With every passing year, I'm more inclined to stop gaming. At first I attributed this to "getting older", "growing more mature", etc., but I don't think that's right anymore, as I'm still fully capable of behaving very immaturely for my age (and let's leave such concepts at the door for the time being).

I've noticed that the level of thought invested into experimenting with the storyline and the story-telling conventions of games is close to zero. In fact, looking back, the industry still has not matured from the "chosen one" cookie-cutter formula. Sure, we got Havok, paralaxbumpwhatevesmapping, but in the last dozen of games I've played, I was set on a path of saving the world as the "last grey warden", "the last living jedi", "the last dragonborn", you name it. In fact, I can think of very few games where the characters were not written to be cheap plaster molds, or delivered lines not riddled with unadvlterated cheese.
While video games have the potential of being a groundbreaking form of multimedia art, it's hard to see when somebody is going to come along and turn the video game industry into something more than the cheapest form of money grubbing consumerism. Right now, the level of art that gaming is at is akin to the early film experiments of the late 19th century - the fact that you have the means to shoot a bunch of factory workers entering the building does not make it art.

In my opinion, the problem with the gaming industry is that it continues focusing on teen adolescent males who are not yet fit for distinguishing good and bad art due to lack of experience. Additionally, it employs mechanisms of addiction to maximize profit. A good example of such an occurrence are MMO's, whose leveling mechanism, equipment and other content turns the player into a guinea pig spinning the big wheel - is there any point to the leveling? Has the World of Warcraft ever taught you anything about yourself, your phobias, your mother, or being human in general? Doubtfully.
One other fitting example of the most basic capitalist greed is Bioware - the fact that a company strips out content and sells it as DLC is outrageous, and implies that the artistic integrity of the game is non-existent. Imagine David Lynch cutting out scenes with supporting characters in one of his movies and selling it as "additional content". Wouldn't you want to punch him in the mouth http://www.fullissue.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/David-Lynch.jpg

To conclude, as my mother is nagging me to join her for lunch, gaming as art needs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1OZCHixR0&feature=related.

Have you played Street Fighter. One of the best game series everar! Super Street Fighter 4 is bomb.

The formula that appeals to the lowest, widest and most common denominator will ship the most units. Developers have a duty to provide a product that their publisher feels will fulfill this criterion.

I like monkeys.. hehee..

That is obvious, but the amazing thing is the long-lasting success of the formula. How to get people fed up with mindless, decadent repetition of plot and start a gaming renaissance?

Cas'als.

Just like there are the mindless action films in movies, there is their equivalent in games. I think you're focusing too much on these, and ignoring the games that truly are a work of art.

Sure, I'd agree that video games have a much more predominant amount of these, but you're generalizing the entire genre. As an example, have you played Red Dead Redemption? John Marston certainly isn't trying to save the world. His character is fleshed out and complex, and he is far from cheesy. Nor does the game attempt to addict you as you point out - something I'd like to point out is, from my experience, only really ever in multiplayer games, and especially MMO's.

If you don't like those types of games, then simply don't buy them. Read reviews of games, and look for the rare gems with excellent stories and characters like Red Dead Redemption; I'll even give you a tip. Buy L.A. Noire when it comes out. You'll most likely enjoy it.

Hurr hurr, Antibody liek shooty gaems. Esplosions pew pew! :gun:

...Also, I think you need to take a moment and come up with a list of games you actually like. The games that live up to your high standards. Is that list long? If not, then I think the problem is because you're looking in the wrong place for entertainment. If you need experience 2001: A Space Odyssey in every game you play, then you're definitely looking in the wrong place. Intelligent games exist, but there aren't and never will be as many intelligent games as there are intelligent books and films. Don't criticize videogames for lacking a quality they were never intended to have.

