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[Paul Eres]

i don't get what this topic is supposed to be about.

the OP seems to be talking about how art doesn't usually have some symbolic message to decode and that after you do the point of the art is accomplished, that it's not merely a delivery mechanism for information. but that's kind of obvious.

i think it is true that people who don't normally appreciate art think of it as some type of chocolate covered medicine, where the meaning of something is the medicine and the rest is just the chocolate coating. instead of how artists usually mean it -- the experience of the sensation of the work itself as the primary purpose, not some hidden ulterior motive that people have to figure out.

i don't really think pointing that out to them will help, though. i mean, it's something one learns pretty early on in english classes (the difference between theme and message), so if they missed it then spelling it out for them won't help. it's like pointing out that a straw man is not actually made of straw -- people either already realize that or will refuse to believe it.

The Lord of the Rings is my favorite example for this, because people are always like, "It's a metaphor for death," but Tolkien freely admitted that he hated analogies in writing and had no intent of writing one. It doesn't mean you can't read it that way, or that there's nothing in there to sustain the analogy, simply that it isn't constitutive of the work as a whole.

He didn't write an epic mythology in order to tell you that people die. According to his own statement of intent, he wrote it so it could be a new and truly British mythology, a capacity which it fulfills simply by existing, regardless of whether or not you get a particular phrase out of it.

that reminds me of the people who say passage is stupid because it's just telling them that life is short and that they should enjoy it while they are alive, and not worry about points since they're useless at the end, which any 10 year old already supposedly knows. but passage isn't just some coded message like that. it can be seen that way, but there's more too it.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Asteroids has simple art, but it's not considered pretentious because it serves another purpose, to facilitate play. The logo Neoshaman posted is simple (a five year old could create that) but that's just an image to represent the company, not the company or the product.

...

As a graphic designer ...

Come on, if you are a graphic designer, YOU KNOW it's not as simple as that, balancing the composition and understanding of gestalt is not that easy ...  

It's actually fundamental skills that are hard to grasp and master!
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/gestalt-principles-of-perception/

[Chris Whitman]

that reminds me of the people who say passage is stupid because it's just telling them that life is short and that they should enjoy it while they are alive, and not worry about points since they're useless at the end, which any 10 year old already supposedly knows. but passage isn't just some coded message like that. it can be seen that way, but there's more too it.

Really? Because I totally think both Passage and Gravity suffer for this, although at least they're clear. That other art-game staple from the same time that people love to discuss, The Marriage, is the same shallow "try to figure out what I think about X!" game, but it takes the obfuscatory route, and is just brutal.

I actually enjoyed Passage, but I have to confess I think it only worked in this format because it was very short. It's still poignant, I think, because it's a vignette. It gets its point across, and then it ends. I mean, maybe it wasn't "supposed" to be like that -- these things always start to get difficult when you start reading into people's motivations -- but I don't feel like it had a lot else going for it.

[Chris Whitman]

Actually, saying they "suffer for this" is maybe too harsh. If your game takes five minutes to play, maybe it's totally fine to just say one thing and stop.

But I think it's also fine to not say anything, and just to have it be your own weird little thing.

[Paul Eres]

i mainly meant that there's a lot of intricacies there beyond just the message -- that the music was generated from an image file, or how time bends so that only the present is shown clearly but the future and past are still there, still existing, just in a visually squashed form. or the whole issue that even though the game is about how score isn't important replaying it to get a higher score became a past-time of many players. of course those are arguably part of the message too.

or even just stuff like the old lady turning into a grave first. interesting stuff which is part of the idea of the game but would be lost if you just told someone the message instead of making a game about it.

[TwilightVulpine]

You know, I think the attempt to convey a message is something that adds to a work, not detracts. Of course, it can't take the place of a good story and interesting mechanics, but they are not mutually exclusive.

I don't see the problem in trying to convey a message through a long story, as long it doesn't become just preaching/bashing. A message can be exemplified in many ways and applied into a greater context. In fact, I don't even see a problem in conveying a message already widely know. At the very least, it is no worse than the irrelevant and redundant messages we see all the time. It may even make a difference to a few people, since knowing is common, but acting in accordance to the knowledge not always is.

[Chris Whitman]

Paul, obviously there's more to the game than just words flashing on the screen that say "HOLY SHIT, GUYS! LIFE IS SHORT!" My point was more that pretty much everything it does seems to be bent towards delivering a particular message.

And it works for Passage, I think, because it doesn't get bogged down in that, so it doesn't feel like it's just preaching. But in a longer game, I think "here's wot I think about x" is not something you can hang a long, meaningful experience on.

Maybe I'm wrong. Also, for the record, I'm not saying I think games have to be meaningless or completely indecipherable, but I think having a single message you're just trying to push on people through any kind of a story (game or no) gets tiresome, and I think it isn't at all necessary for a game to just be a dressed-up communication.


To respond a little bit more to what Vulpine is saying, I think the problem here is a whole approach to making games that is like, "Think of a message or central theme and come up with a story and then design gameplay." It's a very industrial-based approach that big studios use because it efficiently produces a product, and I don't know that it's really that good for independent games. It makes the whole "meaning" thing, along with everything else, very one-dimensional. I think that's where the "Less Talk More Rock" article was really in line with my personal design philosophy (and I know this is kind of ironic coming from someone who talks as much as I do): I think game designers in general over-analyse the process of making games, and try to fit the most artistic aspects into this model of discrete components. So you get games where the message of the game is x, and the hooky gameplay mechanic of the game is y, and the story arc of the game is z, and they do start to feel stale because they are really only ever the sum of their parts.

