To Jim Sterling, Who Hates Art Games

games re arts if u dont like art u dont like games

“1. Art games are a relatively new concept, and like anything new, they are primitive by default.”

Art games are relatively new…? What about the examples from over a quarter of a century ago such as Deus Ex Machina on the Sinclair Spectrum or Moondust on the Commodore 64 that fit neatly into the same criteria then?

I’ve to agree in some degree with both of you (Derek and Jim), but what I see is an increasing amount of aspiring art games that merely copycat previous efforts in the attempt to capitalize their popularity.
How about all those clones of The Passage?

@Jason: I think it’s a new concept, i.e. a new movement. Which is important with regards to this discussion… because it’s really the current movement that’s being criticized in these articles.

Plus he’s fat!

Just restating what I said on the Twitter re: this whole silly debate:

To be honest, I think the word “art” is so vaguely defined that games media basically uses it interchangeably with “good”. What I mean is that there are simply good games and bad games. Games that are experimental are no different. That simple.

- Art games aren’t innovative
- Innovation isn’t good
> So Art games are good. Thanks Jim !

@Derek: no, i can’t see it like that personally because i remember similar movements building up around developers such as Mel Croucher or Jeff Minter twenty five years ago (i was a Minter fanboy, but there for the shooty stuff personally).

I’m not really sure what factors makes a game an Art-Game. In my opinion all games should try to be innovative where they can, or else we’re stuck with playing bad clones of Half-Life, Final Fantasy or Mario for the rest of out lives.

@Jason: Wow, Deus Ex Machina looks really cool. I like this review of it:

http://www.gamesrant.com/gamesrant/?p=4

_”I respect this game, because it’s aspirations are higher than others, it is obviously trying to make statements about life and politics, and for that reason alone I would recommend you play it. Even if it is a little pretentious.”_

And that was 1984! Perhaps it’s the internet and the indie scene specifically that’s bringing these types of games to the mainstream today (and therefore creating more backlash)? I really have no idea how popular games like these were back then.

EDIT: But I don’t think most of today’s art game creators have much recollection of those games. I could be wrong. I think they’re inspired more by the abundance of good game-creation tools than Mel Croucher and Jeff Minter.

Hear Hear Derek! Preach it!

Rule #1: The only kind of control anyone has over any medium, industry or movement, is whether you wish to participate in it or not, and what you do as a creator of a work that medium, or a member of that industry or movement.

Every time I hear someone whining about the “low quality” of something they don’t like, as if they have some damn control over what other people do.

You don’t. You can say you don’t like it; people won’t begrudge that of you. But that, frankly, is all that’ll matter of your screed. Everything else is useless masturbating.

@Derek: Back in 1984, Deus Ex Machine *was* mainstream; it was sold through the same distribution channels as other computer games, reviewed in specialist magazines such as Crash and Zzap! 64 and sold in shops – for a while in the 1990′s, every other car boot sale i visited had a copy for the C64 or Spectrum.

The same goes for Jeff Minter’s Psychedelia, sold and promoted through the same channels as his other titles.

@Derek: maybe not everybody knows about Minter or Croucher or indeed the other people doing more experimental titles twenty something years ago, but at least some of the people involved will know so you can’t really claim that the movement isn’t mature as such.

Sick talk.
Useless talk.
Dumb talk.

Like all those art critics in museum.

Try first to create a game then analyse why that game didn’t work but never again loose your precious time to tell the world that 75% of finalist at IGF are craps.

Never XD

it turned out games weren’t art.

I think the key is to think of Sterling as the Simon Cowell of video games
His expectations are high and he’s just insulting us so we feel the need to rise above him.
It doesn’t make him any less of a tit but I think the point isn’t to start a flame war but to push Art Games to try harder

s/Zompocalpyse/Zompocalypse/

Jim Sterling hates all games.

I just.. I don’t understand the vitriol in articles like his. Why do they feel the need to spill hate on an entire genre because they find some games uninteresting? Is this simply a case of jealousy? As hip as indie games are, it is becoming even more hip to hate on them. Maybe that means our medium is coming of age. Should we throw a party?

I can’t fault the guy for wanting to see more games that he personally finds fun. However, there are much more constructive ways to go about it. Also, it seems greedy to assume your wants are more important or valid than others. You don’t have to understand WHY we like slow, pretentious games. Just leave us to our madness.

They both have valid points. The problem is Jim expresses his view in a very offensive manner.

At this point I’ve never seen a game that I can consider “a work of art”. But criticism is healthy and actually helps the movement IMO.

Now, comparing the current crop of art games to a monet… is kind of insulting.
It is exactly this kind of exageration (by the fans, not the creators, who are usually very humble) that makes some people hate art games.

Can we get the inspiration and provocation of impressionism without the gristle of “press x to rape”? That’s the bigger problem Stirling’s trying to address. There’s a lack of artistic maturity in these games – not in content or tone, but of technical skill at delivering the message.

Look at Greasely’s thread on “Edmund.” He spends so much time posting explanations about what the game’s about (“it’s not about rape, it’s about the rapist,” etc.) and never seems to consider that having to defend it on the grounds of misinterpretation means it’s artistically deficient.

He even defends his explaining the point of the game, saying that he has a voice in the discussion as well. Which is true, but if “Edmund” was effective as art, his voice would be most clearly expressed in “Edmund,” not in TIGSource forum posts.

Your response seems to also avoid the crux of Sterling’s main point in his first post – many of these games are not engaging on the gameplay level. Stirling explicitly excuses games that commit every sin of vague pretension so long as they’re interesting to play; even though people find something interesting in the content, few could argue that, say, “The Path” is an engaging _game_ to play. The gameplay is what you put up with to try to experience the message. The medium gets in the way of the message – that’s a criticism of art in any medium.

Stirling’s indicting art games that are bad games, just as Edward Degas and later Pablo Picasso also criticized Renoir’s work for being, well, vague and lazy. More anarchistic colleagues and contemporaries called Renoir creatively bankrupt for betraying the impressionist movement’s anti-establishment ideals and claimed his commercial success wrongly overshadowed the genre’s best work.

I have to agree with Sterling that it is intellectually dishonest to give art games any sort of free pass on their merits as games, or to automatically indict commercial works because of a presumption that their budget or studio’s size prevents them from pushing the envelope or making an artistic statement. (Remember that Renoir’s primary goal was not making art but getting paid – something that set him far apart philosophically from his peers.)

As for his targets, he’s pursuing the same games – as well as “The Path” and “The Void,” which are very much finished commercial works and not experimental sketches – that have generated the most discussion about the provocation of games as art. Just because they’re sketches doesn’t mean they’re not important, and just because they’re experiments doesn’t mean they’re not open to criticism. Especially in The Marriage’s case, he’s attacking the preponderance of art games to be praised for being abstract, regardless of whether the abstraction effectively conveys the message – a valid criticism whether you’re talking about pink and blue squares or 144 3D-rendered flowers.

I am confused by this statement, however:

“Art games will always have a place here on the TIGSource front page, and I will never ever tell people to stop making them.”

Sterling never said art games shouldn’t be made. He said they should be made _better_, and that people should start judging them on their merits rather than their development processes – that a good game is a good game, and a bad game is a bad game, and art and innovation aren’t automatically good or bad simply because they exist. Indeed, if you want to read between the lines, he’s also criticizing people who oppose art games simply because they’re art games.

That is never a sentiment to begrudge, even if you disagree with the tone of his statement or the specific targets of his ire. And honestly, if you changed the tone of his language and swapped games for any other art form, his argument isn’t what’s been used against new genres – it’s what artists in every genre, including those early impressionists, have constantly driven into each other: bad art can’t be good simply because it’s art. It has to have merits of its own; it has to be an effective messenger.

Early impressionism isn’t very good – but it got a hell of a lot better. Sterling wants to see that happen in games as much as you do, and it’s a shame – and empirically supportive of Sterling’s points – that so few people in the indie gaming scene have recognized that aspect of what he wrote.

Also, one aside: Louis Leroy was a critic, yes, but a satirist as well. That review was printed in a joke newspaper – a farcical article in a 19th-century ancestor of The Onion. I dare say Jim Sterling does in fact aspire to be like Louis Leroy, and I can’t help but snicker at how you clearly don’t mean it as a compliment.

Jim Sterling hates all life.

mate, the question here is whether or not games *should* be art. it’s quite apparent to anyone capable of rational thought that they can be, and often are art. still, nice attempt at being funny.

the 3rd and the 4th argument fight eachother…..

first you state: “These are free games made as experiments, as prototypes – the video game equivalents of doodles or sketches, and just as necessary to making games as to making paintings”

then you state: “He thought it was lazy, sloppy, and unfinished. In fact, it was the start of something entirely new – ”

so tell me how do you watch these art-game thingies ?

as something entirely new or mere experiments/prototypes

[Points at what elle peshoff said] Basically how i feel but with a better vocabulary. =-)

I can sum up his article: Bad games are bad, good games are good.

Hear Hear Derek! Excellently put.

http://twitter.com/jim_sterling/status/9335736818

Peshoff says it best.

I learned a long time ago (well, a few months ago), that Jim Sterling’s opinions are generally to be ignored. However, he is so consistently obnoxious that I sometimes wonder if he is deliberately trying to stir up debate. If that’s the case fair play to him, but I wish Destructoid commenters wouldn’t be so childish.

Games as art:
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky0xmtT7HN1qzwwtgo1_500.jpg

I also agree with Peshoff. Derek didn’t eveb read the article at all.

@Vania: IMO, you only think it’s insulting to Monet because Monet has been vindicated historically.

@elle peshoff: A creative work needs to be interpreted correctly to be valuable? What? All I see is some guys trying to explain what they intended… the fact that people misinterpret their work doesn’t invalidate it. (I mean, consider how many people misinterpreted Sterling’s article!)

Regarding the crux of Sterling’s point, that these art games are not engaging on the gameplay level (meaning that there is no depth or complexity to the game mechanics)… well, I agree with that. (And for the record, on any given day I’d rather play Street Fighter than The Path.) But is “fun” what this game needs to be more engaging? Is graphics what The Marriage needs to be deeper? That’s not obvious to me at all.

Like you said, early Impressionism was rough. So are these art games. What Sterling is saying in his articles is tantamount to telling the Impressionists that they should “try to keep those nice, bright colors you like, but could you render the paintings more tightly so that I can tell what everything is? It’s too fuzzy.” (Except with more “fuck you, you suck and you’re lazy”. Yes, I take umbrage with his tone, and no, I don’t think it’s satire.)

You can hardly improve upon something that defies convention by returning to convention. That’s the difference – I think these art games may be on to something with the ambiguity and the spontaneity, even though they’re rough. Sterling thinks it’s a creative dead end completely.

@nikki: I think they can be both. Have you ever looked at someone’s sketchbook? It can be as interesting (or more interesting) than the final works of art. Often the spontaneity and lack of pressure to please an audience produces more personal and more interesting (and MORE VAGUE) work.

Take Chris Ware, for example. I like his sketches better than his extremely anal-retentive comics.

How would you be able to tell between Jim’s experiment and one of his normal posts?

What an anti-intellectualist.

you may be remembered as the Louis Leroy of this generation

No he won’t.

Be remembered, that is.

zing!

If people actually bothered to read the entire article on DToid, they would see that Jim’s points are actually pretty valid.

It’s pretty dismaying that a site I visit for more highbrow, alternative games, has put up such an ignorant, short-sighted and reactionary response to what was actually a very measured and constructive critique on the subject of the double-standards many people seem to hold towards games, depending if they were indie or not.

All that is being said is that it should not make any difference how, and for what ends a game is developed – all that matters in the end is if there is meaningful interaction between the player and game.

Edmund was criticized because while the player interacts with the game, he/she does so in a manner where they are misled. There is certainly interaction, but it is not really meaningful in any way.

The Path and The Void were criticized because the central premise and/or mechanics were so abstract and vague, that for many players there could simply be no meaningful interaction, or what interaction that happened was frustratingly unintuitive.

To say that Jim ‘hates’ indie games because he has dared to criticise them is total fallacy.

I have to admit I don’t really like games that avoid gameplay altogether in favor of making “art”. Although I tend to appreciate it when it’s in games that are fun (Braid and Zeno Clash come to mind as two random examples). I guess that’s pretty similar to one of Elle’s points.

I also appreciate art in games for helping me to encourage my wife to play them with me now and then, and I even gain some pleasure out of the fun-devoid ones when I play (watch) them with her.

Also, something being a prototype as well as the start of something new doesn’t really seem all that contradictory to me. Isn’t that sort of the purpose of a prototype?

@Seumas: “To say that Jim ‘hates’ indie games because he has dared to criticise them is total fallacy.”

I never said he hates indie games, I said he hates art games. That you thought I said indie games was because he used “indie game” and “art game” interchangeably in his articles (most notably in the titles)!

Also, how is my article reactionary and his not? We’re both reacting to things we disagree with.

I’m an artist myself, and something of an indie game developer, and I find myself straddling both opinions.

I think that often, so-called “art games” aren’t as deep as they should be. They aren’t well thought out, and aren’t the “high art” people make them out to be. It’s the easy way out of creating boring or tedious games – take a crappy concept and apply loads of graphic design to it and suddenly it’s an art game, and doesn’t have to be fun or entertaining. Because it’s art.

I also think that the vast majority of game reviewers / reporters simply don’t have the training to give an accurate report of the concept – kind of like how a good portion of the population thinks that making any photograph black and white instantly makes it artful, regardless of its actual artistic merits or content.

All that said, I enjoy art games now and then, and I appreciate the work that goes into many of them. But I still feel that too many bad indie games get folded into the mix of “art games” simply because they chose to focus more on design than gameplay, and that’s not good for either medium.

i generally agree that there should be good gameplay even in art games and that there are a lot of games that fail at being what i would call art by someone who knows what the f he is doing

but this mod here has no real gameplay elements and i wouldn’t hestitate to call it art (i am not that kind of guy that calls every trivial bullshit entertainment “art”) :

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther

in conclusion: its bs to say art games are bad because a lot of them have failed (which is true)

if we want this medium to be something that is worth talking about we better make some REAL sophisticated entertainment that can be considered art and that has a meaning.

summary: shitty games are shitty but shitty pretentious games are even shittier

Did you just compare indie games to impressionism?

I’m disappointed.

You would be, Jesus.

Man with all the time and energy it takes to make a game, even these “sketches” as Derek says, if things like the Path and Edmund was what they had in mind, there’s no laziness involved.
They were looking for something, or at least looking to try something and that’s what came out of it. That’s one way to define art, ain’t it, not that there’s ONLY ONE WAY to define it either.

And man if art games have to be fun, what is the point of them being art games, a lot of artists usually (if not always) break conventions. Why? I dunno man, because they can, because they feel like it, because they feel it’s important, that it has meaning, that’s art, you don’t have to agree with it, it doesn’t have to be never before seen, it’s a way to express yourself.
And man if people likes it, it’s probably because they liked it, not because they are scared or whatever.
I don’t really enjoy art games usually, but that’s because I’m an impatient dick who likes to scream at stuff. I’m a simple man I guess. But I’ll encourage anyone to try things, anytime, always. Wanna try something different, do it. Wanna try to make something old, man, have fun.
If you feel like it don’t let anyone stop you, this is important.

Thank you for comparing art games to impressionism.

Impressionism sucks for the same reason art games suck. Sorry if that wasn’t your intention, but its true. Louis Leroy was entirely correct.

I think “Does the message of this game sound like something a college freshman would write for an intro writing course?” is a good jumping off point for evaluating art games.

Ex: Passage – “Life is short and you can collect things but they don’t help you live any longer and when you’re young you have more opportunities than when you’re older and you can get married which limits your choices but at least you’ll have someone else” -> Freshman level

If a game doesn’t have a clear message then it passes by default.

Except Sterling doesn’t hate art games – he hates games that are bad, and which also happen to call themselves art games. All he’s asking for is game criticism divorced from preconception – to isolate a game and hold it in the light under its own merits, separated from whatever notions we’ve come to expect from an “art game.”

If a game purports to have lofty themes and supposed introspection but actually has a hamfisted narrative and involves you pressing the space bar once every five minutes, he’s asking you to have the courage to call it shit.

…Which raises the thorny question as to whether you can take a game like Half-Life 2 and analyze it independently of every other FPS, every other *game* you’ve ever played. If I say The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a good book, am I invariably comparing it to every other book I’ve read?

“People do genuinely enjoy these games, and find meaning in them.”

Yeah, there are people with bad taste out there. So what? It doesn’t make bad games better.

“…the video game equivalents of doodles or sketches, and just as necessary to making games as to making paintings.”

So you implicitly agreed with Jim’s statement that indie/art games haven’t become “good” yet.

“Your argument is the same argument people have used for centuries against artists trying to do new things.”

New things are not necessarily good.

Right jimmy.

His point is that we should praise games for being “good games” not for being “artistic.” And if a game is bad (the criteria being unfun, frustrating, or confusing), it’s bad — even if it claims to be artistic.

Hear Hear Derek! Preach it!

Telling people to stop making any type of game is even more stupid as giving attention to people telling other people to stop making a type of game. If you don’t like art games, don’t play them; if you don’t care about them, don’t read or write coverage about them.

