Games as an art form (split from sine mora thread)

[lgb]

These are games you play for the world, not for the core mechanics.

Except you play games for the core mechanics, not the world.

[Dragoforce]

These are games you play for the world, not for the core mechanics.

Except you play games for the core mechanics, not the world.

Particulary true for shmups. I expect an unplayable euroshmup acclaimed by critics as bringing life to a dead genre.

[njiska]

No More Heroes, while far strong on the gameplay front...

how so?

Typo, should have been, "far stronger" because, well, it is.

These are games you play for the world, not for the core mechanics.

Except you play games for the core mechanics, not the world.

It's that exactly that kind of archaic thought that holds the medium back. You may play games solely for the mechanics, and that's fine; but a lot of people don't and those people matter too. Do people play Final Fantasy because they find the combat system so intriguing? I somehow doubt it? That doesn't mean there aren't games played solely for the core mechanics, Shmups are a fine example, I'm just saying not every game has to be that way and it's those kind of games that Suda51 is good at. This is exactly why i'm concerned about him making a shmup. It's just not his style and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the final product just used shmup gameplay, but wasn't a real shmup.

[lgb]

It's that exactly that kind of archaic thought that holds the medium back.

More like someone is misusing the term "game". A game having a "world" is absolutely fine, but it is not and should never be the main focus. Trading card games do this perfectly: additional focus on their "worlds" is left to novels and television shows.

At some point your Final Fantasy might go from being a game with movie bits to a movie with game bits. Oh wait...

[njiska]

It's that exactly that kind of archaic thought that holds the medium back.

More like someone is misusing the term "game". A game having a "world" is absolutely fine, but it is not and should never be the main focus. Trading card games do this perfectly: additional focus on their "worlds" is left to novels and television shows.

At some point your Final Fantasy might go from being a game with movie bits to a movie with game bits. Oh wait...

It's not a case of me misusing the term so much as it's the term Video Game becoming obsolete. The medium greatly progressed from it's roots and evolved into a full-fledged artistic medium. Realistically we should have switched to calling it Interactive Entertainment a while ago, but that's not a catchy title and lacks appeal. The comparison to trading card games is irrelevant because they are two very different things (Eye of Judgement notwithstanding). As for your Final Fantasy comment, i hate Final Fantasy, but I brought it specifically because of the point you made. That series has become little more than a large movie with spurts of gameplay, BUT it's still a game and it's still really popular for some reason. I don't understand it, but at least I do understand that some people, who are different from me, like it that way.

Now I'm not one to yield early in a debate, but i think it's best the discussion stop here as it's quite off topic for the thread, especially now that we know Suda's involvement is limited to presentation. If anyone would like to continue the discussion I'd be more than happy to in a thread in OT.

[Drum]

A) Games were always a full-fledged artistic medium >:(

B) People can make and play games for whatever reason they like. The only thing games 'should be' is be good, and there are lots of ways a game can be good - aestetically, mechanically, bothally. That said, it *is* kind of disheartening to see games like K7, Ico and Rez get singled out and praised for being art amongst many worthy games when what people really mean is 'borrow tropes from more established art mediums'. If Rez is art, Rainbow Islands is, like, Super Art. There is a kind of bullshit colonial attitude polluting the discussion at the moment. But it's ok, it will pass!

[Herr Schatten]

A) Games were always a full-fledged artistic medium >:(

I agree with this. I'd even argue that games are less of a full-fledged artistic medium than they used to be. I remember having a long discussion about this on the old forums before the crash. Games used to concentrate more on the game itself (at least partly due to technical limitations, no doubt), while today arbitrary stuff like presentation, storytelling, physics etc. are taking more and more priority over the pure abstract concept of the game. The problem with this is that these bits are "borrowed" from movies, books, even 'reality'. This is done because people like comparing stuff they have not much experience with (games, in this case) with stuff they know well in order to evaluate it. The more games define themselves through stuff that's not genuinely inherent to the game itself, though, the less they actually become an independent art form.

