction", Zizek about Hegel and Lacan, and so on and so forth, without ever getting anywhere near the issue itself, let alone resolving it.

[icycalm]

Real funny.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2223
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2203

[icycalm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

Gamification
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Gamification is the use of game play mechanics[1] for non-game applications (also known as "funware"),[2] particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications.[3] Gamification works by making technology more engaging,[4] and by encouraging desired behaviors, taking advantage of humans' psychological predisposition to engage in gaming.[5] The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading web sites.[4]

Emphasis is mine.

[icycalm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rNeuuUx-SQ

Everyone's more or less full of shit except Bruce Shelley. Bruce Shelley is hardcore, man -- AoE for ever.

[JoshF]

Why is it when these people who think games are inherently art say a game made them emotional they are always talking about sadness and crying? Is this slave morality at work?

[icycalm]

I know it sounds unbelievable, but it really is all because of the fags. It is not that they put a premium on sadness and crying. It is that, when you have eliminated pleasure, exploration, discovery, experimentation, the thrill of battle, and competition, etc., sadness and crying are all the emotions you have left. Pleasure is eliminated, as you surmised, because of slave morality (since in the slave's mind, for whom pleasure and work are two separate, indeed mutually exclusive spheres, nothing that gives him pleasure could possibly be of any value), and the thrill of battle and competition, as well as all the experimentation, etc. they entail, are eliminated because the fags are fags. There comes a point where anything containing even the slightest hint of masculinity in it could not possibly be of any value, could not possibly be serious, could not possibly be "meaningful", could not possibly be "art", etc. (in which case the Homeric epics, the Scandinavian sagas, Beowulf, and practically all of pre-fagot, and especially ancient art, would also have to be eliminated, but as far as the fags are concerned art history begins with Impressionism, whose blurry sketches really put "feeling" into the dry, dead, "realist" art that preceded it).

Now all these developers in that video are probably not all fagots. Most of them, in fact, from what I can guess by watching them talk, etc., are not. But in the last 130 years the fags have completely dominated the "higher echelons" of all artistic "creativity" and criticism. So when it's time for game developers to step up to that level, they find themselves in an environment where the fags' drivel utterly dominates. Where there is absolutely no opposition. Where even a fucking BAUDRILLARD fell prey to this stupidity, as I'll be showing soon in my Genealogy. Under these circumstances, it would take an unspeakably strong personality to stand by his instincts and not be tainted by all this nonsense, let alone to speak out against it in the definite, necessarily harsh, and even shrill, tones that I have done. None of these developers, in other words, possess 1/1000th of the qualities that are required for this rebellion; they may be good at making games, but they are good neither at criticsm, nor art theory, let alone philosophy. So when you stick a fucking microphone in their faces and pose them the "eternal question" (lol), they stutter. And fuddle. Or at least the best of them do. The worst simply parrot the fagotistical nonsense they've read a billion times since they were born, and all the rest fall somewhere within this spectrum. (And by best and worst here I do not mean as regards game design, but as regards strength of personality, trust of one's instincts and self-confidence.) And thus the situation we now behold.

The funny thing about all this is that, no matter what the fags say or do, they end up refuting their own theories. "Morality always contradicts itself" wrote Nietzsche. What good is it to hold that war and competition are evil, and all that matters is crying and sadness, if crying and sadness ULTIMATELY STEM FROM WAR AND COMPETITION ANYWAY?

lol, this entire spectacle is one of the funniest things on earth if you understand what you are looking at. I'll clear it all up in the third part of my Genealogy, but for now you can consider the above the tl;dr version.

[icycalm]

Also add the fact that in the US people usually employ the word "emotional" to signify the emotions specifically related to sadness, as in "I felt emotional", etc. For some reason that word has acquired that additional meaning in that part of the world, which unfortunately is also one of the dominant regions in videogame design and "criticism".

[icycalm]

I started reading this but got bored after the first paragraph and gave up:

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s5911.html

It doubtless contains some mildly interesting historical trivia, but I suspect not much more. Let me know if anyone reads it and dicsovers otherwise.

[icycalm]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread. ... st31634106

This post actually gets to the heart of the matter. The reason that everyone is acting offended right now is because Ico is currently up on it's pedestal as a True Classic. They treat Ico as it if was the Sistine Chapel of gaming. Thus, anyone who criticises Ico knows nothing about gaming.

