4 ms·

Why the hell would anyone want that? I've already spent most of my life feeling like I'm slowly drowning, I don't need a two-bit piece of unity shovelware to he

by strken 8y ago

Why the hell would anyone want that? I've already spent most of my life feeling like I'm slowly drowning, I don't need a two-bit piece of unity shovelware to help me explore the feeling of being trapped within a doomed world of banal everyday evil.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
How about a perspective of "Well, I guess it could be worse"?
- falcolas 8y ago
  That "it could be worse" doesn't mean a person is not suffering with their own "better" condition. Sure, I could be on the verge of starving while doing backbreaking work in a 3rd world country, but that doesn't mean that I should be OK with my own job being unfulfilling or without meaning.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    Exactly. "Perfect" may be the enemy of "good", but so is "good enough".
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  That reminds me of the first episode of Futurama. Leela is talking to her boss and on the wall is the poster of the sad hardhat guy with the slogan: Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. 3000 years in the future and it's still pretty much the same.
bitwize 8y ago
Because games won't be art until they reflect the meaningless yawning abyss that is human existence.
- Vaskivo 8y ago
  Do you mean that art must be pessimistic? There are plenty of "happy" and "hopeful" works of art. And I find that definition highly reductive. Art is not only meaning/message. It's also technical prowess. And innovation.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    Of course it's reductive, but on this story's thread, almost the only time you see the A-word is when bleak walking simulators with downer endings are brought up. I'm forced to conclude that "art", like "hacker", has shifted in meaning: roughly, art is anti-kitsch. It's not art unless it rebels against popular standards of aesthetics (which are popular for a reason; humans inherently respond emotionally to certain things), because once an aesthetic becomes popular it is subject to commercial exploitation and therefore it dilutes true, authentic self-expression. And, much like kitsch is a low-effort (therefore easily producible, reproducible, and marketable) affirmation of popular aesthetics, the repudiation of such may be almost arbitrarily low-effort and still be considered high art. The repudiation itself is what matters, and all that matters, because the job of the artist is to struggle against the commercialization of society and of human experience -- not necessarily to achieve technical prowess or to innovate. I'm an amateur artist myself. I taught myself visual arts so I could make my own assets for games. I know art is, in reality, much more than this. But in order to wear the art badge in today's wider society, and thus be considered Worthy of Serious Consideration, message is both necessary and sufficient -- and it has to be the right message or it doesn't count.
klodolph 8y ago
You could make the same argument about books... why the hell would anyone want to read 1984? I'm glad we don't live in a world where all of the books, movies, and video games have been sterilized and sanitized and pumped full of diazepam.
- roenxi 8y ago
  Everyone is different, but I'd hazard that books and games tickle different needs. Books are most commonly about transmitting information; particularly in the form "if you encounter this hardship, adopt that mindset". Games are mostly about "verify that your decision making process is robust". Nobody is forcing writers and gamemakers to conform to my worldviews, but there is a trend in those directions with exceptions. If somebody made a game that really explored on "how should you think about horrible situation X" that was gloomy all the way through people would probably enjoy it. But if you have a skill-based game that breaks the success->reward feedback loop for executing a skill well, all the players will quit.
- strken 8y ago
  1984 is more than just pessimism, it's a warning that Orwell wrote because he hoped that there was time to change. Games like Mirror's Edge have a similar message: dark times are ahead if we don't take action. I read and play them in the spirit of preventing disaster and I can't imagine other people are much different. Kunzelman writes that "pessimism, crucially, does not see a way out." The world cries out for a way out of global warming, food insecurity, nuclear proliferation: does it do any good for us to paralyze ourselves with imagined impotence?
  - klodolph 8y ago
    Pessimism and optimism are different lenses to view the world, I don't think there's a solid case to be made that privileges one over the other. Looking at the world through either lens distorts what we see. Take global warming as an example. If I am optimistic, I could believe that we will curb carbon emissions and convert the world to use clean energy. If I am pessimistic, I could believe that we'll face severe ecological devastation and food shortages. "Hope for the best, expect the worst" is only possible if you are capable of seeing both the optimistic solution to a problem and the pessimistic consequences for failing to solve a problem. If you limit yourself to only an optimistic or only a pessimistic viewpoint, you are crippling your ability to deal with problems rationally.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
madshiva 8y ago
For me, almost all news game are pessimistic. I did have read the article (got an 4040 error). For my point of view, is that several game because of the boring gameplay and the lake of fun, goes directly in the pessimistic category. They could be have fun, but not, game are making in a way of winning chest, fake items, skin, etc. This is useless and you see yourself drowning in that scheme where the visual take all, and the fun and the story, goes down.
archagon 8y ago
Why watch movies that aren’t sugary Disney films? One of the games that affected me most in my life was Passage, a dead-simple, pixellated indie experiment that was about eight minutes long. It was not a happy game. I still think about it from time to time. That’s the power of art.
bliblah 8y ago
Sorry to hear that, hope you find a way to make yourself feel better. I personally enjoy music and films that embraces the darker side of humanity but video games have a pretty big gap in comparison. I guess i like creators that embrace this rather than push it away or pretend it doesn't exist. There is strength in this.

