[NGTM-1R]

Well I must admit I hadn't considered BSI as intentionally built on bad design elements in order to convey a beyond the 4th wall message.

I tend to side with Batts on this, though on simpler grounds. No matter what message you try to convey via poor workmanship, it's still shoddy. Poe's Law has destroyed the concept of bad for a purpose for me, not because the failures get better, but because the efforts to be bad in the service of a goal get worse.

[MP-Ryan]

Whelp, while the Burial at Sea Episodes connected the story back to Bioshock and filled in some plot holes, in general the DLCs proved a pretty unsatisfying/bittersweet conclusion to the Bioshcok / Bioshock Infinite story/universe.  If anything, they are a bit of a reminder of "what could have been" as they introduced stealth gameplay that would have allowed the player to avoid the utter bloodbath in BSI.  I kept waiting for Elizabeth to become Elizabeth again... and it didn't happen.

If you haven't bought them and were thinking about it, my advice is a YouTube LP if you're curious and skip entirely if you aren't.

[TrashMan]

People who don't like or want to engage with subtexts do not need to engage with such kinds of material.

Alas, there are those of us who do like that sort of stuff. Censoring this layer because you don't like it is not sensible, IMHO. There's a lot of other layers that I don't give too much of a damn, but I don't piss condescendingly in their playground as if they are idiots who take their joys too seriously.

I'm not censoring anything.

I'm just saying that just because you see some dots and connect them, and get an image, doesn't mean that image was planned or that it even is the image you're supposed to see.

I can write an essay on why Super Mario is really a story about a struggle against socialist tyranny, but doesn't mean it was made as such.

[The E]

I'm just saying that just because you see some dots and connect them, and get an image, doesn't mean that image was planned or that it even is the image you're supposed to see.

Any sufficiently well-written text will be able to support multiple meanings. However, claiming that no reading is valid because they all might be is stupid. Your stance, which is depressingly common among those who see gaming as only a way to pass a few hours, is one of the big things that makes video game criticism as bad as it is, both on the professional and amateur level.
Without accepting that games can mean something beyond the superficial level, games can not evolve. Luckily, the current crop of game designers understands this.

[zookeeper]

I'm just saying that just because you see some dots and connect them, and get an image, doesn't mean that image was planned or that it even is the image you're supposed to see.

Any sufficiently well-written text will be able to support multiple meanings. However, claiming that no reading is valid because they all might be is stupid. Your stance, which is depressingly common among those who see gaming as only a way to pass a few hours, is one of the big things that makes video game criticism as bad as it is, both on the professional and amateur level.
Without accepting that games can mean something beyond the superficial level, games can not evolve. Luckily, the current crop of game designers understands this.

But he wasn't even talking about games only. And what he seems to be saying is merely that no reading can be correct or incorrect because you can read what you want into whatever you want (within reason, if you prefer), and you can never be sure what the subtextual meaning was truly supposed to be unless the author tells you, making discussion of subtext fairly pointless in the sense that you can never reach a conclusion.

Personally, I find it sounds somewhat similar to trying to explain why a joke is funny; to me, the point of it all falls apart the moment you start to dissect it. If I don't find a joke funny, then breaking it down and analyzing it isn't going to help any, and similarly if a story doesn't spontaneously evoke some thoughts in me then it's too late and no amount of analyzing the subtextual cues is going to make it happen. Sure, you can analyze jokes and subtext if that's what you enjoy, but to me it seems like it has very little to do with the actual point of jokes or subtext... assuming that the point of subtext is to evoke certain thoughts, but as I said I wouldn't know.

Anyway, what would you say is the meaning/utility/rationale for subtextual meaning? What is it about it that makes a work containing profound subtext better, more enjoyable, more memorable or have a greater impact than a work which doesn't?

[StarSlayer]

Moby Dick was about hunting a Whale.

Spec Ops the Line was just about 3rd Person Shooting in Dubai.

[The E]

Good subtext, for me, is what separates the SimCitys and the FarmVilles. It's what makes Spec Ops: The Line work, and the Battlefield single player campaigns (to take one example) fall flat.
For me, a good mechanics-driven game is a piece of beauty, the hours I sunk into Tetris and 2048 attest to that. But, at the end of the day, these games only reward you based on simple, mechanical terms. You either grasp their mechanics and find out how to manipulate them well, or you don't. They do not invite discussions about us as gamers, they do not offer points of self-reflection or points of contention that we can debate over.

[Phantom Hoover]

Disagree, mechanics can carry meaning all by themselves.

[The E]

All I can say is that no game that fit into that category comes to my mind. Can you give an example?

I mean, I'm having a rather hard time seeing the subtextual content of the examples I gave above, or games of a similar sort.

[Luis Dias]

I'm just saying that just because you see some dots and connect them, and get an image, doesn't mean that image was planned or that it even is the image you're supposed to see.

This is not helpful, either you are going to say what exact analysis falls short of the evidence provided or you are not, handwaving how "people see stuff doesn't mean it's there" trivialities doesn't make my mind go anywhere else. Subtext readings are possible, and sometimes they do work, make you think, ponder, etc. and that by itself can become useful, irrespectively of them being "true" regarding original intentions or not (sometimes these things happen by accident, etc.). Sometimes we read too much into stuff, but I think it is possible to be quite rigorous to what is a good inference from more wild speculations.

