@Ralizah Ahh, yeah, in the country that problem doesn't manifest until urban sprawl plows its way through. In the cities, suburbs, exurbs, if it's more than 30 years old it's torn down to a dirt lot and a new, modern, freakishly uniform object is put in its place So much character and charming older buildings, things from between the 50's through 80's, unique places with unique identities, unique histories, virtually every last one of them torn down and replaced with either identical looking tract homes or identical looking strip malls, all with the same stores....I'd need a GPS to find out where I am because it's identical everywhere like the Stepford Buildings. Last time I was out in the true country area that, granted, was largely open fields, the sprawl had clearly begun moving out there too, with more identical looking strip malls, and the unique local landmarks all gone. I don't even mind the expansion as much, but make it UNIQUE looking and feeling. The whole world looks like it's being spat out of a 3D printer using a demo template.
Maybe that's why I dislike Minecraft. Too much reality in it.
Ubisoft's new logo basically looks like the old one got gutted. Perfect representation of the current state of the company with their impending takeover.
@IceClimbers Haha, perfect perspective, actually. Very characteristically fatalistic for a French firm. You might be onto something there.
@Ralizah BTW your description of philosophy is interesting, though I think it's probably characterized that IMO philosophy is more or less a mode of thinking and type of perspective/analysis. Trying to make a profitable career out of it as an actual industry is kind of getting away with murder to begin with. The same applies to a LOT of academia, actually. So their defensive/inferiority mindset probably starts there.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE That thing needs a trigger warning or something!
@Joeynator3000 I had a cat that used to change my settings on PC games all the time.....he was better at some of them than I was....I could never find a way to get those settings back either
Why is it that every time I see that avatar my head starts going with hers?
@NEStalgia Almost. The point made by the artists that flipped the snobby academics was only the surface-level value of their own production, people who had abandoned all formalist principles realized that there was a largely unexplored (meaning: sidelined in theorization) world in the arts about all kinds of stuff.
The dynamics between author/audience are of special focus, and of particular relevance in the realm of videogames due to their focus on interactivity. The death of the author, author intentionality and why it doesn't matter, appropriation of the piece by the spectator (the piece that the spectator experiences in contrast with the piece the author made), interaction between the audience and the author (the piece composed by both) or, more recently, the analysis of the same work adapted to different media are all examples of reconsiderations, of questions about the very nature of the art process and how a piece can be perceived. So yeah, you get half a gold star.
And just for the sake of clarity, I'll say that trying to emulate the aesthetic principles behind movements like minimalism (which is now around 50 years old) and to present them as something revolutionary is an exercise in futility. In that regard, the advertisement posted earlier makes total sense, but for that reason alone. Pollock would be laughed at today, for example, but it doesn't change that he and many others helped reconfigure what we as society understand by "art", little by little. That's why we call it contribution to the arts, its definition is as mutable as society is.
Besides that, most people interested in conversations about art have grown in a world in which the people who produce anything artistic have already come to terms with that idea. As a result, they consume media in which these ideas have long being ingrained. Individual opinions may vary, but there isn't that big of a "popular backlash" against abstract art as it used to be.
Now, whether videogames can be acknowledged as an established artform yet or not, that's an entirely different can of worms.
@MarcelRguez Wahoo, a half a star is still more than no star! "We're number three! We're number three!"
Seriously, though, good writeup. I'm far from an art critic, art theory academic, or artistic person (creative, perhaps, artistic, no.) And yet I can't help but hold the opinion on art that, art simply "is"....an art theory academic is just an egotist that can't get over themselves, and anyone TRYING to be artistic already failed. If something is art, then it simply is on the merit of what it is.
When I look at film and video games, it's always so clear from the "arthouse" entries that it's trying too hard to be artistic and as a result fails to be art at all. Meanwhile plenty of commercial entries not trying to be art, end up as an unforgettable expression of art.
Video games, even more than film, though, are hard to quantify as art or not art. Their interactivity makes them automatically less an expression of the artist and more a functioning machine that is engineered. But sometimes the art shines through anyway. AFIAK Miyamoto still does not see it as art, but as a product, and as a toy. Of course he comes at it from the angle of an industrial designer.
Thousands of people still searching everywhere for a Switch
Guy: LMAO imma drop a switch out of a plane!
@NEStalgia I think one of the big problems is that, over the past century or so, a LOT of different disciplines have begun muscling in on philosophy's academic territory. Psychology, sociology, biology, physics, cognitive science, neuroscience, etc. etc. have made wide swaths of the field utterly irrelevant outside of the classroom.
It should also be said that, back when American religious extremists were refashioning creationism as "intelligent design" in order to bypass court rulings that prevented them from getting their propaganda into public schools, I noticed a lot of prominent-ish figures in the philosophy world were duped by them. Very disappointing, to say the least.
On a more on-topic note, I ordered one of those 8bitdo SNES controllers for my Switch. If it works well, I'll have the perfect controller for those Neo-Geo games I'm about to purchase. It also works on PC and Android, so it'll be perfect for my emulators as well. Assuming it works. Most of the buzz around them has been good, but a few people are VERY negative. I'll be sure to post impressions after I get it.
