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Some pretentious conference-inspired rambling THE THREAD

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First I'd like to say that I haven't read the theme yet because I didn't have time. And secondly:

Usually the things that make impact on you in games are things that could make the same impact even if they wouldn't be in game(usually a cut scene or song). And I should add that this is mostly true for things that devoloper wanted you to fell, not like lets say the engine makes posible to happen, but is not something that happens to millions of people people playing the game.

Edited by Sleepdance

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But isn't 'interactive story' a subform of game basically?

For what it's worth, I do not think that it is. I don't even think of it as a game. In my mind, storytelling like that has amazing potential and calling it a sub-form of gaming would be doing it a big disservice. That's a whole 'nother can o' worms, though.

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That doesn't add up for me. Aren't you forgetting that it's Rohrer who put meaning into the game in the first place? Surely, not everyone got the exact same thing out of it (as with any kind of medium), but it made a lot of people go "Oh, I understand what he is saying with this". That is Rohrer succeeding in conveying something to the player.

Out of this

not everyone got the exact same thing out of it

You made my point, thank you. :)

In games, you can make meaning, you cannot make stories. That is it to me, I stil have not met any, not one example that would put that to doubt.

Gameplay can bear many things, emotions for instance, but not stories.

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I haven't read every post in this thread, so I'm probably re-iterating stuff someone else said better. This is mostly in reply to OssK about games not being able to talk to you and also the driving metaphor. And, surprise, I'm using Far Cry 2 as an example, and for the sake of the example I'm going to smooth out some of its problems.

Far Cry 2 places you in a war-torn African state. It shows you the effects of the war everywhere, interrupting beautiful landscapes with burned husks of cars and dead bodies. Here, already, the game is talking to you -- it's telling you things about war.

The game places you in the body of a mercenary. The game could place you in the body of a soldier in some western country's military that comes in and saves the whole damn country, like many games do, but it doesn't do that. You have no chance to be the good guy, and you cannot avoid doing questionable things. You have a degree of choice: you can choose whose missions you do, and you can choose to subvert those missions to help your friends, but you cannot choose to only do good. There's very little good you can do. This is also the game talking to you.

Games talk to you by immersing you in a world of the authors' choosing for an extended period of time, by giving you choice and then limiting it. A game that would have let you just join the 'good' side of the conflict and then blow the evil nazi side away would be saying something completely different (not much of any value).

It's the kind of talk that is very easy to shut out by blowing something up, but no different from cinema or literature in that tons of people fail to properly 'read' them too. There will always be people who fail to look past the surface layer of any work of art.

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Surely, not everyone got the exact same thing out of it (as with any kind of medium)
You made my point, thank you. :)

Welp, can't say I didn't try. :mock:

Shame you chose to ignore that bit.

Agree to disagree, I guess. :)

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You made my point, thank you. :)

I'm sorry, but that's not a valid point. In no other medium will everyone who consumes it get the exact same thing out of a work.

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I'm sorry, but that's not a valid point. In no other medium will everyone who consumes it get the exact same thing out of a work.

Well, then you'd have to choose what you call "to talk"…

To me it means you have a message that you transmit. Not a feeling, not a mood, something you say and that is understood or not, but you had a direct intent and it is objectively directed.

That is art, art is not made in words which tell you things directly, it evokes things to you.

Example: I could tell you "think about what an artist makes, does everything he makes is art ? Why are people paying so much for the table Picasso made?" or, I can make an object that makes the same assertion (which is what games are capable of doing in my point of view) but without saying it. Without talking.

In that case, a person called Piero Manzoni made that object, the object that called that question, that reflexion, it's called Mierda d'Artista and you have probably all heard about it. It's a can of Manzoni's shit and it sold for thousands of dollars. It's the difference between saying something as in what you are both exposing and implying something in your work.

Games talk to you by immersing you in a world of the authors' choosing for an extended period of time, by giving you choice and then limiting it. A game that would have let you just join the 'good' side of the conflict and then blow the evil nazi side away would be saying something completely different (not much of any value).

And that is implying something. Not talking. To me at least.

So you can make movies that talk, books that talk that have a message hidden between the lines and you can also make books movies that imply things.

You can make a song and talk about things, or make a music piece or concerto and imply things, make people think about messages, questions and so on. I am not talking. If I ask a question, I do not talk about a subject I invite you to a reflection on this subject.

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That last post made me understood your point better. Perhaps we think differently about what it means for a work to talk. My interpretation of what you are saying is that if the game talks to the player (in the sense of talk that you defined above), it ceases to be a game or the thing that talks inside the game could just as well be separate from the game.

I just read the 'On Auteurship in Games' post by Clint Hocking, he is saying that auteurship and art in games are different things and that in games the art can be player expression.

But I think that even by just creating the space where the player can express themselves and settings its limitations the game's creator(s) can be saying something, even though more indirectly and it might be something that even doesn't become apparent depending on how the game is played. In that case it may not be the most important intent of the game, or maybe the author(s) have several layers of intents. Like a children's book may be saying one thing to kids but something different to adults. And I still think Passage at least is an example of that.

[edit]After rereading your last post, it seems I don't make the same distinction between 'talking' and 'implying'. So maybe we don't actually disagree that much. Personally, I'm not sure I find that distinction important. Maybe I should.