I think interesting games ought to strongly resist separation. I know Alec harps on about this one a lot, but I think if there are is any real "rule" to making games it's that all the bits should be so tangled up together that they are difficult to distinguish. It isn't that I think games should be meaningless, it's just that if you sit down and say "this game should be about how war is bad," then that could be anything. You could probably get that across to people through an FPS or a physics puzzler.

That's sort of what Tolkien meant about not writing the Lord of the Rings as a morality tale, right? It isn't like you can't read it as being all about death, but that isn't just that. I mean, "a story about the inevitability of death" could have been anything. The reason people look at C.S. Lewis as a second rate Tolkien is because he was like, "Forget the detailed world and the rich history and having this exist as a meaningful thing in its own right; I'm just going to fucking write about Jesus or some shit."

[Chris Whitman]

And obviously it's hard to talk in big generalities like this, and I think Passage still stands up pretty well just because it's very simple and very short, but I think Gravity is an example of how this method can absolutely fail. It combines a direct, authorial message with this "tell a story through gameplay" thing that everyone is nuts about, and as a result it feels a bit like charades or something. Nothing personal to Jason, obviously, because I know it was an experiment and obviously a lot of people really liked it. I just didn't think it really worked.

Anyway, what I'm getting at through my extended rambling is that this strategy often seems to produce the video game equivalent of Narnia. It's like, "Yeah, I'm on page 15 and I get that you're into Jesus. How many more books is this going to go on for?" I think one of the reasons we seem to have trouble making real art games isn't because we need new technology or a new, Bauhaus-style language of design or something; it's because people are just so focused on this "this is a game about x" type thing where they're trying to make a meaningful experience out of what is basically a thinly disguised lecture.

[Paul Eres]

i agree in general, but there are exceptions: i think there are longer games with themes that didn't feel preachy and were still meaningful to me -- planescape torment comes to mind. it's pretty long, but also focused around a theme. it has a lot of accidental things not related to the theme too, but it's also pretty focused. xenogears is another example.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Well i don't think those art game are important for the (shallow) message they convey. The real message is about pushing the boundaries of gameplay langage. That's what experiment are.

It's like trying to make a movie without using words, how do you tell the new people in the towns are siblings? It would feel charade as well. But at the end you have much more power and understanding. That's how citizen kane happen, a full demonstration of the cinematographic language, from framing to editing and words (with an equally trivial message).

Passage and his kind have only value because they will empower us in the long term, and that's the intent.

[nikki]

As artworks those indie-art games are completely silly i think, They are much too obvious, preachy ,one dimensional and because of that, and their 'deep' message.. i think they are pretty pretentious.(in a teenage way)

As game-play / storytelling experiments i think they are pretty succesful, and know how to create a healthy discussion.They also succeed in making a game thats not about aiming the mouse and clicking it. (sometimes)

[Chris Whitman]

Yeah, maybe I went overboard with that one. I just don't think that telling a story solely via gameplay is the panacea everyone thinks it is. Anyway, we're sort of digressing on that point.

Also, nikki, I don't think any of those games are pretentious. I think Jason Rohrer was genuinely experimenting with short art-games, not saying to himself, "Hmm, how can I invent a game people will think is artistic?"

[nikki]

Chris, yeah i think your right in that, I too don't think he (Jason) wasn't genuine,
but i still think its very pretentious.

The game is delivering this 'deep' message in a non-subtle way, to me it feels like the creator assumes he has seen the light and needs to tell the people, wich are stupid, so they need to be told the message in a very ,very understandable way, because they are so stupid.

[agj]

I think one of the reasons we seem to have trouble making real art games isn't because we need new technology or a new, Bauhaus-style language of design or something; it's because people are just so focused on this "this is a game about x" type thing where they're trying to make a meaningful experience out of what is basically a thinly disguised lecture.

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.

[Chris Whitman]

The game is delivering this 'deep' message in a non-subtle way, to me it feels like the creator assumes he has seen the light and needs to tell the people, wich are stupid, so they need to be told the message in a very ,very understandable way, because they are so stupid.

I hate to be English-jerk here, but I really don't like that usage of "pretentious." I think it's started to become a catch-all for any intellectual endeavour, and hence sort of a meaningless phrase people just throw around.

The reason I think Passage works is sort of because of the tradition of the memento mori. Its core concept isn't that you have to be told about death because you somehow got to be an adult without finding out about it, but that contemplating it is somehow transformative. In the the Roman tradition, obviously, it was supposed to instill humility in victorious soldiers, and in religious art its purpose has been (among other things) to reinforce devotion.

So making a game like Passage isn't, I don't personally think, a way to tell people about death as if they don't know and you have to patiently explain it to them with sock-puppets; it's part of that whole tradition, where getting you to meditate on it changes you somehow.

I mean, obviously this is very subjective, or whatever, and whether it "works" varies from person to person, but I thought it was good. I didn't feel the same way about Gravity, because I don't think it had the same tradition or strong history of symbolism to exploit, and so it felt like a very circuitous way of getting to a simple message. On the other hand, maybe if I was a father I would be like, "That's exactly like trying to balance my personal dreams and my family life!" and I would think it was the greatest. So it's possible it just isn't "for me."