Author Topic: Meme Machine Memorial Thread of Things You Saw on Reddit  (Read 1925525 times)

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Himu

  • Senior Member
If you think Silent Hill is art, by all means. But video games are not an art form.

I agree.
IYKYK

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Not really Ichi. A choose your own adventure book will play itself out with only a passive audience.  Much like post-ironic net behavior, videogames bring the audience on stage. Every moment can be a choice. A book only requires you to turn the page, and if you if you fail the you die(in the choose your own adventure). Not that those books don't have some correspondence to games. It's just that in games the page turning is the story, is the art.

Except those choices are still pre-determined. Do you really think any ending you get in a game wasn't animated and rendered beforehand?

Do you know how games work?

You're not understanding. You can kill yourself a gajillion ways that a book of reasonable expectations could not account for. You could succeed taking multiple, minutely different paths, which a book or film could not account for.

Not really Ichi. A choose your own adventure book will play itself out with only a passive audience.  Much like post-ironic net behavior, videogames bring the audience on stage. Every moment can be a choice. A book only requires you to turn the page, and if you if you fail the you die(in the choose your own adventure). Not that those books don't have some correspondence to games. It's just that in games the page turning is the story, is the art.

Except those choices are still pre-determined. Do you really think any ending you get in a game wasn't animated and rendered beforehand?

Do you know how games work?

You're not understanding. You can kill yourself a gajillion ways that a book of reasonable expectations could not account for. You could succeed taking multiple, minutely different paths, which a book or film could not account for.

But what new process did games invent to make this happen?

If you think Silent Hill is art, by all means. But video games are not an art form.

I agree.

So then what the fuck are we arguing? :lol

Himu

  • Senior Member
If you think Silent Hill is art, by all means. But video games are not an art form.

I agree.

So then what the fuck are we arguing? :lol

I have no clue. I just wanted to start an argument. PUNCH. BANG! BAM!!!! :punch
IYKYK

Diunx

  • Humble motherfucker with a big-ass dick
  • Senior Member
MGS4 >>>>>>>>>>>> any piece of shit piccaso painted :patel
Drunk

I think you guys are getting hung up on art form. Ebert is basically saying games themselves are not art; now of course what one considers art is subjective, and I can't convince any of you that Resident Evil 4 isn't of artistic merit, but the fact remains that video games themselves are not considered works or art and did not invent any new artistic process to validate them as such, like films (or painting, novels etc.) did.

naff

  • someday you feed on a tree frog
  • Senior Member
Not really Ichi. A choose your own adventure book will play itself out with only a passive audience.  Much like post-ironic net behavior, videogames bring the audience on stage. Every moment can be a choice. A book only requires you to turn the page, and if you if you fail the you die(in the choose your own adventure). Not that those books don't have some correspondence to games. It's just that in games the page turning is the story, is the art.

Except those choices are still pre-determined. Do you really think any ending you get in a game wasn't animated and rendered beforehand?

Do you know how games work?

You're not understanding. You can kill yourself a gajillion ways that a book of reasonable expectations could not account for. You could succeed taking multiple, minutely different paths, which a book or film could not account for.

But what new process did games invent to make this happen?

It's more subtle but it's definitely unique. I don't particularly like this game but I'm going to reference anyhow as to something games do which is potentially unique (then leaving, band practice...) The Path. You are not the character you choose, narrative events are scripted yet you still control interactions within the environment (gameplay, this is what I consider the art to be in games, any game, not just arty games. Yeah it's preprogrammed... Your point is?) you could not recreate this experience in any other medium.
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BlueTsunami

  • The Muffin Man
  • Senior Member


Himu Chan's Art
:9

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Not really Ichi. A choose your own adventure book will play itself out with only a passive audience.  Much like post-ironic net behavior, videogames bring the audience on stage. Every moment can be a choice. A book only requires you to turn the page, and if you if you fail the you die(in the choose your own adventure). Not that those books don't have some correspondence to games. It's just that in games the page turning is the story, is the art.

Except those choices are still pre-determined. Do you really think any ending you get in a game wasn't animated and rendered beforehand?

Do you know how games work?

You're not understanding. You can kill yourself a gajillion ways that a book of reasonable expectations could not account for. You could succeed taking multiple, minutely different paths, which a book or film could not account for.

But what new process did games invent to make this happen?

That asks the question of what is a new process.

