Author Topic: Games aren't art  (Read 9575 times)

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What I mean is that the game shows Samus as only being particularly afraid of Ridley, which, quite frankly, is perfectly understandable. A lot of people are acting like Samus is a whimpering coward throughout the game, which she isn't. My point was that is silly, she shows fear in a single cutscene and some people are expanding that to the entire game.

(I'm not necessarily talking about this thread, incidentally. This is probably the tenth argument along these lines I've been in. I'm seeing the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS everywhere, at times word-for-word, as if people are just parroting each other, and I'm growing very tired of it.)

I also hesitate to call it "bad characterization". Personally, I liked the story and appreciated the insights to Samus's background. People are calling it bad just because they don't like it, rather than on its own merits (or faults, as you prefer).
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?" -DEATH, Discworld

"You can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard, but you'll never be better than Commander Shepard!"

 
Anyway, I'll point out to those that have not played the game that, this one scene aside, Samus was still the hypercompetent badass she usually is throughout. People are truly blowing this way out of proportion. Ridley's just that much of a badass himself.
It's not really that one scene aside. It's pretty much every cutscene where Samus is conversing or monologuing. In the gameplay itself, she's definitely hypercompetant; but in the cutscenes the game takes away any control and places arbitrary blocks to what can and should be done, and paints her as insecure and weak.
For example
Spoiler:
when Adam incapacitates her completely with a single freeze gun shot, and then she stumbles around for about 5 minutes crying.
I'm playing through again on hard mode, and just skipping all the cutscenes. It's worlds better.

One last thing for now: Adam Malkovich is the worst commander ever.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Excuse me, but I do believe they had the ability to do more characterization even back in the SNES days. They chose not to. As a result, the fans got to "write" her character based on their perceptions of her during gameplay. Derailing that perception, even if it is done by the series creator, is still derailment. It's still perceived as acting out of character. My argument is, if this is how Samus was supposed to be all this time, why didn't they make it clear before? They could have done it during the Gamecube era. They chose not to. They decided to add characterization after more than a decade of games. Can you see why this upsets people?
I didn't imply that the SNES didn't have the ability to generate more characterization for Samus; it falls under the "design" side of my argument instead of the "technical" side.  Action games of that generation generally didn't conduct more in-depth character studies, and Super Metroid was intended as a solitary exploration game along those lines.  As far as the GameCube era goes, Retro Studios completely handled the Prime series development, not the series creator Sakamoto, so they chose to say with a similar exploratory aesthetic.

And no, I don't see the fan-wangst as being particularly justified.  It's true that many people may have made certain assumptions about Samus's overall character, but as in any ongoing fictitious medium, you do so at your own risk.  For instance, if :v: suddenly declared tomorrow that they were making a FS3, it would invalidate the canon conformity of every post-Capella campaign this community has ever released.  In the same sense, just because certain people viewed Samus as a completely-stoic badass based on the design of games from over fifteen years ago doesn't mean that this assessment is correct.  I actually find the whole discussion even sillier based on what happened in Metroid Fusion, which featured Samus showing significantly more personal emotion than she ever had before, and which Other M was designed to resemble.

 

Offline qazwsx

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Proposition: people should only really care about if something is pleasurable to listen to/watch/play/read, discussing whether it is art or not is irrelevant to the objective of these media: entertainment.
<Achillion> I mean, it's not like he's shoving the brain-goo in a usb slot and praying to kurzweil to bring the singularity

<dsockwell> idk about you guys but the reason i follow God's law is so I can get my rocks off in the afterlife

 

Offline General Battuta

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Proposition: people should only really care about if something is pleasurable to listen to/watch/play/read, discussing whether it is art or not is irrelevant to the objective of these media: entertainment.

Disagreed.

 

Offline Sushi

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Proposition: people should only really care about if something is pleasurable to listen to/watch/play/read, discussing whether it is art or not is irrelevant to the objective of these media: entertainment.

Disagreed.

Disagreement with proposition noted and disagreed with.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Proposition: people should only really care about if something is pleasurable to listen to/watch/play/read, discussing whether it is art or not is irrelevant to the objective of these media: entertainment.

Disagreed.

Disagreement with proposition noted and disagreed with.

I simply don't think the utility of an 'art object' can be solely derived from its pleasure value. I feel that I get a great deal out of watching The Godfather even though I find other movies more pleasurable.. Similarly, I extract a lot of utility from pictures of suffering in unfortunate countries, even though I don't find them pleasurable.

 

Offline Sushi

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Proposition: people should only really care about if something is pleasurable to listen to/watch/play/read, discussing whether it is art or not is irrelevant to the objective of these media: entertainment.

Disagreed.

Disagreement with proposition noted and disagreed with.

I simply don't think the utility of an 'art object' can be solely derived from its pleasure value. I feel that I get a great deal out of watching The Godfather even though I find other movies more pleasurable.. Similarly, I extract a lot of utility from pictures of suffering in unfortunate countries, even though I don't find them pleasurable.

And I was just being silly. ;) I know better than to actually get involved in the "what is art?" debate...

 

Offline Flipside

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Some say 'art' promotes a message, others say 'art' promotes discussion, but the truth is, that makes just about everything art, there's nothing we can't turn into an argument, it's both one of the strengths and the weaknesses of the species. I think the problem is that whole fact that we need to even ask what is art and what is not, not based on the grounds of identification, but purely on the grounds of protecting the product from legislation.

The truth is that it is immaterial whether games are art or not, though I've stated my personal opinion earlier, because it's trying to add relevance to something using sleight of hand. Books, movies, games, they are all ways of telling stories, and without stories we'd be nothing more than bright monkeys, violence has always been an inherent part of those stories, Homer described the cutting up of a newborn child and the throwing of its remains into the ocean to delay a pursuing king, since the child could not enter Hades unless the whole body was found, the question we should really be asking is 'how did this become an issue?'.

