zacharias on 11/12/2015 at 15:58

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With respect, I don't think you have understood the point I was trying to make at all. Saying gaming is a superior art form 'because you can have a book or movie within a game' is a retard level argument, and I suspect you know this.
As always, it's about what you actually do with it..

froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 16:09

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They SHOULD be and have the potential to be, but no. Because in any given department, they don't hold up. Can game writing compare to even average great literature? Absolutely not - most of it is aimed at a 12 year old audience. Is game music the best music around? Not in any respect - it's not the best produced, it's not the most harmonically interesting, it's not the most rhythmically interesting, not the most expressive, not making the boldest statement, etc. Frankly, most of it is trite. I think visual art is the arena in which games are the most competitive. Basically, the manifestation of the total potential of the genre cannot be reached until 1) all of the individual elements are of extremely high quality and 2) all of them come together to form a greater statement, instead of a mindless diversion (or a game where each element doesn't blend as well as it could due to too many cooks).

Are there games that have achieved this? A select few, sure. Silent Hill 2 comes to mind.

And I'm not saying I have a life, but I certainly have no patience and a guilt complex about wasting time. But I'm not talking about rushing through and not properly exploring everything - I'm just talking about getting stuck on the same boss fight for 1,000,000 hours or getting lost in the Thieves Guild for days. To me, that is not fun at all.



So what? That's TOTALLY NORMAL. It's happened repeatedly in ever genre that's ever existed. Oh no, sonnets and doo-wop died off and are only being supported by niche communities, literature and music are dead!!!

froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 16:21

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No more bold than any statement you've made in this thread. You're coming at this is a game developer, I'm coming at it as a classically trained composer who makes sheet music for a living and writes theory articles. So of course we're going to be overly opinionated elitists in our own way, but that statement is objective. If we're going to talk innovation, then no game music innovates on the level of, say, Miles Davis or Gyorgy Ligeti, and since, by definition, it has to fit someone else's creative vision rather than express something directly from the artist, it's never going be as much of a personal expression.

Now, the question is, does it have to be? I would actually say no. To ask games to innovate at a high level in all of the media they engage in is absurd. But to ask every element all work together, regardless of quality or innovation, is entirely fair, and since you bring up SS2, I think that's a good example of that:



Well, it does, but if you look at the individual elements, none of them are special. The plot is based on some pretty standard sci-fi tropes and the writing is largely unexceptional (though exceptional for games in the sense that it's not offensively bad). The music is enjoyable and enhances the atmosphere, but it's pretty standard modal-diatonic rhythmically square furniture music. The art and visuals never really stood out to me, aside from having a nice atmosphere. Level design is fantastic of course.

But I think that's the key. All gaming needs is for each element to be competent enough and focused enough that it all comes together to create something greater. And I think the fact that the individual elements of a stellar game like System Shock 2 aren't particularly remarkable in their respective media demonstrates just how awful they are in most games.



Now this is fair.

froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 16:34

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Well, that's not really the point of soundtracks, is it? Most soundtracks in games or film are based on a series of tropes and cliches to evoke whatever feelings directors or developers are looking for in a certain scene or level. They aren't meant to innovate or provide unique sensations, nor are they meant to stand out or even grab your attention. Which makes it especially noteworthy when they do (for example, Kubrick's use of Ligeti and Pendercki in the third act of 2001 to evoke an extreme sense of otherworldliness).

But in a lot of cases, a soundtrack grabbing your attention is actually a bad thing, since that frequently means it's not properly blending into the patchwork of the rest of the film/game. So it's very difficult to create a soundtrack that both fulfills its purpose AND innovates, and most directors and project directors are actively looking for recycled crap (i.e. I want this cliche thing that evokes this feeling here) and don't give composers any room to innovate at all.

froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 16:41

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^Nailed it on all fronts. (Absolutely an oxymoron, yes, I think I was trying to say decent literature haha)

And another thing that complicates this is the method of interactivity. Like we were all recently discussing in another thread, it all defaults to violence.

So let's say we compare a classic art film, Tarkovsky's Stalker, with the game Stalker, which is generally recognized as great around here. In this case, the film version clearly wins despite the complexity of the game, but they're two completely different entities precisely due to the necessity for interactivity. Stalker the film would make for a terrible game, a walking simulator at best. But at the same time, turning it into more of an action-oriented entity centered around violence in the game reduces its artistic value to me (and I certainly find the visual design, writing and scoring of the film superior to the game version, in addition to the overall message and level of thought provocation). So I think there's an argument to be made that interactivity reduces artistry by necessity in some ways, at least in terms of what people have found to be fun. Most games fail to transcend the action movie in moment-to-moment depth, and that is precisely the problem with the medium right now - even in more complex cases. Avant-garde games are a rarity.