Basically, if they are sitting in their basement "expressing" themselves all day and making no money because no one wants to buy their work, it is failed art IMO. If the audience doesn't understand whats being communicating it's not doing its job.
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I'm not 100% educated in all the fine artists that have lived throughout history but it seems like it hasn't been that uncommon for an artist, poet or writer to be discovered/become famous after their death. I think that the public success really has nothing to do with how good art is.
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I was arguing that calling something the 'superior' art form before doesn't work because of how subjective it is, but thinking about it more games are actually an objectively worse art form. If art is about expression, you can't honest say that games are the best way to express something. Games are simply to occupie the mind with problems to solve.
It's the ulimate art form simply because it has such a loose definition, as to include video/text? Thats a horrible reason.
and I pretty much agree with everything Strangefate said
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I see your point, but I think games can express everything a movie, song, painting or sculpture can express, but it can also express the complex relationships between different things. Sim City has no problems to solve.
Do video games have a loose definition? I don't think so. I think we all know a video game when we see one.
How is dying in games fun? Sometimes the fun comes from the restrictions on the game. I remember so many people complaining about not having an instant respawn in Counter-Strike, except that is what made the game fun and unique.
Oops, typo about deaf people. I meant blind people
Sim City doesn't define any of those things as problems, and there is no winning if you get low crime or low polution. The player could just as easily decide that maximum crime and polution were his goals in the game, or he could decide he has no goals at all and just play.
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Well what kind of game would you have to make in order to for people to be able to stand a good chance to make it through with only one life?
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In Okami I only died fighting the final boss, and only because I got lazy and wanted to see what happened when you died in the game. In other words, it would be an easy game, but with the constant tension coming from the fact that you could die and never play again. Alternately you could make it a ranked online game in which everybody had the same chance, since nobody would get to practice, and you would have real bragging rights if you were ranked at the top.
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Normal counter-argument: Use logic to persuade people that your point of view is correct.
Justin_Meisse counter-argument: Make fun of the other person's argument
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I was just pointing out that the extreme stance you seem to take on every issue made me disagree with an argument I would normally agree with.
I don't think video games are the ultimate art, they have the crutch of having to entertain the player.
Well, the appeal in SimCity is, I think, that the possibilities are unlimited. There's no restriction concerning how your city should look and function. What your game ideas are doing, is restricting the players. I don't see how restriction in games provides any sort of relief from daily real life school/work 'I'm-a-nobody' situations. I rather like goofing around in games, because I can't in real life... locking after a single death doesn't exactly sound fun to me.
- An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that deaf people can play
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I'll never undestand this industries obscession with 'being an artist'. In the 17+ years i was a professional musician, of the thousands of gigs i've played, of the hundreds of truly gifted muso's i've met and played with not once have i heard someone refer to themselves as an 'Artist' even though some of them created what could only be described as art. craftsmen, composers sure but artists, never.
it seems all you need to qualify for Tortured Artist thesedays is a wacom and a copy of painter.
maybe i'm just old and bitter
/edit - this wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, just a general observation
I was just pointing out that the extreme stance you seem to take on every issue made me disagree with an argument I would normally agree with.
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I think the reason that I have "extreme" stances on things is because I think all of my beliefs through the best I can, and what I end up with is what I believe. I think most other people just decide to believe what the other people in their social circle believe. Another way of putting it is that I would rather believe the truth even if it hurts some people's feelings.
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Well, the appeal in SimCity is, I think, that the possibilities are unlimited. There's no restriction concerning how your city should look and function. What your game ideas are doing, is restricting the players. I don't see how restriction in games provides any sort of relief from daily real life school/work 'I'm-a-nobody' situations. I rather like goofing around in games, because I can't in real life... locking after a single death doesn't exactly sound fun to me.
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Yeah, there are plenty of games where you get to be a superhero and destroy everything, and if those are not easy enough there are always cheat codes for those types of games. I am not saying every game should be like what I was suggesting, but maybe some? Maybe one?
I don't really give a shit about people calling games art, or me an artist. Mostly I want three things:
I dont think anybody is making fun of anything here.
You do come over a bit like the generic Zealot #1487.
I mean really, i didn't wanna say anything about your ideas, but since Frankie was so kind to bring them up again, let's have a look at them:
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it
COOL, what generic shooter is gonna have that amazingly innovative feature, it's for sure gonna make the game itself better in so many ways. I'm sure any artist here would love to spend a year working on a title people can only play and see once.
Diablo's hardcore mode comes to mind.
A game that lets you only play a certain amount of time each day and rewards you with more playtime as in-game pick-ups
Word!, i'm sure those countries that already have playtime limits on MMOs think it's an incredibly fun and original idea, i smell cult status... and let's face it, rested XP in world of warcraft sucks, rested loot sounds a lot smarter, very original.
- A game that "plays itself" when you are not actively controlling it
Because the sims, RTS, RPGs etc don't do it good enough... hint, don't terminate the game!
- A game with realistic avatar damage (ie, pulled muscle, broken leg, etc)
Love it, i hate games where the leg or arm in the human UI icon just goes red... i mean wtf, is it broken, scratched, tired, blown off ? i want exact medical details so i can feel more relieved when i instantaneously fix it with a med pac. That feature would definetely make any generic #8767 shooter stand out.
- A game that is not set in a sci-fi, fantasy, historic, horror or cutesy setting (that is not a sports or racing title).
Finally... GTA, hitman, Max payne and the other 30% of the games out there are just too cute... they need more leather, spikes and skulls.
An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that deaf people can play
Amazing, how about an FPS game that has lot's of graphics but no sound so blind people can play!
I'm sory Ninjas, but you fall in the same category everybody else does, you're taking things that have been there forever and think you can do better by adding 1 feature which sometimes doesn't even affect the gameplay much or at all, and will result in more generic games.
It's just the way it is, there's always 89784 clones and one will have a litle advancement for the genre that the rest will copy... simple evolution. I don't see the artsy side of it.