I think I've said it before: Games started out being Kandinsky, but went back to being Caspar David Friedrich, because the general public responded better to that.

[alastair jack]

lol

[Drum]

Quiet, you.

[Ed Oscuro]

These are games you play for the world, not for the core mechanics.

Except you play games for the core mechanics, not the world.

I will tell all the people at Myst Online, I'm sure they will be interested!

It's not a case of me misusing the term so much as it's the term Video Game becoming obsolete.

I suppose there's two realistic ways of looking at this:

On one hand, show me games that are more like experimental art (that people actually play; Killer7 doesn't count);

On the other hand, show me games that aren't like an episode of a cop show (Miami Vice would be a decent starting point).

So the medium is, in terms of media coverage (if not in terms of actual numbers, though the millions on millions of FPS players seems a remarkable data point; same for casual games' purchase numbers as well). Many of the folks in this Forum have broken away from the standard episodic gaming format (stuff you see for the major consoles) more than many "gamers," as arcade games are a slightly different beast. Folks who play "casual games" may be said to have stayed closer to standard notions of "play."

"Conceptual" games are games that nobody plays routinely, let alone as a preferred sort of classification - attempts to "expand one's consciousness" ultimately drive intellectualist baloney and are by nature not easy to cuddle up to. Do "conceptual" films ever win the Oscars? Does film that attempts to redefine our way of looking at the world (in a serious way - for whatever reason, Inception is not a candidate, for example) catch more interest than games that tell modern versions of the medieval Passion Plays?

[innerpattern]

If there is any art in games it's in the playing the of the game itself and the rules of the game itself. The technique, mastery, and ingenuity of the player and how well designed the game mechanics are that allow a player to display their game playing ability. Anything else is a not a GAME. Games as art is the art of game/rule invention itself.

A chess set made out of priceless solid-gold handmade figures that tells you an "immersive" story before you start playing is not a better game than one made out of plastic. Chess is good because of the game itself, and the skills it enables players to master.

Myst has gameplay elements but the "art" in Myst is the actual visual art not the game.

[Ed Oscuro]

A chess set made out of priceless solid-gold handmade figures that tells you an "immersive" story before you start playing is not a better game than one made out of plastic.

I know it's quite hard to have this (boring as always) discussion while staying grounded, but I think if this is the base of your line of reasoning, then it's pretty easy to demonstrate where you're off track. See, whether art is good or bad is subjective, and wholly immaterial to the discussion of whether something is art or not. Is Chris Ofili's Madonna not art because it's rather obviously not as pretty as other Madonnas? Is it not art because it's more "conceptual?" (Actually, seeing that picture of Madonna there leads me to suspect the "edgy art!!!" label of the Ofili piece is a bit unwarranted. It looks almost like Picasso at the cusp of his own experimental period. And so what if it uses dung in the pigment; shit never fades!)

Obviously Myst Online isn't very much conceptual art; it mainly incorporates art in two major ways - through the classic medium of storytelling (updated to take advantage of modern technology and the episodic format), and through a large-scale integration of many smaller works of art, namely textures (taken from photographs, paintings, sketches, mock-ups), models big and small, and sound.

Actually there's a bit of a debate right now about how Myst can prosper financially so Cyan can make more of their renowned high-quality content. Obviously, in this age of a-map-and-two-guns-for-$20, it would be hard for them to keep the system going, especially as Myst Online's genre isn't clear - it's being used as a replacement for There.com or Second Life, but it doesn't have the same level of flexibility or user involvement; it's envisoned as an MMO but the content gets burned through far too quickly because it strives to be a game about something other than shooting alien dinosaur triplanes in the face. Plus it is in the middle of a process (an agonizingly slow one) to go Open Source. It was a gigantic project that soaked up years' worth of treasure from all those releases of Myst, Riven, and the rest, to the point that Cyan now has run a Q&A testing service to help stay afloat, and an iPhone port of the original Myst was a major thing. So, in all the most important ways, I consider Myst Online as "experimental" as anybody's PhD installation art video game project involving fountains or lights or people running through the streets dressed as Pac-Man or whatever.