Anyone is free to remove things from their own little world as much as they want, so long as they don’t remove those things from my world while doing so. That’s what America is all about.

“People do genuinely enjoy these games, and find meaning in them.”

Yep, and people enjoy furry fan-fic Sonic & Tails porn, and find meaning in it. It’s still bad.

Any game can be art, through it’s atmosphere, how it makes you feel while you’re playing, or simply through it’s art content. What people consider art games is helping legitimize the medium but at the same time hurting it by either directly or indirectly saying “these are the only games that can be considered art”. Why set out to make an art game and almost explicitly label it as such instead of just letting your game speak for itself an not sacrificing gameplay?

Derek does bring up some excellent points though . The comparison to impressionist criticism was also very good. We shouldn’t try to supress these type of games even if their creators rub us the wrong way sometimes. It’s like stepping on that amphibious creator that eventually becomes man when it stepped out of the water. Let’s at least see where this takes us.

art is art… you either get it or you don’t..

to call them games is probably a bit too much.. multimedia experience with user input is probably more descriptive of these ‘art games’

What I really don’t get about the whole Artgame Vibe is why a large quantity of them shuns gameplay like it is some great disgusting evil to avoid, yet at the same time demand they be recognized as games.

So if Artgames call themselves Games, why the spiteful glare when they’re judged like a game?

ah, a load of posts have appeared between mine and the one which originally preceded it. so, to clarify: I was replying to #16, by the king.

@Theotherguy, that’s the problem though, the criteria for a good game can’t be truly defined. And “fun” shouldn’t be a prerequisite for a good game imo.

Personally the most important point for me, when dealing with art games et al, would be whether the gameplay expresses something through interpretation.

Is there a reason for my character to jump? Why have I collected this green star? etc etc.

Unfortunately, as Sterling suggests, most art games don’t truly convey interpretation and meaning through their mechanics. Extending it to indie games only worsens that, given the amount of bad Metal Slug clones among others. Although I will say indie and art are not interchangeable.

While this article has suggested the infancy in which art games have found their own space within gaming, I would say that attitudes toward and the majority of indie or art games will not become great.

We will however get a great art game to latch onto once in a while, but true genius comes from originality and generally, that isn’t in abundance. Blame education!!!

Also, AmnEn, no game shuns, or can shun, gameplay. “gameplay” is generally accepted to mean the overall system of actions, goals, repercussions (which may include rewards and/or penalties) and so on, all of which, essentially, constitute the experience of interaction with the game (that’s of *interaction*, not of the game as a whole, before you try an argument along those lines). It’s a generic term, and implies no scale of values. I think you mean that they shun simple “funness”.

I also think that your first sentence in general might be projecting to a significant degree.

Actually, the post is generally bollocks. “Great disgusting evil”? “Spiteful glare”? Really? Oh, and could you possibly expand on what you obviously think it means to judge something “like a game”?

I appreciate you posting on this, Derek, and I agree with your perspective. I admit i didn’t read all of Jim’s writing, because it was so needlessly vitriolic. I think a lot of the frustration revolves around the fact that we have called works like The Path ‘games’, and all our predispositions on what a game should be come into play. I don’t want to call it interactive art either, because all art is interactive; when presented with art, you interpret it, and react to it. That is how people interact with art. This does not mean that the viewer sees the same thing as the artist. Nor should you, necessarily. You decide what the art means to you. Now Jim here seems to think the art should very clearly state to the viewer what the artist’s feelings were, rather than let them find their own answers. The reason someone writes an essay about their art is for this purpose, to tell you what they felt, but it is purposely left separate not because the art has failed, but because you should take away your own experience of the art, so that afterwards when you read the essay, you can compare your opinion to someone else’s, rather than go into the experience with prejudice. So what I take away from Jim’s writing is that he doesn’t understand what the purpose of art is. Sadly, many people dont. What really is upsetting though, is that he rants about it being stupid, pretentious, contrived, etc. with such a tone of reproach. Its fine if you didnt like it Jim. But if you try to shame me for enjoying The Path? No, Jim, shame on you.

“@Theotherguy, that’s the problem though, the criteria for a good game can’t be truly defined. And “fun” shouldn’t be a prerequisite for a good game imo.”

And now we get into the whole philosophical study of aesthetics and the baggage that comes along with it.

Although a game doesn’t necessarily have to be fun to be good, it certainly can’t be boring. If I want to play a game for an artistic experience, I want to walk away from it feeling better for the experience. If a game is frustrating and boring, I will not enjoy the experience, in spite of the message the game is supposed to be conveying.

If a painting is indiscernible and indistinct, I can’t derive a meaningful message from it. If a film is confusing and hard to follow, I can’t derive artistic themes from it. If a piece of music is cacophonous and arrhythmic, it loses its sense of being music. If a game is boring and frustrating, it loses its credibility as a game.

Many art games really are just boring, frustrating, and vague. The Path is an excellent example.

literally everyone who has commented on this including me is retarded

Everyone who has commented on this excluding me hasn’t read Jim’s articles.

This thread in one paragraph:

“Of course, most of these indie games get away with their bullshit because there is always a subgroup of people too terrified of looking stupid to argue against “art.” Your game can be a broken, waffling, irritating mess, but if you call it an artistic endeavor, there will be an army of pretentious Internet professors defending it and telling dissenters that they just don’t understand.”

I agree with peshoff. The “art game” label, at the moment, is usually a license to make crappy games that are still very capable of receiving praise. Sure, some people enjoy them nonetheless, but there’s a tendency to delegitimize criticism of them- Sterling’s point.

He does come off as a bit of a prick, especially since he doesn’t seem to have good words for *any* art game (however few there are good ones out there).

Either way, I think in time art games will either grow up to be enjoyed by lots of gamers, or remain as they are and disappear up the collective arse of a few cliquey pseudo-intellectual circle-wankers (not saying there’s an art game crowd like that now). Maybe Sterling’s posture is helpful in steering an endangered genre with tons of potential towards a better future.

@Alex: people who call themselves retarded are retar… oh.

oh, certainly, critique away, but if you demand to be spoon-fed meaning from it you cannot devise yourself, you just end up looking childish. Oh I’m too terrified to give my real opinion Jim? is that why i disagree with you? Why dont you go ahead and straw man me some more? I suppose by calling me a ‘pretentious internet professor’ means your arguments are unassailable, anyone who disagrees must be a hopeless victim of this purported art bullshit, oh heavens no!

Jim Sterling fits into a very simple character arch-type, which Brian Reagan discusses in-depth here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QvSoRQrVJg

What I took from the article was not “art games are bad” nor even “art games have to be fun to be good” but, “games which are viewed as art games should be criticised even though they are art games”

Quite often I find the indie games is scared to criticise art games. This also happens with a lot of other genres I find, experimental projects, being books or films or whatever are not criticized simply because they are an experiment.

Experiments should be experiments because they get an outcome and change something to get a better outcome in the next experiment, and this needs to be applied to art games as well.

Art games need criticism as much as any other games, regardless of their status as art games. If its a bad game, say that. If its a good game say that. The writer of the article doesn’t want art games to go away, he wants them to get better, to evolve.

Yeah fatso! Go pick your snivveling nose, which you turn up at the frontier of gaming society – art games may be pretentious but they’re bringing new stuff to the field whether you like it or not.

Don’t be a hata <3

Guess what kids, you’re falling for a massive troll (lol massive get it Jim is a fatty). All Jim does is make controversial flamebaiting articles.

I don’t get it… They always refer to 5-10 of the currently well-known indie games as the representative state of so called art games in general. I don’t consider myself as a “literate gamer” at all, but I’m pretty sure that there are many other good examples out there, which are truly able to demonstrate the artistic potential of this new medium. Vectorpark’s wonderful games for example. Jodi’s “Untitled Game”, as an older conceptual “art piece”. Myst/Riven. Older adventure games, like The Longest Journey maybe, as some older commercial examples. Cactus’ games. Or increpare’s series. Agj’s story-based games. To name just a few I know from the forums… Linger in Shadows, a relatively new interactive piece for PS3. And .deTuned. Interactive new media art installations/programs. Game-like toys coming out for iPhone… Old flash-websites of the early days of the http://www... Elektroplakton, things like that. Storybook-types of games like Samorost… – I don’t know, but there are so many good examples out there that demonstrate that games — and esp. small independent games — can be used in many expressive and artistic ways… It’s probably true that there’s no big, monumental Shakespear-equivalent type of work yet, but who cares! Otherwise it would be dead and dry place to be, like the the snobby high-art world today. Modern, but dead, scary and simply deadlocked. I mean, experimentalism is great sign for life… Even when it’s futile, weird or even a full failure. I see it a bit like nature’s evolution, with hundreds of required but maybe “failed” species/mutations crawling up the global canvas of the internet. Not driven/led by institutions, or other limiting forces anymore, but just the creators/players/viewers, directly. Still, I think those critical voices are right about certain games in particular, but IMHO it’s much too generalizing to be right about the entire diversity of “artistic indie games”…

@Theotherguy, I completely disagree, but each to their own.

Boring or confusing, hey, there can be contextual merit in doing that.

Games are one form of art anyway (considering they involve creation, molding, imagination, and architecture). “Art Games”, which are another variation of game design, is simply a way for people to express there ideas differently. Don’t know why there’s such a big hubbub over it. Surely there is enough room for Art Games, considering there are certain genres, such as the first Person Shooter, which is overwhelmed and overflowing with the occasional innovative idea and yet far more knee-deep in mediocrity and creative design than probably any other genre, even more than RPG’s. From the standpoint of a gamer who enjoys games from almost every and all genres, I’d say if yet one more First Person Shooter can be made, and for every new FPS made, surely there is room for several dozen Art Games which perhaps might not innovate but instead might inspire. I can’t think of any time when new ideas in development, creativity, and imagination have had a negative effect except maybe when they are forced on people, which I haven’t encountered yet (in gaming).

However, all games should be subject to the same type of criticism regardless of their ingredients or development, though perhaps not all for the same reasons based on genres and / or mechanics and possibly the intent of the creator (developer).

ART IS FOR GAY PUSSIES!

Jim’s comments on “art games” can just as well be applied to art.

He cites BioShock as an example of something good as opposed to something bad – an “art game”. He likes a clear narrative, to be led by the hand, told what to think.

Others don’t. He could just as well bitch about how much greater some painted by numbers cartoon bullshit is compared to Rothko.

He’d be wrong though, as he is now.

yes, kwyjibo, they can indeed be applied to all kinds of art.

And he would be right in all of those cases.

Also, when you continually remove the necessary elements from a game, it ceases to become a game and instead becomes a toy, an interactive narrative, or an interactive art display.

A game requires structure, goals, and interaction. If it lacks any of these, it is not even a game at all.

If a game is poorly defined in any of these areas (yet it makes an attempt in all three) then it is simply a bad game.

I had considered that Jim is probably a troll, but that doesnt mean i can ignore his slander

haha this made it all the way to TIGSource huh?

well said Derek!and Jim did have good points but has quite the negative attitude.

Derek,

I would be really interested in seeing you write an elaboration on point 1.

How do you feel “art” games have already developed from their primitive roots? Can you predict what the next steps of the evolution of the art form are?

How do we bridge the gap between “low art” games and “high art” games? Is that even a valid goal? Is the medium of games robust enough to truly support pure “high art” games?

How will we know when “art” games are established as a form? How long do you think the process will take?

i think jim ko’ed derek. he might be a bit offfensive, but he has great points.

Jim does make a few valid observations, yes. but mostly his arguments are fallicious, hypocritical, and ignorant. For a man who speaks of delivery, perhaps he should consider his own delivery, before he calls everyone who disagrees with him a ‘pretentious internet professor’.

Yes, Jim did say “bad art games are bad” and “not innovative art games are not innovative”. I think we can all agree on those points.

But he did write a lot more than that, and there was a lot more implied (or directly stated) by his article. That’s what I wanted to address. Specifically:

*1. That vagueness is bad.*

*2. That the creators of the games he mentioned are lazy and uninspired.*

*3. That making these games more fun is necessarily how to make them more valuable or engaging.*

To reiterate, I agree that games can be innovative and fun at the same time. I’ve said repeatedly that I’d like to see more depth and polish in indie games… and I also defended the IGF this year when people said it was not innovative enough.

But notwithstanding the “black is not white” arguments, those articles are way off base, imo. And yeah, they’re needlessly vitriolic and sarcastic.

Hope that clears up my point of view a little bit – I am defending art games here, but I’m not giving them a free pass. (Just as Jim is not saying all indie games are bad, which is never something I implied!)

Jim’s article is pretty much spot-on.

The part where he mentions Heavy Rain is pretty important. As of this writing, the game’s not actually available yet. Only the critics have played it, since they get advance copies for review. Yet, you have fans insisting his review is clearly wrong and biased, despite those same fans having yet to be able to even play the game.

It’s clear, they don’t want to like Heavy Rain because it’s fun. They want to like it to be in a clique that hates mainstream games and man they’re cool because of that. This gives crappy games (art or not) a free pass to be crappy and get nothing but praise, and enjoyable mainstream games nothing but vitriol despite the fact that they’re actually not all that different than the indie games.

If we can’t give criticism where it is needed, then how is anybody going to actually improve?

-SirNiko

@DalaranJ:

_”How do you feel “art” games have already developed from their primitive roots? Can you predict what the next steps of the evolution of the art form are?”_

That’s a good question. Like I admitted to Jason, I’m not familiar with the art games people were making in the 80′s. (Does The Manhole count as an art game?!) So I’m not sure how they’ve evolved from then, although I believe the current generation is inspired in great deal by intuitive tools (Game Maker, Unity, Flash) and the indie games scene.

Until now you had to be a coder to make a game, I think that’s a big difference between then and now. It’s harder to be spontaneous when you have to do a lot of programming. I think things can be lost in the process. (I love programming, but it’s not the same as drawing or even dragging and dropping.)

I think “art games” in the future will remain vague and relatively abstract (and possibly very short), but they’ll also be more engaging and less clunky. A lot of them will work better with interfaces like Natal and eventually “Holodeck 0.1″. I think strict goals will feel less necessary with more natural interfaces.

For now, I’m satisfied that art games are trying to express things that games have had a hard time expressing, even if they are kind of clumsy about it. If something is new it’s not necessarily going to be good, but I think newness is a good thing. There are hardly enough art games out there yet for me to be tired of them (relative to every other type of game).

_”Is the medium of games robust enough to truly support pure ‘high art’ games?”_

Video games are robust enough to support anything. I can’t imagine anything that couldn’t eventually be done with the right technology.

“Also, AmnEn, no game shuns, or can shun, gameplay. [...] It’s a generic term, and implies no scale of values. I think you mean that they shun simple “funness”.”

It’s not about fun. It’s about the game actually giving you something to do besides merely interact with it. Everything on your computer is interactive, this web browser I’m typing this message with is interactive.

And yes games can shun gameplay, just as my web browser shuns it and doesn’t try to be a game. It doesn’t ask me to guess a number from 1 to 10 before I can see my homepage. The difference between something being a game and something merely being an application is actually quite obvious.

Corpus, pretty ironic you question my choice of words and then proceed by providing a post of fitting characteristics to my chosen words.

Very well, I made an Art Game just for you. Here are the install instructions: Open whatever Tool you use for Spreadsheets, Calc, Excel, your call. Randomly mark a number of cells and paint them blue.
To start the game you click whatever cell you feel most comfortable with. You control my Art Game by using the Arrow Keys. Reaching non blue tiles wins the Art-Game.
I hereby call this game “Deep Blue World: Life simulated in a cell of meaning” and it’s about the deeper connections of life, how it might appear like an endless struggle of swimming in an ocean of blue.

What’s that? It’s not a game? How dare you deny it the nature of a game? It’s got controls, Start, Finish, a Character, yep all the hallmarks of a game.
What? It sucks? Nuh-uh, I’m sorry my dear. You’re not allowed to have a negative opinion about my Art-Game. It’s Art! Art is exceptional and creative by default and if you don’t agree, honey, you just aren’t getting the deeper meaning of the Art-Game!

Art – “Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature; The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms …”

fuck you all.

I’ve seen a lot of stubborn comments posted here. It almost sounds as if some people are trying to bash Derek for his comments, meanwhile he hasn’t done any bashing toward Jimbo, so it seems peoples passion for game discussion is a little misplaced (not everyone here, just a handful or two).

Derek is no less entitled to his point of view than Jim was when writing the article. Derek elaborated on his view and opinion. Jim did have some valid points but Derek also countered some of those points with his own.

We could easily end this discussion right now by analyzing all of the games Jimbo has made himself… Let me know when you find one that we can criticize ;)

So how about this, lets not get all poopy with each other over our opinions about games.

Discussions aren’t about seeing who got burned the best or who dissed who. Lets stop with the childishness.

@falsion: Well, an application is designed to help you accomplish a task, like browsing the web. A game is meant to be played, and I think you can play a game without being given a clear objective. Calvinball is a game, isn’t it?

And what about Progress Quest? It certainly feels like playing, even though I’m not doing anything except hit “START”.