If you work in a studio, you'll see that your way of thinking (take generic game, add 1-2 'cool' features) is the way 99% of the games are made.
Take the Mona Lisa, glue some silicon boobs on her and you have your interactive artistic revolution, genius.
Dedication and love to your profession is great, i think we all have it but to think that video games have so much more artistical merit than building a cathedral and deserve (and we too!) more respect than Renbrand or Picasso because you think it's the ultimate art form is just delusional.
I'm sure a cook or baker would tell you that cooking and baking are the ultimate forms of interactive art.
The presentation is important as you eat with our eyes, the smell and the taste have to be great and has to feel good on your tongue too. SOme recipes are very difficult and after a good meal most people will feel better than after playing a video game too.
I think you're mixing up entertainment with art. Video games are for now the ultimate form of entertainment maybe, but sure as hell not the ultimate art form.
Just because it's interactive doesn't make it good art, art doesn't have to be interactive at all. Art is not necessarily here to entertain and amuse you.
It's entertainment that gets better when it's interactive, and some forms of entertainment, like video games, do have SOME artistical merit.
I have met a lot of people who shit on every single idea they hear but never come up with anything themselves. It seems to me you are one of those people.
I may not be the best game designer, and my ideas may seriously suck, but here is one thing I am doing that you are not-- trying.
[edit] Ironically, as a contractor I have worked on some of the least innovative games ever. It really doesn't bother me, I think because I still have time to do what I want.
Ninjas, you sound like a kid who has possibly played a little too much Xbox when he should have been doing homework. Please stop speaking for the industry.
The article you first linked to never states that games are more destructive or inferior to activities such as reading. The article never states that gaming prevents students from completely homework, or reading assignments. It ONLY states, numerous times, that gamers spend LESS TIME doing homework and reading. It doesn't go far enough to specify what games or genre of games were played. So basically this article provides nothing. Those with high academic performance and fast reading skills could spend LESS TIME doing these activities, as the last two paragraphs imply. All this article really says is that someone at a University in Michigan has discovered that people play video games IN ADDITION to daily school activities such as reading and homework. Big discovery, eh? Perhaps games have improved their problem solving abilities? Perhaps they read faster to make time for games? While the article may be written with a bias that would lead simple minds to believe video games MAY be the reason their child is getting bad grades...YOU still fell for it. Talk about pittying non-gamers, eh? Try getting off your soap box and thinking for yourself. To me this article has proven how much Universities are wasting their funding on useless studies that spawn pointless discussions. When I talk to non-gamers, I politely ask them if they would like to play as well.
Games are not art. Games are activites that provide entertainment, or education. They have goals, rules, and challenges (what you may call limitations). But that's what defines a game. Games may include art to enhance their visual appeal. Often times the art itself has no influence on the gameplay. I can go on and on...but I don't have time to educate you.
(I would contribute more, but this discussion has gone off topic and has not managed to specify the differences between art, game, toy, simulation, and education tool as it applies to computer applications. thank you.)
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I have met a lot of people who shit on every single idea they hear but never come up with anything themselves. It seems to me you are one of those people.
I may not be the best game designer, and my ideas may seriously suck, but here is one thing I am doing that you are not-- trying.
[edit] Ironically, as a contractor I have worked on some of the least innovative games ever. It really doesn't bother me, I think because I still have time to do what I want.
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Sheesh. I'm not knocking your art, you've got skill from what I've seen but all I've seen you post is the same stuff the rest of us are doing.
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it
COOL, what generic shooter is gonna have that amazingly innovative feature, it's for sure gonna make the game itself better in so many ways. I'm sure any artist here would love to spend a year working on a title people can only play and see once.
Diablo's hardcore mode comes to mind.
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D2 hardcore is the shit! I've played some hardcore NWN mods as well with only one life.
CS only gives you one life per round.
Not really a new concept but a great gameplay element.
Ninjas, you sound like a kid who has possibly played a little too much Xbox when he should have been doing homework. Please stop speaking for the industry.
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I am not trying to speak for the industry. I am just trying to speak for myself, and to speak up for anyone else who shares my views.
As far as me sounding like a kid; I think I am probably one of the older people here on Polycount at 28. In terms of skipping homework, I would compare my art/academic credentials with anyone else here.
Maybe the problem is that I don't even think in terms of FPS, RTS, MMO since those genres were not really around when I was a kid playing games. You had flight sims, adventure games and platformers instead. I have a totally different framework because of it.
As far as the article; it has a negative bias. That is enough for me. The fact that the research is flawed is just a bonus. Every time I see shit like that I am going to start sending emails because I am tired of it. Maybe you guys don't have the self respect to stand up to second-rate pseudoscience, but I do, and I am going to let those people know it.
I have done an awful lot of shit. Most of the last 10 years I have been doing something art or game related for a living, and I have been doing it on my own terms. I don't think I deserve to be called a kid by people who are younger, have less experience and less education than myself.
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Sheesh. I'm not knocking your art, you've got skill from what I've seen but all I've seen you post is the same stuff the rest of us are doing.
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My game art is nothing special around here, but I have been trying to bring my coding skill up, which is very hard for me. I don't have a lot to show for it either. These last couple months I have been having some personal issues that have kept me distracted and in a slump (not to mention coming off of wrapping a major contract job). I am working on some stuff now though. With any luck, if I can stop myself from posting long enough to work, I will put something up for us all to look at in the next week or so.
We are very smart and capable adult professionals like yourself...
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And you are misleading. YOU are not a game developer. Blizzard, EA, Epic, are game developers. You are an "off-site freelance 'artist'" with little to show for himself and a lot to say on forums.
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The fact is that as an economist and professional game developer, I am constantly dismayed by the poor understanding that non-gamers have about video games.
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And you assume that those who attend Universities do not play games. Let's not forget I've already proven your fundamentally flawed interpretation of this article. And...
