next »

[gimymblert]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6539/passionate_frustration_tale_of_.php?print=1
ToT sure have matured a lot, their best interview so far, very refreshing perspective

[s0]

what's matured most is michael samyn's beard.


holy shit

[DavidCaruso]

I tried to skim through it but I felt my brain melting and half of what's there I already talked about extensively in the recent artgam thread (and probably others), so all I'm going to say for now:

When I talked to Ken Levine about one of the inspirations for BioShock, it was during the financial meltdown in America, when Alan Greenspan, who was an Objectivist, said, "I thought this was going to work."

AH: But I was wrong.

But I was wrong.

MS: That's nice. [laughs]

AH: After all those years being the brainiac.

MS: Yeah, but, exactly! That's interesting, isn't it?

AH: That's more interesting than running around shooting things -- that's all we're saying.

MS: Yeah. Can't we express that in a game? That kind of realization, that his ideology failed? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that more beautiful...

It's funny because games let the player know their strategies and ways of thinking suck all the time, and whenever it happens to Michael Samyn he writes stuff like this on his forum.

[ink.inc]

who are these guys and why do they sound so pompous

[s0]

they aren't pompous, it's called being a TRUE ARTIST you uncultured swine

[Christian Knudsen]

They're not pompous, they're just artists, man! They're the true artists of video games, and all the rest of us are just posers!

EDIT: Holy shit.

[s0]

u got ninja'd bro 

[DavidCaruso]

oh my god I started randomly browsing the Notgames forum after linking that thread and some of these posts are priceless (actually, most of them)

To compile is to kill.  To see one's mistakes is an essential part of artistic creation. I don't want some compiler to suggest corrections. All it cares about is the machine anyway. As an artist, I care about the people using the machine.

http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=378.msg3355#msg3355

unlike most ROM hacks, Hyperbound isn't filled with swear words and crudely-drawn penises.

http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=404.0

ToT is always going to get shit from the 8-bit corpse fuckers and those who can't imagine art with any emotional depth.

http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=461.msg3912#msg3912

As far as I can tell, there's two types of players of (AAA) video-games:

1. People who really enjoy interacting with the rules and achieving goals. They tolerate the narrative and the fictional world (but will demand a "skip" option for every cut scene).

2. People who enjoy the narrative and the fictional world. They tolerate the structure of doing tasks to receive rewards (but this better not be too hard, and better open up more narative and world to explore).

The people in each group tolerate what the people in the other group really enjoy (the reason why they play the games in the first place). But not many people seem to really enjoy both. As a result, nobody can actually say they like video-games.

(And as another result, video-games cannot be experienced as art in my practical definition of art is that of which nothing is wrong. )

http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=441.0

I'm never sarcastic about art. There is a difference between works of art that change your life and works of art that don't. I was just curious if Portal 2 had the potential to.

http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=406.msg3501#msg3501

[unsilentwill]

Yes I too find it more beneficial to mock people I disagree with. It severs that nasty tolerance and understanding that people the the same field often have for each other.

[Manuel Magalhães]

But those are notgames, not games.

[noah!]

But see, the sad thing is that the notgames people have a point. Sure, you have to wade through an ocean of prose to get to that point, but it exists. Yes, it's kind of upsetting that there's this subconscious belief that every game needs a strict rule system. Yes, it would be refreshing for games to embrace a player's agency, rather than their ability to follow directions. But come on, having a different viewpoint doesn't mean you've transcended humanity!

(i guess i don't know...it's one thing to have a different opinion, it's another thing to become so absorbed in your opinion that you can't see any other options...this applies to us too)

[TobiasW]

Yes I too find it more beneficial to mock people I disagree with. It severs that nasty tolerance and understanding that people the the same field often have for each other.

Quoted for truth.

They have their viewpoint and create stuff according to it, and we have ours and create stuff according to it. I don't see a reason why anybody should attack or mock anybody there?

[DavidCaruso]

Yes I too find it more beneficial to mock people I disagree with. It severs that nasty tolerance and understanding that people the the same field often have for each other.