Edited by Erkki

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At that point, I think Chris would be required to read all of our things and say where he stands on "talking" so that our comments on his piece might actually be more accurate ;)

Don't get me wrong, I do like passage too, it didn't tell me much but invited an interesting reflexion on the meaning of it inside my rather than yelling about death to my face like UP did (and I still loved that movie).

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PS. I now also read Click Nothing's 'On Authorship in Games' and that seems even more relevant to this discussion. I particularly like this part:

... Where most other media require the audience to induce their meaning, games afford the audience at least the possibility of deducing their meaning.

In other media, ‘supporting material’ that is coherent with the central themes of the work is pushed to the side in a B-plot… in games, this supporting material affords the artist ways to illuminate the meaning from many, many possible directions, allowing the player to explore the meaning the artist is trying to provide. Potentially, because the game designer is able to express himself in systems rather than in examples, infinities can be examined.

...

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This is what I think Hocking himself, Takahashi, Rare, Frozenbyte, and to an extent Rockstar and Media Molecule try or have tried to do. Give the player the tools (i.e. systems) with which to explore a universe which itself is a product of authorship, but without imposing bullshit restrictions on them or forcing everyone to have the same experience a la Uncharted to pick a recent, rather egregious example. In many ways, I appreciate the author's intentions and what he/she/they have created so much more when I can express myself creatively or within them or the systems behind the world come together to deliver some kind of incredible chance event that is - or at least feels - unique to me. Because of this, my investment in the experience increases and I might actually start to care about what happens.

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First thing, I don't think that using new (or rarely used) techniques to convey something in a game means rejecting all the other tools that already exists : being linear at some point is fine, so is using a cutscene or restricting the player's freedom ...as long as those are the best tools to achieve what you want.

And I'm all for implying vs. telling but I don't think contemporary art is something to look up to regarding this topic because 1) the meaning is mainly encompassed in the process of creation rather than on the delivered object itself 2) it does not try to make itself accessible. That might be fine if you don't mind delivering meaning to an audience that might be already sold to your message, but I think that designing also mean making sure to bring most players into the mindset that will enable them to perceive what you imply ... and that might only be achieved by taking some of the players by the hand for quite a while.

That's why even though "Setting up an environment as the only act of design" is an expression that fires up my brain in a good way, I know that behind the simplicity of the formulation a lot of complexity is hidden.

Edit : Also, I agree with Hocking, but I'm still waiting for designers and writers that are able to express themselves with systems. cf this post about structuralism.

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And I'm all for implying vs. telling but I don't think contemporary art is something to look up to regarding this topic because 1) the meaning is mainly encompassed in the process of creation rather than on the delivered object itself 2) it does not try to make itself accessible. That might be fine if you don't mind delivering meaning to an audience that might be already sold to your message, but I think that designing also mean making sure to bring most players into the mindset that will enable them to perceive what you imply ... and that might only be achieved by taking some of the players by the hand for quite a while.

I think contemporary art is exactly the thing to look up to. 1 and 2 are both false. They may be true for some artists, but they are not truisms. If you said that those were problems of the contemporary art scene at large, I wouldn't necessarily argue with you. This doesn't mean that there isn't stuff to be learned from how contemporary artists approach problems, or that 1 and 2 are necessary evils that cannot be avoided. Since it is so unhinged and chaotic and relies on an audience participating or witnessing things, it is a better model than movies, which are static and set up by a hegemonic auteur. Some of the better installation artists could make pretty impressive, effective video games.

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Some of the better installation artists could make pretty impressive, effective video games.

Some do.

Article will soon be finished and translated in english.

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One thing that really facinated me about Passage is how radically different it is from any other medium when it comes to appreciating the author's full intent. With books or music or movies you don't technically need to re-experience them to get the whole thing. If you choose to do so however you don't do it with anything other than a fresh set of eyes and ears. With Passage, you only get a part of the message in your playthrough, and you had to re-play, not just re-play, but re-play using different play strategies to piece together the whole message. The game is definitely telling you something, but how much you take away from it is all dependent on how much time you're willing to invest in it. Feels like a uniquely Video game thing and I like that.

I dunno. maybe there are examples of this done in other medium (choose-your-own-adventure books maybe?) but the culture ain't my thing.

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It came out wrong : I don't mean to condemn temporary art but games I wish to make, I also wish they don't provide the same experience as I've had personally with contemporary art.

It goes like this : I can say that I like or don't like recent contemporary art on a purely aesthetically level, but most of the time this is were my involvement and my curiosity end as there is no way for me to tell you what the piece is about and what - beside the expression of beauty - the artist wanted to achieve.

By their lack of direction and self containment, these pieces of art don't include me, they exclude me ... and while I'm fine with artists doing this, I'm not fine with them displaying what they do to the public and not providing access point to their reasoning.

I'm fortunate enough that my teacher of parents gave me the keys to most art forms and movements, but when I don't have those keys yet I should be confronted to something that talks to me a little and invite to further research instead of something that stares back at me and refuses to discuss until I'm in the known.

My point is : I wouldn't do that. If I wanted my audience to express itself intellectually through my game, I'll make clear what spaces I'm giving them and what is the subject.

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