Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

[Miller]

I think the saddest and most ironic part in all this was that the SJW's essentially co-opted and hijacked the "games as art" crowd and now the common perception of a game that is is "art" is now something more in line with pretentious walking simulators like Gone Home or preachy woke punk shit like Tonight We Riot as opposed to something like Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2, or even Manhunt

"Games as art" was always aimed at the fake geeks/nerd so they could pretend to like video games. Video games aren't art and they will never be art. They're plastic toys.
There are 2 ways to elevate their "games as art" nonsense: walking simulators/scripted movies or denigrate the medium (that's when they started to call the gamers "dudebros").

 

[Wallace]

This shit pre-dates Wii and DS though, places like Kotaku were shitting all over Gamecube for not having "realistic" games like "Call of Duty"

I think it was when the Lord of the Rings movies became blockbusters. It showed Hollywood and Silicon. Alley that normies we're willing to pay money for nerd shit. Then when the normal people met the nerd who occupied the nerd space and rightly recoiled in disgust, it became necessary to remove the nerds. Reminds me of gentrification.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Video games aren't art and they will never be art.

That is bullshit, Video Games aren't intrinsically art no, but art can come from anywhere and be made by anyone.

The fart huffers just want to pretend shit like Gone Home is art, as opposed to actual games that are art like Doom.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think it was when the Lord of the Rings movies became blockbusters. It showed Hollywood and Silicon. Alley that normies we're willing to pay money for nerd shit. Then when the normal people met the nerd who occupied the nerd space and rightly recoiled in disgust, it became necessary to remove the nerds. Reminds me of gentrification.

I wouldn't say it was just Lord of the Rings. Big Bang Theory, Mythbusters, Game of Thrones (the books), Skyrim, Harry Potter, super hero movies, the list goes on and on. In a way it was a golden age of nerd media, helped by there being no barrier to entry. You didn't need to know 100+ episodes of a show or catch up on 50 years of comics just to follow the plot.

 

[SiccDicc]

"Games as art" was always aimed at the fake geeks/nerd so they could pretend to like video games. Video games aren't art and they will never be art. They're plastic toys.
There are 2 ways to elevate their "games as art" nonsense: walking simulators/scripted movies or denigrate the medium (that's when they started to call the gamers "dudebros").

I remember when the fight was going on that the argument wasn't so much "games are art and should be protected" as "games are an artform and as such should be protected", not sure when or why, but people went around started huffing paint and saying "FINALLY! MY CAREER AS A GAMES JOURNALIST MEANS SOMETHING!" "I'M AN ART CRITIC NOW!" etc. Basically faggots ruined everything. Again.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I remember when the fight was going on that the argument wasn't so much "games are art and should be protected" as "games are an artform and as such should be protected", not sure when or why, but people went around started huffing paint and saying "FINALLY! MY CAREER AS A GAMES JOURNALIST MEANS SOMETHING!" "I'M AN ART CRITIC NOW!" etc. Basically faggots ruined everything. Again.

My memory is fuzzy on the details, but I think the "when" was after the US supreme court recognized games as an art form protected by the first amendment, and other countries did similar things. Busy bodies started to dry up as trying to get games banned was proving fruitless, especially when the Wii and DS started getting popular.

The "why", no one in "real" journalism and criticism took the games press seriously, with Rodger Ebert famously saying games would never be art. There was also the massive popularity of Call of Duty that made certain fanboys complain about "dudebros" ruining everything by playing a game they didn't like.

 

[AnOminous]

My memory is fuzzy on the details, but I think the "when" was after the US supreme court recognized games as an art form protected by the first amendment, and other countries did similar things. Busy bodies started to dry up as trying to get games banned was proving fruitless, especially when the Wii and DS started getting popular.

Jack Thompson getting disbarred more or less put the kibosh on that bullshit, at least until Jack Thompson with tits showed up with her feminist bullshit.