Beyond that though, not all games have predetermined outcomes. Some games never end. This presents a narrative problem, but not an artistic problem. Will Wright likes to work with rules without winning. MMOs never have ends, and Roleplay servers offer experiences of story, experience and authorship by the audience going through pre-ordained trials. Trails which offer experiences which are not preset.

You seem hung up on performance art. Videogames can be performance art, but the rules and image presented have outside authority to the participants. Also, performance art still expects a passive audience that videogames do not.

Himu

  • Senior Member


Himu Chan's Art

Oh don't get me wrong. I'm not saying RE1 is art.  :yuck Or heck, any of the RE's.

Of all the games I've played I think I can only come up with maybe 4-5 I'd consider to be "art".
« Last Edit: April 19, 2010, 01:41:52 AM by Himuro »
IYKYK

Guys, even Himu agreed that games aren't an art form. Isn't this debate over? :spin

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
010


CrystalGemini

  • Senior Member
Guys, even Himu agreed that games aren't an art form. Isn't this debate over? :spin

The debate over art is never over.  That is partly the beauty of it.  Art is all about thought and communication.
O_O

But art and "art forms" are two different things. The debate would have a reason to continue when game designers develop a new artistic process that is not merely an amalgamation of processes used by previous artistic forms.

Himu

  • Senior Member
Because I currently believe that games aren't an art form, I don't think they CAN'T be an art form. It's just that I doubt they will be. In order to be more artistic, in my opinion you have to sacrifice fun. Although I think Silent Hill 2 is the benchmark for an artistic game, it's not exactly the funnest game on the planet and the first goal of games is TO BE FUN, not convey a message or a message. This in itself it the main obstacle preventing games from being an art form, in my opinion, although there's certainly games I could label as art. Maybe as games continue to evolve they will be able to share the less-fun-yet-more-artistic games with the more entertaining games kinda like how not every movie is going to be artistic or every song.

But the chances of that are ever so slim.
IYKYK

I think the fact that the main point of most games boils down to simply "play" is a major factor in why most aren't considered works of art. That and the fact that, like Ebert has described, games usually do not present a clear message or authorial point of view. Something like Psychonauts, imo, is the exception to the rule, where even though it was worked on by a large number of people it still had a very consistent point of view and clear authorial style -- Tim Schafer's. Something like Grand Theft Auto, while containing artistic touches (typically critiques on contemporary America, and largely on the media) don't really do it in a way that couldn't be done in any other medium. A hysterical parody of a typical AM radio talk show is still a musical arrangement, in some form or fashion.

Ichirou

  • Merry Christmas
  • Senior Member
PS4

Himu

  • Senior Member
I think the best prime example of a game I consider to be art while still being an emphasis on fun are Grand Theft Auto games. Although you could say the games boil down to stealing cars and running people over, I think almost every single gameplay aspect in those games lends well to being labeled as criticism of social and societal norms, and being a clever satire of modern life. By trying to convey a message while integrating this into way you play them, I think GTA games succeed where other games that attempt that very thing fail.

You're right in that GTA doesn't feel authoritative, but it contains my personal definitions of art.
IYKYK

Ichirou

  • Merry Christmas
  • Senior Member
You can get sex from hookers, and then kill them and get your money back.  What does this say about us...as humans?
PS4

Fresh Prince

  • a one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store
  • Senior Member
But it is only art  :spin
888

You can get sex from hookers, and then kill them and get your money back.  What does this say about us...as humans?
:o

And I dunno about GTA being full of messages, Himu. I mean it does have messages, but like I said those are mostly expressed through stuff like the fake radio stations and occasional cut scenes and such. As far as the actual gameplay goes, GTA doesn't seem to exhibit any real personal vision. It's basically an avatar getting to run freely in a mock-up of real cities. I mean that freedom itself could be an artistic statement, but I'm not sure it's enough to classify GTA as art.

Then again, it's subjective. :spin

Himu

  • Senior Member
You can get sex from hookers, and then kill them and get your money back.  What does this say about us...as humans?

I think they [gta games] make a lot of interesting points about us as a society. There are no positive female character in GTA games, you can beat up and kill hookers, minorities are self-contained to their own little sections, and while you play as a "bad guy" who commits theft and murder on a routine basis, a lot of your behavior seems tame compared to others. A lot of it feels familiar (treatment of women and other minorities, housing, stuff like that) and yet, not so familiar.

I think GTA games are really interesting when it comes to such observations.

And the worlds of GTA games are extremely cynical and cold.