Anyway, you're mixing definitions of art in your post there. You can talk about the small a 'art' of playing games, or designing games, or the art of cooking like Julia Child. You could then say that a programmer views his code as art. Then there are people who talk about Art for a living (I don't know how they get employed writing for games forums but I want that job...to everybody else's horror I'm sure ). I'm not getting why something has to be either a game or art - something can be film but also be interactive, for example, so you can have an interactive movie. Something can be red and blue at the same time (or Red Green, but that requires duct tape).

[innerpattern]

I didn't say "better art" in that sentence, I said "better game." Those visual or storytelling elements have nothing to do with the game mechanics itself. If it was discovered that removing the knight piece from chess made it better, that would be an actual game improvement.

Something doesn't have to be either a game or art. The mechanics/rules/playing of a game is the art of games. Visual art is visual art, musical art is musical art, etc. It's quite simple.
Games are a combination of several art forms, just likes movies (visual art, music, writing) - but the core of a game (what makes it a game at all) is.....drumroll please......the mechanics and rules of the game. The other side of that is the skills and techniques developed by players in order to beat the game within that rule set. The art of the game and the art of playing it. The more you diminish the game itself obviously the less of an actual game it is.

[RNGmaster]

I think that, in worrying ourselves over whether games are art - kind of an abstract debate - we ultimately cave to pretension and make less fulfilling and less enjoyable games. Games can be art, in the same sense that movies can. There's no denying that. Most games are bad art, especially most commercial games. But Crimzon Clover? ESP Galuda? DDP DFK? Battle Garegga? Hell yes, that's art. Fusion of music and graphics to draw gamers almost seamlessly into a game, creating a remarkable mindmeld - that requires tremendous artistic talent. These are games that have achieved the highest success their medium can, and one all game creators should aspire to - they entertain and draw people into a new world.

[wiNteR]

I am gonna have my say anyway. I doubt it will have much effect just like my last post on the topic of why STG games are niche. But in any case I will have a go at it to the point that I have thought about this topic.

It's not a case of me misusing the term so much as it's the term Video Game becoming obsolete. The medium greatly progressed from it's roots and evolved into a full-fledged artistic medium.

The correct term would then be 'regressed' instead of 'progressed'

As for your Final Fantasy comment, i hate Final Fantasy, but I brought it specifically because of the point you made. That series has become little more than a large movie with spurts of gameplay, BUT it's still a game and it's still really popular for some reason. I don't understand it, but at least I do understand that some people, who are different from me, like it that way.

The way I see it, the main point is this - if a game has bad game mechanics, it is very difficult for aesthetics to save it. Most likely it is simply a bad game as a whole. It could still be a good game if the aesthetics are used brilliantly. For example, a cleverly designed adventure game.

And the point about people enjoying a game? The point is that one should judge something based on the category which it belongs to. If I enjoy a good movie for example, would that make it a good game? So if a game plays like a series of cut scenes with little or no interaction, it is quite likely (but not necessarily) just a bad game. If you had a separate category along the lines of "games with little or no interaction" then that particular game would be considered excellent in the said category. And in all honesty, a game with good mechanics but poor aesthetics can be a bad game too, if the synthesis of the two doesn't work out as a whole.

And why should mechanics be given this special privilege? A game becomes a game because of the mechanics (interaction). Without this, it would no longer belong to the category of a game, and hence the special place of mechanics. Aesthetics can exist on their own. Mechanics still need aesthetics to make a game.

One way is to separate the scores given to the mechanics and aesthetics of a game. This has its merits, because it would becomes clear where the game's strength lies. But, in any case, such an assignment of scores would be incomplete. Ultimately a game is an inseparable combination of the two components. In any case, when someone gives the mechanics of a game a score, aesthetics are bound to have some effect on it.