@NEStalgia Oh, it totally is. I'm a literature graduate myself, and it's very easy to see that academic theorization, when it isn't accepted as societal knowledge, is nothing but a power struggle between people that aren't nearly as important as they think they are. That doesn't mean that these theorizations have no value, however. If a certain critical approach has endured the test of time or, more importantly, has proved itself to be useful to understand why people make anything artistic, then it should be preserved, refined and, with time, allowed to spawn another movement from which other people will draw inspiration. The meta-commentary comes with the territory: if art becomes self-reflexive, the critical framework surrounding it has to double down in order to have anything useful to say.
About videogames in particular, I'd bet at least some of the examples you have in mind are trying to claim the "artistic status" for themselves by piggybacking other media. Film is the big one, but painting is a very close second. If I ever have to read another review that describes a game as a "painting in movement", my head will explode. That's an oxymoron if there ever was one.
And about the last paragraph, I want to think the general public has more of a phenomenological approach to games as an artform nowadays, rather than an authored one. I mean, at times you can't separate the product from That One Guy (Kojima is a great example for that), but since your average game is such an industrialized product, the subjective approach of what did this make me think about at this time seems much more valuable to me. Ubisoft as a collective entity isn't trying to say a thing with Far Cry 5, it's the feedback loop between player and game what should be at the core of the discussion.
@Ralizah Wait, what? I'm thinking about getting a NES30 Pro, so I'm assuming it will have similar problems, whatever they are. What are people complaining about?
@Ralizah@SLIGEACH_EIRE Although the big take-away here is despite all the hand wringing in march about screen scratches and defective joycons, my personal favorite, the warping tablet, and whatnot, the Switch is approaching DMG Game Boy levels of durability here!! Throw it out of an airplane, and it just bounces, you buy a new joycon and off you go. Iwata would be proud!
@Ralizah What I love about articles like that, and it's reflection on the inner workings of all the academic disciplines though is, when you read through their self important wordings....both of the individuals referenced in that link, it's always academia looking at itself. Instead of analyzing the world around them they end up analyzing the other analysts and the analysis the latter arrived at by analyzing other analysts. Somewhere along the way they all seem to have forgotten that the whole point of what they're supposed to be doing is analyzing reality, not analyzing the other scribes in their own halls. It becomes a meaningless chess game of aristocrats arguing over whoever can position themselves in the most defensible position. Meanwhile the world outside their walls keeps going unaware of anything going on inside.
Well, it's hard to be more negative on the 8bitdo controllers than people have been on the d-pad-less joycon and the supposedly too sensitive d-pad on the pro controller. Thank goodness I'm not a d-pad based fighting fan vet. It's not "re-learning" to use thumb sticks.
@MarcelRguez Funny I wrote the above before reading your reply and they bear a lot of similar themes
Funny you'd mention Kojma as he's one of those prize examples of "trying too hard" to be art (in his case by imitating the films that try to hard to be art...)
Ubisoft is probably one of the greatest examples of style over substance. It's trying to be art in some places, not trying to be art in others. It doesn't reflect a coherent vision from any one, or any other group, but I'm not sure it's the feedback loop that matters either. Most of that is just repetition based on base instincts and gambling like rewards systems. I dread to think that now counts as "art" and more just gratification loops. But for Ubi it's always about "style". It's shallow art, but I think that's where their art crystallizes.
@NEStalgia I am of the opinion that Kojima is not a great artist (writer, director or whatever) but he's a heck of an auteur, and I mean that in the most modernist way possible. More importantly, out of all the people pursuing videogames as an artform through the Gesamtkunstwerk road, he might the one that understands the medium the best. Most of the people trying to do that disregard the implementation of meaningful mechanics completely. That the guy can secure a night-limitless budget from first Konami (until they were fed up) and now Sony is just the icing on the cake.
And yeah, "style over substance" should be the motto of many AAA devs in general. I will say however that I don't see anything stopping something like gratification loops, for example, from becoming something to examine under critical scrutiny if they're used in meaningful ways. But yeah, it's a problem of lack of focus, absolutely.
@MarcelRguez Latency issues. Mushy buttons. Imprecise D-Pad inputs. The usual.
I search for user impressions all over the internet before buying accessories. Most people loved them. A few people were adamant that they're inferior products. Overall, though, the general buzz has been fairly positive. Enough that I'm comfortable biting the bullet and ordering one.
@NEStalgia Reminds me of the Vita: thing looks like it'll shatter if you look at it the wrong way, but my Vita has been FAR more durable than any of my 3DS models.
I mean, this is what happens when a profession grows insular and disconnected from the outside world. It's probably also why no credible philosophical analysis of 2016 and its implications regarding the evolution of Western culture has emerged.
Yeah, I've heard less nasty stuff about the 8bitdo controllers than about the actual official controllers, which is probably a good sign, because my joycons have been nearly perfect.
@MarcelRguez The general consensus is that the build quality is excellent. I've heard the SNES30 is a dead ringer for a real SNES controller in terms of appearance and feeling, which swayed me, because I absolutely love the SNES controller.
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