But if you truly love gaming, then you'll know that gaming isn't like other art forms. Gaming is different to everything else because it's always been restricted to the technology of that generation. Goya wasn't limited by his tools when he painted Colossus, and if he was alive today he probably would have painted it exactly the same way.

Typical nonsense of people who have no idea of what creating art is all about. If Goya was around today he'd be using Photoshop like everyone else moron. Subhumans have such an absurdly idealized notion of artists it's hilarious. But then again they have absurdly idealized notions of everything above their pathetically low levels of capability and comprehension.

[SriK]

Something which has been confusing me for a little bit now: in your back cover for the Genealogy you reveal that your definition of art is "the craft of illusion," but you also say in the Simulacrum essay:

If, then, the simulacrum is that which appears to be something other than it is, everything is a simulacrum, since in a world of becoming, of perpetual metamorphosis — in a world, that is to say, of flux — no one and nothing is what it appears to be, and Baudrillard's seemingly bewildering declaration that "I am my own simulacrum" is merely the ultimate conclusion to be drawn from this line of reasoning.

So, since at bottom everything is an illusion, wouldn't this mean that any sort of creation, from food to speeches to shit, can be classified as art? Or am I misunderstanding something?

[icycalm]

What you are doing in your question above, is a sort of disembodied thinking, much like the retards on the Ghetto or elsewhere when they read something some great man wrote and manage to convince themselves by similar verbal gymnastics that they have "debunked" it. In this way, if you are pedantic and cunning enough, you can "debunk" (or "deconstruct" as Derrida called it) effectively anything. You can make any piece of writing say something that had never even crossed the mind of its author. Because you are not thinking right alongside him, you see, you do not FEEL the problems that he feels, and you are certainly not looking for answers. This is why your thought is disembodied: you attempt to get to the truth of the matter by comparing mere words (which, of themselves, never actually say anything), instead of bringing yourself face to face with the problem.

To get more specific, "truth" is "the thing-in-itself". But since things-in-themselves do not exist, there is no "truth" -- everything is illusion. But if everything is illusion nothing is illusion any more -- the word itself has become meaningless. And you can follow the same line of thinking and render EVERY word in the dictionary meaningless. This is the disembodied way of thinking -- the "deconstructing" -- the NOT-thinking way.

The thinking way is to realize that we are talking about degrees of illusion, and the degree of illusion of a piece of shit is negligible compared to that of a fucking artwork.

[icycalm]

"Ultimately, true genius lies, not in proving anyone wrong, but in proving everyone right."

That's a line from my philosophical book.

[SriK]

Thanks for the explanation.

[icycalm]

A slightly updated version of a couple of posts I made several pages back:

http://culture.vg/features/commentary/a ... n-art.html

The additions are mostly insults, and the revisions mostly link-words so that the text will flow a bit better, and punctuation errors.

[icycalm]

http://www.the-ghetto.org/forums/index. ... 1#msg22431

You know, these last few days I have come to realize (and I realize I'm about to say something extremely obvious, which should be clear to anyone with half a brain cell) that these "indie" developers place an ENORMOUS emphasis on their name when marketing their games. It's almost like the only thing that matters.

It's like the whole thing with the shit art in the 20th century. The artist starts taking precedence over the work of art, because the work of art is fucking shit and unable to stand the test of time on its own. It's amazing how art was turned from entertainment to some bullshit rethoric about "expression" in the course of just a few decades thanks to people who are unable to scribble two coherent thoughts together.

Icy's genealogy truly is his best essay so far. I tried to make all my retard art college student friends read it but it's an effort in futility. The rethoric of art as an expression is so deeply ingrained in their brains by the idiotic education system that there's no way to show them the retardedness of their way.

[icycalm]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero ... mien-hirst

It may well be that Mr Hirst offends our self-righteous notions of work when he explains his use of a studio with the line: "I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it."

I lolled.

The article, by the way, is a good read if you can disentangle what's worthwhile in it from all the misconceptions and artfagotry.