Part of me is impressed; Jim Sterling actually managed to put together not one, but two almost coherent posts that manage to make genuinely worthwhile statements. I found myself, less than eagerly, agreeing with parts of many of his points. Because he’s… well, Jim Sterling, most of these points got lost in bile and petulant whining. I seriously hope somebody who ISN’T an attention-seeking whore takes up his banner and does something worthwhile with it. Such debate is good for the indie scene, and long overdue.

Wait, you’re using an example from a comic strip? Are you serious? Right, that’s very funny and real mature of you. I don’t even think you read the article you’re replying to, much less my post.

Really, you’re no better than Jim Sterling with that post.

Um.

I love Jim sets himself up as some sort of hero against his own supposed injustices, charging off at tiny windmills with a horde of followers whose mentality is that of Warhammer 40k Orks, the biggest, most cunnin’ is the best.

Certain games are not to your tastes, great!

If you want to criticize this stuff for valid reasons then go for it! You think the rules weren’t clear enough? Oh fine, something to keep in mind for the future! Cool!

But if I see more hating on stuff with this kneejerk “uh oh I think the creator has big ideas!” whinging I’m going to punch your fat snout.

The discussion only gets to this lame, factional crud-slinging because everyone is so tightly wound. I think there’s an ideological split here where there doesn’t need to be. It’s still about people making neat stuff right? Boo!

Addendum: I don’t get how he couldn’t figure out the void, I’m a bit into it and so far they’ve explained everything pretty straight, even though the metaphysical terms are silly. _/o_

Can anyone name an “art game” “that does not bore the experienced gamer to death within the first few minutes?”

@TeamQuiggan:

Are you being stupid or work as a strawman to prove Jim’s point about indie people being shallow self-righteous pricks?

@alastair:

If you mean specifically games that call themselves “art games”, then no.

@alastair
Define experienced gamer. Do you mean one of the knee jerk frat boys who plays every halo clone and thinks he knows everything there is to know about games because he usually comes second in every game of cod he plays?

What’s the quote from?

I would argue that they’re mostly played by ‘experienced gamers’ but on the other hand, they’re mostly short too!

I like how ‘art game’ is simultaneously used to legitimize or discredit stuff people like or dislike.

I think it’s possible to be a H4RDK0R3 G4M3R and an artfaggot at the same time. ;)

@14113:

The last time I checked false dichotomy was a logical fallacy.

Actually, I’d compare current indie games to suprematism, especially to the infamous Black Square.

Look at Black Square and tell me if it’s art or not. The similarity is striking.

Looks ugly and primitive – check

Even a kid can make it – check

Uneffective in conveying it’s message or has no message at all – check

etc. etc.

@ Derek, of course. You are both a gamer and an artfag (as Alex Kierkegaard would say) at the same time.

@lemon Jesus
I agree that it is probably wrong to group people so rigidly into two classes, but I think it is important to distinguish between people who dislike ALL indie games and those who appreciate indie games but dislike certain art games.

I dislike the term “Experienced gamer”. It’s too much of a hard term to define, like the term good driver. Does good driver mean that you drive safely or that you can drive quickly. In the same way does “experienced gamer” mean that you are an extremely good player, beating every game with ease, or someone who plays every single mainstream game released or someone who plays lots of varied games of different genres, mainstream and indie and who has a good knowelege of all games, not just the ones he usually plays.

Black Square isn’t especially ugly or primitive looking though…you’re thinking of Matisse maybe.

As for the other stuff, Malevich is a pretty interesting case and too specific to apply here! If you want to it’d be more comparable to really hardcore genre games. I mean one of his main aims was basically to dispense with the baggage of art history and start building a self-dependent visual language. Black Square was sort of as far as you could pare things down, really.

‘Games that ACT like indie games’.. thats what truly pissed me off. Derek’s relatively more open mind wins this argument for me… tigsource for the win, forever.

Artgames are cool and all… But its pointless to seperate them from other games. All games are art, whether you agree with me or not, its true.

When you stop doing that (seperating) some games pop out and some just aren’t good. I haven’t played The Path, because its not my kind of thing, just from the vibe and all that it didn’t compel me to play it. I’m sure those who felt some sort of connection to images of it and descriptions of it would enjoy it, I assume i’d probably end up brushing it aside. Somebody who looks and acts like that guy just simply doesn’t have any business playing a game like that. It’s down to choice, and everyone gets to make their own decisions about whether it was enjoyable or thought provoking or not, but to put out a negative public message aimed at the people creating these things is just off, in my book. It seems like the general consensus here is, that some games are good and some are bad, full stop.

We’ve already seperated indie games from “normal” games, lets just stop right here and let anybody make whatever they want. If people aren’t buying it eventually it will turn free if it wasn’t to begin with, if nobody downloads it then nobody downloads it, and if people do and try it and don’t like it, everyone knows downloads don’t hurt. In fact they’re addictive like crack. Many indie games are small in the MB sense. Some people manage to convey things with words, some with music and some with visual art, and this big internet we have here lets us share these thoughts and feelings we have without any corporate/commercial shit involved. Now the art form that contains all these more familiar forms of art; visual art, music, moving pictures, the art of story-telling, and the “new” interactive option that allows you to manipulate all of the above, is in my opinion the most expressive art form the world has seen so far. Let us keep making whatever we want to, and sharing it, and not care what furry monocle-wearing nasty rude beasts have to say.

Nothing’s ever made me feel exactly like Survival Crisis Z did. It’s not a so-called ARTGAME, but its version reality and the feeling of “I need to survive” oozing out of every element of everything in the game can inspire unconventional kinds of thoughts in a person. Somebody might really need to play that game, and times might come again in their lives when just playing it will fulfill a need that’s come around again, the mindset of sleep deprivation and repetitive survival-related actions in a very hostile and dark environment… Its the addictiveness of the gameplay that adds to its overall effect. The thing is this could be ANY game, and the effect it had on me may not be the intended effect, I know this and that exactly is my point. Just keep making games everyone. Whatever it is you want to make. The Marriage, The Crowd, that-browser-poetry-girl-swimming-word-changing-one-i-can’t-remember-the-name-of, whatever floats your independent boat. I wrote way too much!

@ROM KITTY :

“Artgames are cool and all… But its pointless to seperate them from other games”

But that’s what indie developers do. Instead of making games that can be called art (e.g. Silent Hill, Mother 3, Yume Nikki etc.) they make “artsy” games, as if trying to prove to players and themselves something that we – the intelligent people – already know.

Listen people, games are already art. They can make us feel, think etc. They can have a profound message. Don’t pretend to be artists, just be them. Make some good stuff, not the usual pretencious bulshit.

You forgot to mention that the creator of Edmund made Edmund, basically invalidating indie gaming for a solid three decades or so.

>You forgot to mention that the creator of Edmund made Edmund, basically invalidating indie gaming for a solid three decades or so.

also forgot to mention that art games aren’t fun or good or art

I always read Jim as satire.

Great article, Derek! I agree with everything, and I have nothing to add!

I’m fine with art games as long as they are, you know, FUN TO PLAY.

@Lemon Jesus
I think you missed the main thrust of what Jim was saying, or at least, trying to say between silly hyperbole and pointless vulgarity. Which was Art/Indie games should be better games, which was the topic of a much more reasonable Rev Rant months ago.

Guess what? I don’t like most art games, I just like the fact that they are made, and that they can find an audience. What I don’t like is jerks that shit in other people’s sandbox, which Jim stole the crown and ran with.

Why is Jim fighting it so much? No one is forcing him to eat green eggs and ham.

Answer: “119 comments”.

from his article:

“Of course, most of these indie games get away with their bullshit because there is always a subgroup of people too terrified of looking stupid to argue against “art.” ”

when someone says something like that, that’s kind of it. you can’t argue against that type of mentality. they actually believe that the only people who like games like blueberry garden or yume nikki like them because they’re terrified of looking stupid. which kind of completely ignores that you’re far more likely to be attacked on the internet for liking that type of game than for hating them.

if someone were really concerned about looking stupid on the internet, they’d pretend to hate every art game, even the ones they sort of enjoyed.

this isn’t restricted to art games, either. a lot of people are saying that if you like vvvvvv, you only like it to look cool, you don’t actually like it, you have to secretly hate it instead.

I can see why so many people seem to think games have to be fun, but I personally think that’s a very narrow view of what games are. It’s like saying all stories have to be non-fictional.

What’s with all the hating anyway? If you don’t like it, then don’t buy it/use it/play it. Stick to the stuff you like, if that’s what you want to do.

Dismissive troll is dismissive.

I’ve spent ten minutes trying to write some dumb artful response when all I need to say is that Paul Eres’ comment is one hundred percent correct.

y’know, um…

by my definition of art, freeze tag qualifies, so i dont see how vidyagames aren’t it

Perhaps the fine members of this community should look up “ad hominem.” Attacking Jim Sterling is both easy and enjoyable, but it achieves nothing; that halfwit stumbled upon, or perhaps stole, some legitimate points, and attacking him won’t make them go away. From what I’ve seen, there IS a subgroup of people who will fawn over every game that attempts to be art that is pushed their way. I enjoy art games, and feel they are a worthy part of the gaming world, but not everyone turns the critical eye towards them that they deserve. Perhaps I’m still angry that Blueberry Gardens, a decent but unremarkable game, won over Zeno Clash, Machinarium, and Osmos at IGF ’09, but sometimes I wonder just how good at being critical the indie gaming community really is.

I need to say: don’t stop the art.

Games with different purposes shouldn’t be measured the same way. Even if the art games sometimes don’t meet up all the expectations as a game, they more often than not show something new. Even when they don’t actually innovate, they show a new perspective.

Perspective is everything. Including why some people see more value in art games than others. It is subjective.

There is no right answer. A vastly popular solution will still be lacking for some.

Dignifying Sterling’s sensational trolling only makes him seem more important than he is. For a guy who writes about video games, he seems to hate pretty much anything about them (though he especially hates the Wii). When caught with his pants down on illogical arguments, he just brushes it off, and continues to write the same shit as proven fact. I’m very disappointed with you Derek, you should instead simply write your article “in defence of art games” without telling us what exactly inspired you to write it. Sensational blogs isn’t what we come here for and someone of your status bothering with people like that makes them seem more legit than the fad of the sensantional gaming blogs really is.

@KC,

I agree with you but the entirety of these comments has degraded into an abyss of immaturity and buffoonery pretty rapidly (not everyone here, just the few that really want to stand out because they need attention, badly).

Derek didn’t post this topic as an Attack against Jim. I think people just got heated because of the topic or subject matter. It definitely makes for interesting debate, but when people don’t express themselves intelligently or thoughtfully they end up making themselves look like dickheads. Not that Jim is a dickhead, but some of his viewpoints did seem a little brash but without putting much thought into it. Some of his comments just seemed like heated comments. The opinions in the article just happened to be linked to one of the nerves in the indie game creation community. Unfortunately some of the people in the community, or passerby’s that decided to participate in this comment thread, got carried away and acted like ass-hats. For the most part the community is civil, but there will always be those asshats that desperately need attention and usually drawing the wrong kind of attention by as if to say “Oi! Over here – I’m an Asshat! Listen to me now, don’t I look like a knob?”

It would be amusing if it wasn’t so sad. Luckily, most people in the community also have good humor. :)

Not sure why people are expected to show respect when Sterling clearly didn’t. Fuck this and fuck that and my opinion is king, yet if you tell me off for being an asshole, you’re an asshole yourself, and your points are void? That’s not how it works… Derek was civil in his response, that’s all that matters. If Sterling can write crap shitting on people’s work, people’s sense of art, people’s thoughts and ideas they doodle into games he can choose to play, or not, then I think it’s more than fair game to tell him off for it… After all, he did just insult everyone who has ever liked an art game, regrdless of what game that was, and what made them like it. I maintain his trolling should not have been dignified with a response from an actual respectable person, and an artist. It’s what I think, and just as Jim writes what he thinks (well, more like what he thinks will drive traffic to his posts so he can get a bonus) so can anyone here.

@KC – i love that you’re saying not to attack him while simultaneously calling him a halfwit, which is just as bad (or worse) as anything anyone called him in this comment section so far

anyway, art games don’t really get free passes — go back read the reviews of blueberry garden some time. i enjoyed that game quite a bit, but i also agree that machinarium is the better game and should have won the igf. if anything, art games are attacked the most of any genre, saying they get free passes from the indie games community seems ridiculous to me, i’ve seen more hate leveled towards them than any other type of game, at least in this community.

Holy fuck people, play games you enjoy and let other people do likewise. I applaud Derek for sticking up for all games, regardless of genre, but really Sterling is nothing more than a troll. I can see his contorted face right now — monocle and all — chuckling as he sips yet another glass of wine, disguising the self-loathing he obviously harbors. Don’t feed the troll, and don’t beat a dead horse. If everybody is going to come into these ‘discussions’ pigheadedly without even considering the other side’s opinion we shouldn’t waste our time. To repeat myself, play games you enjoy and give others the same courtesy.

Derek, I’d feel a lot better if you’d said, “Good games will always have a place here on the TIGSource front page.” My problem is that TIGSource is supposed to be the mecca for good independent games. It’s coming off as if TIGSource is the place for art games, period. If a game is art, or indie for that matter, and it isn’t good, I couldn’t give two shits. I like games that are good and happen to be art or indie, not the other way around. I may not know art, but I know what I like. ;)

I agree with your statements.
also, cocks.

Well now I’m not sure how to feel about this dumb old Internet fight, because I hate Edmund but I also hate Internet teenagers who think they know shit about art.

I’m not a fan of “art games” by any means but why would anyone want to be associated with the dumb cheerleading comments at Destructoid calling for an electronic Bonfire of the Vanities.

Jim Sterling is a terrible writer and a hypocrite. I might agree with some of his points (particularly regarding The Path), he makes some statements that are outright insane.

“The Path is everything terrible about art games, and perfectly encapsulates the reason why most indie developers still live hand to mouth, working on their “art” in a basement somewhere in a bad part of town.”

Wait, what?

The reason Indie game devs work in their basement is because their games aren’t enjoyed by Jim Sterling? that doesn’t make any sense. Also, and this might seem like pointing out the obvious, if people stay in their basements, does it matter how bad their part of town is?

When Jim Sterling was challenged over his review of Assassins Creed 2 he justified himself by saying he would quit when the Destructoid community no longer supported him. He should be around for a good while then, much to my distaste.

“1. Art games are a relatively new concept, and like anything new, they are primitive by default.”

Translation: It’s new, therefore flaws, even if they follow a repeating pattern, and coincidentelly are similiar to centuries old cliches about art, don’t matter.

—

“2. People do genuinely enjoy these games, and find meaning in them. Even if a player is simply filling in what’s intentionally vague or abstract about the game, that’s valuable. By analogy, there’s value in a cup or a bowl.”

Translation: But SOME people enjoy them! Plus, if you do enough IMAGINATION yourself, regardless of how efficient that “game” ASSISTS in this, then the GAME is valuable, rather than YOUR ability to imagine something out of nothing. Horray, a blank piece of paper is valuable, if *I* am just inventive enough to imagine something on it.

—

“3. Jim, you tore apart Edmund and The Marriage, calling them “boring”, “horrible”, and “intellectually lazy”. These are free games made as experiments, as prototypes – the video game equivalents of doodles or sketches, and just as necessary to making games as to making paintings. You railed on two little experimental games for half a dozen paragraphs, and failed to mention that Edmund’s creator, Paul Greasley, also made Zompocalpyse and The Marriage’s creator, Rod Humble, is the executive producer for The Sims (the lazy bastard)!”

Translation: But…but they ALSO made other games! Therefore the mentioned flaws are invalid. These scetches don’t count – they’re not the “real thing” – therefore, one is not allowed to rate their merit. They have some kind of amnesty.

—

“4. Your argument is the same argument people have used for centuries against artists trying to do new things. Here is what art critic Louis Leroy wrote of one of Claude Monet’s paintings around the dawn of Impressionism (1874):”

Translation: That argument has been used before, therefore it must be invalid.

—

Welcome to tigsource, please leave your selfhonesty, common sense and capability of individual thought in the garbage bin at the entrance, and enjoy your visit in the collective.

I pretty much agree.
Art games suck, are usually pretentious, boring and, uh, well – artsy.

Indie games shouldn’t try to be indy, they should try to be GOOD.

Bleh.

I don’t think art games are very fun or interesting, so I don’t play them…

Don’t really understand why you’d need to bash a genre like that, though. Some people like strategy games, some people like RPGs and some others like “art games”.

If Jim’s basic position is that so-called “art games” should be more fun, then that’s a flawed premise. How many art movies are comedies? Very few. That’s because laughter and comedy has an inherent distancing effect on its subject, thus making it more difficult for it to have what can be termed a transcendental or lasting emotional effect on the viewer/player. That’s why pretty much all comedies become less funny in their third acts, because the creators want to get the viewer emotionally involved in the third act and the climax — something that’s very much hindered by comedy and laughter. To ask for art games to be less serious is in some ways like asking for horror games to be less scary.

Geez, finally someone spoke about this. Its ridiculous what has become of the indie “industry” where if you dont make something that doesnt fit…such as stupid artistic games, or games that are so freaking odd or ugly, to the point when people make real beautiful games, they get no attention because it does not look like pixel art from the 80s shit.

