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Video games are one of the highest forms of entertainment. There are many different genres. We here at TIGSource have classified Art as one of those. Then there are those games that are much more than a game. They can affect you in a way. It's not a game. It'a an experience.

Flower by thatgamecompany

Passage by Jason Rohrer

Sexy Hiking by Jazzuo

On a more serious note,

Chzo Mythos by Yahtzee

Passage isn't really a game though, it's more "interactive art" IMO since there really is no goal, just a message.

Yes, but what is 'art'? :wizard:

Flower just looks like a game to me. But at least it's not as awful as that Endless Forest deal. Ugh.

Sorry, not the "artsy" type. I fit in with the cynical, down-to-earth, cool kids. :laughter:

good thread

Cool.

this single post will spark a 6-page discussion

I would not sign this. You might also want to ask an opera fan, ballet dancers, storytellers and theater people about their view on this, and you might get surprising answers.

Every game that has even so much as a remote glimmer of a story is an experience. Not necessarily a good one, but definitely an experience.

Also, Penumbra.

Fuck no, an experience happens when someone experiences something. You can't detach the experience from the event. Fuck this. Learn about linguistics.

The event is playing the game :durr:

Excel 95 - Hall of Tortured Souls

Excel 96: Cel Harder

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari

Garden Gnome Carnage

FROG HUNT  :o

They used that "it's not a game, it's an experience" as taglines to a few virtual naughty games :o

ONE HUNDRED POINTS

Guys please quit the spamming.  THIS IS NOT THE GENERAL FORUM.

Well, obviously. If you ask an opera fan what is higher, opera or videogames, what do you think he is going to pick?

The problem arose when we first tried to market our games to opera fans.

Is this thread sarcastic? I can't tell.


What does this even mean? I mean, I assume you mean that they'd disagree with Javet's statement, but that wouldn't be surprising at all. What's your game? Also, since when did the fact that some people disagree with something negate it?

As for a (completely sincere) reply, pretty much every game made by Increpare, Terry or a combination thereof in the past few months has been what you seem to be calling an "experience." At least, I think they have. I'm not entirely sure of what you mean. I suspect that you are taking the piss, since calling things an "experience" is really kinda cringeworthy, but the aforementioned games would, I suspect, fit into that category. By that, I mean that they're either emotionally or intellectually engaging and are, to some extent, "pushing the boundaries" of the medium.

I wanted to say, that different people might give different answers about what "the highest forms of entertainment" are, and that I doubt that video games are a common answer. I have no evidence for that though, but I suspect that it will be an uncommon answer from the groups that I named.

Overall I was just a bit uneasy with the way that the original poster put "Video games are one of the highest forms of entertainment" as a fact. I wanted to show it's not a fact, but a matter of opinion or at least depending on the point of view.

I did not mean to negate it. I just tried to make it more relative than the original poster did.

Indeed, Worthy. Indeed.

Final Fantasy 6 was where everything started going wrong...  :tired:

When I think of games as an "experience", I think of the climax, the part where everything comes together. So I'm suggesting games with an especially nice climax or defining moment. In some games it's drawn out or keeps going, like in Garden Gnome Carnage where every second is more hectic than the last. Other games have a specific high-point, like the second battle against Assassin Asha in Iji.

La Mulana's climax comes when you get the ocarina and start talking to the statues. It's the first cohesive glimpse at the true story behind ruins.

Every time I play a game it's an experience.  Every time I scratch my butt it's an experience.

Right. That's why I'm suggesting defining or important experiences. I believe that was the original intent of the thread.

It's all subjective, so why bother?  You can't make a "definitive list" on the subject.

If a game moves you in some way, go ahead and express that.  But don't expect that to be the case for everyone, and do expect that someone is going to argue about it if you try to say something like "this is the definitive art game."

Something off-topic and/or tangential.

Eversion.

And Frog Hunt.

And Sexy Hiking. Fo' real. I just can't describe what I feel playing this bizarre awful game, but I must play it from time to time.

is it 'frustration'? because that's what I feel when I play it. I busted it out at game dev school yesterday, I can't even get past the first level any more which is annoying, because I've beaten it.

Spam? WHO HAS SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually think that games can be described as something that's a bit "higher" than most art forms, simply because they contain them. Games have:

Story, like a novel or short story
Art, like a painting or drawing
Animation, like a movie
Music, like a song
and interaction too, on top of all those.

A cartoon has art and story, a movie has art, story, animation, music. Other stuff, like a painting or a song, have just one single form of art in them. Games have a lot of art forms, and almost any art form can be put in a game, from prose to sculpture.

I enjoy making games because I want to do everything. I like art, animation, music, interaction, mathematics, story, characters, physics, and so on. When making for example movies, which is a very broad art form, you have to turn down many of those.

You can put opera in a game, but it's hard to put a functional game in an opera.

Very clever argument :)

That's a good argument for games being higher art. I always liked how games have some of the best parts of music, movies and novels.

A fantastic way to think of it, this is my primary argument in any debate on this topic now, JLJac. Kudos to you!

This is a silly thing to say. By that reasoning movies are "higher" than songs, because movies can have songs in them but songs can't have movies in them.

Songs, movies, paintings, games, etc. are all different vehicles for expression, and crappy or great things can be done with all of them. None is naturally "higher" than another.

It IS true though. There are certain limitations in expressing yourself with music/audio that you can overcome if you combine it with movies/pictures.

I mean, the whole album Discovery from Daft Punk becomes twice as good when you've heard it play to the movie Interstella 5555.