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I was just reading about a research article one of your graduate students recently had published. Hope Cummings' article, which I have not had the chance of reading yet, was about how games took time away from reading and homework.
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...please realize that your conflict is with CNN, not the University. Since CNN is the one providing the bias, and you yourself have not read the actual study. Great job on your letter to the research department btw. I'm sure they'll throw it away, since you have not done YOUR research. And why should you? Because you're busy being an artist of the ultimate art form attempting to change the world with your crazy ideas.
Are you saying that you are not a "smart and capable adult professional"?
I am a game developer. I develope games for a living. I have completed projects with major publishers. I don't want to work fulltime on-site right now, but that doesn't mean my job is any less.
The flaw in the article, and I will spell it out for you again, is that every one of those girls playing games could have been playing text adventures, so they could actually have been reading more rather than less, and all those boys could have been playing games for homework, so that they were actually doing more homework not less. If it is possible for your "findings" to be the exact opposite of what they really are, it means your study is flawed. Have you ever done any research at all? I have.
My conflict is with every single person who says "video games are not reading" or "video games are not homework". Is that clear enough?
Yeah that letter was pretty absurd... ie "That study, which i haven't read OFFENDS ME DEEPLY!" try rereading what you type and have it sink in for awhile.
We don't save lives with game art, out of all the "art forms" game art is probably the most disposable and easilly forgettable of them all, and while film or books or paintings MAY still be recognized after the artist is dead... that will never happen with games because 1. games rarely make it past 6 months without being completely discarded. 2. you don't make a game all by yourself, its a team effort.
Your idealistic notions are familiar to me, but stand back and look at your arguments, you're just being defensive, trying to justify what you do.
And btw there is a game out there that plays itself already... its called progress quest, u just launch it and it just levels up and achieves things on its own, and whoever runs the program the longest is the top "player" every once in awhile u'd pickup a cool item or reach a certain level, all fairly arbitrary, but... you don't have to play.
Really, I don't think it is at all unusual that I didn't read the journal article. It isn't online, and only specialists or schools have subscriptions to the journal. The problems I was pointing out are obvious from the abstract anyway. Also, the person who did the study didn't indicate that she found it particularly unusual that I hadn't read the article in her lengthy email reply.
Haha
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Video games are not reading, and not homework.
Go cry emo kid.
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and all those boys could have been playing games for homework
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Insult me all day, it doesn't change the fact that their research sucks. What do you call it when you interpret letters as ideas? I call it reading. CHolden and Jon Jones did a biology game for a school. I don't know what you find so funny about kids playing something like that at home.
[edit]
And in case anyone here thinks text adventures are just some kind of historical footnote, this game developer has been making a living off selling them since 2002.
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Main Outcome Measure Twenty-four hour time-use diaries were collected on 1 weekday and 1 weekend day, both randomly chosen. Time-use diaries were used to determine adolescents' time spent playing video games, with parents and friends, reading and doing homework, and in sports and active leisure.
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Now, I play DDR for exercise, which I think would also count as "active leisure". I sometimes play text adventures which would also count as "reading",and I also play WoW with my mother, brother and sister-in-law which would count as time with "parents and friends" so I don't see how I could really fill out a time use diary with the listed catagories accurately.
there have been TONS of psychological studies that prove that people learn much faster and easier through games, and video games CAN be educational, hell the millitary uses games to train soldiers. BUT thats not what majority of games are, they aren't meant to educate, they aren't meant to teach you anything, most of them don't include some high minded metaphysical theories that will make you sit there in wonder for days... they're basically exactly what SF said ... mass market entertainment.
they CAN be used for all these good things, but they're not because making them entertaining pays the bills.
games are a medium, plain and simple.
painting is not art, there are paintings that are.
that guy at wal mart with the air brush is painting, but he is not making art. games have the opportunity to be an all encompassing artform. They are audible, visual, 3d,2d, things move around, you can interact with whats happening. getting the viewer to participate in the art they are viewing has been a goal of many artist since dada and situationist international. BUT, they cost a ton and convincing someone to give you a million or 2 to make art isnt something that is just going to happen. there might be a day when digital, interactive art is as common as painting, or sculpture, but it will take a massive effort in the tools sector to allow one person or a few to make something spectacular. you can do that with film, or animation, games are not quite there yet.
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it seems all you need to qualify for Tortured Artist thesedays is a wacom and a copy of painter.
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well, it's part of our job titles, isn't it? sounds quite pretentious and craftsman would be more to the point. or perhaps slave, drone, bitch... depending on how the team is run.
i have met only very few people in the industry, who consider themselves artists and only one of them i would have personally counted as one. most are here to collect a paycheck. reminds me, it's weekend, baby! wtf why is this computer still running?
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Insult me all day, it doesn't change the fact that their research sucks.
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The research you haven't read. Please stop. You have work to do. And so far your vague rambling is only a defense for the fact you have no clue what you're talking about, jumping from point to point refusing to stay on a specific topic. Contradicting yourself and preaching your own extreme bias. Perhaps your anger stems from your inability to show anything for yourself, or the previously mentioned conflicts in your personal life. Whatever it is, many of us have been there (or still there). Keep it to yourself. Do some art, or write a book.
In Okami I only died fighting the final boss, and only because I got lazy and wanted to see what happened when you died in the game. In other words, it would be an easy game, but with the constant tension coming from the fact that you could die and never play again. Alternately you could make it a ranked online game in which everybody had the same chance, since nobody would get to practice, and you would have real bragging rights if you were ranked at the top.
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Why is everyone forgetting that there are games like this, like dungeon crawl, nethack. I wouldn't buy a game like that though because that would be incredibly annoying to have to see everything I just did over and over again just because I died. If the game was too easy, then I would be disappointed by the lack of challenge it provided. Theres a reason these conventions aren't used in games that are mainstream because the general public seems to agree that permadeath is annoying.