And lastly, is their anything wrong with enjoying a poor game (as a whole) because its aesthetics are excellent? I don't think so, but it just shouldn't be judged a good game then. The category in which one would consider it to be good is different. And no, this absolutely isn't a pedantic distinction.

I don't have much else to say about this topic, and neither have I thought about it more than that. So I am gonna leave it here. I don't intend to argue.

[JoshF]

A bad game can't have good aesthetics because mechanics are part of the aesthetics or a video game, more than audiovisuals because it's the characteristic that distinguishes games from movies, music, and fly fishing. Does this BLOW YOUR MIND folks?

The art of fly fishing involves making a convincing fly out of feathers, fur, and string, a good roll casting technique, and moving your line though the water for the purposes of getting a fish to think your lure is delicious. Dressing the fisherman up like Divine from Pink Flamingos and having an electronic lure that looks like a space shuttle and emits retro chiptunes that scare away all the fish isn't an aestheticized version of fly fishing, as much as some talentless charlatan with glasses with thick black rims may try to convince you. As far as fly fishing is concerned, it's anti-aesthetic.

Moral of the story: Games are games not movies, just like birds aren't dogs, thus having unique criteria that go into determining value. You can't say a particular bird is beautiful, so to make a dog just as beautiful you need to glue a similar beak on his nose and paint him bright green. In summary, Super Mario World and Rocket Knight Adventures are the art platformers, not Braid. Dodonpachi is an art SHUMP not something Kenta Cho cooked up in Java in a week, and Gears of War is the art shooter not Killer 7, etc..

[wiNteR]

A bad game can't have good aesthetics because mechanics are part of the aesthetics or a video game, more than audiovisuals because it's the characteristic that distinguishes games from movies, music, and fly fishing.

To be clear, I muddled the terminology a bit in my last post. To be fair, I am not sure what the word 'aesthetics' is exactly supposed to mean. When I used it in my last post, I meant the value you assign to the visuals and audio of a game. This value is separate from the one you assign to a game as a whole.

And I am not sure whether one can even assign a value to the mechanics alone. This is why I wrote this in my last post:

In any case, when someone gives the mechanics of a game a score, aesthetics (read: visuals and audio) are bound to have some effect on it.

The art of fly fishing involves making a convincing fly out of feathers, fur, and string, a good roll casting technique, and moving your line though the water for the purposes of getting a fish to think your lure is delicious. Dressing the fisherman up like Divine from Pink Flamingos and having an electronic lure that looks like a space shuttle and emits retro chiptunes that scare away all the fish isn't an aestheticized version of fly fishing, as much as some talentless charlatan with glasses with thick black rims may try to convince you. As far as fly fishing is concerned, it's anti-aesthetic.

I might be misunderstanding you here, but here is what I make of it. Consider two games with exactly same mechanics but different visuals. Even if the visual score assigned to one game is higher it's overall value as a game might be much lower than the one whose visual score is lower. If this what you meant, I agree with this.

[Drum]

You used the word just fine. JoshF doesn't know what aesthetics means. He did blow my mind, though.

[njiska]

I am gonna have my say anyway. I doubt it will have much effect just like my last post on the topic of why STG games are niche. But in any case I will have a go at it to the point that I have thought about this topic.

It's not a case of me misusing the term so much as it's the term Video Game becoming obsolete. The medium greatly progressed from it's roots and evolved into a full-fledged artistic medium.

The correct term would then be 'regressed' instead of 'progressed'

No, the medium has progressed. Not every facet of it has progressed in the same way and there have been some major forks and divisions, but on the whole the medium has moved forward and is still moving forward. You're more than welcome to not like the direction it's moving in, god knows I don't, but to deny advancement would just be ignorant.

As for your Final Fantasy comment, i hate Final Fantasy, but I brought it specifically because of the point you made. That series has become little more than a large movie with spurts of gameplay, BUT it's still a game and it's still really popular for some reason. I don't understand it, but at least I do understand that some people, who are different from me, like it that way.