 

Offline Scotty

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You know, I don't even really care if someone wants to call X game art.  If I enjoy it I will play it.  If I do not, I will avoid doing so.  Whether it is art or not is completely irrelevant to that point.

 

Offline Mongoose

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As long as we all agree that those bull**** globs of paint on canvas and/or bags of trash under a spotlight aren't art, I think we're on the same page. :p

 
"Art" is so vaguely defined anyway that the discussion is largely pointless.

Or perhaps the word I meant was "subjective", not "vague".
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?" -DEATH, Discworld

"You can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard, but you'll never be better than Commander Shepard!"

 
In Super Metroid, immediately after encountering Ridley on board the space station and driving him off, she jumps in her spaceship and follow him.

Do they make any attempt to explain her behavior in previous games while making her terrified of Ridley? 

 

Offline Topgun

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In Super Metroid, immediately after encountering Ridley on board the space station and driving him off, she jumps in her spaceship and follow him.

Do they make any attempt to explain her behavior in previous games while making her terrified of Ridley? 

In Metriod Prime she does something similar.

 
Do they make any attempt to explain her behavior in previous games while making her terrified of Ridley? 
Nope. Not at all.

 

Offline StarSlayer

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I think you're attacking the issue from the wrong angle.  Quite frankly I believe in the big scheme of things the end user/viewer's opinion is pretty inconsequential to deciding if something is art.  For example I think modern art is hack with no business residing in the same museum as say a Renaissance master's oil work.   Does that mean its not art?  Hardly.  Instead I think the intentions, motivations, imagination, skills brought to bear, and creativity of the maker of the product matter much more when it comes to classifying something as art.  A little halfpint using crayons to make a stick figure family picture is performing art, they're flexing their creative ability to make something that personally to them is art.  Doesn't matter is it looks silly to you.  It's no different then some master portrait painter, professional photographer or composer, they are tapping into their ability to create something, they devote a part of themselves into making it.  When you, the creator use your imagination, go the extra mile and personally invest in your creation its art.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Topgun

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I think you're attacking the issue from the wrong angle.  Quite frankly I believe in the big scheme of things the end user/viewer's opinion is pretty inconsequential to deciding if something is art.  For example I think modern art is hack with no business residing in the same museum as say a Renaissance master's oil work.   Does that mean its not art?  Hardly.  Instead I think the intentions, motivations, imagination, skills brought to bear, and creativity of the maker of the product matter much more when it comes to classifying something as art.  A little halfpint using crayons to make a stick figure family picture is performing art, they're flexing their creative ability to make something that personally to them is art.  Doesn't matter is it looks silly to you.  It's no different then some master portrait painter, professional photographer or composer, they are tapping into their ability to create something, they devote a part of themselves into making it.  When you, the creator use your imagination, go the extra mile and personally invest in your creation its art.
this.
bad art is still art, because someone thinks it is, it just isn't necessarily good art.

 
I think you're attacking the issue from the wrong angle.  Quite frankly I believe in the big scheme of things the end user/viewer's opinion is pretty inconsequential to deciding if something is art.  For example I think modern art is hack with no business residing in the same museum as say a Renaissance master's oil work.   Does that mean its not art?  Hardly.  Instead I think the intentions, motivations, imagination, skills brought to bear, and creativity of the maker of the product matter much more when it comes to classifying something as art.  A little halfpint using crayons to make a stick figure family picture is performing art, they're flexing their creative ability to make something that personally to them is art.  Doesn't matter is it looks silly to you.  It's no different then some master portrait painter, professional photographer or composer, they are tapping into their ability to create something, they devote a part of themselves into making it.  When you, the creator use your imagination, go the extra mile and personally invest in your creation its art.

This, indeed. :nod:
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?" -DEATH, Discworld

"You can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard, but you'll never be better than Commander Shepard!"

 

Offline Mongoose

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Art may always be art to the artist, but I think that, to be near-universally accepted as such, it has to stir for something deeper.  You look at something like Michaelangelo's Pieta, and even if you're not religious in the least, you feel something.  He managed to bring out pure human emotion from a chunk of marble.  And even if you don't have a musical bone in your body, the 1812 Overture is going to give you goosebumps.  But random splotches of paint strewn haphazardly across a canvas...well, it may speak to the "artist" and a few emperor's-new-clothes lemmings, but it means ****-all to the rest of us. :p

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Art may always be art to the artist, but I think that, to be near-universally accepted as such, it has to stir for something deeper.  You look at something like Michaelangelo's Pieta, and even if you're not religious in the least, you feel something.  He managed to bring out pure human emotion from a chunk of marble.  And even if you don't have a musical bone in your body, the 1812 Overture is going to give you goosebumps.  But random splotches of paint strewn haphazardly across a canvas...well, it may speak to the "artist" and a few emperor's-new-clothes lemmings, but it means ****-all to the rest of us. :p

But see you've pointed out the problem, end user opinion will always vary.  There is a group of yuppies that look at paint haphazardly thrown onto a canvas and see art.  I'm willing to bet you can find uncultured neobarb who would listen to 1812 and think it was a cacophony of old geezer music.  I can look at a well forged sword and appreciate the artistry of the smith, somebody else would only see an instrument of death.  The only opinion that isn't an interpretation, that isn't shaped by perceptions is that of the artist.  That doesn't mean you need to appreciate all art just because it is art, crap is crap and you're entitled to your opinion.  But if the developers of a game look at their creation as art that they've invested their imagination, skill and talent into making it, then what qualifications does a third party to tell them its not?
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”