EDIT:

http://www.artfagcity.com/2012/01/04/hi ... -gagosian/

There is, we recognize, a historical danger here. Someday, the record of this exhibition might be dug up by a young art historian, or perhaps a blogger like us, or perhaps some sort of future blogger who does things with brainwaves. They’ll see that there was a massive show spread across every location of the most successful gallery of the time, entirely comprised of one of the most successful artists of the time, and that it was supported by some of the most illustrious voices money could buy. So I’m going to lay this down, just to clarify, so that nobody from the future gets confused: we hate this shit. Everyone hates this shit. These spots reflect nothing about how we live, see, or think, they’re just some weird meme for the impossibly rich that nobody knows how to stop.

[icycalm]

Hello Mr. Brand,

I just read your post on Hirst's new pseudo-exhibition, and was moved enough by your closing lines to find your email address and send you this link:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_the_ge ... art_games/

If you can manage to get past the first few paragraphs, which are concerned with an artform which (I presume) probably doesn't interest you much, I believe you will find that page to be the most astonishing thing you will ever read on the subject of art.

Sincerely,

Alex Kierkegaard


P.S. If you would like a copy of the book when it's out (which it should be sometime in February), give me an address to send it to.

I'll probably end up sending a number of copies of the book to art critics who seem to have the right mentality to understand it. If you are aware of any let me know here, and I'll start keeping a little list with their names and contact details.

[void]

"Ultimately, true genius lies, not in proving anyone wrong, but in proving everyone right."

That's a line from my philosophical book.

Because it takes a true genius to understand the psychological (and other) factors that cause all the different beliefs people have?

[icycalm]

Yes, that is half of it. The other half is understanding that there is no such thing as a "wrong" belief (i.e. a wrong brain state); they are all correct, the only difference is that some are stronger than others (in exactly the same way that there are no "wrong" muscles, it's just that some are stronger than others).

[icycalm]

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view ... 739#p14739

To make my position crystal clear, if given a choice between saving Far Cry 2 or the entire history of 2D games, the 2D stuff would all go in the trash without a second's hesitation, just as I'd trash all the paintings ever made to save a Heat, a Blade Runner or a Dark Knight. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate the primitive stuff -- it is part of the amazing depth and breadth of my tastes and aesthetic sensibilities that I can -- but the utter superiority of the advanced stuff has to be recognized, if not by everyone then at least by the highest arbiters of taste, otherwise we might as well agree with the artfags that progress in art is impossible and go back to cave paintings or splattered canvases.

That is not to say that I expect you to agree to this. But it would at least be a good idea for you to realize what my position is, simply for the purposes of whatever discussions we might have on this or related topics.

So now you know, people: "2-D games" are primitive because we now have "3-D genres" with their analog control wonderness and first-person perspectives which finally! make you feel as the freaking protagonist from your favorite, worth-a-thousand-paintings B-movie.

I'm sure you also expected me not to refrain myself from replying with something along those lines, so there it is.

Recap, just in case you care, the reason you prefer games with scene development, as you call it, over stuff like Asteroids, and then again 16-bit games over 8-bit games, are exactly the same reasons that make me prefer 3D games over 2D ones. So the stuff you posted, about B-movies and the like, apply also to your favorite games. I can even quote you from this thread:

"amazing settings and scenography"

That was in reference to some childishly crap 2D eurotrash art, and to the accompanying C-movie plots.

Just in case you care to know how you look when you talk about stuff like this, you look exactly like Ebert when he's scribbling stupidities to justify his hatred of videogames, and the resentment he feels at his favorite art being superseded. Every little pseudo-argument, and I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE, that is being constructed in order to support its author's incapacity, appears, to those who do not share that incapacity, retarded. So the best thing for Ebert to do would simply to remain silent...

I am not saying you should be too. I am just trying to explain to you how the situation looks like from where I am standing. And as it happens, I have 2,500 years of science and culture standing right here with me.

[icycalm]

Things are getting out of hand and ugly, and I expect an eventual deletion and/or lock and banning, or at the very least some "agreeing to disagree" fagotry, at which point Recap will finally officially join the ranks of everyone who has ever tried to outargue me on something.

Icycalm, keep that shit for your own forum, thankyouverymuch. If you want to attempt to explain why real-time polygons, three-dimensional mechanics in a two-dimensional medium, and analog control pads or control systems based on non-gaming interfaces are "utterly superior" to bitmap-based graphics, pure 2-D mechanics, and digital controls, go ahead. But gratuitous insults which lead the discussion nowhere won't be tolerated even from you. Just in case you care.

