Gaming is growing rapidly as a form of entertainment and it's entering a space of serious artistic critique,
The only games I see that seriously deserve artistic critique are brushed under the rug in favor of games that set fire to the very concept of video games.
Gone Home, Depression Quest and Dear Esther, just for the sake of example are definitely great examples of art, yet they're fucking HORRIBLE examples of the capabilities of video games as an art form. Is this how you make the medium 'grow up'? Because I genuinely don't see how stripping a game of the whole 'game' aspect is going to expand the horizons of the art form.
You'll notice that the greatest directors embrace their medium, they design films as films. The greatest authors embrace their medium, they design novels as novels. You will never see a great director throw out the basic concepts of cinematography and you will never see a great novelist throw the basic concepts of linguistics. So why on earth would a great game designer throw out the concepts of a game?
For a crowd that wants games to 'expand' and 'grow up' these people sure do have an obsession with regressing the medium to even less than the essentials.
Learn your fucking craft, Michelangelo didn't fuck around with stick figures, a game designers shouldn't fuck around with Twine.
Here's the odd part: Opposition to sophisticated critique of video games tends to come from within the gaming industry itself
But can you identify the WHERE of it?
It's a young industry. It saw rapid commercial success and now doesn't want to derail its prosperous ways. It's historically an underground kind of field, not used to a spotlight that could reveal flaws alongside beauty.
No, no you can't. I, as a Gamer want EVERYONE to enjoy video games, like EVERYONE can enjoy music and EVERYONE can enjoy films. I'm sure audiophiles feel the same way, and I know for a fact that film buffs feel the same way. I see the commercial success of video games to be a pathway to getting the whole world gaming.
And I could throw a rock into a crowd of gamers and it would more likely than not hit someone who feels the exact same way.
But go on, talk more bullshit.
"You have a movie like Schindler's List, or you have a movie like... American Sniper or Argo, and everybody gets it." he says. "Why not? Why not deal with politics and real-world issues but still be very successful financially and critically acclaimed, right?"
What relevance does that have to games 'growing up'? Look at feminism, that alone should prove that you can have political opinions about real world issues and not be mature in the slightest.
He also hears that games aren't serious, that they should only be fun or that they're supposed to be pure escapism, no social impact attached.
What are 'Strawmen the pretentious nongame indie devs Shadowbox with'?
Burak wants one thing to be clear: It's not all doom and gloom in the gaming industry. There are games that address social issues or at least don't shy away from offering real-world messages.
The quality of the message matters not when interpreting the quality of the art. You could have the best fucking message in the world that reaches across multiple generations and culture, a true moral objective that the entire world agrees upon. If your methods of exposing it don't jive well with your art form, then you've failed at that art form.
Too fucking often I see games that want so desperately to deliver a message, Gone Home for example, yet have not a fucking whit of a clue how to deliver that message through gameplay mechanics. Compare and contrast with Journey, which can actually move a player to strange and deep emotions entirely through its multiplayer system. I reiterate, learn your craft. I don't expect to hear a guitarist just repeatedly dragging his dick across the strings and calling that a song.
Much of the current gaming controversy is associated with "GamerGate," a hashtag tinged with a history of misogyny and harassment.
I felt something, it's as if a million eyes suddenly started rolling- then were suddenly silenced.
"I think GamerGate surprised people," Burak says. "It surprised people to see how much of a gap and challenge that we have. But even that is dismissed by saying, 'Oh, it's a very small group just making a lot of noise,' but I'm not sure that that's the case. I think that they're maybe the most vocal and the most active, but the thing is, again, the public perception is yet to be convinced that games are serious."
Oh fuck you. You know what people don't take seriously? Interior Semiotics. You know what all these "art games" are? I'm talking Depression Quest, Gone Home, Dear Esther, Every fucking twine game in existance, fuck it, everything done by an indie dev who looks like he smells like the cannabis grow room at the brewery. These games are the Interior Semiotics of video games.
"It can't be all 100 percent entertainment," he says. "It must be more inclusive. It needs to deal with sophisticated items, it needs to be media for everyone.
Media for everyone, will never be the video game version of tinned food up the vagina, you blind fool.