That goes for cinematography as well. I stopped going to picture theaters a long time ago because I felt like paying to see most of that rubbish actually insulted my intelligence.
I don't think the answer is as easy as you put it, but I think most people would admit the common expression "film industry" reveals that it's no longer an art, but a monotonous industrial process on a par with the daily manufacturing of tons of rubber, metal and what not at a factory. I'd say that's the problem of a economically liberal and meritocratic world where the quality doesn't matter anywmore, as long as there are people stupid enough to fall for bland consumerism. I wager nowadays most artists also feel little self-recognition toward their profession (as in what being an artist actually means, what value it holds).

99 percent of everything is crap.

Games are definitely improving. Look at the more recent Rockstar games, like RDR and GTA IV, they're both much more mature (and not just in a hurr durr violence way), the characters are all fairly average guys, who (at least in cutscenes) only use violence as a last resort. The trouble is, games are supposed to be fun, no one wants to play a shooter where the character sits down and has a little cry every time he kills someone, that just wouldn't be fun. I'm sure games will eventually find a way to tell a story that won't be immediately undermined by the player deciding to go on a killing spree, probably when they find a way to make the characters emotive enough that we don't just see them as targets.

What can change the nature of a man?

Beer

^ This

Every time I look at a new MMO coming out i've severely disappointed by the comments I read. One of the absolute DUMBEST comments I read was on the boards for the new starwars MMO coming out. Person said that because he worked and could only play 2hrs a day the game should have nothing but soloable content and provide the best rewards through solo content. Can understand people not having enough time to play a game however having it be nothing but solo content defeats the purpose of an MMO. Might as well just make it a console game to begin with instead of an MMO that way you can save money.

Innovation was once king of the industry however with people not having a lot of $$$ they want quick, cheap, and easy games to get. This is probably why the $5 and $10 games on the 360 store, Nintendo Store, and PSOnline store are thriving. Doesn't take too many developers to make a game that has around 5 to 7hrs of game play opposed to something that is indepth requiring 10 to 15hrs of gameplay like a massive shooter or RPG.

and We Dare

You are just playing the wrong games.

If it works in movies and TV, why shouldn't it work for games too?

Though really, I don't mind if not all of my games are high art. I play games for entertainmdent, and while certainly, something can be intelligent and entertaining at the same time, it really doesn't always need to be. Especially since I play games for the gameplay, not the story, I want a good story, I read a book, when I play games, I want something that's fun to play. Now, that isn't to say that I don't enjoy a good story in games when I can get it, but it isn't the first thing I look for in them. Give me some nameless, faceless people to shoot, and I'll be satisfied as long as you can make shooting them fun, but if you can tell a good story at the same time, as long as it doesn't distract me from the fun of the gameplay.

Though, I do think there's room for really intelligent games on the market as well. Just as in movies, we can have both Hollywood popcorn flicks where you can turn off you're brain and just watch the explosions and art films that you can watch several times while critically anolysing every detail and still miss out on some of the meanings that may or may not have been hidden in them, I do think there's also room for the same diversity in games. But trying to provide such diversity would be a potentially risky business move, so it's no surprise that most developers would not want to take it. Especially when it seems pretty clear that there's still those who think games are basically high-tech children's toys. If the general public recognized that games aren't just for kids, then there would be no reason why there should be controversy over violent video games when movies, books and TV that depict violence are considered quite acceptable. Perhaps once the potential of video games as a form of storytelling is better realized, things will change, but for that to happen, we need developers that aren't afraid to take risks, and businesses usually only like to do that if the potential payoff is high enough to make it worthwhile. And considering that in this case, that involves appealing to a niche that is generally assumed to be considerably smaller than the market that developers have already found an effective formula to please, i think the results should be obvious.



And yet in the case of GTA 4, I think trying to make the story more serious came to its detriment, and you just explained why, because games are supposed to be fun, sure, past GTA games may not have been realistic crime simulations, but that worked in their favor, as the lack of realism made them fun, when Rockstar decided to go with a more realistic route in GTA 4, I can't help but feel that it took some of the fun out of the game.

In the case of Red Dead Redemption, since it wasn't a sequel to games I loved for their general lack of anything that can be taken seriously, I could appreciate it simply for how it stood as a standalone game, with GTA 4, when I play it, I just can't help comparing it to its predeccessors, and noticing every aspect of what made them entertaining that it lost. In conclusion, if you want to make a gritty crime drama, it's probably a good idea not to make it a sequel to a rather over-the-top crime game that has never made any effort to feel realistic.

