The increasing popularity of games may hurt games as an art.

[ChichiriMuyo]

nen-suer said:

ChichiriMuyo said:

trashleg said:
first of all, nice post. i liked it and i like you already

i think that there has been a huge influx of really crappy games, particularly on the Wii and DS (people don't hate on me, im not flaming - i have both and i like them). i worry that there are so many games being churned out willy-nilly to sell a fast buck, that "gaming" aint what is used to be.

but no worries, because fantastic games are still being made AS WELL. as long as you can still go pick up a good or even great game, you can just ignore the rest of them. there's just a much bigger market than there used to be, its a lot less of an exclusive club of "geeks and losers", and most people will end up playing games at some point, if not be at least familiar with the console names.

i think its a mixed bag, really. i do agree with what you're saying, but i dont think we need to worry just yet

How old were you when the NES came out?  The comment of yours I bolded sounds absolutely absurd to me because I've never, NEVER, seen a console that wasn't filled tot he brim with games that were made for the quick buck.  I've had an Atari, an Nes, and almost every system worth mentioning since and they are all loaded with rubbish games regardless of how good or bad they are. It's good that you realize you can just pick the good ones and leave the bad ones behind, but there's absolutely nothing different about the gaming market today than what it was like when I was a kid.  The vast majority of games will always be poor in quality relative to their "peers," and this generation is no different than the rest.

NES may have had those games, but also had more artistic games than the PS3+Xbox360+wii combined

you have a different opinion so be it, but dont decide what other people shold think.

I was actively gaming during the NES days and have played dozens of games that most people haven't heard about, and I can assure you that there were simply a ton of games that were not worth the time of day.  Games that were art in those days are limited to the Marios and Zeldas.  Maybe the Mega Mans and Metroids are still playable, but what beyond the first and second tier games?  What can compare as art compared to the beautiful Okaimi or the ingnious katamari Damacy?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  There were a lot of genre defining games, no doubt, but what from that era hasn't been proven utterly replacable by better games made more recently other than Nintendo's own? 

What still even vaguely stand up as "art" from that era to begin with? I've named a few series, but pretty much all of them saw their apex, according tothe masses, much later.  I've never like a Zelda more than the first yet the consensus is that the best is OoT or, depending on who you ask, TP.  Also for as much as I like the Zelda series, there's no doubt that Okami is considered more artistic.  And more artistic than that are games I won't bother with like Shadow of The Colossus, which bores me a good deal. 

But even with me disliking those games I have a hard time thinking of any from the old days that even compare.  Anything I liked previous to the 3D revolution doesn;t look like art today in any sense.  Not only are they primitive looking but they play primatively too.  As a GAME, almost nothing outside of Mario 3, Tetris and LoZ (my favorite game of all time, btw) is capable of even competing with what is available today, and I doubt you could name more than 20 games that are not utterly and irrevocably surpassed by what has existed in the meantime.  As an artform that transcends its genre, I'm not sure you can even name one NES game of note.

Really, try naming some artistic NES games.  You dont have to post them, because I bet you'd probably be embarassed by the results, but just think about how many games cross that line in your mind and then think about how many could potentially do it today.  I guarentee you if you don't just talk from nostalgia you won't have anything to say in response. The simple matter is that most games of that era get the advantage of being first, not the best, and once you compare them in an even setting you find that virtually no video games were treated as art before the advent of fanciful 3D graphics.

Really, if you look at the games made since the millenium began and compared them to the games made before hand, you are going to see (despite the advantage of many more years of gaming comming before 2000) that things have only gotten better for the idea that games are an artform.  Before the PS2 came out you couldn't really even make a game that looked artistic at all, not could you really make one that sounded artistic on a cart-based system.  The gameplay was the only thing that could be done artistically, and games have only become more responsive and natural feeling as time has passed.

Really, honestly, the explosive groth of gaming only makes artistic games MORE common.  Companies have to try a lot harder now than the days when the 7-up "spot" was considered worthy of its own game.  An Okami never would have existed before the PS2 because the audience was too narrow for it to be adopted at all.  The fact that so many varying opinons exist within the game-buying segment is what makes "art" games worth any investment at all, and previous to this espansion of the market there was no such concept at all.

 

Again, look at the older games that might be considered art.  They all get their recognition for being the first of its kind or playing well.  There are none that stand as art for arts sake.  The industry has come a long way since those days.  There are games that are art for art's sake. there are those that play much better, and there are still at times first-of-its-kind games.  You're spoiled to grow up in this era compared to those that came before it.