 

[Balr0g]

I think this video from Yathzee is one way to look at it

 

[MAPK phosphatase]

 

[Jaimas]

You're going to notice a lot of the current "games as art" crowd are assholes who make completely non-engaging experiences that ultimately aren't art, they just want to be seen as deep and engaging, a lot like the assholes who create modern art, or the dipshits who create music out of literal autistic screeching and declare that it's anything other than weapons-grade cringe. They want all the recognition and none of the effort, and they exist in every single medium from writing to visual arts. This is how they compensate for a lack of talent. None of this is done out of love for the medium; it's entirely done for ego.

There's no difference between them and the woman who vomits on a canvas and claims that it's art.

True love for the craft will always shine through, regardless of the medium, and that's why the question of whether or not games could be art was answered decades ago, and the answer was yes. As an interactive medium, games can inspire, enthrall, and engage on a level other mediums simply can't match.

The question is whether or not games must be art, and the answer there is fuck the hell no.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

You're going to notice a lot of the current "games as art" crowd are assholes who make completely non-engaging experiences that ultimately aren't art, they just want to be seen as deep and engaging, a lot like the assholes who create modern art, or the dipshits who create music out of literal autistic screeching and declare that it's anything other than weapons-grade cringe. They want all the recognition and none of the effort, and they exist in every single medium from writing to visual arts. This is how they compensate for a lack of talent. None of this is done out of love for the medium; it's entirely done for ego.

There's no difference between them and the woman who vomits on a canvas and claims that it's art.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dZ5BtZkIR4
True love for the craft will always shine through, regardless of the medium, and that's why the question of whether or not games could be art was answered decades ago, and the answer was yes. As an interactive medium, games can inspire, enthrall, and engage on a level other mediums simply can't match.

The question is whether or not games must be art, and the answer there is fuck the hell no.

Ratatouille put it best.

"Not everyone can be a great artist, but great art can come from anywhere."

 

[Dom Cruise]

I don't think it was hijacked as much as it's true colours were revealed. The games as art crowd had a boner for pretentious crap as far back as Braid. I'd say Shadow of Colossus and Ico, but people genuinely like those games whereas Braid was only really talked about for it's ending and the poetry between stages.

Many of the games derided as "dudebro" back then had a lot more to say and pushed the industry forward more than the "art game" critics gave them credit for.

Ico and I'm sorry to say Silent Hill 2 are the granddaddies of the "games as art" movement, both came out the same year as Halo, which solidified what the rest of gaming culture is, that's when the schism started in a big way at least.

I love Silent Hill 2 dearly, but it's important to note that for all of it's artistry Silent Hill 2 is still very much a game, it's not a walking simulator or something like that.

Can you cite any specific examples of the "dudebro" games you're referencing?

Look, I can appreciate a good "dudebro" game as much as anyone, but I do want variety and the trouble is "dudebro" games, being the big money makers, tend to push the more artistic stuff by the wayside.

"Games as art" was always aimed at the fake geeks/nerd so they could pretend to like video games. Video games aren't art and they will never be art. They're plastic toys.
There are 2 ways to elevate their "games as art" nonsense: walking simulators/scripted movies or denigrate the medium (that's when they started to call the gamers "dudebros").

Silent Hill 2 is as much a work of art as any movie, book, painting etc has ever been.

I wouldn't say it was just Lord of the Rings. Big Bang Theory, Mythbusters, Game of Thrones (the books), Skyrim, Harry Potter, super hero movies, the list goes on and on. In a way it was a golden age of nerd media, helped by there being no barrier to entry. You didn't need to know 100+ episodes of a show or catch up on 50 years of comics just to follow the plot.

Mythbusters doesn't get enough credit for helping to start "geek chic" I feel.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Can you cite any specific examples of the "dudebro" games you're referencing?

Halo 1-Reach. There's lots of little details like the subtleties of how aiming works, to the story dealing with themes like religion. Even things like the melee and health systems are still used to this day. All of which gets ignored by art critics.