Good point. I think GTA IV is a great game, I just think it could've worked better as a seperate game with a similar formula to GTA, a la RDR. Then they wouldn't have had to shoehorn in some of the features from old GTA games that didn't really fit in the serious world of GTA IV.

I'm sorry, but this amused me:
Who exactly sat down in the dawn of time to define precisely what games would be, now and forever?

As for the OP, it seems to me he's busy playing the wrong games. That's not to say I wouldn't like to see some greater maturity in the industry, but let's not fall into the trap where any game that doesn't fit the criteria becomes evidence that no games fit the criteria.

And on a different note again, I enjoy GTA IV more than any GTA in the series.

Because most people aren't that intelligent and would be alienated by a game beyond their abilities/understanding? :shrug:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in every medium of acknowledged "art" (be it film, literature, and so on and so forth) there is a lot of money-grubbing consumerism. For every Anna Karenina, there's at least five Twilights. No artistic realm is free of consumerism, and perhaps they never have been. Video games are hardly alone on that front, despite how it may seem. I think you may be overestimating the "art to schlock" ratio in other mediums.

Besides, as I commented on another "are games intellectually challenging enough" debate...if every single game since the dawn of Pong tried to be intellectual and push and batter at the boundaries of what's acceptable in gaming and/or what can be done with the medium, I'd stop playing video games from sheer mental exhaustion. Look, my favorite film of all time is Amadeus, which is a magnificent piece of art. But at the end of a long, frustrating day when I just want to relax, I'm not going to want to watch it, because as magnificent as it is it's not good for relaxing the brain.

By and large, people play games to relax. Ergo, they're probably going to prefer a few rounds of Halo to the gaming equivalent of Amadeus. I'm in the same boat--I love good stories in games, and my favorite games of all time are inevitably the more intelligent and thoughtful of the lot. Still, when I've had a terrible day at work, I'd much rather break out Left 4 Dead and mow down a few thousand zombies. Doesn't mean I prefer "dumb" games. (Though calling the L4D series "dumb" does a disservice to how very, very well it uses set pieces and scenery as a means to convey the finer points and details of its story. *removes writer/editor hat*) Just means I've got some frustration to vent.

Also, as my knee-jerk reaction to everyone who alleges that games are unintelligent and "not art," the following games would like to say hi:

Silent Hill 2
Grim Fandango
Shadow of the Colossus
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Planescape: Torment
Portal
Sanitarium
Psychonauts

...and suggest that you play at least one of them before damning the entire medium. (Note: list is highly subjective and heavily skewed towards PC gaming, because it's my own personal list. Still, I'd consider all the games on it to be intelligent, thought-provoking works of art which would only work as well as they do in the interactive medium of video games. Which is the lynchpin of the "can games be art" argument for me: if you take the interactivity and immersive qualities out of a game--if you turn Silent Hill 2 into a novel, say, or a series of still photographs--does it still have the same impact? For the games listed above, at least for me, the answer is a big whopping no. They do their best work as games.)

Agreed. Video games were meant to be a form of entertainment, NOT art. There are some games out there that ARE (in my opinion) art however, such as Flower.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying videogames aren't and never will be art (I think some already are), however, early videogames were not intelligent and weren't meant to be intelligent. They were meant to be forms of entertainment, and eventually became much more than that. But it's silly to sit there and criticize them for not consistently having a quality they weren't originally meant to have.

I think there will be, in time. Video games have been around for what, thirty years now? The movie industry has had more than a century to develop, and literature obviously much longer than that. Give it another half a century and the gap between games and other media won't be as wide any more.

I think the same could be said of a lot of "art", though. I'm sure people were using bowls to hold their food and water before they started aesthetic sculpting, and drawings were probably there for communication or simple time-killing before becoming a medium of self-expression. In fact, at the moment music is the only thing I can think of that wouldn't have had a more "bland" origin and intent.