| Grahamhsu said: I don't believe Ebert believes all films are works of art. As I said before there is art involved in making a game. In the case of MGS the giant and long CGI movies can be considered art. But when it comes down to it the "GAMEPLAY" which is what makes a game a "game", there is no art at all. When I sneak by an enemy in MGS is that considered art? When the command prompt pops out and asks if I should Attack, Defend, or Magicks, is that art? What about headshotting some poor sap in MW2 art? ... I can't say that gameplay is beautiful. For me gameplay is a method, my definition of method would be steps or acts for performing a function. A method can never be beautiful to me, just as the suzuki method is not beautiful to me though the music in it can be. A bad game is not fun to play, and a good game is fun, to me beauty/ugly can't be used to describe them. For me art comes from ourself, it is part of our human nature, all people when they are born already have an idea/sense of art. As so, to me there must be a universal structure to what constitutes good and bad since I believe we are all instrisically born with the idea of what is beautiful and what is ugly. It seems in our arguements you believe that if a game includes artistic values it can be considered art, while for me I don't believe blending them together makes them art. The best example I can use for my idea would be vinegar and oil, they make bread taste delicious, and complement each other but I wouldn't say they are blended together, as I can separate the parts easily. |
(For brevity I coalesced two of your posts)
Isn't that an arbitrary limitation, though? There are ways to design gameplay that build up the experience just as the visuals or writing can during the non-interactive parts. Case of interest: the hand-holding game mechanic in ICO.
It's a gameplay design choice that clearly resonates with most gamers, that enriches the message the game tries to convey no less than the choice of verbal incommunicability between the characters or the visual personality of the castle itself. A game design choice that I remember not in the technical sense, but for the emotions it helped to summon. Just as I remember particular scenes of movies and section of books not merely for their technical content, but as the experience they always granted me.
It looks like Ebert is thinking of the most basic level of gameplay design to entertain in a chess/sport kind of way. He seems to be missing that many games offer additional layers of meaning or additional evocative power right in their gameplay design. You also refered to gameplay in the very same basic, let's say technical, way. But I'm sure that you have a much wider experience that his, and thus might see the restrictions of this approach?
