Games Journalism General

[Secret Asshole]

Games can be art but almost nobody that constantly babbles about that shit has ever created a game worthy of being called a game, much less being called art. Much like science fiction, Westerns, romance etc. can be art, but won't be art unless they're first good examples of genre fiction. You're not going to write a genre busting science fiction novel if you absolutely suck at science fiction, and you won't make a game that is worthy of being called art if your game fucking sucks and nobody would play it.

'Games as Art' has a major problem: Interactivity. If its pretty, has an amazing plot, is full of deep think, but is $50 and is 3 hours long and has shit gameplay, then its a shit game, therefore, not art in the medium of Games. There has yet to be a game which encompasses the beauty of a painting, the intricate plotting and themes of a novel, the cinematic experience of a movie and interactivity to lose yourself in. And if that's your bar as games as art, its really fucking high.

I think you really need to look at Games as Art from the strength of the medium: Interactivity, ergo, Game-play. It isn't the graphics, the message, the plot, the storytelling, its the game-play. I think we can all remember a game with an amazing plot but had terrible gameplay that just ruined the experience. The problem is that we'll all fall in love with a deep, interactive gameplay experience, but if a game doesn't have that feature, why was it a game in the first place? I need and love story elements in my games, and they can make or break games for me, but if the Gameplay is poor, I will struggle to continue with it.

The major hill is that game journalists DO NOT EVER want to judge 'Games as Art' on Gameplay. They fucking hate playing video games. They loathe it to the core of their being. So they focus on crap that is superficial to the experience. If they could have a button to skip mechanics, interactivity so they could just fucking watch or click on a choice, they'd do it.

This is a substantial hill, really. Vidya cannot encompass the raw imaginative power of a novel. It is still struggling with a cinematic experience. They can be pretty or artistic, but they need to be more than that. Games have one thing every other medium really doesn't: Interactivity. And if you don't judge a medium on its unique quality, are you really judging it fairly?

 

[Judge Dredd]

Tbh, not that I find it to be a big deal, but back when that channel was Happy Video Game Nerd (?), that was the first time I ever heard the term male gaze, used sincerely no less, in the Parasite Eve series review.

The Third Birthday was the game where GameSpot went full woke. Saying the game was bad because Aya sometimes showed weakness. The reviewer ended up working for Feminist Frequency, and then leaving due to not being payed.

 

[Emperor Julian]

There has yet to be a game which encompasses the beauty of a painting, the intricate plotting and themes of a novel, the cinematic experience of a movie and interactivity to lose yourself in. And if that's your bar as games as art, its really fucking high.

Ahem

 

[Safir]

There has yet to be a game which encompasses the beauty of a painting, the intricate plotting and themes of a novel, the cinematic experience of a movie and interactivity to lose yourself in. And if that's your bar as games as art, its really fucking high.

"the beauty of a painting": a painting for 99.999% of the world's population is just a static image. You can put one in a game. You can generate one in a game. There are games with extraordinary visuals out there. Granted, screens have limited sizes and aren't good at representing colors, but very, very few people actually get to see awesome paintings IRL.

"the intricate plotting and themes of a novel" - which novel? These days, the plot of a representative game which has one must surpass the plot of a representative novel by any metric, because at least game development has a bar to clear and there's more likely to be money and effort involved. Novels were never highbrow. Fucking Waverley (1814, when 60% of Brits were illiterate) starts with a dig at people who read novels. This boils down to "I think this here novel is better than any game I've played". Congrats?

"the cinematic experience of a movie" - cinematic literally means "movie-like". Any movie is by definition 100% cinematic, and a shitty movie is just as cinematic as a decent one. Cinematicity doesn't correlate with quality at all.

The problem is that we'll all fall in love with a deep, interactive gameplay experience, but if a game doesn't have that feature, why was it a game in the first place?

You're conflating "deep interactivity" with "good interactivity". Deep is a subset of good. Interactivity can be sparse, simple or even shallow on purpose and still make for a good game.

I think we can all remember a game with an amazing plot but had terrible gameplay that just ruined the experience.

Actually, no, I can't. There are could've-been-good games with specific identifiable implementation problems (bugs, unresponsive controls, no replay value, grinding, learning curve is an overhang, too hard (kek), 3d sickness), but I can't think of any good story that was wasted on a game where the interactivity was fundamentally badly designed.

 

[Secret Asshole]

"the beauty of a painting": a painting for 99.999% of the world's population is just a static image. You can put one in a game. You can generate one in a game. There are games with extraordinary visuals out there. Granted, screens have limited sizes and aren't good at representing colors, but very, very few people actually get to see awesome paintings IRL.

"the intricate plotting and themes of a novel" - which novel? These days, the plot of a representative game which has one must surpass the plot of a representative novel by any metric, because at least game development has a bar to clear and there's more likely to be money and effort involved. Novels were never highbrow. Fucking Waverley (1814, when 60% of Brits were illiterate) starts with a dig at people who read novels. This boils down to "I think this here novel is better than any game I've played". Congrats?

"the cinematic experience of a movie" - cinematic literally means "movie-like". Any movie is by definition 100% cinematic, and a shitty movie is just as cinematic as a decent one. Cinematicity doesn't correlate with quality at all.