Game designers should only concern themselves with what is fun, if they did this more often, there wouldn't be so many games that consist of "go here and give this guy this thing" missions, because they are annoying.
Games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating, so you have to tread that line between what is fun and what is challenging. GRAW 2 is a good example of this, even though to me it's a little too easy because I am half way through and haven't died once.
EDIT: Also when I first started playing Dead Rising, I thought that if you died you had to start over, and I was always stressed out, and too afraid to do anything because I didn't want to keep doing all that crap over and over again, which means I wasn't playing the game for fun, but to see the ending which is a bad thing for a game. After I found out you could load your game when you died instead of saving and quitting, I got all excited, and started doing all the fun side missions. t became a much better game to me as a result.
My idea is different than permadeath or hardcore mode. You wouldn't have to worry about seeing the same stuff again because you wouldn't be given the option to restart. You would die, and that would be it.
I am going to make a thread about game design ideas...
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My idea is different than permadeath or hardcore mode. You wouldn't have to worry about seeing the same stuff again because you wouldn't be given the option to restart. You would die, and that would be it.
I am going to make a thread about game design ideas...
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Have fun selling that idea to a publisher, genius. What price range will the game be in? At this point I assume you're joking.
elysium , i dont know what awesome projects you on, but beeing an asshole sure would sell , at least for you...
P.S - he has maybe some crazy ideas, but everyone has them , and im not saying that he might get something out of them , but who knows none can predict the future. Go outside( both of you )
Thanks for calling me an asshole. You contribute so much to this discussion. I'm simply trying to help Ninjas. He said it himself.
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With any luck, if I can stop myself from posting long enough to work, I will put something up for us all to look at in the next week or so.
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He's had his fun. He read an article, and twisted it to his own emotional delight, misinterpreted its findings, and started a rant on the forum that holds no solid point. He went so much as to call people who criticize games "Nazis" in his first post, in doing so lost the debate before it even began.
And I'll fill it with the 14,000 I've had in the last 3 weeks.
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That sounds awesome! The thread is up, and I will be happy to read them. I think it is a lot better to do something constructive rather than to get all uptight about this stuff. I think there is an open source or free text adventure game engine. I would be cool to not just talk but try and prototype and play with different ideas.
Similar to one that came up on my work's internal boards recently, except that one had less pillocking around.
Ninjas, you could indeed argue that playing a text adventure is "reading" - technically of course it is. But anyone older than 38, or who's just never been into games, would consider it as much reading as they would those old Choose your Own Adventure/Fighting Fantasy books.
I got berated by a teacher on at least one occassion because I spent my evening mostly reading/playing one of those rather than reading the god awful boring book he'd given us as an assignment to read (I forget what the book was, might have been Z for Zachariah). He told me that I'd never learn anything from those sorts of books, and they were designed for idiots and children (an odd thing to say, given that I was about 12).
In retrospect they really were junk on a purely literary level, but they inspired me a lot, and I probably wouldn't be doing the job I'm doing now if it wasn't at least partly due to those (games at the time didn't quite inspire the imagination the way those books did).
So yes, you could consider a text adventure as reading, but it's not the sort of reading academic types are refering to when they say people don't read enough. Comic books fall into the same catagory of "not really reading" BTW.
Which is all besides the point, since the article didn't state that not reading was a bad thing, merely that an active association with video games decreased the chances of reading (presumably a book) among boys.
In fact I'd say this article was quite the reverse of what you thought it was - it's actually pretty positive about games, stating that it didn't greatly decrease interactions with family and friends (presumably because the time you would have spent not playing games would have been taken up with reading a sensible book). And these kids studied were playing for maybe 8 hours a week, which is quite a considerable bit less than I spend in front of a console or computer (out side of work).
As for games being art...
Lets get this straight right now, they're not (in the main), but they do have the capability to be; just like any other form of mass media.
Novels can be art, movies can be art, comic books can be art, television shows can be art, and so on, but 99.9% of the time they're more or less the artistic version of hamburgers. If you're lucky you'll get some reasonable steak in there too. Even those games (shows, films etc) you might consider art are a little iffy in the grand sceme of things, because the whole concept of "art", as opposed to merely artifice, is a little iffy these days. Generally art is considered a good thing, but quite often it's just as dog awful as those media hamburgers. For the sake of argument though, we'll take it that by saying games are art you mean they're the good kind.
Art though, even the good stuff, has an amazing way of alienating people, and sometimes thoroughly pissing them off. So in a way your idea of a game which you get one chance to play would be considered art - because it would piss the vast majority of people who played it right off.
"60 fucking dollars I payed for that! I hadn't even finished the training and I'm dead! WTF!?"
Anyway there's already a game that you have only one chance to get through and if you fuck it up and die you don't get another go - it's called "Life".
That 60 bucks is the important point here though, and one that comes up a lot in discussions at work. If someone if paying $60 for something, you want to make them happy with it - and that's a real ballancing act. Some people want an incredibly difficult game (such as Ninja Gaiden), and will happily play a part of it over and over until they get it right, other people get really frustrated after just a few faliures (my personal sweet spot is three deaths in any one section or boss battle or whatever), pleasing all of them is very difficult - Do you allow them to customise the game to their liking and risk compromising your vision? Or Stick rigidly to how you (as the designer) feel the game should be and risk alienating people from your products in future? The later gives more chance for the production of Art, but it also leaves less chance that you'll be able to afford to create more of it. Tricky ballance - and the former choice is usually a lot safer if you want to eat for the rest of your game, I mean life.
And now I'm babbling nonsensically because it's late, but I'll tell you two more things:
1) Everyone in the industry has at least one killer game idea, and probably several. Almost none of them will ever get made.
2) Relatively few of the ones that do deserve to be. Such is life; best get used to it since you don't get a second go.