IYKYK

Ichirou

  • Merry Christmas
  • Senior Member
A friend of mine did her doctoral thesis on virtual geographies in video games.  I mean, that's an aspect that is often ignored by gamerz, more interesting to me than the whole "video games as an art form" debate.
PS4

OptimoPeach

  • Senior Member
I think almost every single gameplay aspect in those games lends well to being labeled as criticism of social and societal norms, and being a clever satire of modern life
Naaa I think it's just a lot of fun to mow people down
hi5

Himu

  • Senior Member
You can get sex from hookers, and then kill them and get your money back.  What does this say about us...as humans?
:o

And I dunno about GTA being full of messages, Himu. I mean it does have messages, but like I said those are mostly expressed through stuff like the fake radio stations and occasional cut scenes and such. As far as the actual gameplay goes, GTA doesn't seem to exhibit any real personal vision. It's basically an avatar getting to run freely in a mock-up of real cities. I mean that freedom itself could be an artistic statement, but I'm not sure it's enough to classify GTA as art.

Then again, it's subjective. :spin

Yeah, I'm mostly talking about the gameplay, geography and locales more so than the talk radio and stuff, although that plays a big part too.
IYKYK

Himu

  • Senior Member
A friend of mine did her doctoral thesis on virtual geographies in video games.  I mean, that's an aspect that is often ignored by gamerz, more interesting to me than the whole "video games as an art form" debate.

Fa real.
IYKYK

Maybe my copies of the various GTAs were buggy, but they usually had black, white and hispanic people all populating the same areas :o

Except in a few areas of San Andreas, but I chalked that up to gang turf.

Himu

  • Senior Member
Yeah, you'll see a bunch of blacks and hispanic people in the poor areas and blonde chicks occupying the Rodeo Dr knock off. Although there's still some darkies in those areas too. :lol
IYKYK

I don't really know if that's artistic expression, though. One could argue that they're just trying to recreate the actual areas as accurately as possible. I mean, what you described is basically how it is in reality.

Himu

  • Senior Member
That's why I think it's artistic: duplicating our reality in an virtual environment. Other games don't do that; they go for the fantastical. GTA often goes for something that exists and attempts to replicate it, how is that not an artistic expression? :P Especially if they take the piss out of our societal norms while doing so?
IYKYK

I don't identify an artistic take when the take is basically "lets try to recreate reality". I would actually call that an artistic cop out.

I also feel the same way with films that attempt to sell themselves "true-to-life documentaries". Pretending to be true to the reality of any given situation and not embracing the inherent fantasy in all artistic expressions is a cop out in my opinion. I think something like Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin is of way higher artistic merit than Precious, because one is purposely subverting and quantifying reality to serve a thesis and the other is trying to be "keep it real, yo" and missing the opportunity to make a real statement.

Beezy

  • Senior Member
This is one of the lowest points this thread has ever reached. 3 pages of this shit? Keep that games/art bullshit at GAF, please. You all post there.

Veidt

  • Senior Member
I agreezy with Beezy

brawndolicious

  • Nylonhilist
  • Senior Member
anything can be appreciated subjectively and therefore be art.
 
The question is if something is good art.  I think the problem is that there are so many possible types of games with everything from
 Battlefield to Assassin's Creed that anybody who took a philosophy class refuses to take a neutral position to the medium.

TakingBackSunday

  • Banana Grabber
  • Senior Member
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20839047&postcount=251

In this post: two equally fucking ignorant idiots.

"Alcohol sucks."

"Fuck you, soda sucks."

How about fuck both of you, Coke is awesome, Jack and Coke is awesomer.
püp

Not only is am nintenho a few hours late, but he totally ignored the point of the debate. Good job, bro.

brawndolicious

  • Nylonhilist
  • Senior Member
Not only is am nintenho a few hours late, but he totally ignored the point of the debate. Good job, bro.
I'm not going to read 3 pages of this shit.

I just responded to etiolate's original post.

Ichirou

  • Merry Christmas
  • Senior Member
Damn that nintenho.
PS4

naff

  • someday you feed on a tree frog
  • Senior Member
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html Ebert's obviously out of his depth on the subject. He can't form his own opinion and falls back to the critics parasitic stance pulling apart someone else's speech yet he's afraid of making his own.

He critiques games as bad taste and having the artistic merits of chicken scratchings on a cave man's wall yet iirc he praised bs like Avatar and compares his experience watching it to his first experience with the original Star Wars  :-\
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Veidt

  • Senior Member
Ebert is crazy.  First he rates the twilight saga above Kick-Ass( A.K.A Hit-Girl). and now this?

Firstly, the man is too old.  and secondly, I couldn't care less about his opinion.