I just re-read Jim’s second article. It’s actually a lot more level-headed than the comments here would have me believe. All he’s saying is that games shouldn’t get a free pass on account of them being “art games” or “innovative”. I can agree with that. I’m not really sure these games are getting a free pass on account of these traits, though…

Jay said it too!

“Derek, I’d feel a lot better if you’d said, “Good games will always have a place here on the TIGSource front page.” My problem is that TIGSource is supposed to be the mecca for good independent games. It’s coming off as if TIGSource is the place for art games, period.”

If a game does not fit within this “click” that this “industry” wants, it wont get 1 minute of attention. Its become ridiculous and it often feels like I am back in High School, I must do some pixel junk so I can get the attention I deserve!

I think the problem is when artists respond to criticism about their gameplay with the famous, “Working as intended.” When really they just simply did not put enough time into fixing all the glitches/annoyances.

It’s like shit. An artist goes to toilet and do shit, since he produced it the shit becomes art.. but still remains shit..

Some example of good Art imo..

http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/163465-ass.jpg

I am sick and tired of reading fat people’s internet opinions.

This man is nothing but another member of the dullard land whale brigade that makes up about half of all games journalism today. If you enjoy art games, and therefore need something more out of your video games than spending millions of hours harvesting numbers and little thumbnail images on Xbox Live in a never-ending retard nerd quest of pointless grinding idiocy, then don’t bother listening to this talking blood blister’s imbecilic opinions.

i think by fun he means engaging. if a game is just so vague that the interactive purposes drop to near zero, the game will not hold the attention it may deserve because the player has no idea whats going on. but really, if a new gameplay concept and message are being put out there, you should really explain it until the masses understand or you’re not going to get recognition you may deserve.

the same thing goes for movies. it’s taken decades for people to become akin to certain types of films. you can’t just expect everyone to like a game and take ‘abstract artistic value’ to merit if they have no idea wtf is going on in the game

@jon schubbe,

I think by definition a video game is interactive, otherwise it isn’t a game at all, it’s either a trailer or a tech demo. If a person cannot interact with it than it is not a video game. That doesn’t mean a game has to be complicated to be engaging. A game can be made up of one basic mechanic alone and still be engaging or perhaps not, but I think it’s obvious that interactivity is a given otherwise it’s got nothing to do with a video game aside from the fact that it may be a preview and a look at what someone is working towards. Even art games have to have some sort of interactivity, no matter how simple, mundane, flawed, or even misinterpreted they are, before they can be called a game… otherwise, they’re pieces of digital art and cannot be mistaken for games.

That’s why games are so different from movies, music, and art. Without the end product being an interactive experience it is not a game at all, it’s just something that somebody just wanted you to either watch, listen to, or look at but NOT interact with.

So, as long as “Art Games” do provide an interactive experience in some shape or form they can safely be called games, whether they are fun or not, or or bad, or perhaps even understood, it is up for the user to decide and that’s partially why they should be criticized the same as all other games but that criticism should also be based on and for its merits within that genre. They should not be compared to games outside their genre because doing that sort of thing would make less sense than a game that is itself incomprehensible.

In other words, you can’t compare Super Mario Brothers to Call of Duty to Blueberry Garden to World of Goo to Fable to Half-Life to Machinarium to The Path to VVVVVV. (I just rhymed off a bunch of titles that people would recognize, but I think you understand what I mean).

You don’t have to be a Fag-tard-h4rdc0r3-G-Un1t-Playa to enjoy, like, dislike or simply not appreciate a game, but a game has to be played before it can be criticized and in my opinion a “real” gamer (a person who love playing video games) wouldn’t make a criticism without trying the game first while coming to their own conclusions, only then can they come up with a thoughtful comment, because to insult a group of people who might like what you otherwise do not like without any sort of thought is not making a comment as a gamer, it’s more like coming off as a hot headed asshat who has problems with people who do not like what they like which has little to do with video games if anything at all, that’s more a problem with oneself.

So called “Art Games” are only different because of the message they offer, not because of the gameplay or the graphic they sports. Making them into some sort of Gaming Messiah is kinda dumb.

Statements like “Art games will always have a place here on the TIGSource front page” without mention of quality or originality is exactly what I expect from TIGSource.

TIGSource has *never* been a source of indie gaming for me. My opinion as a “indie layman” who doesn’t care much about being part of an indie community is that TIGSource is more of a “Game Our Artsy Forum Users Make” kind of place than a blog about everything Indie. I would compare this site to DeviantArt or SuicicideGirls.com : They are not sites about “art” and “erotism”, but sites about what their members think that art and erotism is.

TIGSource is great in that respect but lets not pretend that what goes around here is in the interest of everything “indie”. There is a LOT of indie game out there that are just plain bad, and if TIGSource want to only talk about the ones that they consider worthy (usually because “Edmund” or “Cactus” is written somewhere in the credits) they still need to recognize that, to layman gamers, art games aren’t that artsy or interesting.

Not everyone likes Monet, and it doesn’t make their opinion on art any less valid that any other.

This is pointless! People who like art games ain’t gonna stop liking them just because some fatso decided to make a public matter out of his idiocy, nor is there anything anyone can say that will make people set on hating art games suddenly appreciate them.

@Dodger

I agree with what you are saying, but I understand that certain genres should be compared to others in that genre. I was just merely agreeing to Sterling’s views about how being too vague as a sacrafice for trying to be unique by using 8bit graphics like everyone else, for example, and using some 1-dimensional message is just an excuse to be called an ‘art’ game.

I find a lot of different games enjoyable in different ways wether they are 8bit poetry simple vague gameplay or not. I just think he’s talking more about the pretentious ones that give up a good message or narrative story or artistic graphics/sound just to have ‘innovative’ gameplay. Innovation can be good if the narrative/message, art, and music, and direction are all good as well. You can not just have one of these and get away with it to have a ‘good’ game.

The art depends on sound, sound depends on art, story depends on direction/how it’s told, and vise versa. Interactivity depends on all of this if it’s going to be called a ‘game’. And I have to agree that you can’t just lack in everything except ‘innovation in game play mechanic’ and still argue the game is good just because it’s innovative in one of these categories. It has to be innovative in all the categories AND still be aesthetically pleasing in one way or another to keep player interest. Yes that is opinion where reviews come in but you should understand this.

Sterling takes it one step further in talking about how artsy games think they are unique by using 8 bit graphics, chiptune music, and making everything else (story, narrative, message, gameplay) abstract or boring in every way. The example, Edmund, running back and forth in an 8bit land about rape. Yeah, I agree with him. I don’t see anything artsy about it. Did they ever say it was supposed to be very very artsy? Maybe not, but I have to agree that being pretentious can get REALLY bad when a game looks and plays like all the other ‘pretentious’ games out there.

“My problem is that TIGSource is supposed to be the mecca for good independent games. It’s coming off as if TIGSource is the place for art games, period. [...] If a game does not fit within this “click” [sic] that this “industry” wants, it wont get 1 minute of attention. Its become ridiculous and it often feels like I am back in High School, I must do some pixel junk so I can get the attention I deserve!”

which is kind of ironic because you’re saying that games which are majorities elsewhere (and which get covered in places like kotaku and joystiq) are underrepresnted in tigsource. but isn’t that the entire point of tigsource? to cover games that mainstream games journalists don’t? who really cares if we don’t review, say, starcraft 2? that’s not the site’s purpose. the purpose is to review offbeat and strange games.

it seems incredibly counter-intuitive to come to a site that covers strange games because they aren’t covered elsewhere, and complain that it doesn’t cover the types of games everyone else covers. that’s sort of like going into a black school in the south during segregation and complaining that they don’t allow enough whites in.

Gutter said it right! I think What he meant is that unless a game falls into the TIGsource style, or clicks from the forum, they will not be talked about, yet many other indie games which deserve to be mentioned do not because they are biosed about it.

If i made a stupid game, that had a character as a square pixel that moved left and right, TIGsource would probably be…OMG OMG AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!! ART!!!!!! OMG WOW SERIOUSLY THE GAME OF THE YEAR!

Yet you see amazing indie games out there that takes years to develop, yes may not be perfect but should deserve some kind of attention, and they are ignored. I myself have sent many times to people here to review or look into a game I made for almost 5 years, and I am ignored. And I know that I am not alone here when it comes to issues such as this. I have friends going through the same situation.

TIGS covers plenty games that aren’t art games, and has a forum where people post about tons of things the main website doesn’t discuss, giving opportunity to more people to get some exposure within the same community. Derek’s comment doesn’t in any way imply they only post about art games, and TIGS certainly covers tons of games that aren’t art games, and even has the TIGDB. At the end of the day, they aren’t paid to keep this website. If you think you can do a better indie games site that has better coverage, be my guest. I’ll certainly visit it if it’s good. But to be butthurt because your game wasn’t covered for reasons unkown is quite childish, as is to take it out on art games in general.

@chrknudsen (143)

“I just re-read Jim’s second article. It’s actually a lot more level-headed than the comments here would have me believe. All he’s saying is that games shouldn’t get a free pass on account of them being “art games” or “innovative”. I can agree with that. I’m not really sure these games are getting a free pass on account of these traits, though…”

Exactly. They don’t.

Sure, there’s a few folks out there for whom obscuritae automagically equals good but they’re kinda a minority and none of them are writing for any sort of blog, site, newspaper or magazine with any sort of authority so leave ‘em to have fun with their Ert. They’re not really hurting anyone and it’s kinda cute in a “I like Stephen Malkmus” kinda way.

The rest of the world and the vast, vast majority of people have the ability to cast a critical eye over things. KG’s Eurogamer of The Path is a perfect example of how utterly filled with bull Jim’s argument is. In fact, 99% of coverage of these games says Jim’s argument is a crock.

Perhaps, instead of pulling his best Richard Littlejohn face and yelling at the world outside for not conforming to his views he did even the slightest cursory research he’d know this.

But pretending that Sterling’s brand of journalism is anything but Richard Littlejohn-isms (Americans, insert abhorrent Fox commentator of choice here) or remotely grounded in any sort of reality is giving him way more credit than he deserves.

It’s schtick. It gets hits. Its CONTROVERSIAL! It’s Sterling.

That’s really all there is to it.

And whilst I applaud Derek’s attempt at a rational argument against it, because challenging idiots is always a worthy pursuit, it’d be easier to try and talk a camel into cooking you dinner tonight than convincing Jim Sterling to see sense. It’s not like he cares about sense, after all.

And lol @ people asking Derek to only post about “good games” when if there’s one thing that this “argument” should make clear is that “good” is an extremely subjective matter. If you want “good” games covered go ask Jim what he likes and he’ll be glad to tell you exactly what you should and what you shouldn’t play if you want to match his incedible personality and taste. On the other hand, this place provides coverage for tons of games and lets you decide what you like for yourself. To the possible extend obviously, this is still a hobby for the writers, and they have lives as well.

Art games suck dick and you’re a dumb idiot if you make them.

Or eat up 150 comments to whine about them.

@Matt – i don’t remember anyone contacting me, at least, about reviewing your game. send it over to rinkuhero @ gmail dot com and i’ll take a look at it. i’m happy to do reviews on request as long as i like the game. it just may take me some time since none of us do this editorship thing full time.

(this goes for your friends too, obviously)

if i don’t decide to review it, i’ll at least get back to you to tell you why (least i could do)

Anyone who thinks that just because games didn’t become art after the great “are games art?” debate ran out of steam means that they never will has obviously never created a work of art in their life.

Awful power you’re giving to the fat guy. To go down in history as the blackguard of an entire genre.

Don’t stretch too far on how much a critic can affect the medium. Don’t make it look like he’s making the entire choir look bad. He’s just a guy who reviews games. He will express his (often exaggerated and wildly deranged) opinions and they will reach a few minds and not most.

For every new thing out there there will be detractors and praisers, they will never be able to give the final word, either side.

I don’t like how the current Art-indie games go and history may prove me wrong, but it might just as well prove to be a big waste of time for you, I think that when it comes to taking a stand for or against the new, we can all just civilly agree to disagree (and, of course, continue to fire away at other as much as possible).

@Jay, @Matt, @Gutter, et al: You guys realize that a lot of people think we only post about “mainstream” indie games, too? My point being that I believe our coverage is actually pretty diverse.

Anyway, I usually just try to post games that are interesting in some way, good or bad. I personally wouldn’t post an art game just because it was an art game.

A lot of the media studies 101 waffle that art games tend to generate annoys me. But the knee-jerk anti-intellectualism that is, in turn, generated in response annoys me even more. Yes, we need more balanced, intelligent criticism. No, this isn’t it.

Neither the overblown praise of art games, or the spluttering denouncement that inevitably follows, really has anything more than a tentative connection to the actual work of game developers.

And let’s be clear – Tale of Tales are NOT representative of indie game developers (or art games) as a whole, and when they make their ridiculous statements, they are NOT speaking for everybody. You can’t criticise everybody else by association when you criticise Tale of Tales’ games.

I agree with Jim… to a degree. Wrote this post on the subject ages ago (more “too lazy too copy-paste” than “shameless self-advertising”):

http://wilbefast.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/crawford/

I think there’s potential for art in games, but nothing really qualifies yet. We’ve seen artistic art design within games, good music, good CGI movies, good writing – but the actual **game** is the oft-forgotten interactive side of things.

How many games have moved you in a way that could not have worked in a non-interactive medium? I can’t name one.

Still, as a medium we have to walk before we can run – it’s unfair to brow-beat those making an attempt: it might have little value in itself but it’s a stepping stone for those that follow, and as such deserves respect.

wow.
1. stating the obvious
2. its an opinion retard
3. “you’re wrong”
4. compare to some other guy and talk down on the guy

whats your point

1. hobbyist gam is betar
2. i angry
3. poop
4. oh gr8 jus sum old fart haet new gam!!!

@eva-jolli: Alright, that’s cool.

@Derek: Yeah! That makes sense! That’s what I expected. What’s next? Decide your journey. We await your return, warrior.

@everyone (Regarding this topic of discussion): Enter the heat of battle, go for it!

come on don’t be so mean derek — just cause she doesn’t use exact english doesn’t mean you can dismiss it on the basis of style.

i.e. don’t live up to eva’s impression of you in this game: http://tinyurl.com/spelunk2

Derek seems to have anger issues, always resorting to personal attacks or in my case, bringing up a game that exists in some cartoon as a way to mock what I said. What a shame, I thought Derek had way more class than this.

Oh, the sillyness of people.

Jimmy may not realise that his inflamatory articles do little more than push the developers of these experimental games to try harder, to show he’s wrong.

At least, that’s the way I’d feel about it.

Also, that’s he’d come out with a second article so soon after the first tells me that he’s not looking into making well-thought-out critiques or anything like that. He saw the first article gave him a bazillion hits, a link from David Jaffe and started a few flame wars, so he’s gonna ride those 15 minutes of fame for all they’re worth.

According to Wikipedia entry for “Calvinball”:

“The only consistent rule states that Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice.[49] Scoring is also arbitrary, with Hobbes at times reporting scores of “Q to 12″ and “oogy to boogy.”

Yeah, real mature…

Hey, Canvinball is awesome.

Also, o eva, u so silly

*CaLvinball

that was directed to derek, i meant that as a double post since you can’t edit posts here.

to “father of indie games”, you trash on someone’s opinionated article and think you’re any better with your snarky ending comment “Although, to be fair to Louis, he at least coined the term “Impressionism”.” and a misleading title “To Jim Sterling, Who Hates Art Games”. misunderstanding sterling’s whole point, just to criticize his use of the word “fuck.”

and hey, maybe you could respond properly to the criticism you get next time instead of grouping me as an “angry frontpage commenter.”

@Matt: Your opinion is obviously colored by your resentment over TIGS apparently ignoring your game. I make games too, none of them have received any wide exposure and I know how disheartening it is when people don’t care about something you’ve put a lot of work into, but taking a “these ignorant fools just can’t see my genius” stance is the wrong way of handling things.

Also, I don’t know what your game even is, but requesting exposure on the grounds that it took long to make seems like skewed logic to me. It’d be the exact same as art games getting exposure simply because they’re “artistic”.

all i know is Derek is pretty good at Bomberman B-)

The thing I dont get is, people take crazy shots at me for making Edmund, if you don’t like it im not forcing it down your neck, Ive made other indie games too, im pretty sure no one gave a shit about My First Skydiving Academy, Zompocalypse or any other games ive worked on in my free time, as a hobby.

Its pretty sad to see people I dont even know taking shots at me, you guys need to grow up and put your time to better use than flaming people who devote there free time to making new experiences for yall to play.

Jim Sterling is a useless cocksucker, as are all of destructoid.

I give a shit about My First Skydiving Academy!

>Its pretty sad to see people I dont even know taking shots at me, you guys need to grow up and put your time to better use than flaming people who devote there free time to making new experiences for yall to play.

it’s pretty sad that you can’t take criticism for your tasteless rape game

not just standing there and letting bullies punch you anonymously doesn’t mean you can’t take a punch

>The thing I dont get is, people take crazy shots at me for making Edmund, if you don’t like it im not forcing it down your neck

so you release something to the public and don’t expect anyone to voice their opinion about it

actually, that’s almost fair. i mean i wouldn’t have expected anyone to play it either

>not just standing there and letting bullies punch you anonymously doesn’t mean you can’t take a punch

making a tasteless rape game doesn’t mean you’ve ever committed a rape but it certainly doesn’t help your case

Dusty Spur: Theres a difference between personal attacks, and attacks on the game, the later I can deal with, because like you said, its given. But attacking the person making it, then its going to far.

