Ajax said: and pardon my misspells, and also my enterknop is broken, so I'm forced to write everything after each other all the time and can't put spaces in between, very irritating.. anyhow, it's already 8:42 AM here, haven't slept all night, so I'm gonna give it a try.. it's been a pleasure

Cheers, ajax. I look forward to bickering with you endlessly for the next few weeks.

I don't know. 'Fancy-free' isn't quite how I'd put it. I just wouldn't have compared games to linear media like books and movies. I see them as something like paintings, which do much the same thing as free-form games. Paintings don't force a viewer to take one particular path in viewing them, and they're often remarkable for their many levels of meaning. In many ways, it's the opposite of narrative - complexity and a lack of obvious focus are goods because the art is about letting the viewer/player exercise his freedom. I wouldn't call it an inferior way of being, just a different one. They don't 'say' anything, but they don't have to. They can appeal directly to an emotional level. Incidentally, I think that art in games is hampered by technical improvements over time. No new technology has simply obsoleted older methods of painting or making music, but there are clear and obvious ways in which every old NES game could have been improved. Unlike other media, games can't ever be seen to exist as fully-realized ideas - there are always technological constraints on what an artist can realize. Likewise, the tendency of games to copy each other makes it harder to recognize original art, and I think that gamers often get so used to elements of actual artistic worth in games that they don't recognize them as such.

rocketpig said: GotchayeA said: I just saw NGE two years ago and loved it. Every episode is hilarious; I've never laughed so hard as I did when a friend and I watched the last episode together. Rocketpig, I hadn't considered games as potentially competing with movies. Now that you bring it up, I can see it, but I long ago gave up trying to really 'get' greatness in art, so I'm afraid that's not much of an endorsement. I'd always pictured them as trying to approximate 'The Little Prince'. Something of a "here's a world, now be free" sort of thing. I thought that Mario 64 and Shadow of the Colossus were fairly artistic. The key for me has always been a fully-imagined world that the player doesn't feel constrained by - games, for me, have always been exercises in freedom. I can understand the movie thing, but I just can't feel it. Don't you think it's sad that we view such an incredible medium in such a fancy-free way?

The medium is not very old. Cinema pales in comparison to books when it comes to storytelling, as you say, and yet it manages to do it quite well. Videogames are interactive and therefore can be many more things, but they can also be interactive movies. I think MGS was a great advancement in that genre. I was amazed, and to some extent I still am, when I first played MGS at how it seemed so much like a movie. I showed the theater mode to my grandmother and she liked it as a movie. I also saw Gone With the Wind with her, and I don't think she'd compare the 2, but it's still done well. My point in that videogames are growing in many ways. Exercise machines and interactive movies. MGS does an excellent job with the latter. Clearly we all have different tastes, but I would think people could at least recognize that MGS does a decent job of producing an interactive movie experience, even if it's not all super brilliant. It's not all supposed to be. Btw, I've seen Magnolia...it's certainly no Godfather....but it's good for what it does. Isn't that enough? Does everything have to be the greatest experience?

GotchayeA said: Don't you think it's sad that we view such an incredible medium in such a fancy-free way? I don't know. 'Fancy-free' isn't quite how I'd put it. I just wouldn't have compared games to linear media like books and movies. I see them as something like paintings, which do much the same thing as free-form games. Paintings don't force a viewer to take one particular path in viewing them, and they're often remarkable for their many levels of meaning. In many ways, it's the opposite of narrative - complexity and a lack of obvious focus are goods because the art is about letting the viewer/player exercise his freedom. I wouldn't call it an inferior way of being, just a different one. They don't 'say' anything, but they don't have to. They can appeal directly to an emotional level. Incidentally, I think that art in games is hampered by technical improvements over time. No new technology has simply obsoleted older methods of painting or making music, but there are clear and obvious ways in which every old NES game could have been improved. Unlike other media, games can't ever be seen to exist as fully-realized ideas - there are always technological constraints on what an artist can realize.

Directors still face limitations. They aren't as great, I agree, but they are there.

Granting for the moment that it's a good interactive movie, I just don't understand what the interactivity adds to the experience. It seems to me that the player can only identify with the character to the extent that he doesn't reflect on what he's doing, and the end result doesn't strike me as being any different than what a choose-your-own-adventure book could accomplish. What artistic value is added by giving the player the ability to choose whether or not the character takes the left or the right fork? This is to everyone - this is just a point I've never understood. I look at narrative media as making tradeoffs between identifying with characters and understanding characters. A book or movie can tell you what the character is thinking, but in so doing they create distance between the experiencer and the character, or they can let the experiencer substitute his own thoughts for the character's, but this often leads to moments of realignment where the character does something that the player doesn't expect. The strength of games, to my mind, is that they can break out of this by allowing the player to identify with the character while not letting the character do anything that the player doesn't expect. However, the sort of weak interactivity in something like MGS is limited to meaningless decisions and to tests of skill in order to see the next cutscene, and I just don't see what that adds.