GilloD

  • TAKE THE LIFE OF FRED ASTAIRE. MAKE HIM PAY. TRANSFER HIS FAME TO YOU.
  • Senior Member
Games are art? Guys, seriously? Heavy Rain would be a C- thriller and that's the best argument you have? Let's be realistic. That said: STFU, the debate is stupid and everyone looks like a whine cod piece.
wha

Third

  • BODY TALK
  • Senior Member
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20839047&postcount=251

In this post: two equally fucking ignorant idiots.

"Alcohol sucks."

"Fuck you, soda sucks."

How about fuck both of you, Coke is awesome, Jack and Coke is awesomer.

alcohol sucks and is for losers

Skidmark

  • Member
I guess that I am a bit late to the discussion, I haven't really read what has caused the arguments but I can anyway I am one of those who considers video games a form of art.

My younger brother is a little bit into making video games and there is a lot more art involved in making the games than coding, at least in the stage that he is at. I really find it hard to see someone who lacks artistic talents to succeed as much as someone who is artistic in his approach.

Just from looking at the games that he has made I can really understand a lot about the way he thinks, his humor, taste, dreams, fantasies, what he likes and dislikes. Through his games I have learned new things about him that I probably wouldn't have if I haven't played his video games even though he is my brother.

Making video games is a way to express yourself artistically and thats why I consider it a form of art whether there is a market for it or not.

Skidmark

  • Member

Brehvolution

  • Until at last, I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside.
  • Senior Member
[img]http://i.imgur.com/W4bIB.jpg[img]
:lol :lol
I'm not sure which is worse:

1. Being such an applefag that you are willing to go temp homo and blow a stranger for an ipad
2. Being the person who skips out on the deal

Humanity smh
©ZH

Skidmark

  • Member
[img]http://i.imgur.com/W4bIB.jpg[img]
:lol :lol
I'm not sure which is worse:

1. Being such an applefag that you are willing to go temp homo and blow a stranger for an ipad
2. Being the person who skips out on the deal

Humanity smh

I also find it funny how he refers to the gentleman that he is giving a blowjob to in a Starbucks restroom an honest man.

The Fake Shemp

  • Ebola Carrier
I don't think so. That sounds oddly believable. Apple drones aren't very smart, and they're adept at just doing things other people tell them.
PSP

GilloD

  • TAKE THE LIFE OF FRED ASTAIRE. MAKE HIM PAY. TRANSFER HIS FAME TO YOU.
  • Senior Member
ALso, did anyone notice that Ebert just did this:  :patel to the entire internet and you guys got all Green Shinobi about it?
wha

Skidmark

  • Member
Yo Shake man, can you answer this for me:

I think the question here is what is a form of art.
Here is a definition that I agree with:
An activity or a piece of artistic work that can be regarded as a medium of artistic expression.

Youtube videos might not be art but you can use youtube videos as a medium of artistic expression, the same goes to creating video games, designing buildings and cars, designing the interior of your home, choosing how to dress yourself and customizing your windows theme and background.

Speaking of wallpapers, here are two new ones that I have recently come across, enjoy:
http://i.imgur.com/uF7Gf.png
http://i.imgur.com/2BSxV.jpg

If I was a bit younger or had the suiting outfit style I would have probably ordered tshirt prints of them.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2010, 10:26:02 AM by Skidmark »

Skidmark

  • Member
Obviously fake, though.
It most likely is but I wouldn't be very surprised if someone did fall for such a scam.

The Fake Shemp

  • Ebola Carrier
Mel's gone off the deep end.
PSP

etiolate

  • Senior Member
ALso, did anyone notice that Ebert just did this:  :patel to the entire internet and you guys got all Green Shinobi about it?

That actually my original post's question. The debate stemmed off from that, but I was seeing it Ebert spouting off before he dies, but that it may come back to bite him.


Green Shinobi

  • Member
ALso, did anyone notice that Ebert just did this:  :patel to the entire internet and you guys got all Green Shinobi about it?

Eat a dick, Stephan.

Does anyone find it weird that Lexi uses his/her own face as his/her own avatar?

brob

  • 8 diagram pole rider
  • Senior Member
we need an art emote. :art

Green Shinobi

  • Member
That transgendered chick on GAF. Not the one PD wants to bone.

Great Rumbler

  • Dab on the sinners
  • Global Moderator


Can somebody edit the flag to say "Art!".
dog

naff

  • someday you feed on a tree frog
  • Senior Member
[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

iPads  :lol
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