You're right, I should tolerate and understand people who have put forth the explicit agenda to quash everything I love in games, while at the same time proclaiming themselves as the truest artists the industry has seen so far and the prophets of the future of the artform, and debasing (aka: not tolerating or understanding) the people on the "AAA side." Or, alternatively, I can state whatever arguments I have as inoffensively and dryly as possible, and everyone can just go "different strokes for different folks man, no one knows better than anyone else here, it's all subjective" without having to think about it. Let's practice tolerance and understanding by embracing and appreciating everything, even things and attitudes which we hate with a passion. Someone does one thing, another guy does another completely opposite thing, neither is really better than the other, they're just different (but equal.) Hooray.

Yes, it's kind of upsetting that there's this subconscious belief that every game needs a strict rule system.

Games are rule systems by definition. Nothing else. Even the graphics and sound are part of the rules (to simplify, positioning an enemy sprite and playing a sound is just the difference between writing to one RAM address and writing to another), even if they don't directly affect the game's possibility space, and computer programs by definition run based on rules. There's no such thing as a game without rules; ToT is still making videogames, even if they'd love to segregate themselves into their own special category of Games But Not Games.

Yes, it would be refreshing for games to embrace a player's agency, rather than their ability to follow directions.

If you're referring to true roleplaying (I think Gilbert calls this "attitude," usually written in all caps or bolded), that's the opposite direction of where these guys are heading with their games. Though "agency" and "following directions" aren't mutually exclusive.

[ink.inc]

I agree with this man.

[s0]

Yes I too find it more beneficial to mock people I disagree with. It severs that nasty tolerance and understanding that people the the same field often have for each other.

Quoted for truth.

They have their viewpoint and create stuff according to it, and we have ours and create stuff according to it. I don't see a reason why anybody should attack or mock anybody there?

uhm not sure if you guys realize this but the rhetoric of ToT and the "notgames" crowd is pretty damn aggressive most of the time. it's not like they're just innocuously making games and getting mocked for it by mean internet nerds. people are responding negatively to their negative attitude, big deal.

[unsilentwill]

By tolerance I don't mean bowing to their glory. I just mean not mocking them, belittling them, not listening the them. Understanding means not hating. If you hate them, there is little point for you to take part in a discussion about them. Hating means not understanding. Take a moment, listen to what they said, and tell me what is so wrong.

They're not trying to tear down anything. They are trying to make the games they want to make, and a on the side why so many people want to make games where you kill people without consequences.

They were segregated in part by choice and in part by force, people telling them not to make they things they want to make. I think there is some common ground between the games you like and the games you make.

I personally don't like playing the games they make at all, because of their views on non-narrative abstraction, but I agree with everything they said in that article.

ALSO my post referred to the notgame crowd aswell, who were openly mocking us too. What they said about niche-ing and genre is the most irritating part of working with people who makes games or notgames. They have actually done a lot to separate themselves from our discussion, but that attitude seems to have changed from what I read in the article. People come into making games making what they want, shooters, poetry whatever and refuse to look over their fence.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

ToT is 100% right and gamers are also 100% right, relative to what they seek out of games and want games to be. games don't have to be either/or, there's enough games that there's room for both games that ToT like and the games gamers like; making more art games doesn't mean less gamer games, and usually it seems like the detractors of ToT have the implicit fear that ToT will "ruin games" or something. but all they will "ruin" are games that ToT makes and games influenced by them, which will always be a minority of games; gamers will still always have gamer games to play

as an analogy, it's not like the profusion of fanfiction, science fiction, and fantasy means that more traditional literary novels are no longer being written or published; the two realms exist side-by-side. the "conflict" between art games and gamer games is similar to the conflict between literary novels and genre fiction: something that doesn't need to conflict because there's paper enough (or bytes enough) for both

also i fear that this thread will become (or has become) about ToT in general instead of about that specific interview that neoshaman linked to; i felt that interview was pretty good, they expressed their ideas with more nuance and care than previously, they seem to be becoming more tactful while not losing their idealism, which is usually good for anyone presenting an unorthodox idea

[unsilentwill]

I'd side with ToT over traditional gamers because they seem to understand that games have a culturally responsibility like any other art form. Games influence culture (not indoctrinate behavior) and its important for game designers to understand this. It comes down to the education and insight of the specific designer. AAA designers make games for people who want to have fun without ever thinking too hard about morality or life, ToT makes games for people who never to think too hard about things that never actually had meaning.

I'd prefer gaming as a whole going towards more thought and less violence, because it can influence our current low-level bad guy versus good guy culture (in the US anyway).