The way I see it, the main point is this - if a game has bad game mechanics, it is very difficult for aesthetics to save it. Most likely it is simply a bad game as a whole. It could still be a good game if the aesthetics are used brilliantly. For example, a cleverly designed adventure game.

And the point about people enjoying a game? The point is that one should judge something based on the category which it belongs to. If I enjoy a good movie for example, would that make it a good game? So if a game plays like a series of cut scenes with little or no interaction, it is quite likely (but not necessarily) just a bad game. If you had a separate category along the lines of "games with little or no interaction" then that particular game would be considered excellent in the said category. And in all honesty, a game with good mechanics but poor aesthetics can be a bad game too, if the synthesis of the two doesn't work out as a whole.

And why should mechanics be given this special privilege? A game becomes a game because of the mechanics (interaction). Without this, it would no longer belong to the category of a game, and hence the special place of mechanics. Aesthetics can exist on their own. Mechanics still need aesthetics to make a game.

I'm quite willing to agree with you here. It does often seem good mechanics can usually do a better job of saving a game than good aesthetics. But I think the overall problem here may be that I poorly defined bad gameplay in my initial post. I do not mean games that are fundamentally broken, just games where the gameplay isn't the most inspired. Fahrenheit is a good example of this. The gameplay is limited to only motions and gestures, yet the story and the way it changes based on your actions hooks the player and keeps them going.

Games with little or no interaction as you described it are also not a bad thing. LSD, for example, has no point and very limited interaction, yet it is great fun. It's also an example of why i feel the term video game is so out dated. Nothing in it feels like a game, yet it is most definitely classed as one.

Obviously you need interaction to be a part of this medium, otherwise you're just a film; but how deep does that interaction need to be? Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain are little more than glorified "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, but they're still games and they're still well received.

One way is to separate the scores given to the mechanics and aesthetics of a game. This has its merits, because it would becomes clear where the game's strength lies. But, in any case, such an assignment of scores would be incomplete. Ultimately a game is an inseparable combination of the two components. In any case, when someone gives the mechanics of a game a score, aesthetics are bound to have some effect on it.

I don't think scores are necessarily the right way to look at it, but ultimately I think we're thinking the same way. A game is the sum of it's parts and it's how those sums add up that determines whether a game is good and whether or not a person will like it. Keeping in mind that everything is held in the eye of the beholder.

The bottom line to my argument and beliefs is this:

A game may be judged by it's presentation, it's sound design, the level layouts or gameplay. A game may be judged by many things, but ultimately to declare a game as good it must meet your own personal criteria. If you care about story and could care less about gameplay, fantastic. If you think story is for chumps and you want to spend your time playing for score, well that's fine too. The only thing that's wrong is when we decide that what we care about in games is the only way to care about them and that anyone who feels differently is wrong, simple or ignorant. Unfortunately that's something that happens way too often, especially on this forum.

[alastair jack]

JoshF doesn't know what aesthetics means.

It's you who doesn't understand.

[wiNteR]

Well, first of all, the casual usage of the word 'mechanics' is different from a more narrowly defined specialized usage. I confused the two in my first post. In the strict usage, the mechanics aren't any more helpful than evaluating the, what should I say, academic figures. But, in most cases, these figures wouldn't be all that useful, although sometimes they could be.

But leaving aside this, what I feel is that the label of art games is being used more and more to legitimize or even heavily praise games with mediocre, or sometimes, poor game play. It wouldn't bother me so much if these games removed the pretension of having any real game play (goals, levels, score etc.) whatsoever in them, and simply kept the interactivity. You could just place these games in a different category. Maybe the name you suggested would be good. As it happens now these less than mediocre games are placed along truly great games, or maybe even higher sometimes. I even enjoy games of this type from time to time, but I have a hard time calling these games good.

There are two reasons, that I can think of, why I speculate this is happening more and more.