“t’s pretty sad that you can’t take criticism for your tasteless rape game”

Its pretty sad you say that considering theres 20 odd pages on the forums of me willing and happy to talk Edmund, you act like im ignoring the opinions, I mean, If I was ignoring the opinions, why would I post here?

ya — people who flame others for their games often hide behind the ‘you just can’t take criticism!’ thing. but when you’re attacking a person, it’s not criticism of their game.

No, I am not bitter about anything. All I am doing is pointing something out that was also brought up in the discussion. Something that I and others have experienced. Wether people will agree with me or not on my opinions thats fine, its up to you all, but I am leaving my two cents, thats all I am saying.

sorry this comment above was for C.A. Sinclair :)

Farmergnome: It’s a game about rape. With what that says about the person who made it, how can you not expect personal attacks?

Who’s winning?

I kind of understand why Derek might be a little irked or irritated when people are either taking what his original post and comments were out of context or simply just trying to bash his comments when he in fact didn’t bash on Jim Sterling or his comments at all. He simply tried making counter points to the points that Jim had made. In regards to the original post made by Derek I didn’t read anything that could be considered a personal attack or defamatory towards Jim. Just as Jim, in his article didn’t really attack any one person in his Destructoid Article. Instead, I think it’s the way Jim was generalizing and talking about people who appreciate “Art Games”. I could see how it might rub people the wrong way because he did come off as somewhat of an arrogant snob, which is ironic since I think one of the points he was trying to make is that people who appreciate Art Games see themselves as something of a different breed. I really don’t know if that’s true or not as a generalization, but I certainly don’t believe that the majority of people who enjoy video games and appreciate diversity in video games would feel that they are above or beyond other gamers or other human beings for that matter simply because they get something out of these experiences where others might not. There might be a handful that do, but I refuse to believe some people need to be bigger assholes to separate themselves from lesser assholes so that they might stand a little higher in the garbage heap. If we’re going to generalize then basically we’re all assholes, we’d just rather deflect and draw attention to a different asshole other than ourselves.

Wow, that was totally Ramblomatic… but I think it made sense… a little.

Anyway, point is, Derek initially didn’t start this as a Dick waving contest or as a gay bashing towards Jim Sterling. I think he simply drew attention to an article written out of passion in one form or another that made for an excellent discussion. I think some people took it the wrong way though.

Whoever wins…

@hayate,

Ya, it’s a game about rape, and I sure hope there aren’t any people in here that have ever fully watched any Hentai – in fact to watch half of the Anime or read 2/3rds of the Manga out there would be a cardinal sin as well. *extreme sarcasm sprinkled with hints of absolute truths*

I realize the subject matter of the game might be tasteless and not to your liking, but hopefully I’ve made my point. To sit here and say that you found such a game appalling only to next go to your favorite porn site is more than a little hypocritical. And I’m sure there are more than a handful of people here that leave comments, hated the game for its subject matter alone, and yet frequent Porn sites. I can only guess and that is a rather general statement, but I’d almost be willing to bet money on it… almost.

maybe indie game developers ought to stop with the heteronomative bullshit for a little while.

heteronomative — like heteronormative, but in name only

farmergnome: I went into the forums to search for the thread on your game, mainly what I found was a whole bunch of posts by some guy who likes to use crude and often sexual imagery in a very cartoon way in his games? Is your rape game supposed to be about him? If so, seriously not cool.

200 comments in one day; a record?

The majority doesn’t genuinely enjoy art games, but the majority has learnt that they’re not allowed to critisize crap (art or not, but they’re generally art) games, as they will be immediately accused of trolling by a bunch of brown nosing hippies who like to defend a crap game that had the (only) amazing idea of being in 100×50, 2 colors mode.

>>200 comments in one day; a record?

I’m glad these aren’t comments about another crap artsy game, because some would have had the balls to claim “see, people are talking about it, it means this crap game has succeeded in some way, thus it’s an amazing game”.

A lot of art game haters are just reacting to the retarded fanatics who go to extremes and try to sound hip and smart. This happens with anything that has unreasonable fans.

@Dodger what are you talking about? I’ve never watched any anime in my life apart from maybe what little 2 seconds I see of it on TV. My name is a reference to a move from Street Fighter III. Stop trying to pull an ad hominem and resorting to false dichotomy and come up with a real argument. And last I heard, porn is all consensual.

And no, I don’t visit porn sites either. I find it kind of sad that I’m arguing with someone making really dumb assumptions and pulling fallacies up the wazoo, but if you really wanted to know, there you go.

@anothergol: criticism of art games or any games posted is encouraged, it’s just personal attacks and flames that aren’t.

example of encouraged: blueberry garden bored me, not much to do, skills weren’t that interesting, too short, underwhelming, buggy. not worth even $5.

example of discouraged: anyone who likes blueberry is pretending to be smart, its developer knows nothing about game design and he is tricking the world into liking his game. not a game.

It’s discussions like these that make me truly love TIGsource.

@hayate,

Your defensive nature belies your innocence. ;-) that was a joke, so please lighten up. My comment, while directed at you wasn’t really about you.

Also, I wasn’t *implying* anything towards *you* directly (and it really had nothing to do with your name – though Street Fighter could easily be considered Anime as well), it was more of a cultural reference, people as a group who might enjoy manga or anime and sometimes video games, perhaps an otaku. I was generalizing my comment based on your comment, it wasn’t directed at you per se. I was trying to make a point about how people say one thing and do another. e.g. People speaking negatively about a game for it’s content or subject matter, but then going and participating in questionable behavior themselves. That doesn’t mean I believe all subject matter should be taken lightly, I think we need to be very careful about what we censor, but perhaps we should use caution when making certain content available to everyone where young and impressionable audiences have easy access to it.

The idea of such a game and the results of its influence should be debated and discussed. Just look at violence in video games. Most gamers would tell you that violence in video games has had no adverse effects on them, yet they’re killing people, in a lot of cases the people in the games might be innocent bystanders. So my question is, if gamers can say that violence doesn’t have an effect or influence on them when playing a video game, why would a game about rape? Perhaps those same people know someone who was raped… but what about people who know someone that has had an act of violence committed against them or a loved one? A family member murdered perhaps… Does that affect how or even if the same person will play violent games knowing that someone close to them has been either hurt, killed, or violated? Can you really separate the two and say that one kind of game is worse?

I’m just curious and I believe an honest question with no simple answers. I certainly do not have the answers, but without things (or games as in this case) such as this, would these same questions still be asked?

I would like to add as an artist, neither the marriage nor Edmund are related to your mentioning Monet’s work or time period and public opinion. The quoting of critique on Monet illustrates how art is once again abused by you yourself as an elitarian statement SOLELY to redeem your uncommon preference and not a single inherent quality of the work. In fact, the quote rather illustrates the constant public misconception of art that you yourself uphold falsely.

If you want me to hastily disseminate Edmund for you: it uses pixelart which implies an old computer game look overlaid by a FILM LOOK, you have 3 types of input jump/action/direction, you can choose 2 stories to play about a man named Eddie who rapes people, you rape with the same button as that you shoot with, then both stories end up with Eddie raping someone. One of the two stories then transfers you to a second character that will chase Eddie in order to fix his war trauma. If I’d look at this game as a piece of art I wonder:

1. Why exactly does the work abstract RAPE / HOMICIDE / REVENGE / EJACULATION to a single button; it is clearly a choice made by the author, it is not an artistic choice but a gameplay convention and thus equating everything to being a game.
2. Since rape is a central theme, is there a purpose in abstracting rape into a cut-scene (which are copied by games from movies) with a single quicktime event for progression?
3. The juxtaposition between film and games can be distilled from its graphical appearance. Is this a comment on the simplicity and baseness of hollywood movies and its videogame counterpart? Is the author simply releasing an indie game to criticise mainstream gaming? This is circular and one could make a more innovative game fulfilling the same purpose because making an indie game is automatically a comment upon mainstream gaming.
4. Or are we simply watching a translated hollywood plot (serial killer kills village, man fails to save village, serial killer kills in city, man finds revenge) where the player is performing every character with a single button.

Whatever you answer to these most immediately apparent problems that the work poses, even something that is not-really-art such as the movie Irréversible by Gaspar Noé does all the same shock; and you can walk away from that movie happily understanding now that Edmund wasn’t art. It was a game yes, it was different. It doesn’t need to be art to be appreciated even if that means you will no longer be mistakenly perceived as intellectual by your friends for playing weird games.

Contemporary art is already a tainted shithole, and you are trying to justify nothing more than a pseudo elitarian misunderstanding of it. Jim is right. You are a fool to subscribe to the notion that any game that employs ambiguous, mysterious gameplay mechanics or metaphores is an art game.

In other words I think it is almost vulgar that you are bible coding Impressionism and comparing it to the current state of Art-Games. You very faithfully cut and paste high school knowledge to support some belief that is simply irrelevant.

To remind you, change is nearly always critiqued, no need to refer to impressionism specifically; but you go on a frenzy and suddenly compare the impressionism movement to gameart just for the sake of finishing your clusterfuck. In order to prove your point you turned game art into an anachronism; well BOY we are so happy that gameart is still in the stage of impressionism and fucking has to reinvent the wheel.

So you’re an artist who critiques other artists as inferior to you because they make art games and not what you consider art. Not to mention Derek didn’t even defend a particular game as being of high quality so unless you start discussing specifics, which can’t be generalised as examples of the whole “movement” then you’re doing nothing but random pathetic ranting.

Also it seems lotsa people here are bashing the wrong games, talking about 8 bit graphics and shit… Retro games aren’t necessarily art games… And Retro games can rock too… Just play what you enjoy and give the rest a rest, really. Criticising the whole idea of someone making a unique experience in game form that isn’t yet another shooter as some kind of abomination that should never see the light of day and as the reason indies live in basements (most don’t make art games, stupid) is quite absurd to say the least.

Gah. This is why I rarely read comments…they always get so mean-spirited. Take a deep breath people, k? One might hope that we could have a disagreement on -something- without verbally stabbing each other in the face. There are some real insights to be gained from this debate, but it’s obscured by the sheer amount of vitriol being hurled back and forth.

As for the articles, (both this one and Sterling’s) they made me think. And that’s important, more important than who’s right and who’s wrong.

I am posting to add to the post count.

Make some good games already you pretencious bastards.

a few random points:

- that people are getting upset over a game about rape who don’t ever get upset about games about murder kind of have their priorities twisted; last i checked, murder is worse than rape

- derek wasn’t comparing art games to impressionism as a movement, he was just comparing the criticism of it to the criticism of impressionism: i.e. that it’s not “really” painting, is too vague, and doesn’t require as much work as “real” painting does. but the similarities between the two movements pretty much end there.

- there’s no real ‘art game’ genre, it’s really more like three genres: conceptual games (games that you have to figure out the meaning of), ambient games (games that focus on the atmosphere and generating a mood), experimental games (games that explore some particular convention by breaking it). those three don’t have anything in common except that they aren’t traditional, yet are often all grouped as “art games”. but they’re as different from each other as they’re different from normal games.

Oh, since you’re here Paul, I’d like to ask you a question: do you really believe that every “art game” has a meaning and if someone doesn’t see it, he/she just “don’t get it”.

Don’t you think that such position is exactly what Jim called “giving all indie games a free pass”?

Learn how to spell pretentious, you child.

i’m not particularly a fan of conceptual art games (e.g. the games that have meaning that you have to figure out). it’s not the kind of art game that i most enjoy, i’m more a fan of ambient art games: small worlds, glum buster, seiklus, knytt, yume nikki, darkfate, photopia, and so on — games that focus on atmosphere and mood rather than meaning.

i don’t think that most art games are intended to have a meaning, just some of them. for instance, tale of tales once explicitly said that the path has no intended meaning to figure out. i kind of don’t like the idea of having an abstract “meaning” in a game as particularly interesting, mainly because i distrust abstract thought so much.

that said, i don’t begrudge people for making them. i didn’t particularly enjoy, say, the marriage, but i don’t look down on people who do. abstract conceptual games are fine if they enjoy that kind of thing.

and i don’t think all games have to be fun; experimental games are very important and are worth posting about even if they aren’t fun, just because it’s interesting to see what happens when things we take for granted in most games are changed. for instance, the only real “art game” i ever posted about is ‘dungeon’ by cactus and podunkian, and i agree that it’s not a particularly fun game, but i do think it’s a particularly interesting game, worth thinking about, even if you wouldn’t play it for pleasure.

@Bush:

English isn’t my native language, blasphemer.

@paul eres:

But what is that sacred knowledge that make indie connoisseurs enjoy indie games? Sice, as you said, not all indie games require intellectual effort from the player, there must be something else that makes them better than “normal” games, right?

It’s definetely not graphics or gameplay, because most indie games are visually “minimalistic” (or even outright ugly) and, as many people sagaciously noticed, “don’t have to be fun”.

So if it isn’t food for thought nor graphics nor gameplay, then what?

Perhaps some kind of (*gasp*) indie fetish?

> Plus he’s fat!
Yeah fatso!
(lol massive get it Jim is a fatty).
I’m going to punch your fat snout.
I am sick and tired of reading fat people’s internet opinions.
because some fatso decided to make a public matter out of his idiocy
Awful power you’re giving to the fat guy.

Just quoting what Tigsource really means when it preaches “constructive criticism”.

“Art games are a relatively new concept, and like anything new, they are primitive by default.”

It doesn’t really feel that way though. These games are often primitive because the creator thinks they can get away with it being ‘just an art game’.

It’s almost as if they do not consider it something truly new at all just yet.

Experiments or not, I haven’t seen a good art game yet either, so I can pretty much relate to the whole argument against them.

Personally I am against the whole ‘games that make you think’ hype in (or of) art games anyway.

Visual originality aside, what’s the point when there’s basically no true game to be played there??

Just quoting my earlier comment (comment 207) because I also have another question that I think might be relevant after the quote:

“The idea of such a game and the results of its influence should be debated and discussed. Just look at violence in video games. Most gamers would tell you that violence in video games has had no adverse effects on them, yet they’re killing people, in a lot of cases the people in the games might be innocent bystanders. So my question is, if gamers can say that violence doesn’t have an effect or influence on them when playing a video game, why would a game about rape? Perhaps those same people know someone who was raped… but what about people who know someone that has had an act of violence committed against them or a loved one? A family member murdered perhaps… Does that affect how or even if the same person will play violent games knowing that someone close to them has been either hurt, killed, or violated? Can you really separate the two and say that one kind of game is worse?”

Again, if we can live with the above and still enjoy games that involve different subject matter and / or adult themes, then why is it so difficult for some people – people who might really enjoy games that use or even exploit questionable subject matter, to accept the idea that other people might enjoy art games and perhaps what they stand for? Why is it difficult to swallow the idea that human beings are diverse and sometimes complex even though we sometimes act as simple beings? Does liking Art Games make someone pretentious? Does it make them a “poof”? If so, what does that make the people who only enjoy action or wanton violence in games? Does that make them unintelligent? Psychopathic? Can we really limit all of these ideas and not having things in common to share? And lastly, is it indicative of falling into one of these categories as a gamer to not be able to grow and appreciate ideas that might be “outside-of-the-box” and does this force those same people who are not curious or interested in exploring new ideas to only stick to what they know or perhaps what they think they know because of what they’ve either learned or perhaps only seen on TV?

I just wonder if outside influences, such as Television, play a part on “breeding” a gamers tastes. Or is it upbringing? Perhaps religion plays a part, or perhaps the lack of spirituality altogether has a different type of effect. Does it make anyone else curious how and why people are effected differently by these interactive experiences? With that, does feeling contempt towards a genre or people who appreciate that genre, mean that we are still very distant as psychological beings because of all the different influences during our upbringing? Or, when we do try to point fingers and direct negative attention to others, are we just seeking attention of some sort? Or is it just a fear of the unknown and misunderstood?

>Again, if we can live with the above and still enjoy games that involve different subject matter and / or adult themes, then why is it so difficult for some people – people who might really enjoy games that use or even exploit questionable subject matter, to accept the idea that other people might enjoy art games and perhaps what they stand for?

Because, Dodger, the themes aren’t the important part. Whether X is to talk to someone, or open doors, or to rape, in the end it can always have the same function: moving the game forward. All you do is move the colors around. This is what’s appalling about artgames: usually they’re just palette swaps and slight rule changes on games we’ve already played, only with the fun of the simulation corrupted (because if it’s entertaining it CAN’T BE ART you guys), it comes out uglier and simpler. It’s not what the game STANDS FOR that matters: only a complete tool will throw out a good shmup because it uses anime girls instead of space ships. Just as only a complete tool will praise a crappy platformer with no enemies just because of the subject matter.

I have been trying so hard not to post here, but it’s just too easy. As for the articles, I honestly couldn’t bear to read them. They were really boring. Even the titles are cringe-inducingly stupid. He really can’t be saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times before.