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Basically, if they are sitting in their basement "expressing" themselves all day and making no money because no one wants to buy their work, it is failed art IMO. If the audience doesn't understand whats being communicating it's not doing its job.
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I'm not 100% educated in all the fine artists that have lived throughout history but it seems like it hasn't been that uncommon for an artist, poet or writer to be discovered/become famous after their death. I think that the public success really has nothing to do with how good art is.
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Here are some ideas I have had recently:
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it
- A game that lets you only play a certain amount of time each day and rewards you with more playtime as in-game pick-ups
- A game that "plays itself" when you are not actively controlling it
- A game with realistic avatar damage (ie, pulled muscle, broken leg, etc)
- A game that is not set in a sci-fi, fantasy, historic, horror or cutesy setting (that is not a sports or racing title).
- An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that deaf people can play
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Ninjas argument: Games are the ultimate art form and those who bash them are Nazis
Justin_Meisse counter-argument: Make fun of the other person's argument
Sorry I don't understand, was this supposed to be a joke?
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No
I was arguing that calling something the 'superior' art form before doesn't work because of how subjective it is, but thinking about it more games are actually an objectively worse art form. If art is about expression, you can't honest say that games are the best way to express something. Games are simply to occupie the mind with problems to solve.
It's the ulimate art form simply because it has such a loose definition, as to include video/text? Thats a horrible reason.
and I pretty much agree with everything Strangefate said
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I see your point, but I think games can express everything a movie, song, painting or sculpture can express, but it can also express the complex relationships between different things. Sim City has no problems to solve.
Do video games have a loose definition? I don't think so. I think we all know a video game when we see one.
The 5th point isn't an idea.
The 6th idea already exists as a game (with more depth) http://kotaku.com/gaming/in-the-pit/audio+only-doom-game-167797.php
Sim City has no problems to solve.
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Crime, pollution and traffic jams aren't problems to solve?
And, I may be missing something, but how would a deaf person play an audio only video game?
How would any of the first 4 ideas be fun?
The 5th point isn't an idea.
The 6th idea already exists as a game (with more depth) http://kotaku.com/gaming/in-the-pit/audio+only-doom-game-167797.php
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How is dying in games fun? Sometimes the fun comes from the restrictions on the game. I remember so many people complaining about not having an instant respawn in Counter-Strike, except that is what made the game fun and unique.
Oops, typo about deaf people. I meant blind people
Sim City doesn't define any of those things as problems, and there is no winning if you get low crime or low polution. The player could just as easily decide that maximum crime and polution were his goals in the game, or he could decide he has no goals at all and just play.
Well what kind of game would you have to make in order to for people to be able to stand a good chance to make it through with only one life?
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In Okami I only died fighting the final boss, and only because I got lazy and wanted to see what happened when you died in the game. In other words, it would be an easy game, but with the constant tension coming from the fact that you could die and never play again. Alternately you could make it a ranked online game in which everybody had the same chance, since nobody would get to practice, and you would have real bragging rights if you were ranked at the top.
Normal counter-argument: Use logic to persuade people that your point of view is correct.
Justin_Meisse counter-argument: Make fun of the other person's argument
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I was just pointing out that the extreme stance you seem to take on every issue made me disagree with an argument I would normally agree with.
I don't think video games are the ultimate art, they have the crutch of having to entertain the player.
- An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that deaf people can play
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I'll never undestand this industries obscession with 'being an artist'. In the 17+ years i was a professional musician, of the thousands of gigs i've played, of the hundreds of truly gifted muso's i've met and played with not once have i heard someone refer to themselves as an 'Artist' even though some of them created what could only be described as art. craftsmen, composers sure but artists, never.
it seems all you need to qualify for Tortured Artist thesedays is a wacom and a copy of painter.
maybe i'm just old and bitter
/edit - this wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, just a general observation
I was just pointing out that the extreme stance you seem to take on every issue made me disagree with an argument I would normally agree with.
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I think the reason that I have "extreme" stances on things is because I think all of my beliefs through the best I can, and what I end up with is what I believe. I think most other people just decide to believe what the other people in their social circle believe. Another way of putting it is that I would rather believe the truth even if it hurts some people's feelings.
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Well, the appeal in SimCity is, I think, that the possibilities are unlimited. There's no restriction concerning how your city should look and function. What your game ideas are doing, is restricting the players. I don't see how restriction in games provides any sort of relief from daily real life school/work 'I'm-a-nobody' situations. I rather like goofing around in games, because I can't in real life... locking after a single death doesn't exactly sound fun to me.
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Yeah, there are plenty of games where you get to be a superhero and destroy everything, and if those are not easy enough there are always cheat codes for those types of games. I am not saying every game should be like what I was suggesting, but maybe some? Maybe one?
I don't really give a shit about people calling games art, or me an artist. Mostly I want three things:
-The game industry to avoid government regulation
-Better video games
-Non-gamers to understand what they are missing
You do come over a bit like the generic Zealot #1487.
I mean really, i didn't wanna say anything about your ideas, but since Frankie was so kind to bring them up again, let's have a look at them:
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it
COOL, what generic shooter is gonna have that amazingly innovative feature, it's for sure gonna make the game itself better in so many ways. I'm sure any artist here would love to spend a year working on a title people can only play and see once.
Diablo's hardcore mode comes to mind.
A game that lets you only play a certain amount of time each day and rewards you with more playtime as in-game pick-ups
Word!, i'm sure those countries that already have playtime limits on MMOs think it's an incredibly fun and original idea, i smell cult status... and let's face it, rested XP in world of warcraft sucks, rested loot sounds a lot smarter, very original.
- A game that "plays itself" when you are not actively controlling it
Because the sims, RTS, RPGs etc don't do it good enough... hint, don't terminate the game!
- A game with realistic avatar damage (ie, pulled muscle, broken leg, etc)
Love it, i hate games where the leg or arm in the human UI icon just goes red... i mean wtf, is it broken, scratched, tired, blown off ? i want exact medical details so i can feel more relieved when i instantaneously fix it with a med pac. That feature would definetely make any generic #8767 shooter stand out.
