Next Big Thing In Gaming

[indstr]

I love how these hats don´t actually protect you from sunlight or anything because it´s the future, and in the future things don´t have to make sense if it only looks futuristic.

That was brilliantly funny

[Nuke]

In the future, billboards will spam you directly, cars will drive YOU and cereal boxes will be extremely annoying. And Minority Report will suck cock!

[spadgy]

I love how these hats don´t actually protect you from sunlight or anything because it´s the future, and in the future things don´t have to make sense if it only looks futuristic.

But in the future like everything else the sun will just look more futuristic and not actually make sence or produce heat and light, and every day will have beautiful looking synthetic weather, so the hats are perfectly designed to not block out heat that doesn't really exist from a floating cube with downloadable tanning...

And those hats will look great on the holo-beach...

[kengou]

Someone ... might have been here ... made a comment a while ago about how 30 years is about the span from the commercial viability of movies to the release of Citizen Kane, so perhaps we will be seeing our own Citizen Kane sometime soon

Games with FAR more artistic merit than a boring movie about some old guy's sled:

Shadow of the Colossus
Half-Life (the entire series)
Portal
Bioshock
Chrono Trigger
Metroid (most of them, including Prime and Prime 3 but excluding Prime 2)
Zelda (most of them)
Dodonpachi (if you consider perfection of gameplay as artistic, this is right near the top of my list. This example is more to prove that art comes in many forms and interpretations by many people)

We've already passed the point of games as an art form meant to express emotion on a deep level. Play through Colossus and tell me it didn't stir your emotions on an artistic level in some fashion, and I'll be very surprised.

[Specineff]

Tesseract Tetris.

[it290]

Actually, it did. I would agree with SoTC as a game on that level, as well as perhaps Portal, Rez, and a few others. However, these games are still a long way from the sophistication of something like Citizen Kane (which is not my favorite movie or anything, remember I was quoting someone else) in terms of storytelling technique or subject matter. How many politically oriented games have you seen that are actually worth playing, for example (I suppose one could make some argument for MGS in this regard)? Very few games deal with actual issues that affect people, or exploit the medium in a conceptually interesting manner (although again, MGS should be mentioned, as should Killer7).

I personally think that Bioshock is an overall crappy game, though, and the rest you mentioned -- while good -- aren't nearly as interesting to think about as they are fun to play.

[FIL]

TGM2+ is our citizen kane, FACT.

[kengou]

Actually, it did. I would agree with SoTC as a game on that level, as well as perhaps Portal, Rez, and a few others. However, these games are still a long way from the sophistication of something like Citizen Kane (which is not my favorite movie or anything, remember I was quoting someone else) in terms of storytelling technique or subject matter. How many politically oriented games have you seen that are actually worth playing, for example (I suppose one could make some argument for MGS in this regard)? Very few games deal with actual issues that affect people, or exploit the medium in a conceptually interesting manner (although again, MGS should be mentioned, as should Killer7).

I personally think that Bioshock is an overall crappy game, though, and the rest you mentioned -- while good -- aren't nearly as interesting to think about as they are fun to play.

I disagree, I think that the interactivity offered by video games gives them a potential advantage above movies in terms of storytelling technique. Look at Half-Life 2, Portal, or anything Valve-produced, that gives complete control to the player to look around and move where he or she wants during story scenes. The game environment is very cleverly designed to draw the player into making choices that the developer intends to further the story, but making the player feel like it's his or her own choice the entire time. It's that level of immersion that places games above movies fundamentally as a storytelling medium. Take Portal. At the end of the tests (spoilers) you're on a moving platform leading into a fire. You discover that GlaDOS intends to kill you. If you are resigned to death you can choose to keep moving into the fire and die, and the game will say game over. However, if you're attentive, you'll notice the portal surface on a wall above the pit of fire, and you're able to escape. After this, there is no further direction through the game, you have to make your way through the underbelly of this test center while GlaDOS taunts you. The game makes you FEEL like your choices led you to where you are, even if the game was designed to draw your eye to what it wanted and to direct your actions subtlely. Listen to the commentaries in the game for more examples of how they do this. If this isn't at least on the same level of storytelling as a movie, I don't know what else is.

As for Bioshock, I use it as an example primarily for its atmosphere and mood, which exceed that of most movies. The storyline was pretty good, and once again it proceeded entirely from a first-person view which places you into the character's viewpoint more than is possible in a movie. And (spoilers), when the twist is revealed that you are controlled by the phrase "would you kindly", and you suddenly lose control of your character for virtually the first time in the game, and find your character obeying without question with you, the player, being helpless to do anything, is a jarring experience. As to the gameplay, I agree it was pretty average FPS fare. The ending sucked too (both of them). Regardless, I feel it has lots of examples of great storytelling unique to the game medium.

One further example. Metroid Prime. The game is pure exploration. The game gives you no real direction (ok, the map screen gives you vague locations to find occasionally, but you can turn that off) and the game proceeds based on the drive of the player to explore. There is definite emotional impact as you find new diverse areas or dangerous enemies. In the Phazon Mines I had real dread about Space Pirates dropping down from the ceilings in pitch black areas. When I found some huge new areas, like the first time I went to Phendrana, with its moody music and snow falling constantly, I really felt the wonder of exploration on some level. It's what drives you to keep playing, but it's also something that is MUCH harder to convey with movies. There's virtually no story in Metroid Prime (at least no story of interest), the entire game IS your experience exploring the world presented to you.

I'm glad most people agree on Shadow of the Colossus. It's a monument of gaming and everybody ought to play it. MGS is very movie-like with cutscenes and storyline, and I love the series, so that's an interesting example too, but the gameplay itself doesn't factor in as much in my opinion to the art as the other examples I mentioned. As to Killer 7, it had artistic merit, but I just couldn't get past the awful gameplay so I didn't play much into it. It's the type of game you either love or hate, I guess.

[Shatterhand]

Out of This World.