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[Paul Eres]

speaking of momento mori, that's why i liked the movie ikiru by kurosawa -- it was about a guy who got stomach cancer and was given 6 months to live, who felt as if his entire life had been wasted as an office bureaucrat, and he spent the first half of the movie figuring out what to do with his last remaining months that'd be worth doing; the second half of the move was his funeral, where people talked about his life and what he did with it. it's a pretty powerful movie, even if its "message" is simple.

so yeah, i agree, the purpose of passage wasn't to somehow inform people that they'll die as if they didn't realize that, but to remind them of it by making them live through a very short life in an interactive fashion. there's a difference between knowing a thing in the abstract and fully seeing it there in front of you. something doesn't have to tell you something you don't know for it to be worth telling.



and i also agree that people often use 'pretentious' when what they actually mean is 'patronizing' (there's a difference), or even just 'treating something too seriously'.

[Chris Whitman]

It's either this (the author attributes a 'solution' to his work), or the people who critique it (they try to find a solution to the work). I agree that it's an obstacle, thus my thread. Thanks.

The project I'm working on right now is sort of surrealist, so while it's a little abstract maybe, it's definitely got meanings you could read into it. Just from some of the writing, I could see people being like "obviously he means that you should think x about y," but I'm trying to avoid either using gameplay as a platform to tell people what to think or the standard good/evil option where it's really more like, "Which version of this escapist fantasy do you find more cosmetically appealing?" I don't know, it's a fine balance.

But my question is, do you think gaming needs some kind of a Dadaist movement? I mean, there are already clearly meaningless games in general, like no one is really going to try to read meaning into an abstract SHMUP, but there are really no "art house" style games I can think of where they're just totally absurd. Do you think it would help to actually try to challenge people in that way, by coming up with something that strongly resists narrative and just directly fucks with people?

[Gimym TILBERT]

But the point is that whatever is done for whatever reason just enrich and broaden the media (game in our point). It will inspire people who would do smoother things afterwise. So YES we need it, we need everything.

[Paul Eres]

well, be careful of treating the medium as an end in itself, neoshaman. medium implies that carries something, that it's a road. broadening the medium isn't an end in itself. it'd be like just making tools that make better tools, and never making anything with those tools. or making a road wider and smoother even though nothing travels on that road. i don't view the best game as the game that expands the medium of games the most, the best game is the game that positively impacts people the best, regardless of whether it expanded the medium or not.

of course, artists whose primary goal is just to be experimental and try new things so that other artists can apply those things are fine, but the ultimate purpose isn't only to forever experiment, sometimes you need to apply the knowledge gained from experimentation too.

[nikki]

we absolutely need as much as possible.

i believe i was using the word pretentious as in: "Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified." Considering the choice in subject (Memento mori i just learned ) i'd still say Jason Rohrer is pretentious and Damien Hirst is not.

 but anyway i susupect you guys are right and this is subjective and could work out for others very well. I might have to look up the definition of the word once more.

It is definitely experimental and different that yer usual fps shoot em up , so its very valuable.

[Gimym TILBERT]

well, be careful of treating the medium as an end in itself, neoshaman. medium implies that carries something, that it's a road. broadening the medium isn't an end in itself. it'd be like just making tools that make better tools, and never making anything with those tools. or making a road wider and smoother even though nothing travels on that road. i don't view the best game as the game that expands the medium of games the most, the best game is the game that positively impacts people the best, regardless of whether it expanded the medium or not.

of course, artists whose primary goal is just to be experimental and try new things so that other artists can apply those things are fine, but the ultimate purpose isn't only to forever experiment, sometimes you need to apply the knowledge gained from experimentation too.

You are pretty absolute in your view, just like words define the world and not the other ways around.

The fact is whatever the intent the effect of broadening a media (even if it's an end) ultimately broaden option to look at. It's about exploring new continent. If you seek only ends you may leave entire area that would make things easier or just render the problem irrelevant.

I never said it make better game, but it certainly make things better for design.

But yeah i'm a formalist too, as well as an animist (scott mc cloud classification).

[agj]

Video games are a medium only if you consider them a vehicle for communication. Not every game strives for that. A game like Sim City is not about delivering so much as it is about empowering. This is why I think that video games are not a medium, but an art form, which is a wider definition.

But my question is, do you think gaming needs some kind of a Dadaist movement?