CoD 4 and Modern Warfare 2. Once again, there's a lot of small details that make the gameplay work, and the story is well told and well paced. Then of course there's the multiplayer which is still copied to this day. It's not some flash in the pan game mode like Battle Royale. People seems to forget how fun and how different Modern Warfare 2 was at the time. If you only care about story, scenes like Shock and Awe and No Russian do a better job at story telling and thinking about the subject matter than any walking simulator. I should also mention Black Ops. It could be argued it did what Spec Ops: The Line was trying to do, only better as it has proper set-ups and payoffs, but is ignored because it didn't insult players.

Bioshock. Seriously flawed if you have any understanding of Objectivism, and it strains credibility that Ryan would stand for his principles so strongly that he'd rather build a city under the sea than compromise with world governments, but then abandons them at the drop of a hat when Fontaine shows up. This was considered an art game, as was Bioshock Infinite, right up until a few days after Bioshock Infinite's release when they were stripped of art status retroactively for having the Vox be evil.

I could keep going, but you likely noticed the pattern. Dudebro games tend to have surprisingly refined gameplay. While people like Crowbcat and the games as art people might mock or ignore those elements. Gameplay is as much if not more of a game than some cliched bullshit about mans inhumanity to man. Even taken purely from a story stand point. There's a lot more to get from the games listed than I'd get out of some pretentious walking simulator that doesn't have an ending.

 

[Berrakh]

The issue with the "games are art" discussion is that it is hard for something to be art and commercially viable in many mediums. Games included. Doom is a great example. I could see why would call it art because it's pretty much perfect at realizing its goal. But most people would see that as more like a really successful blockbuster movie than art, which they feel has to be challenging intellectually or emotionally to really qualify.
I am not coming down on either side of this. It's just important to know why people feel the ways they do. What they think is 90% a product of rationalizing how they feel.

The film industry has an uneasy solution to this where Big Mainstream Movies and Sophisticated Indie™ movies are basically not supposed to be compared because they reflect different priorities and construction. Not a perfect solution but definitely better imo. There's a place for lauding a game as an experience like Doom is. It's definitely an achievement. And there's a place for more smarty pants games which use interactivity to suck you into a narrative or setting and proceed to fuck with you. I'd call both art but reflecting different trends or philosophies in design.

I think this video from Yathzee is one way to look at it

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0y-RkiPhpPY

Yahtzee pretty much is of the pretentious fart-huffer crowd people here are critical of though. He loves games which promote his own vices as values and insult the player.

Halo 1-Reach. There's lots of little details like the subtleties of how aiming works, to the story dealing with themes like religion. Even things like the melee and health systems are still used to this day. All of which gets ignored by art critics.

CoD 4 and Modern Warfare 2. Once again, there's a lot of small details that make the gameplay work, and the story is well told and well paced. Then of course there's the multiplayer which is still copied to this day. It's not some flash in the pan game mode like Battle Royale. People seems to forget how fun and how different Modern Warfare 2 was at the time. If you only care about story, scenes like Shock and Awe and No Russian do a better job at story telling and thinking about the subject matter than any walking simulator. I should also mention Black Ops. It could be argued it did what Spec Ops: The Line was trying to do, only better as it has proper set-ups and payoffs, but is ignored because it didn't insult players.

Bioshock. Seriously flawed if you have any understanding of Objectivism, and it strains credibility that Ryan would stand for his principles so strongly that he'd rather build a city under the sea than compromise with world governments, but then abandons them at the drop of a hat when Fontaine shows up. This was considered an art game, as was Bioshock Infinite, right up until a few days after Bioshock Infinite's release when they were stripped of art status retroactively for having the Vox be evil.

I could keep going, but you likely noticed the pattern. Dudebro games tend to have surprisingly refined gameplay. While people like Crowbcat and the games as art people might mock or ignore those elements. Gameplay is as much if not more of a game than some cliched bullshit about mans inhumanity to man. Even taken purely from a story stand point. There's a lot more to get from the games listed than I'd get out of some pretentious walking simulator that doesn't have an ending.