@Derek
“Mainstream indie games”? Isn’t that a bit of a contradiction? I don’t get it. :P

@Jesus

“But what is that sacred knowledge that make indie connoisseurs enjoy indie games? Sice, as you said, not all indie games require intellectual effort from the player, there must be something else that makes them better than “normal” games, right?”

i thought i said why. there are other factors besides graphics, meaning, and gameplay. for instance, mood and atmosphere. trying out interesting things. an interesting world to explore. story. music. different people get different values out of games.

for me, the most important thing about a game is its world, atmosphere, characters, controls, and music — how immersive it is, in other words (since all of those are factors which draw me into the game). for others it might be gameplay or meaning or graphics that they care about most.

Finally pushed through the two articles. What are you guys so pissy about again? He isn’t even saying he hates art games, he’s just saying that indie devs need to stop relying on trite gimmicks (INNOVASHUN), “shocking” subject matter, and purposely vague mechanics and plot points to trick people into thinking their games are deeper than they are. In short, he is imploring indie game devs (and, in a huge way, indie game critics) to step up their game, and the response is BAWW BAWW BAWW YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WALLOW WALLOW. Art games aren’t art. You’re not special for thinking you understand it. Deal with it nerds.

There really isn’t even anything wrong with indie game devs putting out silly little game maker experiments. When I’m showing people my doodle pad, there’s an acknowledgement that I’m not trying to create a masterpiece. My stick figures with moustaches are not fit for a museum. They don’t even nearly compare to DC comic books. I draw them because I like drawing gimmicky little cartoon characters, just as I’m sure plenty of indie devs like making gimmicky little one-room games. The problem is when these games get put on a pedestal and talked up as something bigger and deeper than they are. Canabalt is getting glowing praise from Kotaku, threads are passed around on 4chan /v/ saying “if you do not buy VVVVVV, you hate video games. Criticism of these half-formed fetal doodle games is UNHEARD OF. It’s not even just indies, either. The game community in general, from message boards to journalists to a great deal of devs, is just so full of whiny, pretentious little kids. I don’t even know if there is a way out. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this.

@Anarkex,

You’ve made a huge generalization in response to my earlier comment. Your comment didn’t help me to understand where exactly you stand or what I should gain from what you had to say either.

You stated:

“only a complete tool will throw out a good shmup because it uses anime girls instead of space ships. Just as only a complete tool will praise a crappy platformer with no enemies just because of the subject matter.”

Again, that comes down to a matter of opinion. The examples you’ve given are also extremely broad and at the same time vague. There’s no rational reasoning behind your comment either. It comes across as hot-headed and more like a knee-jerk reaction, especially when you lower yourself to referring to others as “tools”.

An honest opinion usually involves thoughtfulness, whether two sides agree to the same opinion or not. Grouping people together, generalizing their character, and then insulting them does not help evolve the discussion or shed light on the subject.

So, now we don’t only have people hating those who make or like games they don’t, we also have the apparent delusion that all indie games are art games and therefor these arguments encompass indie developers as a whole? The fuck? And these people try to pretend they bring up valid points to consider? Aw hell…

Also, lol @ palette swaps. Games creat atmosphere with more than putting up awesome enemy AI for you to fight, you know? That doesn’t only happen in indie art games, it also happens in mainstream big publisher titles. Like the Silent Hill games which always relied on outdated and crude mechanics, and barely any sense of “fun”, yet are arguably good titles in terms of atmosphere, making the player feel and think things. But I suppose with this type of game this generation turning out more like generic shooters with palette swaps (see Resident Evil 5) then it’s no wonder people no longer understand the concept of a game that doesn’t want to make you smile and grin as you slay your enemies but make you scared, tense, worried via the chosen subject matter. Just like not all movies are comedies or Tarantino action flicks.

yeah — sometimes people get confused when i say i like resident evil 1 more than any of the latter ones. i think resident evil 1 did the best job of producing an atmosphere of horror, of actually making the player afraid to explore a place. now in RE4 and RE5, it’s more of an action game, with constant shooting, and not even an attempt at creating a creepy atmosphere, or making something interesting to explore. the mansion in RE1 was ten times more interesting to explore than any of the areas in RE4 for instance; they focused a lot more on making an amazing place.

i think it’s just that modern tastes have shifted away from atmosphere and into action. that’s part of what i like indie games for, there are more games which focus on the subtle and on the experience, and on creating something interesting to explore, the way silent hill 1 and 2 and ico did. not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with headshots, it’s just that sometimes it’s more interesting to slowly look around and be scared by the occasional monster when it shows up, rather than to quickly react to monster after monster without any time to breathe.

Dodger, I’d think it would be easy to understand why it’s stupid for an STG fan to disregard every game containing anime characters instead of space ships. I’m mentioning this to illustrate the silliness of judging a game on its aesthetics. It’s the exact same situation in reverse when someone praises a game for its subject matter alone.

An intelligent fan of shooting games would play the game regardless of how it looks, and make his ultimate judgment on the mechanics, as in the end the mechanics are what a player is dealing with the most (of course aesthetics would play into his final judgment, but not nearly as much). Mechanics are the features that will be emulated or changed in future games, they determine replayability and challenge – and in the end, mechanics (and only mechanics) are what the player will learn in order to succeed at the game. To judge a game based on aesthetics (and art games are ALWAYS about aesthetics, because any “deeper meanings” you would find wouldn’t be there without the text and graphics) is like judging chess by whether the pieces are made of wood, marble, or glass.

If you can’t see past a little vehemence I’ve built up from reiterating this point ad nauseum in every crappy art games discussion from here to Kotaku, I really don’t know what to tell you. These people are tools. Close-minded tools. They’re cut from the same cloth as the kids who won’t play Kirby because he’s pink and “that’s gay”. Same people who act like they’re special and superior because “meerh the violence in GTA sickens me I can’t wait for Heavy Rain”. It’s all just childish goofballery, posturing and pretentiousness. I’m sorry I can’t make myself sound like a scientist or cite sources from art textbooks. All I have is cold logic, piss and vinegar.

Paul: Mechanics can make you scared of a monster. They aren’t all about putting omnipotence into the hands of the player. The volatile AI in Bioshock kept me absolutely terrified the first night I played it. As a more indie example, I still can’t play more than twenty minutes of Minecraft indev without getting jumpy and nervous. When stepping too far into a pitch dark cave can kill you, you have to weigh your options and take risks, which is much scarier than when the mood is just implanted into the atmosphere with graphics and sound. Games that rely on aesthetics to cause emotions often can’t hold up after the first playthrough, because the player knows what to expect and sometimes he just wants to get on with things. Solid mechanics, however, can hit you again and again with the same impact every time, and even grow into something different as you learn more about them.

We do this like, every time I come here, Paul. I’m almost starting to enjoy it.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/raitendo/passage-in-10-seconds

look at that fat bastard’s meaty paws completely swallowing up that wine glass

@ Anarkex, congrats on having different taste, that doesn’t make things you dislike inferior. And I’d say Minecraft chooses pretty simplistic mechanics to create its atmosphere, just like plenty art games. Not that it ever scared me, losing a life in a game is hardly a situation that will make me uneasy, so for a game to affect me it needs to set up the proper mood via the audio and visuals (for example, the first Endless Ocean made me pretty uneasy diving into the pitch black abyss, yet absolutely nothing can ever hurt you in the game, showing the power of setting the mood – it’s also a Wii game showing I’m not talking about extra awesome graphics or anything, just effective) but I can see where you’re coming from and I feel similar for other games. And I also don’t think a game HAS to hold up for multiple playthroughs (and Bioshock certainly didn’t for me). If that’s what you value in a game, good for you, look for games that claim they offer that, and succeed in doing so, and ignore the rest as they clearly have a different target audience. Perhaps roguelikes are for you then (hey, there is one on the front page of TIGSource) for example, but not for me.

The one thing I feel compelled to say is that The Void is one of my favorite games ever. It is also one of the most flawed games I’ve seen, and it’s target audience is very narrow. But once you get past the initial confusion of what type of game you’re playing (you’re not playing an RPG or a FPS, you’re playing a First Person Resource Management game, as if you were a WarCraft peon playing in first person), it is very innovative and very well put together.

@anarkex: i’m not sure what your point is; nobody is saying that art games should only use aesthetics to generate immersion; are you saying that art games do not use mechanics to generate immersion? cause plenty of them do — glum buster for instance, or (as you mentioned) minecraft, which i’d consider an art game.

@ paul eres:

“a few random points:
that people are getting upset over a game about rape who don’t ever get upset about games about murder kind of have their priorities twisted; last i checked, murder is worse than rape”

This is true.

However, killing isn’t automatically murder. A lot of games have you killing enemies, but there aren’t many where the goal is to murder people. The distinction’s an important one.

In our society, there are circumstances (war, self-defense, etc.) where taking the life of another person is considered a justifiable act. In most games where the player has to kill enemies to advance, there’s some sort of backstory present to provide context for the player’s actions, so that he or she can feel justified in carrying out those acts. (There are exceptions, I know, but this is generally the case.) There’s no need for the player to feel guilty about killing enemies who would kill [i]them[/i] if left unchecked, or slaughtering enemy soldiers trying to invade their country or what have you.

Rape, by comparison, is impossible to justify. It’s a purely selfish act. Unlike killing, there are no extenuating circumstances that can be invoked to make it defensible, let alone acceptable.

That being the case, I don’t think people ‘have their priorities twisted’ for taking issue with a game that casts the player in the role of a rapist, but has no problem with ones that expect the player to kill foes to advance, presenting it in a framework that validates the player’s actions. In fact, I’d say those people have their heads on pretty straight. Now, if we’re talking about games where the player is encouraged to (and rewarded for) murdering the innocent for no better reason than the player’s amusement, I’d be inclined to agree, but like I said earlier, there don’t seem to be a lot of those out there.

^ Wow, I really killed the formatting on that, didn’t I? :/ Wish I could edit these. Sorry.

i’ll edit it, one sec

edit: fixed

Cool beans Extended. At the point that we get into this everything is subjective story, I mean, it’s cool and all, but then there’s no reason to ever bother talking about anything at all ever. We then would never have to back up our opinions with anything because lol who cares it’s just your opinion. So straight up subjectivism is something I try to stay away from. Jim should just LEEEAVE INDIE GAMES ALOWNE, and we should all just leave everyone alone, and I guess we’d all be happy if we just never bothered each other.

And no, games don’t HAVE to hold up for long-time play. Only the great games do. If you like going through one-shot games with gimmicky mechanics and 16-bit graphics sliding around in game maker, or playing endless ocean and being super scared for no reason one time, that’s fine, I do that too, but just because they’re all pleasing in the short term doesn’t make them great games that will hold up against something you can take out again and again. Like a good STG, FPS, Fighting game, Monster Hunter, or yeah, a roguelike. I don’t know how self-centered you’d have to be to think that just because YOU liked a game unconditionally it’s automatically indisputably good. *I* don’t even think that. An expert follows his opinions up with reasons and his own experience, and that’s what makes his words hold weight. This is what I aspire to do, and it is what I do every time I make a post here.

Lastly some comments about the games. Really don’t know why you weren’t crazy about Bioshock. The game was practically all aesthetics, I was only bringing up the AI as an example, but with the exception of the AI and the whole Big Daddies thing, the game has pretty boring mechanics. And how can you even compare Minecraft to art games? It’s only in alpha and it’s already a fairly deep game. Between building safe places to stay at night, mining for resources, farming, defending against monsters, and crafting new tools, there’s tons of different viable ways to go at the game as it is, and it’s not even close to done yet!

regarding rape vs murder, there are a lot of games which focus on murder too — the grand theft auto series are pretty popular, and it is kinda encouraged (though not required) that you kill random civilians in that game. there are also games where you play as assassins or hitmen, and generally international treaties and world courts frown upon assassination, even if the person you’re assassinating is pretty bad.

there are also tons of games where you kill non-sentient things (such as wolves in world of warcraft or whatever) which pose no threat but presumably just want to live in peace, and are encouraged to do so and given rewards for it. i’d even say the majority of enemies in most games won’t go out of their way to kill you unless you stand in front of them; otherwise they’d just walk back and forth, forever — so it’s not exactly self-defense to stand in a koopa troopa’s way, say you’re threatened, then kill them. bearing all that in mind, i’m not convinced that the primary action in most violent games isn’t murder.

besides, as someone else mentioned earlier, there are thousands of hentai games, often about rape. i don’t see why making an experimental/artistic game about rape is any worse than making an erotic/pornographic game about rape.

Paul: Jim Sterling’s articles are all qualms about mechanics in art games. He says they are frequently shallow games with vague and scarce mechanics that don’t matter very much, and that generally they’re very boring to play in the long term. I agree with this, obviously, but the general response on this page was not “no, they are frequently mechanically complex,” followed by a detailed description of *The Marriage*’s rising tournament community. It was “Lol Jim different people like different things don’t pick on us because we’re deep and different art games don’t need that”. Jim doesn’t have a problem with ALL artsy games, nor do I: He specifically cites Braid which in spite of being *awfully pretentious* manages to be a reasonably fun puzzle platformer. This isn’t a warcry to KILL art games, it’s a request that critics be more critical and that devs quit relying on crutches like posturing and pretentious poetry ( :cough: too many p’s…) to distract us from frustration-platformer mechanics and sub-flash games less interesting than a jack-in-the-box. If you can’t see that as a rally against the overuse of aesthetics in game design, not even necessarily indie game design, I don’t really know what to tell you.

Monster Hunter sucks. It’s a tedious and boring game based mostly on mindless grinding. The only somewhat redeeming factor is the combat, but that’s ruined by the terrible controls and camera.

People who claim to “enjoy” it are all either weeaboos who play it because they heard it’s the latest craze in Japan or people who suffer from a severe case of item collecting OCD.

See, I can back up my opinions with reasons and my own experience, which makes me a super awesome gaming expert just like my idol Anarkex. Bonus Expert Points are awarded for stating opinions in the most inflammatory manner possible and spiking them with not-so-subtle ad hominem attacks.

Also, it goes without that saying expertly backing up my opinions with reasons makes me infallible and anyone who tries to disagree is obviously delusional or just a plain old moron.

@Anarkex, but there are plenty of shitty non art games as well, would that justify claiming that “games” in general are bad? I mean, isn’t that how the mainstream media often treat games, causing an outrage (by those who have yet to get used to it at least) in such communities? And besides, there are plenty games that don’t attempt to do things art games attempt to do, how exactly would we be better off if those developers suddenly saw the light and started creating such experiences only? And what’s so hard about accepting that something you personally don’t enjoy can still be appealing to others? I didn’t want to insult the games you stated you love to start the bullshit fest all over again, but I suppose it’s almost needed to get the point across. Personally I didn’t enjoy Bioshock and barely found it worthy of playing through once, while Minecraft, as said already, can be considered an art game. The second part especially should hit home to the “different strokes for different folks” mentality. You can like art games. You admitted that much. So why argue against them? Not all non-art games are created equal, and not all art games are created equal. Should the people making the experiences that don’t quite cut it just stop trying altogether, stop showing their works to people to avoid generalised backlash like this (which means they get no feedback, and cannot improve), or what exactly would make you and Jim happy in your fight against uh, whatever this is a fight against since apparently it’s not against art games… The majority of games, not just art games, or indie games, are shit. It comes with the territory. But without them, you likely wouldn’t have the good experiences either.

In defense of MH: The grinding really isn’t very important, as there’s plenty of equipment that is very easy to craft that will get you through the game just fine. With a very minimal amount of grinding you can beat the game on skill alone. Grinding for equipment is just there to reward you for going back and mastering the fight against every monster. Controls on the PSP games is pretty excellent to me. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s very precise and wonderfully stiff so an experience player has no trouble lining up his attacks. And the camera, a constant point of contention, isn’t a problem if your hands are fully developed and you can properly claw the controller. Even so, MH Tri will include an option to control with the right stick, so this really shouldn’t be a problem for anyone at that point.

Other than that, I’m really glad you like me so much, C.A. Sinclair, but you sound very inexperienced. You do show a lot of potential, though. Maybe after you’ve played some more games you’ll be as awesome as I am. Keep at it, buddy!

To add to my last post, if this is about giving them a “free pass” I don’t think TIGS ever stopped people from posting their criticism and often includes criticism of its own in the news posts, while leaving the final judgement to the end user. And I didn’t hear of any indie dev becoming a millionaire by a *shitty* art game so they definitely don’t get a free pass by anyone. The majority criticises them (mostly by way of ignoring them) so there’s absolutely no need for an article that, in an inflamatory way, creates stereotypes out of the blue and claims they get more praise than they deserve. They do not.

@Sinclair I was about to verbally tear you a new one because Monster Hunter absolutely fucking ROCKS (and I never liked anime, I don’t think MH looks much like anime even, oversized weapons aside). But then I saw you were trying to make another point :-P

@ paul eres-

The GTA series (and imitators) were actually the games I had in mind when I mentioned exceptions. So we’re on the same page there. :)

As far as the other examples you mentioned, games that revolve around assassination (the Hitman and Tenchu games come to mind) task the player-surrogate with eliminating some pretty unsavory characters. Even if the protagonist’s actions in those games wouldn’t be legal, they’re justified in the context of the setting. It’s not just the game rewarding the player for gratuitous acts of murder in their own right.