I don't know. If it helps clear the misconception within the video game community that art is about delivering a deep message or something, then yes, certainly. In fact, any sort of 'movement' would be a neat thing to see. Somebody start one.

I mean, there are already clearly meaningless games in general, like no one is really going to try to read meaning into an abstract SHMUP, but there are really no "art house" style games I can think of where they're just totally absurd. Do you think it would help to actually try to challenge people in that way, by coming up with something that strongly resists narrative and just directly fucks with people?

Actually, around half of what comes out of the Klik of the Month is like that.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Funnily Dada was against meaning, it was all about the absurdity (Which was a reaction to the world war seen as a failure for humanity to act with meaning).

They had opened the door for the kind of stupid things we can create todays.

[Paul Eres]

there are arguably a couple of different indie game movements right now actually (at least different 'schools' of game design). this was discussed a bit in dereks's 'fracturing' thread. i'll make these names up since they're largely nameless.

there's the "retro game pixel art movement" (who like games like cave story and la mulana and like old games), there's the "alternative games movement" (which favor experimentalism and "expanding the medium") characterized by increpare and cactus, there's the "gdc indies movement" characterized by making full, polished mainstream-lite games with console exclusitivity, there's the "notgames movement" characterized by eschewing goals and challenge (atmospheric games like knytt and seiklus would also go here, along with the stuff tale of tales makes). and there are probably a few more smaller ones.

often people belong to two or more of those schools simultaneously, though. and there's a lot of intermixture.

[LemonScented]

i believe i was using the word pretentious as in: "Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified." Considering the choice in subject (Memento mori i just learned ) i'd still say Jason Rohrer is pretentious and Damien Hirst is not.

It's a cliche to point out how deeply subjective art is, but I wonder if that's what led you to that conclusion - I'm presuming here that you're not a fan of Rohrer's work (so you consider his distinction and merit to be unjustified) but are a fan of Hirsts (so his distinction and merit is entirely justified, in your opinion)?

I'm a fan of both of those artists, but my subjective opinions and my consideration of that definition of subjectiveness led me to completely the opposite conclusion To me, Rohrer's work is an earnest exploration of the possibilities of the medium, and one which seems to result in work that, if not profound, is at least interesting and worthy of merit. Hirst follows in a tradition of conceptual art, and although his work tends to be spectacular in and of itself, I think his real genius is in a kind of cynicism about his interactions with his fans, critics, and customers. I don't personally "get" a lot from his work itself, although some of it is absurdly theatrical and over-engineered shock-value stuff, and some of it is splatter paintings not even made by him (he has apprentices uses machines to mass-produce the things), and that's like the set-up for a long joke. The joke continues with the fights between the outraged critics and the fervent admirers, and the punchline comes from the eventual pricetag. I think that's his genius. The art itself is not the best in its field, but the business is art in itself. Hell yeah, it's pretentious. But it's wonderfully so.

I'm not sure I have a point, except that I've still not heard a compelling argument that pretentiousness (particuarly the lazy, sadly more common definition, but also by the more precise definitions) is a bad thing. I think it's fine to say that something isn't to your tastes, or that it leaves you cold even when other people are raving about it, but to claim that a work is pretentious as a way of dismissing it (rather than simply describing your opinion about a characteristic of it) is a bit lazy.

[nikki]

well i really enjoyed the rohrer game with the icey blocks (gravitation i believe) (and thought that one worked alot better as being an way to think)'and i don't have anything against him otherwise.

but to make something that automatically places oneself in a line of artworks dating back to the Greek , and at the same time make it so over the top clear in what it means, and not be interpreted any other way, is pretentious in the unjustified way i think.
(atleast when i look at it from the fine art perspective / the (indie) game perpective is another story )

damien hirst on the other hand atleast made it "THE MOST EXPENSIVE AND BEST ARTWORK"  
And has a little bit more hmmppf to the same message , and he took some time hiding the obviousness of it all



anyway I am too for snobbery and pretentiousness, but not unjustified and i can fully agree with your description on hirst.

[agj]

there are arguably a couple of different indie game movements right now actually

Mayhap. But these lack the fantasy that the avant garde movements have in my mind. They're just not amazing enough.

[Paul Eres]

are you sure? have you read the not games manifesto?

[agj]

I guess you're right. It's too bad that I think it, ultimately, sucks. That's okay, though--I hope cool stuff comes out of that.