I can write an essay on why Super Mario is really a story about a struggle against socialist tyranny, but doesn't mean it was made as such.

While it does not matter if it was "made as such", I don't really think you can write such an essay and convince me of it. Meanwhile I did one analysis about Freespace2 and I think it was convincing.

e:

All I can say is that no game that fit into that category comes to my mind. Can you give an example?

I mean, I'm having a rather hard time seeing the subtextual content of the examples I gave above, or games of a similar sort.

Luckily for you, Errant Signal has just uploaded a video precisely about what game mechanics conveys with one big example: Assassin's Creed!

[General Battuta]

The author's intentions don't dictate what subtext a work contains. What matters is what readings the text itself can support.

[Ghostavo]

Death of the Author basically then?

[MP-Ryan]

Death of the Author basically then?

Not entirely.  The biographical and contextual information about an author is important; its their intentions that are less so.  Subtext has a lot to do with who an author is, but not what they say it means (because what they say it means and what the combination of the text and the author's context reveal are often two very different things)  Tolkien insisted to his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was not meant to be in any way allegorical to the Great War and Second World War and their toll and losses incurred, yet arguments are routinely and quit successfully made that the books are indeed allegorical in practice, and that has much to do with Tolkien's personal life experiences.

[The E]

All I can say is that no game that fit into that category comes to my mind. Can you give an example?

I mean, I'm having a rather hard time seeing the subtextual content of the examples I gave above, or games of a similar sort.

Luckily for you, Errant Signal has just uploaded a video precisely about what game mechanics conveys with one big example: Assassin's Creed!

Which I would not rate as a purely mechanics-driven game. Look at the examples I gave to define that category for the purposes of my argument: Tetris. 2048. These are not games that tell stories; Assassin's Creed however very definitely is.

[StarSlayer]

I write Homeric epics about Minesweeper.

[Lepanto]

Death of the Author basically then?

Not entirely.  The biographical and contextual information about an author is important; its their intentions that are less so.  Subtext has a lot to do with who an author is, but not what they say it means (because what they say it means and what the combination of the text and the author's context reveal are often two very different things)  Tolkien insisted to his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was not meant to be in any way allegorical to the Great War and Second World War and their toll and losses incurred, yet arguments are routinely and quit successfully made that the books are indeed allegorical in practice, and that has much to do with Tolkien's personal life experiences.

I'm skeptical that literary critics writing after the fact, viewing an author's work through their own attitudes and biases, can determine the true meaning of an author's work more accurately than the author themselves can.

[Hades]

All I can say is that no game that fit into that category comes to my mind. Can you give an example?

I mean, I'm having a rather hard time seeing the subtextual content of the examples I gave above, or games of a similar sort.

Luckily for you, Errant Signal has just uploaded a video precisely about what game mechanics conveys with one big example: Assassin's Creed!

Which I would not rate as a purely mechanics-driven game. Look at the examples I gave to define that category for the purposes of my argument: Tetris. 2048. These are not games that tell stories; Assassin's Creed however very definitely is.

Yes, but Phantom wasn't limiting his criteria to 'purely mechanics-driven', he simply said that mechanics can carry meaning, which doesn't preclude said games from having stories. Luis' link showed this.

[MP-Ryan]

I'm skeptical that literary critics writing after the fact, viewing an author's work through their own attitudes and biases, can determine the true meaning of an author's work more accurately than the author themselves can.

If there is one thing human beings excel at, it's self-deception or distorted self-awareness... and authors, due to a combination of things that are no fault of their own, are startlingly prone to it.  Writing is one of those things that tends to reveal a great deal that the author may not have actually intended.

For example:  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle certainly never intended his work to be a critique of the way science has been used to support injustice and regressive social policy, yet 84 years after his death there is little question that it does provide that very critique.  He is notorious for quoting the 'science' of the day (phrenology being one example) as valid, and then writing plotlines that ultimately end up running counter to it.

[swashmebuckle]

I think what frustrates a lot of people is that once you engage with an analysis/critique of a work, it is natural to then treat that analysis in the same way that you are treating the original work (meaning you have to analyze the analysis, determine who the critic is, discover the underlying motivations for their critique, etc).

This can easily devolve into kind of a petty struggle/circle jerk for meta authority, but mostly I think people find it disturbing because it ultimately results in you (the original consumer) analyzing yourself. That can get pretty awkward.

[General Battuta]

Death of the Author basically then?

Not entirely.  The biographical and contextual information about an author is important; its their intentions that are less so.  Subtext has a lot to do with who an author is, but not what they say it means (because what they say it means and what the combination of the text and the author's context reveal are often two very different things)  Tolkien insisted to his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was not meant to be in any way allegorical to the Great War and Second World War and their toll and losses incurred, yet arguments are routinely and quit successfully made that the books are indeed allegorical in practice, and that has much to do with Tolkien's personal life experiences.

I'm skeptical that literary critics writing after the fact, viewing an author's work through their own attitudes and biases, can determine the true meaning of an author's work more accurately than the author themselves can.

Why shouldn't they be able to? I'm speaking here as someone firmly in the author camp.