- A game that is not set in a sci-fi, fantasy, historic, horror or cutesy setting (that is not a sports or racing title).
Finally... GTA, hitman, Max payne and the other 30% of the games out there are just too cute... they need more leather, spikes and skulls.
An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that deaf people can play
Amazing, how about an FPS game that has lot's of graphics but no sound so blind people can play!
I'm sory Ninjas, but you fall in the same category everybody else does, you're taking things that have been there forever and think you can do better by adding 1 feature which sometimes doesn't even affect the gameplay much or at all, and will result in more generic games.
It's just the way it is, there's always 89784 clones and one will have a litle advancement for the genre that the rest will copy... simple evolution. I don't see the artsy side of it.
If you work in a studio, you'll see that your way of thinking (take generic game, add 1-2 'cool' features) is the way 99% of the games are made.
Take the Mona Lisa, glue some silicon boobs on her and you have your interactive artistic revolution, genius.
Dedication and love to your profession is great, i think we all have it but to think that video games have so much more artistical merit than building a cathedral and deserve (and we too!) more respect than Renbrand or Picasso because you think it's the ultimate art form is just delusional.
I'm sure a cook or baker would tell you that cooking and baking are the ultimate forms of interactive art.
The presentation is important as you eat with our eyes, the smell and the taste have to be great and has to feel good on your tongue too. SOme recipes are very difficult and after a good meal most people will feel better than after playing a video game too.
I think you're mixing up entertainment with art. Video games are for now the ultimate form of entertainment maybe, but sure as hell not the ultimate art form.
Just because it's interactive doesn't make it good art, art doesn't have to be interactive at all. Art is not necessarily here to entertain and amuse you.
It's entertainment that gets better when it's interactive, and some forms of entertainment, like video games, do have SOME artistical merit.
I may not be the best game designer, and my ideas may seriously suck, but here is one thing I am doing that you are not-- trying.
[edit] Ironically, as a contractor I have worked on some of the least innovative games ever. It really doesn't bother me, I think because I still have time to do what I want.
Ninjas, you sound like a kid who has possibly played a little too much Xbox when he should have been doing homework. Please stop speaking for the industry.
The article you first linked to never states that games are more destructive or inferior to activities such as reading. The article never states that gaming prevents students from completely homework, or reading assignments. It ONLY states, numerous times, that gamers spend LESS TIME doing homework and reading. It doesn't go far enough to specify what games or genre of games were played. So basically this article provides nothing. Those with high academic performance and fast reading skills could spend LESS TIME doing these activities, as the last two paragraphs imply. All this article really says is that someone at a University in Michigan has discovered that people play video games IN ADDITION to daily school activities such as reading and homework. Big discovery, eh? Perhaps games have improved their problem solving abilities? Perhaps they read faster to make time for games? While the article may be written with a bias that would lead simple minds to believe video games MAY be the reason their child is getting bad grades...YOU still fell for it.
Games are not art. Games are activites that provide entertainment, or education. They have goals, rules, and challenges (what you may call limitations). But that's what defines a game. Games may include art to enhance their visual appeal. Often times the art itself has no influence on the gameplay. I can go on and on...but I don't have time to educate you.
(I would contribute more, but this discussion has gone off topic and has not managed to specify the differences between art, game, toy, simulation, and education tool as it applies to computer applications. thank you.)
I have met a lot of people who shit on every single idea they hear but never come up with anything themselves. It seems to me you are one of those people.
I may not be the best game designer, and my ideas may seriously suck, but here is one thing I am doing that you are not-- trying.
[edit] Ironically, as a contractor I have worked on some of the least innovative games ever. It really doesn't bother me, I think because I still have time to do what I want.
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Sheesh. I'm not knocking your art, you've got skill from what I've seen but all I've seen you post is the same stuff the rest of us are doing.
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it
COOL, what generic shooter is gonna have that amazingly innovative feature, it's for sure gonna make the game itself better in so many ways. I'm sure any artist here would love to spend a year working on a title people can only play and see once.
Diablo's hardcore mode comes to mind.
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D2 hardcore is the shit! I've played some hardcore NWN mods as well with only one life.
CS only gives you one life per round.
Not really a new concept but a great gameplay element.
HAHAHAHAHA
Ninjas, you sound like a kid who has possibly played a little too much Xbox when he should have been doing homework. Please stop speaking for the industry.
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I am not trying to speak for the industry. I am just trying to speak for myself, and to speak up for anyone else who shares my views.
As far as me sounding like a kid; I think I am probably one of the older people here on Polycount at 28. In terms of skipping homework, I would compare my art/academic credentials with anyone else here.
Maybe the problem is that I don't even think in terms of FPS, RTS, MMO since those genres were not really around when I was a kid playing games. You had flight sims, adventure games and platformers instead. I have a totally different framework because of it.
As far as the article; it has a negative bias. That is enough for me. The fact that the research is flawed is just a bonus. Every time I see shit like that I am going to start sending emails because I am tired of it. Maybe you guys don't have the self respect to stand up to second-rate pseudoscience, but I do, and I am going to let those people know it.
I have done an awful lot of shit. Most of the last 10 years I have been doing something art or game related for a living, and I have been doing it on my own terms. I don't think I deserve to be called a kid by people who are younger, have less experience and less education than myself.
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Sheesh. I'm not knocking your art, you've got skill from what I've seen but all I've seen you post is the same stuff the rest of us are doing.
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My game art is nothing special around here, but I have been trying to bring my coding skill up, which is very hard for me. I don't have a lot to show for it either. These last couple months I have been having some personal issues that have kept me distracted and in a slump (not to mention coming off of wrapping a major contract job). I am working on some stuff now though. With any luck, if I can stop myself from posting long enough to work, I will put something up for us all to look at in the next week or so.