First of all I wouldn't be surprised if the people who love the label of art games are, in a large part, fans of movies, cinema or animations in general. They still might or might not be casual gamers, but their judgment probably gets misplaced because of this particular aspect. And it also happens, atleast in my own limited experience, that people who are fans of movies, animations etc. also tend to just label just about everything, that impresses them, as art.

Secondly, high quality of production value in a game takes a lot of money. Big studios that spend ridiculous amount of money on their games having these production values, are gonna make sure that the particular aspect that gives them the edge (production value) wouldn't be downplayed. This particular mindset then pours down to big gaming sites and then the mainstream gaming audience.

I just made up these two reasons as I was typing my reply - not sure how close to the mark these two reasons are.

[drunken starsailor]

It wouldn't bother me so much if these games removed the pretension of having any real game play (goals, levels, score etc.) whatsoever in them, and simply kept the interactivity.

This is ridiculous. Many screen savers have "interactivity". Ex: Bouncing a ball off of all four corners of the screen with your mouse. But who would want to play that? How could anyone convince themselves that such a "game" is more enjoyable than Ninja Gaiden? Or Suguri? Or Panzer Dragoon Orta? Or Cadillacs Kyouryuu-Shinseik?

Am I reading that right? Levels are pretentious? How on earth is the player supposed to progress through the game? Each stage should be harder than the last. If the difficulty remains sterile, then it's just a bad game.

What I don't understand is why you are posting in a video game forum. If you dislike conventions, then you quite simply hate games.

[Herr Schatten]

Am I reading that right?

No.

[drunken starsailor]

(Re-reads)

[drauch]

I'd say if anything art is fairly relative. The "video games as art" debate will never end or be universally accepted. I view games as an art form myself, so if someone disagrees, so be it. It's all a matter of opinions and silly definitions...

[Drum]

JoshF doesn't know what aesthetics means.

It's you who doesn't understand.

No, I totally understand. There is a lot of crossover - gameplay mechanics can have aesthetic qualities (say, a slight pause during a fighting game to enhance the impact of a blow), and they can be very beautiful and elegant, but they're still a distinct thing from aesthetics - they're more than that. Similarly, you can to some extent seperate the type of language used in a novel from the themes and narrative, and also admire how the themes and narrative gel together. I understand what JoshF was getting at, I think, but his message is garbled because he doesn't know the meaning of the words he is using.

[austere]

I'll just leave these here:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/for_artfags_only/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_the_ge ... art_games/

… Now that 99% of us are ignoring this post, I'll get down to business. :p

No, the medium has progressed. Not every facet of it has progressed in the same way and there have been some major forks and divisions, but on the whole the medium has moved forward and is still moving forward. You're more than welcome to not like the direction it's moving in, god knows I don't, but to deny advancement would just be ignorant.

I'll start with this part:

No, the medium

Medium: An intervening substance through which something else is transmitted or carried on.

Television is a medium, in the sense that it is used to deliver information but are the programs on television themselves a medium? Surely, they can be used to deliver information as well, however as they are the information transmitted you will have to draw the line at television, lest you have everything become a medium.

Getting back on track, how about games? You'll probably argue that they can be used to deliver a message, but even if I concede this, you can see from the previous example that using the term in this manner renders it meaningless. Indeed the game itself, you can say, is the end product that is transmitted by the hardware running it, a simulation, which should entertain those who interact with it -- or observe the interaction, for that matter. In my opinion, we must draw the line somewhere and placing games in the medium side renders the term worthless. You may as well call sports a medium. After all, the players can shout a haiku at the top of their lungs while hurling balls at each other. Again, without some demarcation we would all have to deal with this nonsense.* A tool, to muddy up the water and pass whatever you wish through as if it made sense. You’re above that though, I assume, so I will not accuse you of doing so intentionally.