Just as a painting may get a whole new meaning if you can hear accompanying music in the background.

But I wouldn't go so far that one thing is "higher" than the other. I'd just the more medias it combines (text, audio, video, interactivity) the more possibilities to express are given and thus more possibilities to experience something. An song can give you a unique listening experience, a movie can give you a unique listening and/or viewing experience and a game in turn can basically give you all of that and more.

That's really clever, JlJac. I generally think along the same lines, except that I consider art and animation to be the same thing.  :shrug2:

We should try turning this topic towards something more fun. We could try to think about the best "Experiences" of indie games in each category. Best art/animation moment, best story moment, best music moment... that sort of thing. And not just the game with the best ____, either. It's the game with the best single segment. So not looking at game as a whole, but at a specific part of the game.

But it works both ways. A song in a movie might only have a fraction of the impact it has on you when listening to the whole album the song belongs to. A novel can be an incredible experience on its own, without any pictures or sounds, to the point where movie versions of novels are often considered inferior to their print counterparts, even when the movie is a great example of a movie. (Lord of the Rings comes to mind; great movie, but simply not the same as reading the book.) The experiences are fundamentally different.

Just because a book only uses words on a page doesn't mean it is more limited than movies or games or whatever. There are experiences a novel can give you that a movie or game never could, and vice versa.

Just because there are more basic forms of media involved in something doesn't mean it inherently provides more ways to express something.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't think all the different forms of media in a game "stack" so to speak. Games can tell stories, but a story told in a game will always be a different experience than reading a story in a book or watching a movie. In fact, the interactivity provided by games can put limitations on the story-telling capabilities of a game; when the player can make choices about what happens in a game, the story writer may be unable to make the cohesive, tight, story-telling experience that can be achieved in something like a movie or book. (Of course, that interactivity can also bring unique story-telling styles that movies and books can't do.)

This isn't to say that any one or the other is better or worse of course, just that they're different. Yes, games can do things books or movies or whatever can't do, but movies can do things games can't do, and books can do things games can't do, and so on.

Anyways, I'm blathering! I don't mean to start an argument about any of this stuff, but I do like discussing these sorts of things. Please no one take any of what I said personally :)

Personally I think Noitu Love 2 is quite an experience in.....retroness? I don't really know how to describe it. The art, the music, the gameplay. Everything in this game just works. It's like somebody took all of these Contra games and Gunstar Heroes and all those other SHMUPs and brought them together in a package of raw awesome.
It's also the only game that can claim to have its music on my iPod.

Additionally to that, although not indie, Elite Beat Agents, as well as Ouendan 1 & 2. Especially the final two stages in each are (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w9QeM2U6js) pretty (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e_slQt_o2g) epic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wstuq6qy1hs). (Three different links)


Haha, no worries, all is good. I think it probably depends on the person who IS experiencing it. I'm heavily influenced by music, so anything that HAS music is automatically a better experience for me than anything that doesn't. Heck, the final stages in EBA/Ouendan always give me wet eyes.

It is an experience in nostalgia, is what I think you meant. It brings back the beauty of the past, and keeps it good.

It's silly to say that one type of art is inherently "higher" than another. Art is what the artist makes of it, regardless of medium.

I agree. I love games and all, and I think there are plenty of artistic games that outshine works in other media. But to say that games are the highest form of art, without qualification, is kind of ridiculous. Ico is just not as artistic as Brothers Karamazov, sorry.

I do agree that games have the *potential* for works greater than any other genre, since they're quite flexible and you can do a lot with them. But that potential isn't anywhere near to being realized. It'll take dozens, maybe hundreds of years before computer games and computerized interactive art in general reach the heights that novels, theater, paintings, etc., have.

Thanks for getting my line of thought people!

"High" is the wrong word, beacause it somehow suggests that any game must be better than any painting. Of course there are paintings that deliver a much stronger feeling than some games does, but I think a game has a higher potential than a painting, because a game can have that painting in it, and a hundred other paintings too.

Well yes, I defenitely think so. I think it's easier to make an overwhelming experience the more channels of communication(art) you have to work with.

It is extremely hard to make a memorable art experience with the thinnest possible channel of communication, the binary tapping of a telegraph. I'm not reffering to words or code that are deciphered by some kind of key, that's a broader channel, but just the tapping in itself.

You can do much more with white and black areas on a two dimensional surface. If those areas can change and move, you get another completely new aspect to work with. And if you add sounds to accompany those movements, you have yet another channel to communticate feelings to the one experiencing.

Our most memorable experiences are real life experiences, and those are so strong because we feel them with all our five senses. A street in an asian slum is a very strong experience, because you can see it, hear both sound and music, smell it, feel both temperature and the texture of surfaces, and also taste it.

I believe that the more channels of communication you have, the easier it is to create an overwhelming piece of art. That is kind of natural, isn't it, because you get closer to a real experience?

If you have more types of media each type is inevitably watered down. The final product can be great, but it won't be any better than, say, a painting, as a painting concentrates on one specific aspect.

Yes. But you can have one 'dominant' one and several 'supporting' ones. For instance, in a musical, the music is dominant, but the story supports it. Similarly, in a movie, the story is dominant, but the acting, visuals, music, etc., support it.

Yup, that's why I say that using many channels increases the potential for experience, not necessarily the experience. I know that the individual art types are watered down in most cases, because of time limitations and such, but they still don't have to. And if they weren't, how great wouldn't that be?

Whereas, in a game, the interaction/fun factor is dominant but the graphics, music, story, etc. support it.

Time is not the only factor in play here.

EDIT: Sorry for the double post.