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We are very smart and capable adult professionals like yourself...
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And you are misleading. YOU are not a game developer. Blizzard, EA, Epic, are game developers. You are an "off-site freelance 'artist'" with little to show for himself and a lot to say on forums.
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The fact is that as an economist and professional game developer, I am constantly dismayed by the poor understanding that non-gamers have about video games.
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And you assume that those who attend Universities do not play games. Let's not forget I've already proven your fundamentally flawed interpretation of this article. And...
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I was just reading about a research article one of your graduate students recently had published. Hope Cummings' article, which I have not had the chance of reading yet, was about how games took time away from reading and homework.
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...please realize that your conflict is with CNN, not the University. Since CNN is the one providing the bias, and you yourself have not read the actual study. Great job on your letter to the research department btw. I'm sure they'll throw it away, since you have not done YOUR research. And why should you? Because you're busy being an artist of the ultimate art form attempting to change the world with your crazy ideas.
I am a game developer. I develope games for a living. I have completed projects with major publishers. I don't want to work fulltime on-site right now, but that doesn't mean my job is any less.
The flaw in the article, and I will spell it out for you again, is that every one of those girls playing games could have been playing text adventures, so they could actually have been reading more rather than less, and all those boys could have been playing games for homework, so that they were actually doing more homework not less. If it is possible for your "findings" to be the exact opposite of what they really are, it means your study is flawed. Have you ever done any research at all? I have.
My conflict is with every single person who says "video games are not reading" or "video games are not homework". Is that clear enough?
We don't save lives with game art, out of all the "art forms" game art is probably the most disposable and easilly forgettable of them all, and while film or books or paintings MAY still be recognized after the artist is dead... that will never happen with games because 1. games rarely make it past 6 months without being completely discarded. 2. you don't make a game all by yourself, its a team effort.
Your idealistic notions are familiar to me, but stand back and look at your arguments, you're just being defensive, trying to justify what you do.
And btw there is a game out there that plays itself already... its called progress quest, u just launch it and it just levels up and achieves things on its own, and whoever runs the program the longest is the top "player" every once in awhile u'd pickup a cool item or reach a certain level, all fairly arbitrary, but... you don't have to play.
Go cry emo kid.
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and all those boys could have been playing games for homework
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Haha
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Video games are not reading, and not homework.
Go cry emo kid.
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and all those boys could have been playing games for homework
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Insult me all day, it doesn't change the fact that their research sucks. What do you call it when you interpret letters as ideas? I call it reading. CHolden and Jon Jones did a biology game for a school. I don't know what you find so funny about kids playing something like that at home.
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And in case anyone here thinks text adventures are just some kind of historical footnote, this game developer has been making a living off selling them since 2002.
[re-edit]
Here is a quote from the abstract:
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Main Outcome Measure Twenty-four hour time-use diaries were collected on 1 weekday and 1 weekend day, both randomly chosen. Time-use diaries were used to determine adolescents' time spent playing video games, with parents and friends, reading and doing homework, and in sports and active leisure.
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Now, I play DDR for exercise, which I think would also count as "active leisure". I sometimes play text adventures which would also count as "reading",and I also play WoW with my mother, brother and sister-in-law which would count as time with "parents and friends" so I don't see how I could really fill out a time use diary with the listed catagories accurately.
ahaha couldnt resist...
there have been TONS of psychological studies that prove that people learn much faster and easier through games, and video games CAN be educational, hell the millitary uses games to train soldiers. BUT thats not what majority of games are, they aren't meant to educate, they aren't meant to teach you anything, most of them don't include some high minded metaphysical theories that will make you sit there in wonder for days... they're basically exactly what SF said ... mass market entertainment.
they CAN be used for all these good things, but they're not because making them entertaining pays the bills.
painting is not art, there are paintings that are.
that guy at wal mart with the air brush is painting, but he is not making art. games have the opportunity to be an all encompassing artform. They are audible, visual, 3d,2d, things move around, you can interact with whats happening. getting the viewer to participate in the art they are viewing has been a goal of many artist since dada and situationist international. BUT, they cost a ton and convincing someone to give you a million or 2 to make art isnt something that is just going to happen. there might be a day when digital, interactive art is as common as painting, or sculpture, but it will take a massive effort in the tools sector to allow one person or a few to make something spectacular. you can do that with film, or animation, games are not quite there yet.
it seems all you need to qualify for Tortured Artist thesedays is a wacom and a copy of painter.
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well, it's part of our job titles, isn't it? sounds quite pretentious and craftsman would be more to the point. or perhaps slave, drone, bitch... depending on how the team is run.
i have met only very few people in the industry, who consider themselves artists and only one of them i would have personally counted as one. most are here to collect a paycheck. reminds me, it's weekend, baby! wtf why is this computer still running?
Insult me all day, it doesn't change the fact that their research sucks.
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The research you haven't read. Please stop. You have work to do. And so far your vague rambling is only a defense for the fact you have no clue what you're talking about, jumping from point to point refusing to stay on a specific topic. Contradicting yourself and preaching your own extreme bias. Perhaps your anger stems from your inability to show anything for yourself, or the previously mentioned conflicts in your personal life. Whatever it is, many of us have been there (or still there). Keep it to yourself. Do some art, or write a book.
games are
ahaha couldnt resist...
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What the heck is that thing? I've seen it but I can't remember what it means.
Oh, and this thread is getting silly. Give it a rest guys, agree to disagree and shit.
In Okami I only died fighting the final boss, and only because I got lazy and wanted to see what happened when you died in the game. In other words, it would be an easy game, but with the constant tension coming from the fact that you could die and never play again. Alternately you could make it a ranked online game in which everybody had the same chance, since nobody would get to practice, and you would have real bragging rights if you were ranked at the top.