Moving on:

has progressed

I hate to repeat myself, but I've seen this term thrown around way too much and it's getting on my nerves. Your post demonstrates how silly this usage is, especially when wiNteR's point (attached to his opinion, intrinsically) was countered as somehow wrong. However, instead of presenting an opinion of why you thought he was wrong, you aligned your opinion with his and still insisted that he’s incorrect. You achieved this by stating a tautology, again by rendering the term "progress" useless. I shall demonstrate my objection starting with the first part:

on the whole the medium [has moved forward and is still moving forward.

Games have indeed, moved forward, but at which point did they begin to do so? From the first game ever? From 5 years ago? Lets move quickly by assuming the latter (or both, lol). Of course, hardware is mountains above what it was even 5 years ago. Are games, on average, also mountains above, or even mildly better? I would dare say no, in fact, games have decidedly regressed, as surmised by wiNteR. It's quite telling that to get a good experience many people here have to go to titles from the past, move backwards if you will, to find excellent games. In any case, let us hear how you justify that they are "moving forward":

You're more than welcome to not like the direction it's moving in, god knows I don't

Uh oh, it seems that, with those words, you agree that they have regressed! Otherwise, progress and "moving forward", is simply saying "they are changing". That is to say, they are not stagnant, which they never have been and probably won’t be until the last programmer and computer engineer have died. For all intents and purposes, a tautology.

Finally:

to deny advancement would just be ignorant.

"On the whole" as you said before, or specific parts? On average or specifically well crafted examples? Your sentence which began with nonsense, ends in nonsense. It seems that you simply want to counter the usage of regression itself, a negative term you find so offensive, which just may be targeted at something you enjoy. Just like in George Orwell’s 1984, negative terms are being pruned from the English language in favour of politicians and CEOs harking on about "moving forward" as a way to express their goodness of the good in the good people and lack of double plus ungood.

* For the unconvinced: A table, as a further example, can be a medium to transport kinetic energy across a room in quantised packets of energy called phonons. Are the phonons a medium? You may say, they can be, if they are used to transport some form of information. What if the phonon itself is that which is being transported, nothing more? Can you call the phonon themselves a medium in that case? How about the observer and model (without which a phonon does not even "exist")? Where does the medium begin and where does it end? In order to make any sense of what we say we must be careful where we use this term.

[TLB]

[drunken starsailor]

Alright, I'll give this a shot.

With books, you attach meaning to the words and imagine the scenarios in your head.

With movies, the scenarios are presented to the viewer; through audio and visuals.

With games, you cannot progress through the story without overcoming challenges. If I treated Esprade like a movie, I would never make it to the stage one mini boss. A shining example of a great game.

A game like Jet Set Radio Future has gorgeous visuals, but the game is lacking in many areas. You have a giant health bar, for one. If you're in a fix, you could grab one of the many health items all over the game world. Enemies are stupidly easy, and the bosses are insulting. (Captain Hayashi can simply be knocked off of the building in the second battle with him.) The graffiti tagging aspect is tedious and downright boring. With all of these flaws, the beautiful visuals mean nothing, because JSRF would be better off as a CG anime. That's what Josh means by, "It's a shame that Goichi Suda is not directing movies, instead." Killer 7 looked awesome, but it's a bad game because it does not require much skill to master.

If developers want to treat their games like movies, then that's great and everything. But their efforts will always end in vein.

[TLB]

Alright, I'll give this a shot.

[some stupid shit here, assertions and examples leading nowhere]

If developers want to treat their games like movies, then that's great and everything. But their efforts will always end in vein.

let's just go for the last line, it's my favorite.

But their efforts will always end in vein.

their efforts will end in vein? like, they'll end in your vein? like, their objective is to stab you in the neck? what????

now, maybe you meant to say this:

But their efforts will always end in vain.

in which case, it still makes no fucking sense. their efforts will end in vain? hell no, they won't, their efforts will end to the immense satisfaction of myself and several other people i know who think what they do is retarded. perhaps you meant this:

But their efforts will always be in vain.

okay, yeah, sure

what was your point again