You're conflating "deep interactivity" with "good interactivity". Deep is a subset of good. Interactivity can be sparse, simple or even shallow on purpose and still make for a good game.


Actually, no, I can't. There are could've-been-good games with specific identifiable implementation problems (bugs, unresponsive controls, no replay value, grinding, learning curve is an overhang, too hard (kek), 3d sickness), but I can't think of any good story that was wasted on a game where the interactivity was fundamentally badly designed.

The first part was more for games journalists who are setting that bar. That's why I used that language. I agree.

Second point, true.

Third, you might not consider bugs as gameplay problems but I certainly do. Vampire: Bloodlines and New Vegas. These games were buggy as fuck and were only fixed through fan patches and mods. Even so, vanilla Bloodlines gameplay is mediocre. Also, a lot of Obsidian games were buggy as shit, which detracts from the experience. Planescape: Torment's gameplay was pretty poor even though its story was amazing. This does hinder it for some people. Most of these are obviously going to be RPGs. I'm not saying a story was wasted, but this does ruin the experience for some people.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

The Third Birthday was the game where GameSpot went full woke. Saying the game was bad because Aya sometimes showed weakness. The reviewer ended up working for Feminist Frequency, and then leaving due to not being payed.

I actually agree with @Your Weird Fetish that 3rd Birthday did kind of desereve to have it called out. The clothes ripping mechanic and the shower scene.

Spoiler

Which is really underage Eve in Aya's body. It's stupid, trust me.

It's a weird, hardcore scifi game and that stuff was inappropriate for what they were doing (and iirc was an order from Squeenix bosses, not the people working on it.) At least in PE2 it was just some tame quicky fan service that at least fit Aya's character and situation if anyone was bothered by that games shower scene.

However, it's also nothing to spill spaghetti all over the place for.

 

[AnOminous]

This is a substantial hill, really. Vidya cannot encompass the raw imaginative power of a novel. It is still struggling with a cinematic experience. They can be pretty or artistic, but they need to be more than that. Games have one thing every other medium really doesn't: Interactivity. And if you don't judge a medium on its unique quality, are you really judging it fairly?

That's why a game has to succeed as a game before it can be "art" on top of that. Either it's art because it succeeds at that so well that its quality is something in itself, like Tetris, or does it somehow else. Unfortunately, what games journalist tards mean when they say something is "art" is that it has qualities of something other than being a game, like being a movie, a novel, or something else they're more comfortable calling "art." This is fundamentally wrong-headed, because nothing is art by being something not itself. That is, instead, how something is bad.

This is why you see these idiots praising something with a couple of hours strung between some cutscenes, and their idea of true "art" as a "game" is essentially a series of cutscenes with no gameplay at all.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

That's why a game has to succeed as a game before it can be "art" on top of that. Either it's art because it succeeds at that so well that its quality is something in itself, like Tetris, or does it somehow else. Unfortunately, what games journalist tards mean when they say something is "art" is that it has qualities of something other than being a game, like being a movie, a novel, or something else they're more comfortable calling "art." This is fundamentally wrong-headed, because nothing is art by being something not itself. That is, instead, how something is bad.

This is why you see these idiots praising something with a couple of hours strung between some cutscenes, and their idea of true "art" as a "game" is essentially a series of cutscenes with no gameplay at all.

Even more, it generally has to be something they see as pushing their personal ideology if they're going to call it "art".

(and iirc was an order from Squeenix bosses, not the people working on it.) .

Boy they've changed.

Incidentally it's not that I'm morally opposed to clothes falling off as a character takes damage as a concept. Just, it's a concept that belongs in a porn game and is unnatural and jarring in this context.

 

[BScCollateral]

Incidentally it's not that I'm morally opposed to clothes falling off as a character takes damage as a concept.

That would be a great mechanic in Onichanbera.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Incidentally it's not that I'm morally opposed to clothes falling off as a character takes damage as a concept. Just, it's a concept that belongs in a porn game and is unnatural and jarring in this context.

It's also harder to defend "clothing damage" as a realistic concept and not porn game shit when some of the clothing is "Maid Outfit", "Swim Suit", "Bunny Suit", etc.

 

[Marissa Moira]

It's also harder to defend "clothing damage" as a realistic concept and not porn game shit when some of the clothing is "Maid Outfit", "Swim Suit", "Bunny Suit", etc.

Have it go deeper and have the damage mechanic relate to layers of flesh being ripped off.

When you become a skeleton you die.

Having all damage be physics related and getting bits and pieces uniquely shreded off you like Revengence would be rather fun. I'm really kinda wondering when something like that will happen to Souls games. All the ways to die and there's nothing that can physically tear your guy in two.

Having a game based around healing, blood loss, and regrowing limbs and organs while recovering from serious injuries would be a fun concept as you slowly make your way from start to finish.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

It's also harder to defend "clothing damage" as a realistic concept and not porn game shit when some of the clothing is "Maid Outfit", "Swim Suit", "Bunny Suit", etc.