With more abstract depictions of violence, or games where you’re fighting nonsentient enemies, I’d argue that we’re moving away from what most people would consider murder. Squishing a koopa by jumping on its head is an act of cartoon violence, and no one’s going to equate the imagery involved with somebody putting a gun to a person’s temple and pulling the trigger. Likewise, though animal rights activists would probably disagree, the average person isn’t going to equate killing a bear or deer with killing an innocent human. We collectively place a premium on sentience – on personhood.

I think it all boils down to this: A lot of people take it as a given that artists, when given the chance, create the sort of art that they themselves like. (It’s one of the reasons character studies of artists and authors based on what their works supposedly reveal about them will never go out of style.) So when someone makes a game where the player’s goal is to rape women to ‘win’, be it an art game or an erotic one, the *perception* is that this is something that the author countenances and/or finds appealing. (The exception to this is when the work in question depicts the protagonist/player-surrogate suffering unpleasant consequences as a result of those actions. Then the work becomes an interactive Aesop and the moral rectitude of the author is confirmed.) That’s not necessarily *true*, but there are always going to be people who assume an author’s work reflects their deeply held views on a subject. So while there’s nothing inherently *wrong* with making a game that deals with the subject, it’s inevitable that there are going to be people who are squicked by the subject matter, and who also feel it reflects poorly on the creator.

Extended, I think at this point whether or not Minecraft is an art game is fairly key to my point. I’m going to go ahead and say it’s not, as it is not trying to communicate anything. I don’t know why you would say it is, since if Minecraft is an art game, so is Morrowind or Dwarf Fortress.

I was under the impression that art games by definition are made to communicate “meaning” rather than entertain. Is this the definition everyone else is following? If we don’t get the semantics down, we’re just screaming at each other. I’ve said before that art games by definition sacrifice mechanics for aesthetics, and this point was met by no contention, so I thought this definition was accepted.

I just said that I didn’t love Bioshock, I was using it to state a point, so yeah, whatever. I still think the AI was moderately entertaining until I figured out its patterns, as it was unlike the enemies I’d run into in, like, Halo or something.

>You can like art games. You admitted that much. So why argue against them?

It can be said, as I have said recently, that in essence neither me nor Jim Sterling are arguing AGAINST art games. I’m not trying to make them go away. I am recognizing that they have a fundamental weakness, and trying (evidently failing) to tell people about this weakness so that A) Criticism of art games can be improved, and B) All games can be improved. By the definition I’ve stated above, art games DO have this weakness: it practically goes hand in hand with that definition. Games are, first and foremost, games, and if they are bad games, they are not good games. Is this really so complicated? This isn’t telling art games or indie games or any games to stop.

All Jim Sterling is doing is pointing out a flaw in game design that’s just as prevalent in commercial game design as it is in indie design: the overuse of aesthetics at the expense of mechanics. Art games are just the most obvious offender. That’s the only reason they’re criticized, by Jim and by me. I KNOW I’ve said this already not four posts ago, so please, if you’re going to respond again, make it something I have to think about. This is getting boring.

Unless of course you feel like singing my praises. In which case I’m all ears.

So what do you and Jim criticise when you call those who make them no life basement dwellers while ignoring their works that have nothing to do with art games, if not art games?

Now you say that wasn’t against art games. What was it against? Art games you PERSONALLY don’t like? Should every developer out there spend every bit of his spare and work time to please you (since, again, those no life basemenet dwellers did work on conventional games, but apparently what stuck with Jim is their disgrace of games, their art games)?

Shit, the headline alone is pretty pretentious. Art games aren’t innovative and innovation isn’t good. Why not Art games aren’t always innovative and innovation isn’t always good? Wouldn’t that be a far more valid argument and actually in line with the way you’te trying to twist what Jim actually said into a subtler version of it? I’ll tell you why: It would be stating the obvious and make for a boring article nobody would care about, while all out trolling is sure to generate hits. That is what you’re sympathising with. His writing is as bad and as guilty of going for the cheap thrills as the rape game he describes. He’s a hyprocrit and you stand by him. Good job.

First of all, I can’t wait for Heavy Rain. At the same time, I just finished mopping the floor with my Sniper Rifle in MAG. If Heavy Rain is considered an Art Game by some of the “believers” and “non-believers” (People who hate one side or the other – then I think Heavy Rain is a great example of what Art has done for games. However, it’s not really my opinion that Heavy Rain even is an Art Game. It’s an adventure game, plain and simple, a very atmospheric adventure with a truly engrossing story. It’s also much like an interactive movie (which is still a game) but it’s much deeper than that. The actions and choices you make have real consequences in the game, so it’s not at all like the crappy FMV adventure games that were out in the 90′s. And even then, there were great games like The Pandora Directive which many adventure gamers still love.

Back to Heavy Rain though, I was a big fan of The Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain definitely seems like a moderate step forward. It takes the things that worked and from what I’ve played, it tried some of the things that didn’t work have been rectified. Does that mean I think it is the end-all-and-be-all of all adventure games? No, but I’m certainly impressed by the demo and how easily it drew me in. I’ll be buying the game this Tuesday as soon as it hits store shelves. I can’t wait to experience the game in its entirety. I still wouldn’t call it an Art Game though, *BUT*, if it is an Art Game, then I like Art Games – and every other genre and sub-genre of video gaming out there. :)

The great thing for me is, two weeks later, I’ll be picking up God of War III as well. :)

I don’t like anything simply because someone else does or does not. I like things that make me feel things such as joy, pleasure, sadness, anger, fear, and sometimes confusion (as long as there’s some sort of resolution – even if it requires discussion). I can’t simply hate something or love something for that matter, based on what other groups of people hate or like. I might talk about something I like while trying to show the appeal and reason as to why I like something, but I certainly can’t force someone to see that something the same way. That’s why I believe there has to be a space for all of these games and interactive experiences, regardless if I like them or “get” their meaning, somebody else may. That doesn’t make me any better or any worse a human being, but perhaps if I don’t get something someone can instead tell me what it is that they did get from the experience that I didn’t or what they felt and why. Games can be simple fun, but they can also be memorable experiences, and sometimes just memorable instances. I think there’s room for all of that.

@Anarkex: Indeed I was trying to make a different point. Even though I didn’t enjoy Monster Hunter (and it’s a game I really [i]wanted[/i] to like and tried hard to get into), I don’t come to the conclusion that because I think it’s a tedious and heavily flawed game, it’s absolutely impossible for anyone else to genuinely enjoy it.

Also, keep in mind that things you perceive as “flaws” in a game might just be what other people like about it.

And lastly, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a game “tricking you into thinking it’s good”. If a game successfully manages to do that, it’s a good game in my book. I think questioning the reasons why you like a certain game is pointless. If you judge everything by a set of faux-objective criteria of what constitutes “good” game design, you’ll end up missing out on a lot of games because you think you’re enjoying them for the “wrong reasons”.

Note that I’m not really saying this in defense of art games, hell I don’t even like most art games, it’s just your “it’s wrong/impossible to like this game” attitude that gets me riled up.

@blade: ” Squishing a koopa by jumping on its head is an act of cartoon violence, and no one’s going to equate the imagery involved with somebody putting a gun to a person’s temple and pulling the trigger. ”

true, but isn’t edmund largely ‘cartoon rape’? i mean, it’s not realistic, it’s abstract, nobody would confuse it with real rape. if mere cartoonishness is an excuse for violence in a game, it could also be an excuse for rape in a game.

@ana: “Extended, I think at this point whether or not Minecraft is an art game is fairly key to my point. I’m going to go ahead and say it’s not, as it is not trying to communicate anything. [...] I was under the impression that art games by definition are made to communicate “meaning” rather than entertain. Is this the definition everyone else is following?”

no, that’s not the definition a lot of us are using. i described the different types art games a few hundred comments above, and mentioned several times that conveying meaning isn’t the point of all or even most art games. to think that art games can be defined as games which are about conveying meaning is ridiculous to me, considering the wide variety of art games out there.

Extended: Now you’re using what Jim said against ME. I’m not responsible for how shitty his arguments are. I’m just telling you why he’s right, and he *is*, even if he’s being a douche about it.

Dodger: Adventure games are fine by me, though the genre kind of died out and I personally think it mostly did for a reason. Telltale’s recent entries are my main argument: though occasionally funny they feel kind of soulless as they’re nothing but fetch quests and retarded “I DON’T WANNA USE MY GUN ON THE BAD GUY” goofballery. I thought Machinarium was a HUGE step in the right direction, but I’m not sure how well that sort of thing could be improved or even reproduced.

However from what I’ve seen of Heavy Rain it strikes me as not only an awful video game but an awful story as well. I was one of the first to criticize the Mall gameplay trailer and obviously not the last. The voice acting was awful, the writing was awful, the graphics were buggy, and characters did absolutely stupid things. Heavy Rain strikes me as a story that could only be told in video games, simply because patrons of any other medium would never put up with it. But then, I haven’t even played it and I’ve only watched a few trailers, so maybe I’m wrong.

In any case Visual Novels and whatever you’d call Heavy Rain occupy the absolute far end of acceptable game design with regards to mechanics. Essentially they’re just phases on electronic choose-your-own-adventure books, and my opinions vary wildly on them specifically.

The golden rule here is that when a game is all about story/ themes/ whatever at the expense of mechanics, it IS still potentially enjoyable. However, it is only enjoyable if the player is willing to tolerate the lousy game for the story’s sake. And the fact that the lousy game must be tolerated for the story’s sake dilutes it – Brevity is the soul of wit, as they say. I’ve used the Mother series as my prime example. These are pretty awful games because they’re boring to play and broken as all hell, but I do love them for their themes, stories and characters. However, I would give all three games to read one book by Itoi, their creator – as he is a writer, not a game designer.

C.A., I don’t believe I said it was impossible to like these games. In fact, I think I just answered your qualms in my last post about adventure games. Twist it a bit and I think you’ll find the answer good enough.

There are plenty of games that, mechanically, I can’t get into. If asked, I can give you the reasons, hell, a lot of the time they’re shortcomings on my part. I am unable to learn Dwarf Fortress, no matter how hard I try. I don’t think I can play RTS games, simply because I freak out when forced to multitask. But I don’t see that as a shortcoming on the game’s part. The mechanics just don’t appeal to me. But I think I can say with some certainty when a game is simply poorly designed or regressive, and a majority of artgames are. Sound good?

I do like art games, but many are just bad. Today I Die, and many others by the same creator is still a favorite. Games are supposed to make you feel more satisfied after completion.

He has a point though in art games being lazy, when you have a bad game that claims that it’s bad because it’s art. This is exactly why a lot of people hate them.

It’s not that art games will always be bad, it’s that they’re often worse off because they try to be artistic, and a lot of game lovers just wish that they weren’t.

Oh yeah, Paul, I missed that thing you said up there about my definition being wrong. I guess I can accept the definitions you put forward, with the exception of the third, “breaking a convention”. All games feature a reinvention of rules set forth by a previous game, so that doesn’t necessarily make a game an art game.

By your first two classifications, conceptual and ambient games, my argument still holds water. Both imply a deficiency in player control and mechanical complexity. Also I argue that Minecraft is neither. The music is somewhat ambient, but come on dude, I’m building castles and fighting zombies.

>>(..) and claims they get more praise than they deserve. They do not

Exactly. If the said “artists” were to be interviewed for a blog, with pics & reviews of the artist’s shitty games like, for example, a worthless shmup that would delete files, then it would be different. But that would never happen ..right?

I do understand that a blog is about writing articles, and it’s easier to write about the controversy around a game rather than about the game itself (there would be absolutely nothing to write about the content of the game I mentioned), but it’s still giving undeserved attention to artsy attention whores who put zero effort in their game.

@Anarkex,

Just to quote you again:

“However from what I’ve seen of Heavy Rain it strikes me as not only an awful video game but an awful story as well. I was one of the first to criticize the Mall gameplay trailer and obviously not the last. The voice acting was awful, the writing was awful, the graphics were buggy, and characters did absolutely stupid things. Heavy Rain strikes me as a story that could only be told in video games, simply because patrons of any other medium would never put up with it. But then, I haven’t even played it and I’ve only watched a few trailers, so maybe I’m wrong.”

I’d have to say that you’re very wrong. Have you never read a fantasy novel? People both read and watch fantasy and fiction in books and on television. To say that Heavy Rain would never be accepted by patrons of “any other medium” is a pretentious statement when you try to group people based on their opinions.

I’ve played through the Heavy Rain demo 4 times now and each time I have made different choices. Some choices mildly affected the outcome while other choices made huge changes to the way the game and story played out and unfolded. I seriously can’t wait for the full game.

The story may take place in a real world setting (a familiar theme) but it’s also based on fictional events and characters (much like many other games out there – and even movies and books). The story, atmosphere, voice acting, and gameplay all work very well for me. I could definitely see how the pacing may not be to everyones liking, but after actually playing the demo and these snippets of chapters from the game I can honestly say that I’m impressed with how well it comes together and unfolds. It definitely keeps me interested and the mechanics kept me engaged in the story. It’s not going to be for every gamer, but then, no game ever is. Your point about patrons of other media has left me a little dumbfounded because I don’t believe any person could actually say that and have thought about it for very long. Again, it sounds more like a knee-jerk reaction, rather than constructive thought or criticism.

As an added note,

if I did have one complaint about the game it would be the mechanic used to make the characters walk. It can be a little annoying but it’s definitely not a deal breaker – I think people who have played the original resident evil games (1, 2, 3 and CV) will have no problems dealing with the mechanic. But that was really my only gripe.

“All games feature a reinvention of rules set forth by a previous game, so that doesn’t necessarily make a game an art game.”

i meant where the entire purpose of the game is to experiment with breaking a convention, not merely a new game that breaks some convention as part of its design.

the reason i think minecraft is arguably an art game is because there’s no gameplay in the usual sense: no winning or losing. the game is just about creating a world, building it with some friends, and having that world evolve. it’s a very world-centric game, it’s not game-centric: no score, goals, etc. those are qualities usually characteristic of art games. it has rules, but most of those rules are not related to any goal or purpose, they’re just rules of the world, like grass dies in water, or water fills empty places, and so on. in a sense most of the rules of minecraft are purely aesthetic, because they don’t mean life or death, they just influence how things look.

Dodger, I said I might be wrong, I haven’t played the game. I’m just telling you what I thought of it so far, and I have seen a lot of the material in this game. It looks pretty contrived to me, but if you don’t feel that way, it’s all good. You’re the one buying it, not me. Sorry it bugged you so much.

@Anarkex,

Your comment about the game didn’t bother me, it was your comment about “patrons of other mediums would never put up with it”. That’s a broad and general statement and one that makes me believe you haven’t read many books or watched many movies, or played any variety of games. I’m not saying that’s how it is, but comments such as that only show a closed mindedness which would lead me to think something like that. Not to say that you’re closed minded, but when you decide to speak for other people you cannot speak for one group and put down another. It doesn’t work and only comes across as pretentiousness. So that’s what bothered me about the comment, not the fact that you didn’t like what you saw of Heavy Rain. :) That I can live with, since I am greatly looking forward to it, and especially after my brief experiences with the demo. We can agree to disagree, but we can’t speak in broad spectrum’s in regards to, and when referring to, groups of other people and their opinions when such things are for the most part out of our control.

Actually Paul, the in-development versions of the game are tests on a survival mode, and this is the version I’ve been referring to. You actually can die in this mode, and it’s what I’ve had the most fun playing as of late. The rules have been reworked to operate with a crafting system that lets you create tools and weapons to help you survive. Of course, creative mode isn’t going anywhere, but compared to what’s in the in-development version even now it’s very bare-bones. I think it’s clear that Notch is working to turn this into a fairly complex game.

Read both of the articles on Destructoid and got to say am a little disappointed, even saddened with the kind of mob mentality that seems to present itself given the efficacy of comments come pile-up in general. Arguably, if you’re going to critique an ‘experimental’ game then you absolutely need to be able to understand the purpose + rationale for different game design choices, and be able to speak about them in an interesting context instead of wedging everything into one-size fits all F-pants.

Contentions for and against ‘art games’ are also a little backwards and non-sensical given that games are a subset of interaction design, and not the other way around.! So I love and find it invigorating that independent developers are willing to explore the bounds of interaction + game design given the paucity [and difficulty] of new ideas in professional production. Even then I tend to feel that we’re generally a little lazy in not going far enough, challenging people, or simply offering up more of ourselves, meanings and personal thoughts in games rather than trite stereo-types or coagulated teenage fetish.

Suppose the meta-game of starting a business and being self-sufficient is quite an aspiration; though are the two aims of innovative design + accessibility really all that oppositional? I just hate to think that this frontier’s weighed down with the same gravity that bogs down commercial game design when its a fantastic space to really reach and try fresh ideas.

-

As an interesting aside, related to this idea of getting a macro view on things: our concept of computer games so far has totally been shaped by technological constraints both in terms of hardware in the computer loop + interactions existing in the player loop. Is not to cleave to these limitations, or defining moments, markers in time, classic Nintendo gameplay or whatever you might want to call them just being retrograde for the sake of it? Let’s just say that fibre optics networks developed 10-20 years earlier, then possibly the whole canon of single player games from the 80s would not have been designed and we would have gone down another path [sic] in terms of game design and what we know as computer games.