GotchayeA said: Granting for the moment that it's a good interactive movie, I just don't understand what the interactivity adds to the experience. It seems to me that the player can only identify with the character to the extent that he doesn't reflect on what he's doing, and the end result doesn't strike me as being any different than what a choose-your-own-adventure book could accomplish. What artistic value is added by giving the player the ability to choose whether or not the character takes the left or the right fork? This is to everyone - this is just a point I've never understood. I look at narrative media as making tradeoffs between identifying with characters and understanding characters. A book or movie can tell you what the character is thinking, but in so doing they create distance between the experiencer and the character, or they can let the experiencer substitute his own thoughts for the character's, but this often leads to moments of realignment where the character does something that the player doesn't expect. The strength of games, to my mind, is that they can break out of this by allowing the player to identify with the character while not letting the character do anything that the player doesn't expect. However, the sort of weak interactivity in something like MGS is limited to meaningless decisions and to tests of skill in order to see the next cutscene, and I just don't see what that adds.

I'll throw at you The Darkness. One simple scene in the game that may seem irrelevent during the moment makes another scene much more powerful later in the game. Subtlety, emotional connection, and interactivity makes that work on a level that MGS could only dream of.

Mind that the rest of the game was rather mediocre but that is one instance where someone in the development team fought to make a point and damn, it worked brilliantly. 

It's just a great combination. Why are movies made about videogames? Why are videogames made out of movies? People like them both and like seeing their characters and worlds in both mediums (even if most attempts don't get the budget they need to do wel). MGS combines them. You get great gameplay mixed with great story. Having to beat a boss to see the next cutscene is a great reward system. I can play the game as a test of skill or watch it as a movie after I beat it once; both are done well enough to do either. That's why it's considered one of the best game series.

rocketpig said: GotchayeA said: Granting for the moment that it's a good interactive movie, I just don't understand what the interactivity adds to the experience. It seems to me that the player can only identify with the character to the extent that he doesn't reflect on what he's doing, and the end result doesn't strike me as being any different than what a choose-your-own-adventure book could accomplish. What artistic value is added by giving the player the ability to choose whether or not the character takes the left or the right fork? This is to everyone - this is just a point I've never understood. I look at narrative media as making tradeoffs between identifying with characters and understanding characters. A book or movie can tell you what the character is thinking, but in so doing they create distance between the experiencer and the character, or they can let the experiencer substitute his own thoughts for the character's, but this often leads to moments of realignment where the character does something that the player doesn't expect. The strength of games, to my mind, is that they can break out of this by allowing the player to identify with the character while not letting the character do anything that the player doesn't expect. However, the sort of weak interactivity in something like MGS is limited to meaningless decisions and to tests of skill in order to see the next cutscene, and I just don't see what that adds. I'll throw at you The Darkness. One simple scene in the game that may seem irrelevent during the moment makes another scene much more powerful later in the game. Subtlety, emotional connection, and interactivity makes that work on a level that MGS could only dream of. Mind that the rest of the game was rather mediocre but that is one instance where someone in the development team fought to make a point and damn, it worked brilliantly.

Heh, see, I didn't think The Darkness was that great as a game or as a story. I'm not going to trash all videogame stories over it, though ;) Actually, my favorite feature of that game is being able to watch To Kill a Mockingbird and The Man with the Golden Arm in their entirey from in-game TVs. It had a couple of nice episodes of other stuff, too.

I grant that it's a fun combination, windbane, but I meant to ask how the interactivity made the experience artistically superior. A hot dog at a baseball game is an incredibly satisfying combination, but there remains a sense in which the hot dog doesn't make the baseball game better.

I never played that, rocketpig - how does the interactivity make the difference there?

windbane said: rocketpig said: GotchayeA said: Granting for the moment that it's a good interactive movie, I just don't understand what the interactivity adds to the experience. It seems to me that the player can only identify with the character to the extent that he doesn't reflect on what he's doing, and the end result doesn't strike me as being any different than what a choose-your-own-adventure book could accomplish. What artistic value is added by giving the player the ability to choose whether or not the character takes the left or the right fork? This is to everyone - this is just a point I've never understood. I look at narrative media as making tradeoffs between identifying with characters and understanding characters. A book or movie can tell you what the character is thinking, but in so doing they create distance between the experiencer and the character, or they can let the experiencer substitute his own thoughts for the character's, but this often leads to moments of realignment where the character does something that the player doesn't expect. The strength of games, to my mind, is that they can break out of this by allowing the player to identify with the character while not letting the character do anything that the player doesn't expect. However, the sort of weak interactivity in something like MGS is limited to meaningless decisions and to tests of skill in order to see the next cutscene, and I just don't see what that adds. I'll throw at you The Darkness. One simple scene in the game that may seem irrelevent during the moment makes another scene much more powerful later in the game. Subtlety, emotional connection, and interactivity makes that work on a level that MGS could only dream of. Mind that the rest of the game was rather mediocre but that is one instance where someone in the development team fought to make a point and damn, it worked brilliantly.  Heh, see, I didn't think The Darkness was that great as a game or as a story. I'm not going to trash all videogame stories over it, though ;) Actually, my favorite feature of that game is being able to watch To Kill a Mockingbird and The Man with the Golden Arm in their entirey from in-game TVs. It had a couple of nice episodes of other stuff, too.

 I never said it was a great game. One scene showed the potential of interactive media. That's it.