A lot of this controversy is a conflict between Gaming Elites (lol) and the Plebs. A big reason, as denoted by the perjorative Dudebro Games, the critics came down hard on those games is because they did not like the people who do like them. Often for defensible reasons. Because these games were popular and used spectacle the fans tended to largely ignore the more nuanced ideas within them. Or if they did notice they were drowned out. So it did create a situation where people who could extoll the value of these games were just not heard amid the raucous crowd that loved them for the fluff.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Yahtzee pretty much is of the pretentious fart-huffer crowd people here are critical of though. He loves games which promote his own vices as values and insult the player.

He's also very open about his biases and is self-deprecating enough it's much harder to call him pretentious than the usual games journo.

 

[Cyclonus]

Playing games Telltale made before the Walking dead convinced them to keep churning out the same shit over and over again made me realise that a walking simulator is just a point and click puzzle game with all the puzzles surgically removed.

 

[Cryonic Haunted Bullets]

the dipshits who create music out of literal autistic screeching

This is seriously low-effort. If you're gonna make screech music, at least put some soul into it.

 

[AnOminous]

You're going to notice a lot of the current "games as art" crowd are assholes who make completely non-engaging experiences that ultimately aren't art, they just want to be seen as deep and engaging, a lot like the assholes who create modern art, or the dipshits who create music out of literal autistic screeching and declare that it's anything other than weapons-grade cringe.

The virgin autistic screechers vs. the Chad agonized screams of the institutionalized criminally insane.

 

[c-no]

I think the saddest and most ironic part in all this was that the SJW's essentially co-opted and hijacked the "games as art" crowd and now the common perception of a game that is is "art" is now something more in line with pretentious walking simulators like Gone Home or preachy woke punk shit like Tonight We Riot as opposed to something like Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2, or even Manhunt

The first Manhunt was actually pretty high-concept from an artistic point of view despite all the bloody violence and brutality. Rockstar basically intended the game to be a commentary on the controversy over video game violence and the moral guardians of the time.

The snuff film plot is meant as a deliberate parallel to the rhetoric over violent video games, and the whole thing is meant to look like a cheap 80's VHS tape, both as part of the setting and as a way to invoke the moral panic over "Video Nasties" back in the 80's (Rockstar was originally a British company)

The second Manhunt was a cheap edgy cash-in, but it was more focused on the urban legends about MK Ultra and ripping off Fight Club than anything else.

IIRC, Manhunt 2 was also developed by one of Rockstar's minor subsidiary studios.

Nowadays, the woke punks and SJW journalist types would see something like Manhunt or even the first Bioshock as "problematic" and "edgy" games fit only for incel neckbeard strawmen.

With the games they could of made that could be art or "political statements," they could do more than just make a game pushing some ideology they like or follow. Someone trying something similar to what Rockstar did with Manhunt, a game even the devs themselves felt uncomfortable in making, would be worth more a look at than a pixel side scroller beat-em up/whatever Tonight We Riot is. With Manhunt, any sort of artistic or political statement for it isn't obvert but at least makes you wonder when you get far enough and wonder how this game manages to be more fucked up than GTA itself.

That is bullshit, Video Games aren't intrinsically art no, but art can come from anywhere and be made by anyone.

The fart huffers just want to pretend shit like Gone Home is art, as opposed to actual games that are art like Doom.

If anything with art, it may as well be a subjective thing because at this point, everyone gets their own interpretation of a game compared to what the author tries to lay out. And at this point, one can argue a dudebro game or a hentai game can also be art.

Could the same apply with politics? The more I see people sperg out over politics in either soapboxing or that MGS 2 itself was "nukes bad" the more I feel it's just people being autistic tards that seem buggered at some shit. One example being some sperg getting buggered a game developer making some hollow statement an NPC would uncritically eat up, the other trying to sperg on how "no politics" is some sort of dog whistle when the former's statement may not really be some dog whistle when considering how the writers could be shit at it (and if one wonders what I mean in this instance, it's Bethesda. They never had good writers and I can assume the shit they'll write would fall flat on its face if one actually pays attention).

 

[ScatmansWorld]

Meanwhile, Mike Zaimont of Skullgirls fame makes a very tasteful joke on stream that I'm sure won't lead to any huge consequences.