It'd actually be fine in Third Birthday too if they just toned it down a bit and didn't always end up with sexy, conveniently torn rags.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Have it go deeper and have the damage mechanic relate to layers of flesh being ripped off.

When you become a skeleton you die.

Having all damage be physics related and getting bits and pieces uniquely shreded off you like Revengence would be rather fun. I'm really kinda wondering when something like that will happen to Souls games. All the ways to die and there's nothing that can physically tear your guy in two.

Having a game based around healing, blood loss, and regrowing limbs and organs while recovering from serious injuries would be a fun concept as you slowly make your way from start to finish.

To some extent, this was Metal Gear Solid 3 (as you recieved injuries you would have to go into a menu and manually heal them through a trama center-esque mini section).

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Having all damage be physics related and getting bits and pieces uniquely shreded off you like Revengence would be rather fun

The dude who directed the best Metal Gear, Ghost Babel, created a game sort of like this called Neverdead.

Not the best game in the world, but it's interesting and at least gave us a killer Megadeth song.

It'd actually be fine in Third Birthday too if they just toned it down a bit and didn't always end up with sexy, conveniently torn rags.

The start of the club scene when she tears off more of her jeans makes me lol every time.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Did Christmas come early this year???

Quill on Twitter

“KOTAKU IS FUCKING GONE https://t.co/o3dh9xfQYR”

twitter.com

 

[Water-T]

"I was fired for writing about ORANGE MAN BAD instead of sports on a sports site! THE NERVE!"

If Kuntaku is gone, then Polygunt is going to have to suck on Chelsea's taint doubly hard!

LOL now the staff is "rebelling" by posting dumb "Articles" like "Three Good Dogs I Met".

I'm sure this strategy will pay off, Cotton. Getting yourself fired for ignoring a reasonable editorial edict will surely look great on a resume! Please, Gawker babies - continue to shoot yourselves in the foot, because mediocre hacks that think they are the next the Woodward & Bernstein are a dime a dozen nowadays, and online news sites are barely turning a profit.

 

[Nobunaga]

"the beauty of a painting": a painting for 99.999% of the world's population is just a static image. You can put one in a game. You can generate one in a game. There are games with extraordinary visuals out there. Granted, screens have limited sizes and aren't good at representing colors, but very, very few people actually get to see awesome paintings IRL.

"the intricate plotting and themes of a novel" - which novel? These days, the plot of a representative game which has one must surpass the plot of a representative novel by any metric, because at least game development has a bar to clear and there's more likely to be money and effort involved. Novels were never highbrow. Fucking Waverley (1814, when 60% of Brits were illiterate) starts with a dig at people who read novels. This boils down to "I think this here novel is better than any game I've played". Congrats?

"the cinematic experience of a movie" - cinematic literally means "movie-like". Any movie is by definition 100% cinematic, and a shitty movie is just as cinematic as a decent one. Cinematicity doesn't correlate with quality at all.


You're conflating "deep interactivity" with "good interactivity". Deep is a subset of good. Interactivity can be sparse, simple or even shallow on purpose and still make for a good game.


Actually, no, I can't. There are could've-been-good games with specific identifiable implementation problems (bugs, unresponsive controls, no replay value, grinding, learning curve is an overhang, too hard (kek), 3d sickness), but I can't think of any good story that was wasted on a game where the interactivity was fundamentally badly designed.

Rule of rose comes to mind, amazing story with shitty gameplay

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Looks like this was the catalyst.

Jason Schreier on Twitter

“https://t.co/A2VFFuakkx”

twitter.com

Twitter

archived 29 Oct 2019 21:20:49 UTC

archive.li

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

Kinda sad the CP shit didn't nuke them, but I won't be picky.

 

[AnOminous]

Looks like this was the catalyst.

I'll laugh my ass off if this insufferable prick thinking shitting on the advertisers of his employer was what did it. Hasn't he ever heard of Sam Biddle, who gloated about losing Gawker millions with his shitlordery?

And Biddle just infuriated readers enough they went on an apeshit rampage burning down Gawker's advertisers. Schreier literally directly attacked the advertisers himself? How is it possible to be this fucking stupid? I guess he assumed he was just bulletproof, having gotten away with so much absolutely self-destructive, idiotic bullshit already.

Here's the actual article Schreier was tweeting. It was deleted but still in cache:

A Note To Our Readers

archived 29 Oct 2019 22:50:59 UTC

archive.md

The text:

We have received a great deal of feedback from you, our readers, about the sound-on autoplay videos that have been inundating our sites. We want you to know that we hear you, that we take those complaints seriously, and that we, the writers, editors, and video producers of Kotaku, are as upset with the current state of our site’s user experience as you are.

We think it is important to let you know that the editorial staff does not control the ad experience on the site, and that we understand that Kotaku is nothing without its readers, so your complaints are our complaints.

Editorial staffers at all levels of this company have made our concerns known in various conversations with members of G/O Media’s senior leadership team. We think it would be good for them to hear from you as well, so we invite you to submit feedback about our site’s current user experience. This email address goes to G/O Media’s CEO, editorial director, as well as the editors-in-chief of Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker and The Root. Please keep your comments respectful.

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