Complaining about the game industry, and about the Wii does not compute. The Wii was made to fight disinterrrest and change the "Blockbuster" model of games.

And to be blunt, old games were never creative because they were "art". Old games were creative because there wasn't much that came before them, and becase they understood that they were GAMES and not art. Gaming was born in bars, and continued in the arcades. not in art galleries. Only later gaming moved to consoles. Creativity circled around how to make a game fun and addictive to play.

^im not saying there weren't, just that there are so many these days :O

lol@ninjabread. thankfully my bro's taste in PS2 games leaned a little more towards Tekken, SoulCalibur and the like, so my TV is a happy bunny.

edit:was late. aimed at nordlead in case you hadn't guessed.

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.

@Nordlead: Or maybe fun is the actual aspect of art in videogames?

@Trashleg: This topic was about art, not what games you like. Art in itself is a justification for the existance of art. And therefore art itself doesn't need to entertain anyone.

*backs down*
bdbdbd, i wasnt just talking about games i liked to begin with tho, sorry my comments got a little off-track. my first comment is the only one i intended to make in this thread.

@ChirichiriMuyo: Actually, NES has more games that could be considered as art, than the current gen systems combined.
You are right that most of the NES games have been surpassed by their sequels as "better" games, but not as art.
You can paint similar, but better, painting than Mona Lisa, but the painting isn't going to surpass Mona Lisa as art.

I'm not against pretty games, or ones with big stories that are intriguing. What I am against is the industry becoming so full of itself that it must be "arty". Make a game fun should always be the primary purpose, but how to make a game fun can be open to thousands of interpratations. However, whenever someone claims that a gaming is losing their artistic touch, and that games need to be more arty, what they are realling saying (most of the time) is that games with no story (or some other type of game) have no place in gaming, which isn't true at all. Or that another version of Mario Party should have never been created. It is this attitude that needs to die. Forget the "arty" part of video games and focus on "fun" and you'll have a better product overall.

this post is absolutley correct

there will always be a market for artistic games, and you certainly shouldnt be complaining if you have a wii, which seems to only have wierd shit on it (and i say that in a good way): boom blox, no more heroes, mad world, zakk and wiki, just to name a few.  now, if only we could get some more fps's...

trashleg 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. please dont shout at me i was born in 89, didnt have a NES tho.. maybe when i was younger i just got lucky in that my parents bought me games i just happened to really enjoy? i've been gaming since i was old enough to understand moving images on a TV screen, thank you very much. but you can't possibly be arguing that the Wii and DS don't have the most awful non-games out on them? the entire "Imagine" range, for a start. bolded: don't speak to me like i'm a fucking retard. kthx.

Don't act like a retard?  Really, I can name games on the older systems that would make the imagine series look like a godsend to you.  Ever play Davia or Jack the Giant Slayer?  I wrote FAQs on them for GameFAQs because most people can't stand to play such horrible crap but I did.  Try playing Milo's Secret Castle some day, a game I actually enjoyed from those days. Or maybe Fester's Quest, which I also liked.  Tell me either of those two aren't terrible.  Most of the games I liked then were terrible, because most of them were terrible.  Most games of all time have been terrible.  That's the nature of the gaming industry.  It's also the nature of the movie industry, the novel industry, the animation industry, the television industry, the comic industry, the music industry, and the paitning industry.

no need to get personal. whats your problem?

and just because you may know games that are worse than the ones i mentioned, doesn't mean that my opinion needs to be corrected or is invalid. like bdbdbd said, and i acknowledged, this isnt about bad games. its about the loss of imaginative creative games and their replacement by churned-out lazy games.

chill?