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Why is everyone forgetting that there are games like this, like dungeon crawl, nethack. I wouldn't buy a game like that though because that would be incredibly annoying to have to see everything I just did over and over again just because I died. If the game was too easy, then I would be disappointed by the lack of challenge it provided. Theres a reason these conventions aren't used in games that are mainstream because the general public seems to agree that permadeath is annoying.
Game designers should only concern themselves with what is fun, if they did this more often, there wouldn't be so many games that consist of "go here and give this guy this thing" missions, because they are annoying.
Games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating, so you have to tread that line between what is fun and what is challenging. GRAW 2 is a good example of this, even though to me it's a little too easy because I am half way through and haven't died once.
EDIT: Also when I first started playing Dead Rising, I thought that if you died you had to start over, and I was always stressed out, and too afraid to do anything because I didn't want to keep doing all that crap over and over again, which means I wasn't playing the game for fun, but to see the ending which is a bad thing for a game. After I found out you could load your game when you died instead of saving and quitting, I got all excited, and started doing all the fun side missions. t became a much better game to me as a result.
I am going to make a thread about game design ideas...
My idea is different than permadeath or hardcore mode. You wouldn't have to worry about seeing the same stuff again because you wouldn't be given the option to restart. You would die, and that would be it.
I am going to make a thread about game design ideas...
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Have fun selling that idea to a publisher, genius. What price range will the game be in? At this point I assume you're joking.
And no...please don't.
P.S - he has maybe some crazy ideas, but everyone has them , and im not saying that he might get something out of them , but who knows none can predict the future. Go outside( both of you )
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With any luck, if I can stop myself from posting long enough to work, I will put something up for us all to look at in the next week or so.
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He's had his fun. He read an article, and twisted it to his own emotional delight, misinterpreted its findings, and started a rant on the forum that holds no solid point. He went so much as to call people who criticize games "Nazis" in his first post, in doing so lost the debate before it even began.
I am going to make a thread about game design ideas...
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And I'll fill it with the 14,000 I've had in the last 3 weeks.
And I'll fill it with the 14,000 I've had in the last 3 weeks.
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That sounds awesome! The thread is up, and I will be happy to read them. I think it is a lot better to do something constructive rather than to get all uptight about this stuff. I think there is an open source or free text adventure game engine. I would be cool to not just talk but try and prototype and play with different ideas.
Ideas are Worthless Unless Acted Upon
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What better way to flesh out ideas than to discuss. Stop trolling Elysium.
Similar to one that came up on my work's internal boards recently, except that one had less pillocking around.
Ninjas, you could indeed argue that playing a text adventure is "reading" - technically of course it is. But anyone older than 38, or who's just never been into games, would consider it as much reading as they would those old Choose your Own Adventure/Fighting Fantasy books.
I got berated by a teacher on at least one occassion because I spent my evening mostly reading/playing one of those rather than reading the god awful boring book he'd given us as an assignment to read (I forget what the book was, might have been Z for Zachariah). He told me that I'd never learn anything from those sorts of books, and they were designed for idiots and children (an odd thing to say, given that I was about 12).
In retrospect they really were junk on a purely literary level, but they inspired me a lot, and I probably wouldn't be doing the job I'm doing now if it wasn't at least partly due to those (games at the time didn't quite inspire the imagination the way those books did).
So yes, you could consider a text adventure as reading, but it's not the sort of reading academic types are refering to when they say people don't read enough. Comic books fall into the same catagory of "not really reading" BTW.
Which is all besides the point, since the article didn't state that not reading was a bad thing, merely that an active association with video games decreased the chances of reading (presumably a book) among boys.
In fact I'd say this article was quite the reverse of what you thought it was - it's actually pretty positive about games, stating that it didn't greatly decrease interactions with family and friends (presumably because the time you would have spent not playing games would have been taken up with reading a sensible book). And these kids studied were playing for maybe 8 hours a week, which is quite a considerable bit less than I spend in front of a console or computer (out side of work).
As for games being art...
Lets get this straight right now, they're not (in the main), but they do have the capability to be; just like any other form of mass media.
Novels can be art, movies can be art, comic books can be art, television shows can be art, and so on, but 99.9% of the time they're more or less the artistic version of hamburgers. If you're lucky you'll get some reasonable steak in there too. Even those games (shows, films etc) you might consider art are a little iffy in the grand sceme of things, because the whole concept of "art", as opposed to merely artifice, is a little iffy these days. Generally art is considered a good thing, but quite often it's just as dog awful as those media hamburgers. For the sake of argument though, we'll take it that by saying games are art you mean they're the good kind.
Art though, even the good stuff, has an amazing way of alienating people, and sometimes thoroughly pissing them off. So in a way your idea of a game which you get one chance to play would be considered art - because it would piss the vast majority of people who played it right off.
"60 fucking dollars I payed for that! I hadn't even finished the training and I'm dead! WTF!?"
Anyway there's already a game that you have only one chance to get through and if you fuck it up and die you don't get another go - it's called "Life".
That 60 bucks is the important point here though, and one that comes up a lot in discussions at work. If someone if paying $60 for something, you want to make them happy with it - and that's a real ballancing act. Some people want an incredibly difficult game (such as Ninja Gaiden), and will happily play a part of it over and over until they get it right, other people get really frustrated after just a few faliures (my personal sweet spot is three deaths in any one section or boss battle or whatever), pleasing all of them is very difficult - Do you allow them to customise the game to their liking and risk compromising your vision? Or Stick rigidly to how you (as the designer) feel the game should be and risk alienating people from your products in future? The later gives more chance for the production of Art, but it also leaves less chance that you'll be able to afford to create more of it. Tricky ballance - and the former choice is usually a lot safer if you want to eat for the rest of your game, I mean life.
And now I'm babbling nonsensically because it's late, but I'll tell you two more things:
1) Everyone in the industry has at least one killer game idea, and probably several. Almost none of them will ever get made.
2) Relatively few of the ones that do deserve to be. Such is life; best get used to it since you don't get a second go.