by strken 8y ago

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

How about a perspective of "Well, I guess it could be worse"?

falcolas 8y ago
That "it could be worse" doesn't mean a person is not suffering with their own "better" condition. Sure, I could be on the verge of starving while doing backbreaking work in a 3rd world country, but that doesn't mean that I should be OK with my own job being unfulfilling or without meaning.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Exactly. "Perfect" may be the enemy of "good", but so is "good enough".
drivingmenuts 8y ago
That reminds me of the first episode of Futurama. Leela is talking to her boss and on the wall is the poster of the sad hardhat guy with the slogan: Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. 3000 years in the future and it's still pretty much the same.

bitwize 8y ago

Because games won't be art until they reflect the meaningless yawning abyss that is human existence.

Vaskivo 8y ago
Do you mean that art must be pessimistic? There are plenty of "happy" and "hopeful" works of art. And I find that definition highly reductive. Art is not only meaning/message. It's also technical prowess. And innovation.
- bitwize 8y ago
  Of course it's reductive, but on this story's thread, almost the only time you see the A-word is when bleak walking simulators with downer endings are brought up. I'm forced to conclude that "art", like "hacker", has shifted in meaning: roughly, art is anti-kitsch. It's not art unless it rebels against popular standards of aesthetics (which are popular for a reason; humans inherently respond emotionally to certain things), because once an aesthetic becomes popular it is subject to commercial exploitation and therefore it dilutes true, authentic self-expression. And, much like kitsch is a low-effort (therefore easily producible, reproducible, and marketable) affirmation of popular aesthetics, the repudiation of such may be almost arbitrarily low-effort and still be considered high art. The repudiation itself is what matters, and all that matters, because the job of the artist is to struggle against the commercialization of society and of human experience -- not necessarily to achieve technical prowess or to innovate. I'm an amateur artist myself. I taught myself visual arts so I could make my own assets for games. I know art is, in reality, much more than this. But in order to wear the art badge in today's wider society, and thus be considered Worthy of Serious Consideration, message is both necessary and sufficient -- and it has to be the right message or it doesn't count.

klodolph 8y ago

You could make the same argument about books... why the hell would anyone want to read 1984? I'm glad we don't live in a world where all of the books, movies, and video games have been sterilized and sanitized and pumped full of diazepam.

roenxi 8y ago
Everyone is different, but I'd hazard that books and games tickle different needs. Books are most commonly about transmitting information; particularly in the form "if you encounter this hardship, adopt that mindset". Games are mostly about "verify that your decision making process is robust". Nobody is forcing writers and gamemakers to conform to my worldviews, but there is a trend in those directions with exceptions. If somebody made a game that really explored on "how should you think about horrible situation X" that was gloomy all the way through people would probably enjoy it. But if you have a skill-based game that breaks the success->reward feedback loop for executing a skill well, all the players will quit.
strken 8y ago
1984 is more than just pessimism, it's a warning that Orwell wrote because he hoped that there was time to change. Games like Mirror's Edge have a similar message: dark times are ahead if we don't take action. I read and play them in the spirit of preventing disaster and I can't imagine other people are much different. Kunzelman writes that "pessimism, crucially, does not see a way out." The world cries out for a way out of global warming, food insecurity, nuclear proliferation: does it do any good for us to paralyze ourselves with imagined impotence?
- klodolph 8y ago
  Pessimism and optimism are different lenses to view the world, I don't think there's a solid case to be made that privileges one over the other. Looking at the world through either lens distorts what we see. Take global warming as an example. If I am optimistic, I could believe that we will curb carbon emissions and convert the world to use clean energy. If I am pessimistic, I could believe that we'll face severe ecological devastation and food shortages. "Hope for the best, expect the worst" is only possible if you are capable of seeing both the optimistic solution to a problem and the pessimistic consequences for failing to solve a problem. If you limit yourself to only an optimistic or only a pessimistic viewpoint, you are crippling your ability to deal with problems rationally.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

madshiva 8y ago

For me, almost all news game are pessimistic. I did have read the article (got an 4040 error). For my point of view, is that several game because of the boring gameplay and the lake of fun, goes directly in the pessimistic category. They could be have fun, but not, game are making in a way of winning chest, fake items, skin, etc. This is useless and you see yourself drowning in that scheme where the visual take all, and the fun and the story, goes down.

archagon 8y ago

Why watch movies that aren’t sugary Disney films? One of the games that affected me most in my life was Passage, a dead-simple, pixellated indie experiment that was about eight minutes long. It was not a happy game. I still think about it from time to time. That’s the power of art.

bliblah 8y ago

Sorry to hear that, hope you find a way to make yourself feel better. I personally enjoy music and films that embraces the darker side of humanity but video games have a pretty big gap in comparison. I guess i like creators that embrace this rather than push it away or pretend it doesn't exist. There is strength in this.