The reason I prefer 16-bit games over 8-bit ones, or games with scene development over stuff without it is, essentially, an aesthetics subject. A plain matter of beauty. Of pleasing my eyes. It has nothing to do with how well the game makes me feel as its stupid protagonist --neither how well the game makes of me its actual protagonist-- nor the virtual tangibleness of its world. As I told you once, I don't give a shit about immersion in my action games. Not that kind, anyway.

Icycalm, keep that shit for your own forum, thankyouverymuch. ... gratuitous insults which lead the discussion nowhere won't be tolerated even from you.

There's not a single gratuitous comment in any of my posts in this thread. If the substantiation that I offered is not enough for you, ask for more and I will provide it. As to your level of tolerance of my ideas and arguments, it has nothing to do with me, and you will of course take any action you deem necessary, whenever you deem it so.

If you want to attempt to explain why real-time polygons, three-dimensional mechanics in a two-dimensional medium, and analog control pads or control systems based on non-gaming interfaces are "utterly superior" to bitmap-based graphics, pure 2-D mechanics, and digital controls, go ahead.

I already have: because they are more immersive, i.e. as I have explained at length in my Genealogy (even just the parts of it that have been published on the internet so far), artistically superior. And I mean, besides all that (which is all there is, and all there needs to be, but perhaps some humor might help you see the ridiculousness of your position anyway), if you think that a retarded childish little 2D bitmap, or some variation of fucking Tetris or whatever (which is what all the 2D action genres boil down to in the end), or a fucking arcade stick or whatever, are the ULTIMATE POSSIBLE ACHIEVEMENTS OF DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT, and that the purpose of the entire history of digital technology as it pertains to art had been achieved with these pathetic little developments, you are out of your fucking mind. Even if we put behind us all the theory and all the science and all the art, and just simply put a screen from Super Mario World or whatever (to demonstrate the graphics), and an arcade stick on a couple of pedestals and write beneath them: THE PINNACLES OF DIGITAL ART, we'd have even THE PEDESTALS THEMSELVES LAUGHING AT US, dude. The absurdity of your position is so obvious the moment we leave some early-90's obsessive's dedicated gaming room and go out into the street and get some goddamn air, that no arguments at all would be required to prove any of my points (quite aside from the fact that I HAVE ALL OF THEM WHILE YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING). Like, for reals dude. If you seriously think that the pinnacle of art is The Super Shinobi or Strider or whatever, you seriously need some goddamn air. Nor can you escape from this implication by hiding yourself inside the term "videogames" and claiming that art and videogames are two separate things, because that dichotomy has already been demolished in my Genealogy. Art and videogames are EXACTLY THE SAME THING, and as I explain in my article on Set Theory (and as you should be able to grasp without even reading it), videogames are basically a superset of all previous (and in fact even future) artforms. So if you say that some random 2D childish little game is the pinnacle of videogames you are saying it is the pinnacle of art, and no amount of muddling the waters or backpedalling can obscure that retarded insinuation.

The reason I prefer 16-bit games over 8-bit ones, or games with scene development over stuff without it is, essentially, an aesthetics subject.

As if all my writings weren't about aesthetics, lol.

A plain matter of beauty. Of pleasing my eyes.

There's nothing "plain" about beauty, Recap. It is an extremely complicated subject, and our understanding and pursuit of it hinges on an immense level to all the rules and guidelines art theorists like me have been expounding for millennia. The retort that "that is simply what I like" belongs on gamefaqs: at the level of art theory and criticism it is merely an ignorant childish gesture. And I am telling you why games with stage progression (i.e. scene development) "please your eyes" -- instead of having a game be a single glorified stage (however beautiful) -- because real life has scene development, which is why therefore it's more immersive.

It has nothing to do with how well the game makes me feel as its stupid protagonist --neither how well the game makes of me its actual protagonist-- nor the virtual tangibleness of its world.

It has everything to do with exactly those things, and your denial of this obvious simple fact is merely your way of attacking the theory which you can see eventually, in the long run, and from a higher viewpoint, denies the superiority (and therefore ultimately the relevance) of your tastes.

As I told you once, I don't give a shit about immersion in my action games. Not that kind, anyway.

There's only one kind of immersion, and as far as 2D Japanese games go you are a downright ADDICT of it.