[ink.inc]

I don't have a problem with this. Folks can make games as they please. I don't have the internet power to force someone to stop writing code for their Sonic Clone or SHMUP or Cave Story or what have you. I love FPSs and RPGs, but I also love little experimental games like Every Day The Same Dream, etc. They all have value to me. What I do have an issue with is the amount of pretentiousness that is just exuding from their quotes.

"To compile is to kill.  To see one's mistakes is an essential part of artistic creation. I don't want some compiler to suggest corrections. All it cares about is the machine anyway. As an artist, I care about the people using the machine."

This doesn't even make sense!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think a healthy medium between art game and gamer game can be found in the recent success of the game "catherine", which for those who don't know this article is a good intro to:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7088651/catherine

Catherine is certainly a small, scrappy game, but neither word begins to do it justice. What word does do it justice? For starters, Catherine is a profoundly weird game, but a lot of games are weird. It is also an incredibly hard game, but a lot of games are hard. What sets Catherine apart is, maybe, the fact that it might be the sexiest video game I have ever played, a thought I put forth with caution and dismay. Historically speaking, "sexy" video games have tended toward Leisure Suit Larry-style puerility (or something far, far worse). Now, Catherine is a Japanese game, which means its "sexiness" comes to us with all manner of footnotes, codicils, and preambles. There are times when Catherine's "sexiness" feels profoundly retarded and times when it feels vaguely illegal. Play this game in front of your girlfriend, as I did, and prepare yourself for several long, interesting conversations.

Catherine is about an emo, douchey, yet surprisingly likable thirtysomething named Vincent, who lives in the "America" that Japanese game designers excel at getting so fascinatingly wrong. Vincent has a girlfriend named Katherine, but he is unsure about committing to her and prefers hanging out in a bar called the Stray Sheep with his equally young, emo, douchey friends. One night, he cheats on boring, predictable, straitlaced Katherine with Catherine, a hot and hopping-mad pixie who is into (I think — the game only hints at it) the enthusiastic exploration of her anus. We are, I remind you, talking about a video game, and a fairly sophisticated, nuanced one at that.

A lot of you are probably wondering where the game part of Catherine comes in. That might be what is most remarkable: There's hardly any game, properly speaking, in Catherine at all. The cutscenes are long and frequent, but Catherine knows its cutscenes are long and frequent and does not care. You "play" Catherine in two kinds of situations. The first is whenever Vincent gets a chance to walk around the Stray Sheep and talk to people, retire to the bathroom to look at the dirty cell phone pics Catherine sends of herself, drink alcohol, and respond to texts. The second is when Vincent falls asleep at night, which plunges him into an odd nightmareland in which he has been transformed into some sort of half-man, half-sheep hybrid and is forced to climb up an increasingly challenging set of spatial puzzles based on the manipulation of blocks. The whole thing feels like Haruki Murakami's Q-Bert: A Novel.

The larger plot of the game involves a surprisingly absorbing and even thought-provoking exploration of fidelity, gender difference, responsibility, and the fear of fatherhood. Vincent has nightmares because he is a cheater, and as the nightmares go on, you realize that almost every guy in the game is a cheater, and you begin to encounter them, too, in similarly sheepified form, in your nightmare puzzle world. These unfaithful boy-men are scared and confused, and, as Vincent, you have the chance to comfort them. If you fail to do that, they start disappearing from the bar, for if you lose faith and die in the nightmare, you die in real life. Occasionally, a giant butt monster or demon baby chases you up the block puzzles. Other times, the game asks you questions, like, say, whether you would be willing to let your significant other look at every cell phone text message you have, or how you would respond to news of her infidelity, after which it reveals how everyone else who's played Catherine responded. (These answers help determine how, exactly, the game's emotional endgame will break.) And sometimes Catherine's narrator breaks in, apropos of not much, to recite goofy trivia about whiskey, sake, and beer.

Obviously, Catherine is not going to be for everyone, but anyone who fails to be impressed by its audaciousness and sneakily hidden variety should be willing to entertain the possibility that the problem lies not with Catherine but themselves. Right about now, everyone who plays video games is getting hit with the flak and shrapnel of half a dozen shooter franchises, and with new Modern Warfare, Battlefield, and Uncharted titles on the horizon, the bullets are going to keep flying for months. For me, Catherine became less a game than a much-needed foxhole in which to hide from that stuff for a little while. Above all, it serves as a bracing reminder of how much there remains to be done and said and explored in the video-game medium.