Props to Mel Croucher, Paul Woakes, Ian Braben and all the other pioneers though. Maybe I was just a weird kid back then, but the tangible feeling of excitement playing Elite, Damocles et al was just phenomenal and famously being able to travel to the programmer’s home planet [and kill him to end the game] in Mercenary was super cool with regards to player agency. Somehow I just don’t get that same joy from traversing dialogue trees in Mass Effect 2. To answer Derek’s question, alot of these games right up to the Amiga period still inspire because of their willingness to try new things out. Hopefully we don’t lose this kind of freeform experimentation with everybody set on going semi-professional. It’s a shame that Sterling’s article has rendered the world flat.

– Chuan

ah, i haven’t played that type of minecraft, just normal mode. i find the idea of a survival mode that you can be killed in with tool crafting kind of unappealing, since the game already works so well as just a world creation and world sharing engine, but i suppose i’ll eventually try it. regardless, i think you’d agree that if the game were purely about world creation and sharing rather than having the mode you describe, it’d be an “art game”, yes? and what you described earlier, as it being immersive (digging tunnels and such), would still apply to creation mode.

anyway, my position on this is that i don’t care how games immerse me, sure it’s great if it can do so through mechanics, but i don’t think i’ve ever played a game that was immersive solely through its mechanics, there always seems to be at least some aesthetic skill involved too. i don’t think games should ignore that. both are important though: for instance, the ecosystem mechanic in blueberry garden increased the game’s immersion, but so did the soft piano music. either alone wouldn’t have worked as effectively.

Same as in music “industry”:

There is Lady Gaga vs some indie punk bands. It is impossible to judge what is art, what is commercial bullshit and what is artsy by intention. Some bands are exaggerated in their indie-like behavior and others are industry whores. Some are both. I suggest to listen to (play) what you like.

@Anarkex – you say “he’s right” and constantly try to deconstruct what he said into a subtler version of it that isn’t “against art games” when his headline alone and many instances in his posts are in fact against art games, and when confronted over his insane statements you say that I use what he said to attack you? Of course I do, you keep saying “he’s right” ! So, read those last comments and respond. Or don’t, I don’t care, you’re being a hypocrit yourself right now.

Yeah, I know, Paul. Mechanics and aesthetics usually and ideally work hand in hand. And if it were purely creation mode, I probably still wouldn’t consider Minecraft an art game. I mean, do you consider Gmod an art game? But whatever, all that’s really kind of irrelevant.

Extended: Dude, Jim mentioned in the first article that he really likes what Braid did. It seems pretty apparent that he isn’t trying to end art games forever. He’s just played a ton of them and is sick of the wasted potential. Any ad hominems he throws out are basically just there for the lols, and even if he’s relying on shock value to get some of his message out there, the message is solid and constructive.

Also a hypocrite is someone who acts contrary to his stated beliefs. I don’t really know how that would apply to what I’m doing.

@Derek, (A bit late but,)

Thanks for your’ response.

There were some good points there. Plenty for me to consider.

@ Anarkex dude, again, the majority of games in general is shite so I don’t see the need to bash art games in particular because he played tons of crap ones. How many of the hundreds or thousands yearly releases of games do you find worthy of playing? 50? 100 if you had more money to spend on them? Surely there’s a fuckton of bad games left. But I doubt you’d make an article bashing “video games” in the way Jim bashed “indie” and “art” games. And if you would, you’d be wrong as well.

And you’re a hypocrite because while you claim Jim is “right” when I bring up how Jim’s statements are wrong. you say that doesn’t apply to you. Then don’t state Jim is right, just state what you think instead. And sorry but saying he liked this or that doesn’t somehow make the rest of his shitty arguments easy to ignore. If anything it shows he can’t even write an article without contradicting himself, making his goals ever more obvious.

Extended, is this seriously all about the frigging “no-life basement dwellers” comment? It’s a stupid ad hominem that has nothing to do with his main argument. It’s just there for chuckles. He made very specific statements about what elements of art game design he was against, and the example of Braid isn’t there just as an “exception”, but it’s there as an example of an art game that isn’t so far up its own ass that it’s no longer fun to play. And for the last time, he’s not “bashing art games”, this is all over a very specific element, the sacrifice of mechanical complexity for artsy fartsy goofballery, that is more or less ingrained into the concept of art games. This is something I’m sure Jim would agree with me that these games could easily move beyond, it simply takes effort on the part of the devs and criticism on the part of the community, something that yes, eventually snowballs into a criticism of every last one of us, devs, critics, and players. Is this seriously that hard to follow?

Some people seem not to understand hyperbole.

jim is a troll, making the argument that The Knack are more important than Black Flag. i miss the days of ron workman at dtoid. now its just a poor mans Kotaku.

Derek, I thought you knew better than this. Sterling is a professional troll, and that’s all he’s ever going to be. Ignore and move on. He doesn’t even deserve the muscle movement your fingers made to type up this article.

There are plenty more instances than just that. Again, if his title, and the rest of his “”"article”"” (one pair of quotes isn’t enough) had the tone of “art games aren’t ALWAYS innovative, innovation isn’t ALWAYS good” then there would have been no argument in the first place. Yet, he chose to make tons of stupid claims both in the title and in the rest of it, in order to actually cause this argument, and hits to that website and you said you agree with him. End of.

Also, as said a billion times before, don’t play art games if you think they sacrifice too much of what games mean to you. There are plenty of makers making games you want, why do you want to seemingly force the rest of them, or hell, even those same developers, since plenty of them work on conventional games as well, to spend their creativity only in ways that please your very personal gaming habits? Not all movies are comedies and action flicks, not all games are about putting a grin on your face as you master the mechanics and come out on top. Deal with it, your disapproval isn’t going to make anyone realise your truth is the one truth and that all games should be the best games in their genre ever, and hell, even fit in a genre. You didn’t enjoy something? Move the fuck on than claim the developer was so wrong to displease you. Especially since most of them are free, and as said before, often necessary for experience and ideas to grow and be turned into a better convetional game.

Yeah, this is akin to complaining that flipnote animations all suck and are the reason their creators live with mom n pops, and that if they had real talent they would be making just Disney productions or Mona Lisa-esque paintings, lol.

@Extended: Let scrubs and casual gamers kill gaming? I would rather die then ever let that happen.

Mastering game mechanics is gaming. These scrubs and casual gamers who have no internet in actually playing games, much less making them, who enjoy movies more than they do games need to stop perverting the medium and dumbing it down even moreso than the mainstream games industry already has.

I bet most of the games you play don’t even require any sort of mastering and are in fact casual games like Modern Warfare, GTA and the like. Those types of games do indeed kill gaming, unlike what you mean when you say casual and the art games that you loathe so much, yet are from and for people who have little to do with other types of games, and therefor cannot destroy those. It’s a different market that cannot and will not replace the rest of it, whereas crap like Modern Warfare and GTA did in fact replace actual games that did require mastering like Quake. Or actual thinking like ye olde adventure games, when most of the current are mindless click the win button affairs, or kill x enemies to progress (RE5 again).

If you’re like Jim you should spend less time mastering gameplay mechanics that have no room for mastering in the first place, and more time mastering life, otherwise all that fat will in fact kill you within 5-10 years by the way. Not that many will miss you, I imagine the anger issues of both of you stem from that fact, in fact, but yeah, I don’t imagine you’ll particularly enjoy it when it happens, heart attacks and strokes are rather painful and can leave you crippled if you survive. Start today!

Derp: Nice to know you guys can rise above my mindless namecalling. At least mine has a point.

Extended: How about throwing something at me I haven’t heard before. LOL YOU HAVE NO RIGHT, CRITICISM IS NEVER WARRANTED, LEAVE INDIE GAMES ALOOOOWNE.

Soak your head. If ANYONE takes what I’ve said to heart, it’ll have been worth the time I wasted posting here. Regardless, though, I’m done with you, as the goofballery has obviously come full circle. Until next time, TIGsource.

@Anarkex,

Is that you Jim??? LOL

@Ryan (comment #280),

Well said, but he actually might have had some valid points in his first article, unfortunately for him he threw any credibility out the window when he wrote his second article considering he contradicted himself… I guess proving your point in a way, though you’re probably more familiar with his work, or habits, than I. Either way, I kinda made himself look foolish by responding to himself.

I won’t dare read all the comments that are above me, but I agree with you, Derek, and appreciate the post.

why do we even try to create art? why not just try to create good games…

Why fly a kite when you can just pop a pill?

*jk* Sorry, but I couldn’t resist that classic line.

>implying that Modern Warfare takes no skill

facepalm.jpg

Cod4:MW has been a staple of the MLG for years now. Where the hell have you been Derp?

And a lot of people like to use GTA as an example when guess what? Actually doing the missions under a set amount of time or finding out the best way of doing them does in fact take skill. Only a complete scrub who has never tried to set a record in anything would use that as an example with a straight face.

>If you’re like Jim you should spend less time mastering gameplay mechanics that have no room for mastering in the first place, and more time mastering life, otherwise all that fat will in fact kill you within 5-10 years by the way. Not that many will miss you,

Now this is just retarded. If you think keeping yourself in shape and playing video games both are hard to do, you just suck at managing your time. Look at Fatal1ty. That guy does at least two hours a day of cardio, and he’s a master tournament level player at Quake.

Second, I’ve won more money at gaming tournaments than you probably make per month or even year at your day job.

Well, I skipped right to the end and I must say that if all the replies are like that I’m glad I did. Internet kids bragging about winning video game tourneys and how hardcore they are because they play some of the most mainstream titles out there that any non gaming redneck can enjoy (and going by Xbox live voice chat they do so)? How did discussion devolve like this?

What he said. What the fuck are those people doing on an indie games site anyway? Did all of them come from that shitblog linked at the top or what? No wonder with that attitude.

I don’t discriminate between indie and non-indie. Only games that have gameplay and games that don’t (and still try to pretend to be games because people are too ignorant to question them otherwise). And no, watching a screensaver where you can make a person walk around isn’t gameplay, you know what you call that? One word: shallow.

@Infinite,

That’s the kind of tirade that actually turns people off and comes across as “shallow”. You sound like a young kid, so I want you to know that I’m not trying to insult you or anything, it’s just that by being brash and abrasive for no other reason than to be loud in a comments section of a public forum just for some attention is the equivalent of a child purposefully spilling their milk to gain that needed attention. If you’re not a young kid then please grow up. Again, I’m not trying to insult you but considering the tone and context of your comments they came across as immature. Everyone has the right to a point of view, and perhaps you have a valid one, you’re going to have to express yourself with some consideration and thought first though, if you want anyone to take what you have to say seriously.

Just trying to help.

You’re the one saying I have no life. Now you’re backtracking because I just proved you wrong.

Just trying to help.

Infinite,

WTF? That made no sense. I think you should probably stop posting while you’re ahead. Don’t worry, this is my last reply to any of your comments.

These comments are mostly tl;dr flames but I just wanna chime in again and say the ThirdStrikeAnnouncer stuff cracked me up. Props to whoever posted those.

Games themselves are art. I think people are upset when the gameplay in artistic games don’t satisfy when it comes to the fun factor.

There are games out there which are extremely terrible to play through, but their stories, characters, music, and enviorments are so rewarding if you can put up with the crap gameplay, you’ll get something special for your efforts.

If innovation was terrible, we’d be stuck in the stone age of computer/video games.

Experimenting and moving forward in different game genres (and into entirely new types of genres) is mostly a good thing, it’s just that not all experimental games turn out that fun or exciting, but they sometimes have different merit to them.

I don’t think minimal interactivity is a problem in itself. It’s just that most “art games” also seem to lack anything enjoyable to make up for it. The messages they crudely try to convey are mostly clichéd and cheesy, and the interactivity there is doesn’t really add anything to it at all. The graphics are often crude, obviously derivative and boring.

I’m not saying that all art games are like this; of course there are some exceptions, but actually none that I can think of from the top of my head.

… and there’s something utterly disgusting with self-proclaimed art games, especially when they are as shallow and boring as most seem to be right now.

“This game sucks. Oh, it’s an ART GAME?! I should re-evaluate my experience because of what someone told me what to think”

You can call it fucking Picasso, it doesn’t change the fact that it is shallow and has nothing but a cheap message generated through all means besides actual gameplay itself. Games like Passage could easily just be a flash movie instead. Why even bother having the player press forward? Give them a play button instead and it would be the same damn thing. Shallow gameplay is shallow gameplay no matter how you try to justify it.

what’s that ripping sound? and where did jim get that extra asshole? Damn, Derek!

Here here! (to the Derek’s original points). And to everyone bashing art games: GEEZ already. There’s criticism to be made, perhaps, discussion to be had, but:

“This game sucks. Oh, it’s an ART GAME?! I should re-evaluate my experience because of what someone told me what to think”

is completely missing the point, and–I have to say it–downright juvenile.

“This game sucks. Oh, it’s an ART GAME?! I should re-evaluate my experience because of what someone told me what to think”

That’s what I’m getting from his articles.
Someone that makes a thread about his simple gamemaker game with the default sprites will get comments like, “Ok for your first game.” or, “that was pretty bad and here’s why…”.
But if he makes the same thread, but calls it an experimental art game then he’ll have people in the thread calling those that give constructive criticism trolls who don’t understand.

Also, what’s with the “You’re wrong, I’m right, and I’m not going to respond to you anymore, I win.” mentality?

@Jordan: No, I don’t think that I am missing any point. It’s just a general tendency I’ve observed. People who seem to think that their games are more work of art than others’ often try to force their view onto their peers by different means, and calling your game an “art game” is one of the most blatantly obvious ways of doing so.

Why do they do it? Mostly because they want people to evaluate the game based on what the authors want it to be.

By the way, if you can’t argue with me without downplaying my arguments condescendingly, I’d prefer if you don’t at all. Let’s try to keep this discussion tidy.

“A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape.”

I also agree with this statement regarding Claude Monet’s paintings

At least they aren’t trying to be interactive.

yep, you are pretty much right

@paul eres: You’re right to call me out on assaulting Jim. I got carried away. Thus the long gap between that comment and this one; I realized I needed to step away before I got overly invested in this. My intent was to emphasize that whatever you may think of Jim, whether you love him or hate him, he did make a valid point. I should have said something to this tune:
“While I rarely agree with Jim Sterling, and personally dislike the man, he has made some legitimate points that bear further discussion.” I wasn’t quite mature enough to resist my own jab at Sterling, though; I felt like it would somehow endear me to this crowd by further separating me from him.
Regarding art games getting more hate than any other: I could be mistake, but I think the real problem is that they are very much a “love it or hate it” thing. It’s just the people who hate them outnumber the people who love it. Quantity does not equal quality, though…
Anyways, me and a couple of my friends have been discussing the topic offline. I’m writing an essay/blog post on the topic. I’ll not advertise it, though; if it’s worth reading, it will make its rounds under its own power. Also, I’m going to quit this comment thread while I’m ahead, before I say something else stupid… if I haven’t already.

Looking in my crystal ball…

I see a lot of Jim Sterling themed art games in the near future.

Regarding a few of the latest comments… I think people are mistaking shallow with the amount of things you’re given to do in a game. In that case, why aren’t people bitching about the redundancy of First Person Shooters? I’m not saying they’re redundant as if to say that’s my opinion about FPSes, I’m saying that if you have a hate on for shallow games then why not bitch about all of them? They are, in my opinion, the most shallow of all genres. I still play them and enjoy them, but I would never say they are anything more than shallow gameplay experiences. The deepest FPSes were the originals, and out of the “later” titles, only the System Shock games come to mind in terms of deep gameplay – but, that’s also because they were true FPSes. If you truly have a hate on for shallow games then your last experience with a so-called “deep” game was probably The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, since you had so many things you could do in it (Sword Fighting, Archery, Horse Riding, Swimming, Time Traveling, etc. etc.)

Again, that isn’t my opinion, this is what I gather from all the people who are complaining about games such as passage. How can you really bitch about a game like passage when it was intended to be an extremely short game/experience. Is there a message? That’s up to the player to figure out. I have to question some peoples honesty though, why would you play a game that you didn’t like the reading about? Obviously you had to read about Passage somewhere in order to play it, it’s a rather hard game to stumble upon if you’re not into indie games. So, given the fact that most of us had heard about it and read about it before playing it, why play it if you didn’t like what you heard or read? Just to bitch about it? In that case, you have too much time on your hands – and perhaps missed the message (if there was one) in Passage. *lets see how many people get that* ;-)

@Infinite,

Take some diazepam or renew your prescription for methylphenidate. You’re far too angry over such a trivial topic.

I’m sorry, but haven’t we learned anything from action movies? NEVER TRUST A FAT MAN WITH GREASY HAIR! he’s obviously the villain!

“GIVE THEEZ PEEPUL AIR!”

PS Destructoid can suck it.

Comparing “Art” games to impressionism? Hurhur

Seriously: Why the hell does anybody waste his sparse breath to complain about art?
If you don't like artsy fartsy games, stick with games that let you shoot bad guys with an m4a1.
Nobody forces you to like anything that you personally consider boring.
But if you REALLY wanna be on the sight of light:
Eat mainstream and drink art.